** Shadow Puppets, Part Two **

 ( <——- Part One)

Outside, the streets were dead as they made the frozen two blocks in a somber trance. The dull clicking of her worn boots a subtle backdrop to her delicate humming.

At her car she paused, her persona having shifted along the way. Transformation complete.

“So… what’s it this time, lover?” she asked aggressively, catching him off guard.

“Don’t, Ginny,” He growled.

She scoffed. Opened the trunk of her rusted two door to empty her arms of things.

“Oh c’mon, baby,” she challenged. “This is the part where you tell me this is over, right? And then you say how you can’t do this to her anymore. How you’re gonna change things?”

She waited. Threw her arms open.

He just stared.

“Oh, I see. So tonight it’s the other one. ‘You’re better than this, Ginny. You deserve more. To be loved?’ That’s real good coming from you, you know.”

She turned to open her car door. Slid into the ripped seat.

“You know it all, don’t you?” she asked, gripping the steering wheel – her gaze hard, eyes empty, mouth pulled taught to quell the threat of tears. "You think you know it all," her lip quivered, "I hate that, baby. You’re no better than me."

He bent over, hanging from her open window. “Ginny I-“

“Just stop,” she pleaded, motioning with her hand. “Forget it.”

The wind picked up then, rustling the last of fallen tree feathers.

She sighed. Straightened. “Same time next week?” she asked.

He nodded simply, too tired to pretend anymore. Reached into his back pocket to retrieve his wallet.

“Here,” he offered. “There’s more there. Don’t give it to Montana.”

She hesitated before taking the bills. “Thanks,” she said.

He stood as she started the car. Backed onto the curb.

“Hey,” she called, leaning her head out the window. Tried a smile. “Happy Birthday.”

54. He’d forgotten.

She hesitated a moment, nodded with her eyes, and then pulled away.

And then she was gone, and he was alone.

Six days, he thought.

Six days until he would be touched again.

His feet carried his slumped frame slowly and steadily back in the direction he’d come while his mind filled the silence for anyone out there listening.

He thought of her – his ex-lover who, in being so, had made a once good man into a broken and empty shell of a liar. She who had fled in mind first and body second until all at once he woke up reaching, reaching, reaching – missing.

You’re not the man I thought you were, she’d screamed.

I’m not the man I thought I was, he’d agreed.

But she had loved him once. Growing up it had been that easy. Black and white and nurturing and full of good things and most of all, love.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

He folded into himself as the wind picked up, sending his cries toward the ears of ghosts and puppets and jokers and thieves.

He thought they had been special.

“Who is that?” he’d asked.

“That’s her.”

“Who is that?”

“That’s her.”

… “I’m gonna marry her some day.”

And then a darkness settled in and turned them normal. Average. Regular. Nothing special. But he couldn’t remember when. Why couldn’t he remember when? One day it was love and then not at all. Crushing and being crushed. Hurting and being hurt. Every word of love and every word of hate piercing through to pinch and stab and remove the beating of hearts and pairing of minds and then time came and carried them away entirely. Taking emotions with it. Stealing threats. Breaking promises. Liars.

And they’d meant every word.

And so it has come to this. A dirty motel just to be touched. To pretend love amongst shadows. Pulling strings. Memories and parting sorrows just to feel. And her face. Always her face depicted.

By the time he reached the bar, he felt numb. Staggered his way through electric beats toward wooden salvation. In this life, he’d seen too much. Hoped too much. Loaned all he had knowing all along where the road led. Like the back of his hand. But he wouldn’t ask to be saved. It was his cross to bear. Finding religion.

“Bartender,” he choked out, “make me.”

And he drank it down – amber whiskey to remind him to listen. One. Two. Three. Seven.

Make me.

His mark. His mission. The drink burning like cinders as it traveled down, down, down. Hell on the throat but at least he belonged. Strange.

He shifted his weight on the rickety stool, fumbled with his wallet. Removed his wedding ring and placed it upon the bar. Emptied his glass. Stared.

“Another?” asked the stout angel as he poured the liquid gold. It glimmered upon transfer, and he couldn’t help but notice that it was the only thing on the bar that still did.

So why was he still holding on?

He picked up the ring and slid it onto his finger, selling memories and buying into his own lies once again.

“Today,” he told the bartender, “I turned fifty-four years old.”

He paused, his slurred speech playing tricks in his head.

The bartender smiled, his gaze taking in the aged ring. “Happy Birthday, Mac. This one’s on the house.”

He nodded his thanks. Downed the proffered whiskey.

“She’ll be back, hey? My June,” he prophesized.

The bartender waited, patiently.

“Yeah,” he laughed sardonically, “she’s gonna burry me in that field.”

He swayed. Caught himself.

“Not this year. Maybe next year… I got time. She’ll meet me there. She’ll be back.”

The bartender sighed. Reached

to clear away his glass, surprised when he pushed his hand away.

"Sorry kid," he mumbled, "I gotta close up."

“Not yet, hey? I’m not done yet,” he begged.

And the bartender relented. Filling his glass one more time.

“I got three kids, you know?” he told him. Grabbed a bar napkin and began folding. Twisting. Ripping. In  half and half again. A poor man’s ill attempt at origami.

Shook his head. “I got a wife. I got three kids. It’s my birthday.”

He took a small sip of his whiskey, swishing it through his teeth, holding it as long as he could stand it.

“Not one fucking phone call.”

The tears came then, slowly at first, and then all at once.

"Maybe next year."

He didn’t care anymore. He cared too much. He surrendered to the overload of his youth, of his ending, of being buried alive .

Raised his glass to the now sullen angel behind the bar, let it go, and went out with a bang.

“Checkmate,” he said to the man. Laid a handful of crumpled up bills in his wake, and stumbled back below the stars and into the cold night air, feeling old but no longer lonely.

Six days, he thought.

Six days, and he could touch again.

Six days.

For now, he could wait. He could move. Keep pace. Sleep alone with her and then with her and keep time and step in line with the cadence of being all wrong. Because it was too late to make it right. The price he paid too high and so he had become a thief just to get by with necessity.

There would be no comfort now. So he let it go.

Six days. He would wait.

And then he would be buried.

But tonight, he would grasp at strings as his drunken feet carried him west, into the shadows. Toward her. Toward home.