| FALLING - first chapter |
[Dec. 1st, 2007|11:03 am] |
When the sky opened up suddenly, I got caught in it. My leather jacket and flannel scarf offered no protection from the driving cold rain of November, so I ran the last few blocks to the bar. I came out of the hissing rain, drenched through to my cotton shirt. The bar was full, patrons being of the mostly-black clad variety: punks, goths, skaters and every other misfit. The air was too smoky, the music ear-splitting loud.
I was shivering cold from the wet, but peeled my soaked jacket off anyway, patted down my drenched messenger bag stuffed with random papers and a camera, safely dry and tucked into its case. I found my cigarettes in a now-moist pack, pulled one out and tried to light it, but it was too damp. I looked around for the cigarette machine I knew was mounted on the wall, headed towards the bar and waited in a short line for some change, grabbed a beer while I was there. Pushing quarters through the slot to get my smokes, water ran down my face, my long hair dripping at the ends. I was trembling in the puddle I was making.
I watched the paper pack loosen from the twisting metal spiral and fall down into the trough. I retrieved it with cold fingers and pulled the plastic from the box, scanning for somewhere to sit, to pull myself together. A small empty table with a view of the dance floor was shoved in the corner where two huge panes of painted glass met. It had one chair only, its mate no doubt dragged away to meet a fuller table. I moved towards it, plunked myself down and tried to squeeze out some of the water from my hair. I hung my coat and scarf on the back of the chair and finally lit a smoke, took a deep gulp of beer.
I pulled out the contents of my bag and spread things across the table to check for damage. The weather report may have said something about rain later in the evening, but it was clear and nice when I had left my place. Only a few things sustained harm; the cigarettes (only four left anyway), the edge of a library book I’d been meaning to return all week, and a small scratch pad, engorged with wet, accordion-swelling, a total write off. I was hanging the canvas bag over my jacket to dry and stacking things up on the table when she came over to me.
She didn’t seem as small to me then. She was angular, hard, with whip-straight black hair. She poked me in the arm, and I looked up at her blackened eyes and lips, two silver rings through the bottom lip, glinting in the low light of the bar. She said something, and I missed it. She bent down to my ear. Her hair fell off her shoulders and curtained us from the rest of the bar, just our faces in shadows and red light. I suppose from the outside, it looked like she was about to kiss my cheek.
“I’d like for you to buy me a drink,” she yelled, biting her lip, chin forward, challenging me.
I sat up straight, leaned back a little, creating distance between us. I immediately took her for a lush, a goth bar-slut just pushing her tits at me to get some free alcohol, or maybe a club regular out on the prowl. But I was not keen on getting involved with any woman at all, having just broken up with my long-term girlfriend that week. I didn’t want a one night stand, ten minutes in the bathroom, or even a drink. I was in the bar to meet a friend, to talk business for five minutes before getting disgustingly drunk, to obliterate my ridiculously bad week.
I shook my wet head at her, furrowing my brows a little. “Sorry, no.”
She smiled at me, breath already thick and sour with liquor. “We could split a pitcher?”
I held up my beer. “I’m fine.”
She shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She scanned the room for something, and trotted away on dangerously high black shiny heels. I shook my head and returned to my damp piles, but she returned, dragging a chair behind her. She pulled it up to the table and sat herself down in it, invading my space, challenging me again. The she ignored me, watched the people on the dance floor. I wanted her to leave.
I debated grabbing my stuff and moving to another table to get away from her, but the place was packed. I had a good scowl going but she wouldn’t look at me. I was about to tell her off when she leaned forward over the table.
“You’re really a very beautiful boy,” she yelled at me.
I stared at her sideways, more than a bit unkindly. I wanted to tell her to fuck off, ask her where she got her nerve, tell her she was rude, but instead I just sighed and yelled “Thank you” back across the table at her, silently hoped she’d get bored and move on.
She smiled. “I’ve never seen you here before.” She licked her lips, bit one of the lip rings in a coy fashion. She was flirting, none too subtly, but somehow I guessed this girl wasn’t really the subtle type in anything she did.
