Two Perfectly Good Legs

For ten years, I’ve been in love with a prostitute. A sweet young girl named Adelina. She is the reason I get up in the morning, move around my concrete box and do whatever it is I find to keep myself busy, though all the while my girl kicks down the door and streams into my thoughts like my tasks and amusements are hers too. Every day I dream of her, and as long as the sun is out I am suspended in my sorrow and crave the night when I will close my eyes and walk the streets once again to look for her, and her eyes will glow even in the darkest night because merely to reflect would be obscene. But my love is a glass that’s overfull, which sits on rough dry land that can’t use it. These have been the darkest nights of my life. It’s all too much for a lonely man to bear.
I met my Adelina during the second part of my life that began during the War. The War was about to end. For a year of my life I had been fighting, and all I wanted was to stop. I didn’t want to admit it then, but I was scared. Before, I had been like everyone else, brave and ready to be a hero of our time and fight against tyranny and so on. But then I saw the death; I couldn’t believe anymore in the holy good of America, sweeping away the dictators of hell. It wasn’t our business to go to Europe. I saw ten guys like me die in a day. And I saw war, and all I saw of war was dirt and blood. I didn’t want any of it. I had been fighting in France but was sent back to a hospital in Jacksonville, North Carolina after a Nazi private’s bullet went straight through the left side of my head. I’m really not mad at the soldier, I’m sure he was some poor shoemaker or worker like me who was swallowed up by the violent enthusiasm of his country just like I was swallowed by mine; in fact I’m pretty glad. They came to the hospital and gave me an award and said I would never have to fight again. Only I wasn’t the same after that. When I came back I was empty and nauseous. The doctor said my injuries were merely superficial and I was lucky, but that bullet did something to me that I can’t explain, except to say that it left an inescapable anxiety and restlessness. When I got out, FDR put me up in a house just outside Jacksonville with five other soldiers. On account of my injury I couldn’t hold a job for a minute, and six months later I was out on the street living off a dollar a day from good old FDR.
After a short stint on skid row, I hooked up with an old friend from high school named Skip Draws, who worked for a company that gave tours of the city of Jacksonville and the harbor in big angular boat-cars called “amphibious vehicles.” His job was to drive through the crowded streets of downtown for an hour and then plop into the sea and putt putt around the harbor like a confused ferry until all the passengers were bored and sick of it. Most of his customers were the wives and girlfriends of soldiers stationed in the city ready to ship off to that terrible mess across the sea. While the soldiers were on duty during the day, the women spent their courageous female energy ambling around the city, speaking of their husband’s honors and the latest fashion. And like any responsible patriot, Skip made sure to console the ladies as soon as their men had left, which left him with a horrible itch and inexhaustible smile.
“Well brother I can’t get you a job on account of your injury makes you no good for giving tours, but I can give you a place to stay. About six months ago I was out on the water giving a tour, and just as I was explaining the sad significance behind the waterfront statue dedicated to those who died in the battle of the annexation of Guam, a drunk Subchaser hit us starboard. An hour later our ship was at the bottom of the bay. No one was injured, and the AV was dredged up and put in the boneyard. It aint much, but it’s enough to make a decent place to rest your head if you’ve been residing on the streets.”
And it was. Compared to the nights of screaming drunken bums and shifty mad bums, the abandoned AV was a sweet homestead. I even gave it a name – Annette Verde, after a beautiful French spirit that practically saved my platoon from the depths of hell with warm bread and sweet Bordeaux wine. The ship consisted of one big room with a two foot tall spectator’s opening that stretched the length of the vessel on both sides. On my first day alone with my new home I rummaged through abandoned cars and boats in the yard and found enough windows to cover all the openings on the vessel, which saved my life during the numerous short but sharp flurries of the North Carolina winter.
The money from the government was just enough to buy bread every day and sometimes meat and wine a few nights of the week. At night, I would walk the streets and drink from my wine canteen and holler at the moon and God and anyone that would listen. During the day I could handle being a lonesome bum, looking for things to do, watching the city dance its hubbub and busy thwap. But at night when the city slowed and thoughts sunk in my head, all I wanted to do was disappear. All I wanted to do was walk and walk, and hopefully walk straight into the end of the night, where my soul could rest and feel like a child lying in a field of wheat staring up at the clouds. I thought, the end of the night will come soon enough. For now, drink your wine and enjoy the strange chaos of the world.
