Finally.
After my frenzy, my fall, my search, and my being dragged from the mall, I was quite the mess. I showered and changed and tried to dishevel my hair with the same artistry I showed in the morning. While I freshened up, Angelica sat in the living room. She was looking, at the pictures hanging on the wall, at the stack of magazines my mother kept in a wicker basket by the couch, at the CDs stacked by the player, taking in her surroundings.
As I rounded the corner from the bathroom she looked at me.
“Where would you like to eat?”
“I thought you’d have all the details planned.”
“I did… but things didn’t go according to plan.”
She smiled again at the scene from the mall. I opened the fridge in an attempt to look busy or occupied.
“Do you know any recipes?”
I peeked up over the refrigerator door… I could see her through the doorway. It was a rather small apartment and unless someone was behind a closed door, they were pretty much always visible.
“Excuse me?”
“We could just stay in and fix something.”
I know the microwave and soup. I tried to put the two together once and ended up with a crusted-over bowl. I could work a kettle and add milk to cereal (not without the occasional mishap) and that was as far as I ventured. I couldn’t even bring myself to attempt Kraft dinner. I wasn’t about to make the mistake of killing my beloved. I closed the fridge.
“There’s not much here…”
“Let me see.”
She came to where I stood blocking the entrance to the kitchen.
“Don’t you trust me?”
“Move.”
I let her pass hoping logic would prevail.
“Wouldn’t you rather eat a nice meal out somewhere?”
She opened the fridge.
“A place where hired professionals cook the meals?”
She opened the freezer.
“Where inspectors uphold standards?”
She peered in the cabinets. Something got her thinking because she finally responded with a question of her own… but we weren’t on the same page.
“When’s your mom coming home?”
“I doubt if she is.”
I let my mother’s curfew drop because she paid rent… I was a student after all.
“We’ll make do.”
With that she reached into the cupboard and pulled out a couple of bottles, went back to the fridge and rummaged around a bit finally emerging with an assortment of vegetables and various ingredients, then over to a drawer to pick out utensils, and back to the freezer for a cut of meat that wasn’t past due, when that couldn’t be found, one that hadn’t begun fossilization.
I protested. Or I started to…
“I can’t…”
“I can.”
She began. She began by ordering me to start chopping, so I guess it would be more accurate to say we began; chopping, slicing, mixing, pouring, thawing, tenderizing, tasting, adding, stirring, soon the marinade was complete.
“It should be an hour, at least, before the flavor starts to set in…”
“Tea?”
“Sure.”
An hour steeped in a cup of Red Rose and pleasant conversation over a few hands of gin. Then it was back to the kitchen, boiling, sizzling, frying, broiling, baking, dashing, daring, sparing, spilling… before long we had something resembling a meal, and a hell of a mess.
“Was this red meat?”
“I think so.”
“Does that mean Sauvignon Blanche, a Chardonnay Rouge, or Rose Zinfandel?”
“I don’t know. Got milk?”
Smell check.
“Yep.”
We sat down.
“Wait…”
I turned off the lights. I kicked a chair. I turned the lights back on. I lit a candle. I turned the lights back off. Perfect. It only cost me a stubbed toe.
“Now, to dining in.”
We raised our glasses and took a sip. Then we partook. If I were the only one to gag and spit out my first bite I would have died of shame… luckily it was a reflex we shared.
“How about Pizza?”
“We already toasted to dining in…”
“I’ll call.”
Forty minutes later the kitchen was clean, the garbage was full, and we were side by side on the couch watching music videos and eating pizza. Perfect.
If I had been given the luxury to transpose my life then and there onto some lasting medium, I wouldn’t be in the position I find myself in at the moment. Looking back I can honestly say that I wish my life were a movie, and I were holding the remote, so I could stop and rewind and pause and relive that evening, that day, even those few weeks, with the drama and the feeling and the uncertainty and the hope… it’s the hope I wish I could capture… the suspended moment when that video came up that she was particularly opposed to viewing and she reached for the remote that I held in my hand, just as I was moving my hand away from her, (coincidentally, I swear…) the result being that she fell right into my lap trying to grasp the evasive converter. She looked right at me, a mix of embarrassment and hysteria playing with her features. I handed her the controller and she buried her face in my shoulder, laughing. She laughed so hard she left wet spots on my sleeve. When she calmed down she rested her head in the same spot. The wall around Jericho had fallen again, this time from laughter. She gave me back the flicker… sort of. She set it on my knee and when I put my hand on it, just to secure it from falling (I’m pretty sure my knees were shaking) her hand alighted on mine. Her touch was soft, she was wearing Obsession, and I didn’t even have to pretend. Freeze frame. Fade to Black. Cut. That’s a wrap.
