** Shadow Puppets, Part One**
‘Course for a budget room, 15A wasn’t half bad. That’s why he chose it. Had been choosing it since that one Christmas she’d decided to spend with her mother and he’d decided he liked it better that way, anyhow. At forty five a night he wasn’t expecting pillow chocolates. Never was a fan of spearmint. And at least the curtains matched, even if the linen never did.
This time it was brown.
Not rose. Not apricot. Though at one point it may have been. No telling. Too many nameless faces hanging from worn bodies just passing through.
From the other side of the thin wall, he heard the electric thumping of a familiar tune. Fingered a cigarette burn embedded within the brown – his finger turning a dime sized hole into a silver dollar.
Really should switch to non-smoking.
He didn’t, after all. Smoke. Had maybe tried it once or twice when he was a boy. It never took.
His cell vibrated once from the corner of the dark room. Twice. A third time. And he grunted as he shoved off the mattress and out from beneath the singed rag. Carried his broken and naked body across a century old cum stained carpet to the spot where his uniform trousers lay discarded in a crumpled pile. Fished the device from his back pocket.
His wife’s face lit up the screen. He hesitated – his thumb lingering before pressing ignore.
Shit.
He pulled on the scratchy bottom half of his uniform and slunked into the only worn out chair in the room. Leaned his head back to rest against the thumping wall.
“I’m gonna live forever… sling shot me into outer space…”
It hit him hard, then. And not just because the beats were written that way.
“We’ll leave footprints on foothills… catching continental drifts…”
He recognized it. Laughed. Because it was all he could do. Because it seemed like centuries since he’d heard those lyrics. But mostly because he remembered the first time he had heard them. And how he’d laughed then, too. Thought he’d be different. That he knew better.
He closed his eyes and went back. Faded between the knowing and the not knowing. Wondered when he’d moved from one to the other. Because, as it turns out, he didn’t.
“Won’t do me no good… washing in the river…”
Just like everyone else.
“Can’t no preacher man save my soul.”
Not surprising he hadn’t noticed the shift in melody either, until it’d already happened. Thinking back, he rarely did. But you couldn’t blame him. Not with the way it happened when it did. They were so young. He and his best friend playing ball in the fields. Socks slipping into worn tennis shoes that trampled down June flowers.
She’d been there that day, too. Sitting on the bleachers with two of her girlfriends. Three sets of painted fingernails reaching into an endless bag of Twizzlers.
“Who is that?” he’d asked.
His friend followed his gaze across the ball field and shrugged. “That’s her,” he’d said.
She’d seen him looking. His lean frame draped lazily against a wooden baseball bat.
“Who is that?” She’d asked.
And her friend smiled, nudged her shoulder, giggled. “That’s him,” she said.
They were fourteen when their lives began. Too young to know better. To know different. To regret.
He dug his eyes out with angry fists, rubbing away the pale yellow of her spring dress – the way the sun danced across her bare arms and pooled deep within the blue of her eyes, large with innocence. Opened his own to a tauntingly bare wall full of shadows and a single, floral motel picture. He watched as puppets trampled the arrangement with their wilted socks.
She shifted then in the bed, rolling drunkenly onto her side – her pale hips a glowing mound of flesh.
“Step away from this, you can – tolerate you can resi-“
Her eyes fluttered at the sound of his fist against the wall.
“What’s that, Lover?” she drawled from her whiskey’d sleep. Wiped spittle from the corners of her mouth. Smoothed the sex out of her rooty, bleached blonde hair.
“Can’t fucking sleep with this shit,” he growled, banging his protest against the wall one more time before the music slowly faded.
“Hmph,” she responded. Stretched over to retrieve her near empty pack of Marlboros and a cheap Bic lighter. Yawning as she righted herself to lean against the headboard, cigarette poised between her lips.
He watched her shaky hands as fingers fumbled through the process of striking the flint. Her eyes squinted against the sparks. Frowning as she took her first pull, inhaling deeply – with purpose – before holding her smoke and settling deep amongst the springs and the bed bugs.
