LITANY- chptr 4
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Liam really felt like he got up this morning with the gray light of day billowing through the filmy curtains of his ever still room; an astonishing sight. It’s been a long time since he had woken up in his own bed feeling good about the day ahead. He had spent so many days immersed in Channing’s music, especially one particular piece. Then he spent the night in her arms. Then he would wake up in her bed and start the whole cycle over again.
Liam had his morning coffee with table cream and sipped it slowly while listening to the birds and watching the gathering while sitting in front of his broke ass piano looking out the soot smeared windows at this old steel town. And there he was, happy one moment then bored out of my ever loving mind the very next. The strangest thing for Liam, by far, about these few weeks spent with Channing and her music is that while he really never had listened to this kind of music before and he’s certainly had never heard Channing stuff before it’s like he knew ever note of this music all along. It was in Liam’s blood. It’s like how a Scots feels when they hear bagpipes. Even little babies with Celtic roots respond to that sound.
He fiddled around with green machine fuzz rock for awhile. He decided he could appreciate Prong for their mild syncopated rhythm and mind blowing guitar waves. He sipped the coffee and it felt good to be in his own place. He let his mind play around with God for awhile and came to the decision that the riding of a bike is a beautiful symbol of faith and a simple metaphor of the faithfulness of God’s power.
Riding a bike brings us a sense of wonder and freedom and exhilaration. It can also bring fear and pain and doubt in us. Just look into the eyes of a child that has just fallen off a bike, and you’ll see what losing faith looks like. Then he called her. He, in actuality, didn’t know why, exactly, except for the unrelenting boredom.
“Hi. It’s me,” said Liam. “What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving in ten minutes for your place. I haven’t been there yet, right? Gimme your address.”
And that’s about all you have to do, apparently, to turn the world on a dime. It’s that easy with her. All the time, she’s that easy going. At least that’s how it felt. It was almost hard to truly say if she’s all that laid back as Liam’s senses; hearing, seeing, they were kind of shorting out. He’s be thinking about the music or working on that one insidious piece and then this buzzing sound would start off low in the back of his brain then it would get louder and louder until it pierced his mind and then…. There would be dead silence for a second and everything would be still. He’d shake the whole thing off, take a second to wonder if he imagined it and somehow, magically, always end up wondering why he’s spending so much time with Channing. Sure, she’s beautiful, and charming and all but it seemd like they’d been together every night since they first met at Barry’s.
Sure enough she’s right on time and looking as saccharine sweet and fit for human consumption as usual. Luckily Liam is just one of those guys that just never look
s bad. Regardless of the abstruse fashion alternatives, the time of day, whether he’s shaven or not, he just never looks bad. Channing as always had a happy and energetic light in her laid-back manner, she makes any day just that little bit easier. Liam looked Channing over, uncharacteristically used onomatopoeia to compliment her and twirled her around his finger and dipped her right his tiny, broke ass kitchenette.
“Let’s get outta here,” suggested Channing. “It’s a beautiful day.”
Liam looked over at the soot smeared window to see the raining and the drizzling, and the sky is overcast.
“What do you want to get up to?” Liam vaguely asked.
True to form she gave him the most sarcastic answer she could think of,
“Grocery shopping. Seems fitting for such a ‘perfect’ day, doesn’t it?”
And that’s exactly what they did. She talked him into it by springing for the groceries. Far be it from Liam to turn down free food. He watched hers teeth dazzle in the florescent lighting of Fortino’s as they strolled up and down the aisles. He suggested grabbing some lunch citing Channing as far too thin. So they drove to the Harbour Front and watched the swans amid the cold November water. They ate at a well know fish and chip shop down by Pier 4. They ate their fish and chips and Channing stunk up the car with all the malt vinegar she used. Then they drove back to Liam’s place.
She really does it for Liam. He liked precisely who he felt like when he was with her. He liked to look long and hard at her with that certain look, like he’s hungry and it makes her face almost blush in a not so demur kind of way. He gave it to Channing while they were shopping in the pasta and beans isle and she pretended not to notice it but fidgeted with her collarbone. She does it for Liam so well that he figured that it’s best not going to make any kind of effort to push them any further than they are right now. Isn’t it possible, after all, that where they are, is exactly where they’re supposed to be?
Liam liked talking with her and feeling really intelligent and not in a preachy kind of way. He liked that she never treats him as though he is like some kind of sage or prophet. Especially when it came to collaborating on Channing’s music. Liam could really get into the healthy competition of outsmarting each other on equal terms of engagement. He liked the way she kisses him; long and slow and lingering. He also really likes the way hers lush lips feel pressed firmly against his own. He loved the way her tongue feels twirling around his own. He loved the taste of her breath, for sure; no doubt about that.
Somewhere in between waking up and that morning coffee Liam had managed to think about Channing a lot. He thought a lot about her everyday, it was almost a compulsion. When he was away from her he found he would miss her company, for real. When Liam was asked in the most polite fashion why, when he is so obviously enamored of Channing, do he always manage to keep his 18 inches of personal Canadian Space. The only retort he had or ever will have, “why not?” He spent an almost unsettling amount of time thinking about that response and how uncharming and unfunny it actually was.
The taste of her breath. It lingered in the unproductive November breeze. It captured his senses when he least expected it. Well, something had, something was causing the buzzing. The taste of her breath made his nipples harden and his lips purse and his head swim with nostalgic idioms. He could hear the same cliché expressed over and over in the context of his innermost dialogue.
“The blood is love.”
It appeared to be, in Liam’s mind, that he had begun to be able to focus and truly see beyond what is visible to the eye. Now there are those, of course, who do not share his acuity, it is true. When Liam told Channing that all women are shocking splendor, she did no more than meekly object. Liam felt he was able to see all women for how they truly are. Women are purely breathtaking, pleasurable, luminous, and humble in the truest sense of the word. Liam had never once been limited by his own visual perspicacity. Men react to women in the way they do, because they sense that females search out the kind of splendor that lies within and doesn’t stop looking until it overwhelms everything else. Females cannot avoid doing it either as they cannot avoid their desire to release it and you in it.
“The blood is love. The blood is love.” What the hell does that mean.
The taste of her breath. It lingered on his tongue as Liam drifted off to sleep each night. It captured his sensibility and rendered Liam frequently blissed-out. It made his cheeks flush and make moist his upper lip. He would purposely swim in the heady fragrance that seemed to be her scent. It is the kind of heady scent that inspires you to love. Until your every sense is filled with her you inhale her. You inhale her and you keep doing it until you can almost taste her. Her scent is that of piping hot, fresh ginger cake, exotic and wild but at once sweet and aromatic, strong, but light, perhaps something you can’t quite put your finger on.
Liam hoped, as she watched him, in her eyes he was the glass of fashion, he was spinning Oscar Wildean fantasies around her. Tall, so young, his skin seemed poreless, like alabaster with warm, clear eyes and a generous shaped mouth, didn’t it. Liam really felt those to be high compliments coming from a female and really wanted that for Channing.
The taste of her breath. It lingers and yes, it led Liam to believe that a solitary soul born in heaven can split into twin spirits and shoot like falling stars to earth where over oceans and continents their magnetic forces will finally u