"You realize that this is never, ever going to end well, right?" "Yeah." "I mean, we're both going to end up going back where we came from, you know?" "Not without a fight." "I thought you never fought?" "No, I never argue. Are you going to make some coffee? I really want some coffee. I've been thinking about drinking coffee all the way over here. Do you want me to make some coffee?" "No, I'll make it. Just give me a minute to get undressed..." "You really don't like clothes, do you?" "I really like clothes, I just don't like wearing them. You don't seem to mind." "No, I don't."
She backed out of the kitchen into the hallway, undoing her hair from it's loose ponytail, letting if fall like the cold mist that was curtaining down from the clouds that couldn't make up their minds if they were clouds or fog or a cat or the town drunk, or what. I still wasn't used to this California winter, if that's what you could call it. One day it was warm and sunny and the next it was gray and damp and chilly. Sometimes it was both on the same day. It never really rained, the sky just sort of leaked this damned gray, chilly mist that clung to everything like a bad reputation or a grade school lie. It was tolerable at night, especially around here, it made the sky and the ocean all one, and the lights of the town reflected on the clinging drops, like one of those cheap, glittery cardboard houses that my parents used to put under the Christmas tree every year, but in the day time it was just plain depressing. It made you feel less than wet, but more than damp. I weighed you down, both physically and mentally and was probably the prime cause of savage, bloody murders and other more horrible mayhem. "Honest, your honor, I don't know what happened... one minute I was standing there in his doorway, all soaked with that damned mist and the next thing I knew I was rolling up his body in an oriental carpet... I plead insanity by reason of this god damned Southern California winter..." Luckily, all it made me want to do was drink more coffee than usual. With her.
I had turned the kitchen chair I was sitting in to the window, and I was watching the drops roll down the glass, when she returned from bedroom and I watched her naked reflection grow larger in the mirror pane as she came up behind me, wrapped her arms around my shoulders and rested her chin on my shoulder. We stayed like that for a long, long time, watching that parade of drips and drops down the outside of the glass, occasionally looking at each other's reflection, not speaking, not with words, anyway. I reached up with crossed arms and held her arms, pulling her closer and she tightened her hug, then she pulled back a bit, bent her head down and rested her forehead on my shoulder for a few seconds, then turned and whispered in my ear, "Just, please, don't ever tell me that you love me, ok? Whatever this is and how ever long it lasts, it's going to be something wonderful, and I will never, ever hurt you, but please... just don't ever tell me that, ok?" Millenniums passed before I stopped looking at my reflection in the window, and it was only the pain of me biting the inside of my bottom lip that brought me back to this so called reality and I nodded my head and she moved away from me and while I sat there watching her in that wet mirror world, she filled the beat up old coffee pot with water and ground coffee, lit the burner with a wooden match, blew it out and dropped it in the sink. I sat, silent and still, in her silent and still kitchen, listening to the hiss of the gas flame and the sound of the coffee pot beginning to perk. The faint aroma of new born brew wafted through the room. I stood up and turned around to see her leaning against the sink, her arms crossed over her chest and that tangled black hair falling all over the place. She narrowed her eyes, cocked her head and asked, "Cat got your tongue?" "Yeah." "You want to leave?" "No, not really. I want to have a cigarette. And then I want to sit with you and drink some coffee and stare into your eyes. And then I want to go to bed with you and hold you till you fall asleep and then tell you stories to help you dream. And then I'll leave. For tonight." "I'll make you breakfast if you stay." "Next time... if you want a next time." "Don't take what I said the wrong way." "No, I never would. Is that coffee done yet? It smells done. I really want some coffee." "You are a coffee junkie... "
Round and round we go, round and round and round, we go...