He said nothing. And he should have known. In all the years he’d known her, he’d never known her to hold the silence. So when she started humming, he simply tipped his head back and closed his eyes – drawing curtains on the only woman who had touched him in six days.
“Tonight won’t you come down out of your tower,” she sang softly between puffs of smoke, “don’t make me dance all night alone…”
Her voice was raspy in a pleasant way – the kind a man, when he could sleep, didn’t mind waking up to. Through squinted lids, he examined her features. True – the smoking hadn’t been kind to her weathering face, and he could do without the bad dye job, but even he could see that at one time, she may have been beautiful. Probably still was.
Her lips puckered innocently through each verse.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“hmmm hmmm hmm hmmmm hmmm…” her head rocked lazily back and forth to a tune he couldn’t hear.
“What’s what?” she asked through closed eyes.
“That thing you’re humming.”
She breathed. “A song,” she replied.
His eyes rolled – slightly annoyed.
“I know it’s a song, Ginny,” he
criticized, “what song is it?”
She took a drag and thought for a moment, glancing at the corner of the ceiling as if she expected to find her answer hanging there. Like a potted plant.
“A song about dancing,” she shrugged.” Don’t you like to dance?”
He thought about it. Realized that he did, actually. That he used to love it, even.
And there she was again, his little June flower in a cream colored dress, because ever since that first day in the park, she’d been the only woman he’d ever wanted to dance with. And so he had. Twirling in the middle of a gym floor in his rented tuxedo, dancing to silly little love songs. Her senior prom. The end of eighteen. King and queen of small town USA; loving each other and being loved for that love held fast their position in the spotlight. And so they went home that night with their third set of crowns.
And a little something extra.
He’d always loved math. Loved numbers. The steadfast signs and unbreakable rules. But a few weeks after graduation when her delicate hands presented him with a little white stick and he stared down at a deliberate pink plus – it was all he could do keep it together.
It didn’t add up. Wasn’t supposed to happen that way. Not for him. Not for her. He’d promised. She was destined for bigger things, and he wasn’t cut out to end up like the father he’d barely known since knowing had even become a possibility. They were bigger than their parts. He knew it. She knew it. The whole town had always known it. And he wanted nothing more than to give it to all of them.
It hadn’t occurred to him on the night of their last prom – riding side by side in the cab of his rickety old truck as they made their way toward an empty train house at the edge of town. Or with her head nestled in the crook of his arm as they laid between the tracks, the moon light bouncing off the diamonds of her crown, counting stars and making love and wishes – that he might not be able to make them come true.
He never meant to be a cliché.
“There must be some kinda way out of here,” he’d said to the tiled bathroom floor when he couldn’t meet the deep blue of her eyes for fear of falling in. “How can we make it all go away?”
“What,” she’d gasped. Her face turned instantly pale and sickly horrified. “Are you joking?”
But two weeks later, they’d made it go away.
“What time is she expecting you home?”
He blinked back into the motel room. Lifted his head toward the sound of her voice. Found her sitting cross legged in the center of the bed – wearing the dingy brown blanket loosely around her shoulders like a cloak. The ashes of her cigarette clinging dangerously close to falling away into yet another dime sized hole.
“You need to ash that,” he said gruffly.
She blinked, unmoving.
“What time is she expecting you home?”
He lifted himself and retrieved the amber colored ash tray. Plucked the charcoal colored snake from between her fingers and stubbed it out.
“She thinks I got off an hour ago.”
Ginny smiled deviously. “’Least you weren’t lying.”
He didn’t laugh. Discarded the deceptively heavy glass atop the adjacent TV tray with a thud and sank onto the foot of the bed.
“I wish you would quit that stupid job,” she cooed, closing the gap to wrap her bare legs around him from behind. Rested the cold of her cheek against his hunched back. “We could just stay in this room forever,” she dreamed.
He hated his job. Hated the warehouse. The stupid glass walls. Night shifts. Parking lots. He’d told her as much, plenty of times. It was only ever supposed to be temporary. A stand-in. Just something to get them through the second pregnancy. Their first born.