But time passed. I don’t know how much of it. She eventually stirred and looked at me.
“It’s late.”
I hadn’t noticed.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
She smiled. I couldn’t recall ever speaking a thought so honestly, without filters or spin doctoring, I smiled too.
“Hmmm… I guess I should go…”
I wished she wouldn’t. I could have died happy just sitting there.
“If you must…”
She stood, I stood, and we walked together to the door. She gathered her things and I opened the door and she stepped across the threshold into the hall.
“Do you want me to walk you to the bus?”
“No… I could use the time alone.”
“Are you sure? It’s no trouble.”
“I know it wouldn’t trouble you… but I’ll manage. Bye Phil.”
“Bye Angelica… I love you.”
I closed the door. She knocked. She must have forgotten something.
“What did you forget?”
“What did you say?”
“What did you forget?”
“Before that…”
“Just now?”
“When you closed the door…”
“I said ‘Bye’.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes I did.”
“You said something after that.”
“Angelica.”
“Yes?”
“No, I said, ‘Bye Angelica’.”
“You said ‘I love you’.”
“I said ‘you love me’?”
“No! You said you love me.”
“Oh.”
She stepped back inside.
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Because I don’t know how you could…”
“What do you mean…”
“I mean you hardly know me…”
Talk about uncomfortable thought-filled silences.
“How could you…”
I didn’t like where that was headed… I decided rather abruptly that I had to stop that thought before it formed into something more formidable. I actually put my finger to her lips. I proceeded to close my eyes, take a deep breath, then continue:
“How could anyone not love you…”
She looked hurt that I could say such a thing. I kissed her where I made the hurt… I just assumed that I had made the hurt with my finger. She slapped me. Hard. I didn’t feel it because of what she shouted as she was running down the hall. She was crying, but she made sure I heard her clearly…
“I hate you… don’t ever speak to me again.”
I didn’t feel anything after she said that to me.
Looking back I wonder what could have happened; if a different sequence of events had transpired, if the whole outcome would be different. If I had succumbed to her weight, when she was leaning against me, as so we could lie together, or if I had given her mine. If I asked her to stay rather than facilitating her departure, would the following morning have resulted in a brighter future?
I tried calling her that night but she didn’t go home. I tried her all the next day but there was no answer. The next day, when her father picked up, I got the message.
“Hi is…”
That’s all I got out.
“Is this Frankie or Phil or whatever the hell your name is? Listen you little sonuvabitch, if you ever step foot near my daughter again, or try to contact her in any way, I will castrate you and feed your Johnson to my pit bull as an appetizer before I chop the rest of you into little pieces and shove you in his dish. Go off and die somewhere you little shit.”
Click.
When I called back he actually had the dog answer the phone.
That was three days ago. It’s been a week since she walked out of my life. One week and I am so weak. I haven’t so much as risen but to relieve myself from bodily waste, or partake of minimal sustenance. My mother hasn’t called or come home. I haven’t picked up the phone, lest a way out would present itself and I forget. I don’t want to forget this. This is pain, and it let’s me know that I’m alive. It won’t last though. I can’t weather this storm, Fost. I’m already growing accustomed to these ideas… these tendencies. They’ve been visiting me, in the middle of the night, waking me from my tortured sweet dreams where she presides. They rouse me in the mornings when I sit down to write. I’ve penned all that I have herewith under their vigilant watch. They’re waiting for me, these fancies of never having to suffer pain again, waiting for me to put down the pen so that they can have me, because I have already given myself over to them. It’s just a matter of doing this one last deed. What I’ve written down in the past few days has been recorded in numb recollections. I’m leaving it up to you to spice it up a bit. Try to make me out to be something better than I was. I don’t know what purpose you can find in this, in me, but if there is one, I trust you to find it. Try to make people understand, Foster. Not ‘why’… why is inconsequential… try to articulate ‘who’. I bet you keep that sentence… it’s you. Anyway, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Don’t let anyone take the blame for this; the blame lies on me. I leave you this in hopes that it will be the most valuable thing I leave behind. If there’s nothing after this world, write me into one of yours somewhere, so that I’ll live on…
Post Script.
Tell Angelica… something. That I love her… that I always have and always will… that I love her smile. That she made my lofty ideals loftier just by smiling when we met. That I died happy because I died with her in my memory. Tell her something… something I could not. It’s too much, Fost… It’s too much.
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