One warm night in June, three months after I moved into my dredged boat home, Skip and I were walking down Diamond Street amid pool halls and Belgian rotisseries. The heat was oppressive; the air stuck to my lungs and tickled my throat. “Goddamn Skip” I said loudly over the city sounds, “Lets get us some drinks.” So we walked inside a smoky blues bar and drank a few beers. There were about a dozen or so people seated in the bar. In the front of the room an old Negro man sat alone with a scratched brown guitar twanging very forceful and giddy. He was picking some sad melody and it sounded perfect to me right then. Then he started singing with the utmost clarity and style:

I’m a lemon tree baby, won’t you come under my shade,
Oh, I’m a lemon tree baby, won’t you come under my shade,
And squeeze my lemons ‘till the juice run down my leg….

“I don’t care what these boys do with themselves,” went Skip, “they can ship over there with machine guns and tanks and all sorts of things to kill each other if it fits ‘em, but I’m going to stay here and ball every girl I can; just drink my pleasures before I can’t taste ‘em no more.”
“Damn, don’t talk so loud, you’ll get us lynched if any of them boys heard you,” I scolded. “You wouldn’t believe what goes on over there old man,” I whispered, looking around my back. As I drained the last of my third mug my mind felt released, like a western wind, like Abraham rambling back down the mountain in Mariah. “Governments treating people like you and me as if they were nothing, do you understand? They want the war to be nothing fighting nothing, so regardless of who wins they’ll hold one big, slontial funeral in front of millions of mourners speaking of duty and honor and greatness. And then that night they’ll neglect their wives and fall asleep early, dreaming unexceptionally, waking at five o’clock sharp to raise taxes and brood over tea yet too hot to drink. Sometimes…”
“Ha! Who’s getting lynched? And besides, who are they anyway, do you know? I don’t, and I don’t’ care. What do you expect us to do, sit the world leaders together and conference, huh? Poke Hitler in the ass with a furnace stick? Why worry about things you can’t control? Why waste energy? I’ve got money enough for quarter and food and a little left over for drink. I’m surrounded by women who need love, whose men esteem glory and killing over loving; I tell you what: a real girl don’t want no big gun nor square hat.” I wanted to tell Skip that I don’t esteem killing either, but we can’t all have flat feet.
Around eight-thirty Skip and I left the bar and parted ways. I told him I had to go mail a letter, but really the beer had made me hungry so I began in the direction of the Post Office and then, embarrassed and out of sight, I turned down Seagram Dr. toward Saint John’s Cathedral. Most nights you could walk through the alley behind this big beautiful monument and stand in the crowd of quiet bums waiting at the back door of the kitchen for the church Beadle to serve soup out of a yellowed trash can. It used to be better. They used to serve the soup in the Cathedral itself. I used to spend lonesome evening hours there sipping soup lax on my own wooden pew admiring the great paintings of illuminated Mary holding the little savior near her breast and all the fog and stress would recede and I would feel quite whole and blessed for a few moments. I loved those pictures at night, quiet with candles flickering against the peaceful scenes. How the faithful artist, so Christ-like himself, gave Mary Magdalene the same ecstatic glow as the Mother herself!
As I turned down the alleyway and approached the light I noticed for the first time that my back was drenched with sweat. I’ve been transient too long, I thought. My mind felt light and fuzzy; like the others I’d been perpetually wearing my overcoat in the southern heat. Then I noticed, standing somber but brilliant and out of place, a beautiful dark haired girl with big dark eyes staring intently upon my approach. From afar I could just make out her young body which listlessly supported her dress. What a dress! Topped with a loose collar and languid bow around the neck, gently curving around her parts, the bottom lying just above her knees. Her dark legs reminded me of the war and the sacred beauties in the front yards of small French country homes as we marched past. I stared into her eyes as I walked by. I did not continue to the kitchen for soup. I had forgotten about my stomach. Instead, inspired by my heart and the beer, I walked back toward the girl, noting that I literally had nothing to lose.
“Hello sweetheart,” I said.