It crossed my mind to just tell her I was gay. That would work, get her away from my table. Instead I nodded. “No, I come here. Just not a lot lately. More so in the past. I’m meeting someone here.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Girlfriend?”
“No, not a girlfriend.”
“Boyfriend?”
Jesus. “No. Just a friend of mine.” Why was I giving this girl details?
“Oh, does he come here often? Maybe I know him.”
For all I knew, she did know him. I smiled weakly and downed my beer.
“What’s his name?” she tilted her head at a strange angle, like a bird eyeing bread.
“Michel.”
I wanted Michel to arrive and not know this woman, to be able to get drunk and bitch about women with my friend. I wanted to vent about the ending of my relationship, the destruction of my life as I knew it, the mess everything was around me now. I wanted to dry off. I felt like screaming this at the strange girl, but instead I stared at the people on the dance floor.
“Did you want to dance?” She reached her hand out to me. I shook my head. She shrugged and got up abruptly, teetered into the writhing mass of people. I watched her appear and disappear between people for a while, stomping to angry music on those stiletto pointed boots, the kind strippers wear. I felt relieved to be free of her. I kept checking my watch, ordering more beer, trying to remember when I had arrived and what Michel’s version of “not too late” would be this time around.
When one o’clock hit, I was dry, but done. The drinks I had consumed were sitting badly inside my stomach, which was already tight and watery from not having eaten before I started drinking. I felt light headed and sick, still feeling cold from the rain before, and foolish for having waited for Michel all alone by myself for so long. I stood on uneasy feet and pulled my jacket on, stiff from drying on the chair. I swayed a little dangerously, managing to get the strap of my bag over my head and across my body before a gentle spray of stars came into my view. I gripped the back of the chair and shook my head in an attempt to make the small galaxy disappear but only succeeded in knocking myself fully off balance and crashing into the glass wall beside me, where I heard and felt my head meet it with a dull and solid cracking noise. The echo of the impact reverberated through the club and I saw people turn to look at me as I fell, crumpling down to the floor, holding my head and swearing, trying to pull myself together but feeling deep in my stomach a welling frustration that threatened to explode out of me in a fit of tears and an episode of punching the wall my head had just made friends with. I was unraveling. I needed to get out into the street and away from the music, outside where I could walk off my anger at Michel, my frustration of having to live with an unfaithful girlfriend, my stupidity. I bit my lip hard, and tried to stand again. I felt a hand under my elbow and saw a few people standing around looking at me, then the girl’s face an inch away from mine, silver-ringed lip grinning at me.
“That looked like it hurt. You ok?” She helped me back into the chair.
“Yeah. Just a little dizzy I guess.” The stars had gone but now I was aware of the throbbing on the left side of my head. I touched it and came back with sticky red fingers. “Oh shit, I’m bleeding.”
“Yikes, let me see.” She pushed my hand away and tilted my head to the side. “I can’t see anything in this lighting;
do you feel ok enough to walk to the bathroom?”
I nodded and stood up again. She put her hand in mine, a stronger grip than I would have given her credit for. She forcefully pulled me along, this little thing, shoving people aside with her free hand while I pressed on the wound on my head with the palm of my hand and tried not to panic. She dragged me into the stark fluorescent lighting of the women’s bathroom and propped me up against a wall layered with graffiti while she went to grab a chair for me to sit on. Being in the women’s bathroom was odd; some women looked at me strangely, others completely nonplussed by a bleeding man in their midst. I tried to check out my wound in the mirror. It was already clear it was superficial at worst; my fingers came away with less and less blood as I pressed paper towel to the cut.
She came back into the bathroom dragging a bar stool behind her and quickly pushed me down onto it, wetting paper towels and pulling my head down. “Doesn’t look too deep, just like a bad scrape. It’s not even an inch long, like this big-” She indicated a size with her heavily-ringed finger and thumb in front of my face. “I think you’ll live.”
I smiled grimly. “Thanks.” She pushed some paper towels into my hand. “Just keep pressing down on it for a few.”