I let myself in the back door, the kitchen door, her kitchen door. I always came in through her kitchen door, it seemed so, so elemental. Our first kiss was in her kitchen, in the dark, her hair filled with the smell of the damp January Pacific chill we had just wandered through after I met up with her at the end of her shift at the cafe downstairs. We could have just tripped up the back stairs, but we strolled all along the ocean side road, sipping cardboard coffee she poured for us as she nighty-nighted everyone in the kitchen while I watched through the back screen door. The steam from our brews curled up into the stillness of the night air and was multiplied by our blowing across our cups to cool it enough to drink, we must have looked like two dragons of yore, trolling for an errant knight to fry. No knights that night. They were all inside, warming their armor by the fire while we dared the damp Pacific chill to chase us from out of doors, but we wouldn't go. For only eleven at night, it was dead along our way. Southern Californians didn't seem to like the cold, but I, from the ocean on right side of the land, and she from the mountains that divided them, were used to worse than this. We were both used to the worst of everything. That's what drew us together, I now know. I mistook that first glance she returned over my coffee cup for affection, maybe even interest, but I think she saw in my eyes what i was seeing in her's. Neither one of us belonged here. I think she thought I was thinking she was as out of place as I was, sitting alone at the single by the cafe door, trying to read the future in the chips on the rim of my mug, while she flitted about between the tables and the service bar, carrying plates and ferrying mugs. Every sideways glance of hers was met by a smile I couldn't control, I remember shaking my head when she came over to see if I wanted anything else and, while what I wanted, really, really wanted, was a greasy grilled cheese sandwich and a plaid paper basket of greasy fries, I couldn't help it. It was some sort of nervous reaction to her attentions. Actually, what I really, really, really wanted was a name and phone number hastily scrawled on a napkin with her nubby waitress pencil, casually folded and dropped with some spy like motion on my table as she twirled by with empties and silverware and crumpled paper place mats. I wanted it to be mysterious, like she was promised to another, but was looking for one last clandestine fling. But no. After everyone had left, save me and some stoned looking couple that was hunkered down in the last booth by the kitchen door, she walked up, brushed a stray tangle of her famous black hair out of her face, stuck out her hand to me and said, "Hi, I'm Karen. I get off at eleven, you going to be around?" "Indeed. It's a pleasure to meet you." "Likewise. And don't get the wrong idea, I'm not of the habit of throwing myself at strangers, especially strange looking strangers, but you seem safe enough..." "You have no idea. I'm not from around here, I'm a refugee from New Jersey. And you're not from around here, either, are you? I'd say by that accent, you're from the Midwest somewhere, maybe not too far from Texas?" "Close, but no cigar, rube. New Mexico. I won't tell any more than that, you'd probably laugh if you knew where in N'Mex I'm from." "Gotta be Pie Town..." "Sunnabitch..." "Lucky guess. I was out there last year, I bought some property about fifteen miles out of town and was checking it out. What are you doing out here, tips at the Daily Pie not good enough?" "I don't like cowboys and being all worldly and such, I decided to try the left coast. Uh, I gotta go throw those two out, it's almost closing time. You really going to hang around? I need to talk to you." "I'm yours. Of course, a coffee to go would be nice." "Natch. Black, no sugar. Be right back." So, she ushered out Raggedy Anne and Raggedier Andy, the stoners, locked the front door and vanished into the kitchen for five or ten minutes and came out and bade me follow her to the back door, where she shoved me outside where I watched her pour two cups of cardboard coffee into two cardboard cups and pause to do the bump with Jake, the owner and cook, to some scratchy Presley tune crawling out of his ancient transistor radio. She threw on an oversize red and black flannel shirt, grabbed our coffees and elbowed through the door, let it slam shut, thrust out a cup to me and, hooking her arm in mine, we walked. And walked. North, along the ocean road, until she decided that we'd been heading that direction long enough, she spun me to the South and we headed back toward Jake's Place, now dark and hollow and looking with a forlorn gaze out over the Pacific, like it wanted to be on the other side, serving up all that greasy and caffeinated to the Japanese... "I thought you wanted to talk to me?" "I am, or are you not as perceptive as I thought you were?" "You'd be surprised." "I think you're going to be full of surprises. Hey, I live over the shop, you want to come up for a nightcap? Uh, coffee, I mean. I mean, I didn't want to make you think, um, I mean, I didn't want you to expect something..." "I never expect anything from anyone. That way no one ever gets hurt..." So, we tripped up her back stairs and into her kitchen. That dark, strange kitchen. And after I held her and she held me and I smelled the damp January Pacific chill in her hair, I tipped her face up and, having gotten used to the dark, looked as deep into her dark brown eyes as I could. There were stories upon stories in those eyes, more that I'd ever be made party to, and that was OK. And she kissed me, quietly and softly. That surprised me and I started to laugh. She just shook her head and lay it back on my chest. And now I'm in that kitchen, once again. I have a key. I can find my way around in the dark as good as she can. I'll just pull a chair up to the window here, look out at the dying lights of town and wait for her. I think they're having a special on fish and chips down stairs. I can always tell what they've been hawking on any given day by what her hair smells like when we hold each other close. Every once in a while I wish they'd run a special on damp January Pacific cold, with a side of cardboard coffee...
