Friday, May 28, 2010

The Reassuring Weight Of Closure

A glance is all it is, a quick flicker of the eyes as she turns away from the ATM. Then a double-take segueing straight into wide eyes and her mouth falling open. My clairvoyant mind, two or three seconds in the future, predicts an incoherent wail, dramatic body language, a full-on made-for-TV movie slump to her knees, bystanders turning in slow motion, doing that Chariots Of Fire run to her aid.

“You,” she says, with the kind of voice that struggles up from blackened lungs.

“You,” I say. I’m craving a cigarette.

“You.”

I shrug, more awkward than guilty. “Maybe I could buy you a drink,” I say.

“Maybe that’s the least you can do,” she replies.

Five years ago she was working the counter of a liquor store Bink decided was an easy mark. Like a lot of things, I see with hindsight that armed robbery was mostly Bink’s thing. Back then, though, I thought we were a team. So when he handed me this stupid little .22 and told me I’d be okay if I pulled my hood up over my head, it felt like my idea as much as his.

Bink gave himself all the best lines, told her to put her hands up, empty the cash register and put it in a bag, lie down on the floor and count to a hundred. Bink’s Steve McQueen delivery sounded cool if you closed your eyes and tried to forget he was the world’s tallest junkie, leaning over the counter like a preying mantis in an overcoat, too-big pistol clutched in one skeletal hand.

If it was Bink’s dumb idea, then it was my fault we didn’t get away clean. The street was still empty when we emerged with the money, and it seemed crazy to rip off a liquor store without grabbing a couple of bottles of whiskey and some cigarettes. Bink was too wasted to run, and I figured I could go back, grab some shit, and catch up before he even realized I was gone.

She probably cheated at hide and seek as a kid. When I came back through the door, she was on her feet, reaching for the phone. She looked up and saw me at the same moment I realized my hood had slipped back. I didn’t even think about it, just raised the .22 and squeezed the trigger. She fell. I heard sirens in the distance. I vaulted over to her side of the counter, grabbed a couple of packs of cigarettes, then paused just long enough to shoot her in the back of the head as she lay motionless on the floor.

Five years on, I take her to a nearby bar where she drinks shots of brandy with Bud chasers just as fast as I can order them. She tells me her name’s Claire, tells me her life hasn’t been the same since I shot her in the head. With a few bourbons inside me, I tell her my life hasn’t been the same since her testimony put me away.

“I was doing okay,” she says, “But when I came out of the hospital, it felt like my life took a left turn.”

Over an ashtray already brimming with butts, we tell our stories of substance abuse, of domestic and jailhouse violence. I have a bathroom blowjob for every one of her amateur abortions, a knife scar for every one of her cigarette burns, a burgeoning heroin addiction to beat her constant craving for prescription painkillers.

“It’s fate,” she says, “us meeting like this.”

My clairvoyant mind already knows she’s taking me home to a threadbare apartment she pays for by working the counter of a liquor store. She’ll show me her skinny body and I’ll fuck her with my trigger finger, run my hands over the scars on her head as I take her from behind. It’ll be the grand climax of Claire’s left turn, the final curve of fate’s perfect circle.

“Must be,” I say, smiling partly at her, but mostly at the .22 resting against my spine with the reassuring weight of closure. posted at 8:46 PM ---------------------------------