And then their second.
By their third, he’d given up on quitting.
“Just go in tomorrow,” she reasoned, “give your two weeks. And be done with it.”
His head dropped into his hands – elbows cutting into his thighs with her added weight. “I can’t, Ginny” he breathed. “I’m in too deep.”
She pulled herself from his back and slumped her legs over the edge of the bed. Hummed a high pitched tune while miming the playing of a violin with her bony, sun spotted arms. Frowned. Stared.
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, tilting his head to glare at her without removing it from his cradle.
“I’m just doing what you’re doing, lover,” she teased.
“And what am I doing?”
She cocked her head to the side. Chewed her bottom lip.
“You’re composing. It’s all violins and loose strings in that head of yours,” she said. “And you’re pretending.”
Her eyes flickered in thought. “You’re the saddest song I’ve ever heard.”
He dropped his hands but kept his head down.
“I’m not sad.”
She studied him. Shook her head. Moved to straddle his lap, taking his face in hands smelling of cigarettes and bent down low. Leveled him with her eyes.
“You are sad, baby,” she replied.
“You’re sad here,” she bent down to kiss his chest – the cool of her lips pushing through his skin and taking hold of his heart just inches beneath them. Causing it to beat faster.
“You’re sad here,” she challenged as she straightened, placing a soft kiss lightly upon his forehead.
“And you’re sad here,” she whispered, her lips lingering in the soft dip where his taught jaw ran off to form an earlobe.
“When was the last time you heard that you were loved, baby?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled her lips to his own and tried to ignore the stale taste of alcohol and tobacco. He could do that. For her, he could do that.
No, he didn’t love her. And she’d never asked him to. But these past few years she’d always been there to help him self-medicate, her forgiving touch like an IV drip – dispensing a liberal dose of a knock off brand of lullaby he’d felt so long ago. True – her eyes weren’t blue
. Had emptied long ago. And she’d never before worn a summer dress. But she did what she could to mend his broken frame and stand him back up again. Make him whole before reconnecting. Ginny was there the first time he’d been denied by his lovely flower girl – when he’d sworn that his heart had been cut open and left exposed. And the second. And the third. And she’d been there ever after, kissing down the length of each and every scar. Listening to their stories. Helping them heal. Keeping him safe and warm and removing him from the festering of his broken insides. She was his iodine. Wrapped in faux leopard print fur.
Truth was, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard those words.
“What about you, Ginny?” He said gruffly.
She paused then – her eyes retreating into the depths of long ago. Shadows of a memory. And she shivered.
“What about me?” she lied. Sliding off his lap and busying herself with the motions of re-dressing.
She’d never talked about it. And he’d never asked. But all at once he needed to know. After all, he thought, he owed her that much.
“Who was he?” he asked.
And she sighed. Hesitated momentarily before swiping another cigarette and settling back into the center of the bed.
“I ever tell you I used to be in pictures?” she said, matter of factly. More a statement than a question, because they both knew she hadn’t.
“I was nineteen,” she continued, her gaze finding its way back to the corner.
He watched her. Waited.
“Used to be this little shop back in town,” she remembered, “where I grew up? Used to sell those… what d’you call ‘em, penny candies and cream sodas?”
She lit her cigarette.
“I’ve always loved salt water taffy. When I was little, my daddy used to bring me t’that shop and he’d buy me so much of it…”
She shook her head – laughed.
“I’d have a belly ache by the time we got home.”
He smiled, too. Reached for the ash tray and passed it to her.
She spoke more evenly, then. As if carefully picking her way through the fallen debris and aftermath of some natural disaster. Searching for anything that could pass for salvageable.
“This one summer –,” she said, “I was about… fifteen or so – daddy said they’d gotten a new stock boy down at the shop. Nothing new, you know? Boys was always comin’ ‘round for me. I’d never wanted anything to do with them…. But he kept teasin’ me about it and I’d get all mad and embarrassed…. He could be so mean like that,” she scrunched up her nose, but her smile belied any impression of anger. “So the next time he took me, I was determined. We walked in like we always did and I went straight for my taffy. And that’s when I saw him.”