"This penchant of yours for thinking too much will be the very end of you, you know.."
She walked around me like a sculptress, not so much like she was looking for form in the raw block of what I thought I was, but more like she was wary of planting her foot on one of the razor shards that fell each time she wielded her mallet and chisel. The orange evening Autumn sun cast itself through the hazy glass of the bedroom windows, washing all in some sick color that was making even the polished pine floor look queasy, like that look she had on her face after she got so sick trying to smoke one of my cigars. It even muted her usual glow. And, it smelled, if a color can have an odor, like a pair of old pantyhose, or something that reminded me of old pantyhose, god knows why it reminded me of pantyhose, but it did. She preferred knee socks. I never argued that fashion bent of hers. I never argued any of her fashion choices. I never argued... I take that back. I argued, once. But not with her. With another. She was, at the height of that sole argument, standing naked in a kitchen, bathed not in this orange light, but the light of a candle sitting in a saucer on her kitchen table, wishing, I'm sure, it was burning it's life away someplace else, as did I. Standing hard and straight, her arms crossed over her small breasts, her long bronze hair hanging about her like some Druid cape, biting her bottom lip as her pale gray eyes filled with water, while I argued that, like the remnant of that taper alight in the darkness, she was better off burning her life away someplace as well. I was a wanderer and she was an angel with translucent skin and fluttering wings, an air dancer and a miracle worker and was more worthy than I could afford at the time. That didn't end well. I won that argument. That's why I don't argue any more. Sometimes, you win... But, back to now.
She continued her buzzard dance around me for a few more seconds, then crossed the room and stood looking out through the window, and became but some brown-gray ghost with a pumpkin aura, staring at the setting sun over the little town down the hill. She, too, was naked, save for a pair of fuzzy brown knee socks, of her own creation, knitted one night while we sat on her porch, as I read aloud from a book short stories about trout fishing. Naked, but not for any reason other than she preferred to be naked when inside her place. Always when she was alone and always when I was her sole company. Or mostly always. I wasn't as comfortable with myself as she was and preferred to remain in my usual jeans and sweatshirt, except when they got in the way, like last night or two nights ago, or a thousand nights ago, whenever it was, I really can't remember, when she coerced me onto her living room floor and made me lie there naked with her while she wrote out a shopping list for this party she was planning on having the next weekend. She kept getting up and padding into the kitchen to bang about the cabinets looking for things she thought she might have, but didn't, that were added to her list. I lay on my left side, she on her right, facing me, her paper and pencil on the floor between us while she scribbled in her left handed little kid's printing:
THINGS FOR THE PARTY:
POTATO CHIPS (THE ORANGE KIND) LICORICE BREAD AND CHEESE AND BUTTER FOR GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES! COFFEE CARROTS AND YOGURT FOR DIPPING (PLAIN) BALLOONS PAPER PLATES HERB TEA FOR DYLAN'S GIRLFRIEND FUCK HER!!! NUTS (IN A CAN WITH LOTS OF SALT) RED WINE AND WHITE WINE AND GINGER ALE AND LEMON LIME SODA
She pushed the list into my face and said, "Can you think of anything else?" "I'm trying to figure out why you want to have a party..." "It's for you. You need a party. It will make you happy and it will make me happy and for a few hours I won't worry about you and wonder why you always just sit and stare at me all night." "I like to stare at you. You're stare-worthy." "You can stare at me at your party. Are you sure I'm not forgetting anything?" "You're not supplying any booze for your, I mean, our friends?" "Nope, if they want to drink, it's BYOB."
Chisel, mallet... tap, tap, tap...
She turned away from the window at exactly the same moment the molten orb fell behind the furthest off hill and walked back to where I was sitting in the middle of the twilight blue room on her old wooden bar stool. Not everyone I knew or loved or wanted to love had an old bar stool in their bedroom, but she did. She took up her pace around me again, the scuff of her socks on the ancient pine, the air of her nakedness whirling around me like some maelstrom of mythic lust, counter-clockwise she moved, anti-sun wise, like how she moved around her circle in the clearing in the woods, that holy place where she talked to her goddess and sang to her gods... Her left index finger traced across my shoulders, then across my lips, then around and around again in that dance. I knew what she was doing and I let it happen. I never, ever argue...
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