I stared up at her. “Really, I’m fine now.” I attempted a weak smile. She narrowed her eyes.
“You look pale as hell. Not that that’s saying much in this crowd.” She smirked. “Just like a minute more, ok?” She put her hand over mine. My neck muscles strained. “So, hi. I’m Jayne, with a ‘y’, like Jayne Mansfield, the Satanist chick who got decapitated. And you are?”
“I- Severen. Thanks for this.” Had Jayne Mansfield been a Satanist?
“Well Seven, the wound isn’t too bad, but honestly, you do look like hell.”
“It’s Severen. And yes, I’ve had a bad week, thanks for noticing.” I dug out a hair elastic from the depths of my pockets and yanked my hair into a messy ponytail, unwound the scarf around my neck.
Jayne released my hand and tossed the wet paper towel into the trash. “And your boyfriend stood you up?”
“What? Oh. Yeah. No- I mean, I’m not gay.”
“No? Yes?” Jayne smirked at me.
The light in the bathroom was really starting to bother me. “I think I need some water.” I lifted myself up off the chair unsteadily but managed to walk to the door. “Thanks again.” I pushed past people and got myself down the stairs to the exit and into the cool air, where I felt a little better but still dizzy. I leaned heavily against the iron gate that surrounded the club, hung my head forward. A wave of nausea eclipsed me and before I could duck into the nearby alleyway, I was vomiting my few drinks up onto the sidewalk. I groaned a little, choking in air.
“That’s not good.” Jayne was behind me, shrugging on a long black fur coat and flicking her hair from under the collar. “I think you’d better come with me, chief. And drink this.” She pushed a plastic glass of ice water into my hand.
“Really, thanks, but I really just want to go home-”
“Fine, but at least let me take you, make sure you don’t vomit or bleed everywhere. You’re in pretty nasty shape.”
I sighed, the taste of bile thick in my mouth. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t know you and I don’t know why it is you’re trying to help me, but you don’t have to. You’re freaking me out a little bit here. So thank you, but I can get home by myself.”
“Look, let me just get you into a cab at least?”
I swayed, exhausted and tired of fighting her. “Alright. Thanks.”
She hailed a cab and slid into it next to me, eyeing me warily.
“You gonna be sick again?” She put her hand up to my forehead. It felt cool, and I could smell a perfume on her wrist that reminded me of cookies.
I shook my head. I gave the cabbie my address and she reached across me, locking the door. I suppose she was worried I’d tumble out onto the street. A silent ride and ten bucks later we were at my door. I fumbled with the keys until Jayne took them from my hand and finally got me into my apartment, where I flicked on the light to find most of my belongings missing.
Jayne stepped into the apartment behind me. “Whoa, you get robbed or something?”
I looked around, stunned, tired, drunk, relieved.
“No. I think my ex may have moved out while I was gone.” My head spun, so I leaned on the wall before I fell over.
“May have? Honey, I think we can call this one definitively.” She laughed under her breath.
“Shit.” I looked around the almost empty apartment. It did look like I had been robbed. I dropped my bag and jacket in the hallway, the sound echoing in the emptiness. I kicked my boots off and wandered from room to room, surveying the damage, not really taking any of it in. I registered space, more room than usual, but I couldn’t figure out what specific things were gone.
Jayne touched my shoulder. “You gonna be ok?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s probably for the best anyway.”
“You’re sort of taking this well.”
I shrugged. “Frankly I’m glad she’s gone.”
“But all your stuff? Shouldn’t we call the cops?”
“Why? Most of our things were total junk. It’s just stuff.” Exhaustion washed over me. “Anyway. Thanks for helping me get home. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. Maybe I’ll see you around? I’m at the bar again next week, same night. Come by and I’ll buy you a drink.”
“OK. Thanks.” I opened the door for her and felt the room spinning again.
She stepped over the threshold on those impossible heels and started down the stairs, clomping as she descended.
I called down the stairs to her, “See you.”
I shut the door and locked it, headed into the bedroom.
My ex had at least left me a mattress.
My novel "Falling" is available for purchase here |
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