She paused. Flicked her ash. Picked dead skin from the cuticle of her thumb.
“He was the cutest boy I had ever seen.”
It was the most she’d ever spoken about herself – told him how it was that they fell in love. How he’d surprise her with bags of treats and kisses after his shifts and they’d dance all night in the middle of the shop while he was supposed to be mopping floors or counting the till. How throughout the coming years and despite the handfuls of glances thrown her way, she’d never looked at another boy the way that she’d looked at him.
“We were supposed to get married,” she explained. “We had everything planned and we’d picked a date and started looking at the cutest little churches…”
“And then one day I was waitressing down at the diner and this man come in. Asked me if I’d ever wanted to be in pictures. And… I don’t know, I mean, I’d thought about it a little I guess – everybody was always tellin’ me I could do it and all…. He said he’d pay me. I don’t remember what it was he said, but it was more money than I’d ever seen. So… I did it.”
She paused. Shrugged helplessly.
“I went with him. Left town. Thought maybe I could come back with enough so we could move into one of the little houses we’d always dreamed about. Start a family.”
He recognized the shift in her gaze. Knew the rest of her story before she’d even had a chance to tell it.
“I lost time,” she mumbled, trying to reason her way through the sketchy haze of her unreasonable past. “I didn’t mean for it to happen I just… I was so young. And I felt so small and so big at the same time and before I knew it I had all these things – all these things and he kept promising me more if I’d just stay and take more pictures and so I kept saying yes, yes, yes… only because I was too small to say no.”
She closed her eyes. Swiped the moisture from her cheeks. Tried on a small smile – gave in when it didn’t fit.
“I tried to go back once.” She said. “Sold everything I had. Bought a train ticket.”
She shook her head.
“What happened?” he prodded.
Again, she shrugged. Tried for indifference when all she really felt was pain. Confusion. Emptiness.
“I missed my train.”
And there it was. The weight of her past hung heavily in the dark room. They sat in silence for the first time, watching as it intertwined with his – broken hearts and broken dreams dancing like marionettes amongst the shadows and the spores and the smoke from her cigarette.
“What ever happened to him?” He asked.
She laughed. “He ended up marrying my best friend. Just before daddy died.” Stubbed out her cigarette. “Guess he couldn’t wait forever.”
He nodded.
“You ever think…” she wondered, “what would have happened if… you know – you hadn’t done what you did? Wondered where you’d be now?”
He scoffed. “I don’t do reg-“
“I know, I know,” she cut him off. “You say, you say, you say – ‘I don’t do regrets.’ I know. I get it.”
But it was more than that, he thought. More than the loss of all that they’d once had – bl
ood in and blood out, the constant reaching for hands or a face or a heart that was no longer there. More than the words he’d lost over the years to bottomless bottles and bathroom floors. Dropping memories in a drunken stupor as he begged his June to meet him once again in the center of that field. Because, if there was ever a point to any of this, he knew she was it. She’d always been it. And even if it proved him wrong, he would wait for her.
“I can’t help it, Ginny,” he sighed. “I love her.”
And she’d known it all along. He’d made it very clear whose face it was he saw while he fucked her – it was the same method she’d employed since chasing after the back end of a train. But still, she wondered.
“I know,” she whispered. “I just wish I could remember what it felt like to be happy.”
Her phone buzzed then, shocking them both sober. Ginny leaned over the side of the bed, springs hissing in protest. Rummaged around in her oversized purse.
“It’s Monte,” she sighed. “Gotta go lover. I’ve got another client.”
She gathered up the remainder of her luggage, tangible or not. Took a swig of whiskey from her flask and swished it around her mouth before swallowing. Called the front office to sign on for another room because somehow that made her fell like less of what she was. Ginny with a “Y”, she’d emphasized, because he never could spell it right.
“I’ve got to pick this one up,” she said – her voice even. Secrets hidden once again.
He nodded, pulled on his shirt. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
( Continued … )