“Hi.” She said kindly. Upon closer inspection I was quite sure she was a whore. She had all the signs: her posture was formally erotic, extreme; a stance spawned by hours waiting on dark corners, but in the light it looked awkward and silly. Sometimes working girls came to the Cathedral dressed like her, standing like her, on the outs with the bosses and without food. Some hadn’t handled a dollar in years; every slice of bread, every roll of toilet paper was provided to them by the pimps. My girl was no different. She had done something, probably something quite courageous for a girl like her to be locked out by a John. She would inevitably go back wringing her hands and crying, as they all did. But I didn’t care about any of that. A bum hasn’t the luxury of passing judgment. Besides, she was beautiful.
“You’re very beautiful,” I said. She laughed.
“You haven’t talked to a girl in a while, have you? Don’t you know you can’t just say something like that outright?” she told me as she smiled. She was poking fun at me, but her body was open and she wasn’t ignoring me.
“Well,” I said, “I just wanted to tell you. My name is Arthur, what’s yours?”
“Adelina.”
As I shook her hand she looked me over. She knew I had no money by the way I hung my fingers out of the holes in my jacket. I was suddenly very conscious of my smell, damned heat. I wondered what she thought of me, who she thought I was, how she thought I ended up this way.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” I asked. “It’s a nice night and the stars are out.”
“Are you dangerous?”
“No.”
“Then alright that sounds nice.”
We stepped out of the church alley arm in arm and took a right onto Melville Drive toward the ocean at her request. I made sure she was on my right side so she wouldn’t pay any attention to my wound, but she asked anyway, and when I told her what happened she told me I was very brave and kissed me on the cheek. My blood warmed and I could feel it running through me like the first tingling sip of red wine. Her face was beautiful and severe, dark, Tuscan, like an animal. I hardly saw her eyes, they were hidden under her hair, but intermittently she’d look up and I would glimpse their melancholy green and want to tell her that it’s okay to have pain, that when we’re dead we might miss it. Then we turned onto State Street where a short woman with a very large dog was yelling at a man who had dented her Ford with a fallen paint can.
“I’m very sorry miss, but will you please silence your dog so we can resolve this,” said the painter.
“If I am not compensated promptly then I’ll give him a reason to stop barking!” yelled the woman.
“At least the bucket stayed in tact or there would have been a horrible mess,” whispered lovely Adelina.
“At least while the car’s in the shop she can ride to market on that dog”, said I.
We both laughed.
“You really could be quite handsome if you cleaned up a bit,” She said to me, looking at my old jacket, “like a college boy.”
“Ha, if I was ever handsome once, not anymore”
“Ah, you’re a man like that are you,” she said, with a smirk that made her face wrinkle.
“Like what.”
“You’ll fall in love with me,” she said, very matter-of-factly. “I know you will.”
“And how do you know me so well?”
“I can read your soul on your face. You are a good man, but you suffer.”
“I was in a war.”
“Yes, I know. But you suffered before the war. Am I right?”
I tried to think but I couldn’t remember. My life before the war was to me a vague happiness. But I couldn’t be sure of anything. My mind wasn’t right.
“What about you?” I asked, “Do you suffer?”
“Maybe, perhaps, but really there’s no need to be happy. People go around searching for happiness everywhere and can hardly ever find it, and even if they do it never lasts. I don’t expect anything from anybody.” She paused, somewhat apologetically. “But it is beautiful out tonight and I enjoy walking with you.” She smiled.
Her smile mingled with the warm night and sent pleasure through my bones; I was happier in that moment then I had been since the war began. We walked along Anne Street and shuffled down the river toward the harbor. She asked me about my life and I told her all I could. I reciprocated and she told me about her upbringing in Texas, how her father was a rigid Pastor but still a good man, how her mother died when she was young of consumption. We passed under a store front light and the wind blew her cotton dress against her breast, drawing smooth shadows across her abdomen. I wanted to take her right there under the moon. Being still a man, inventive and sly, I directed our course toward my terrestrial boat home. She said she’d come in but would not undress. “Of course,” I replied. As we lay together, her body against mine, I thought, what’s one more celibate night for me - great stoic bum, master of my body, veteran hermit monk!

That night I had a dream. I was a child on my father’s farm drawing pictures in the dirt next to the front doorstep. It must have been summer because the heat was unbearable, wet heat, heat that turned the sky into a yellow foggy oppressive wave. The sun on my neck itched; my face dripped with sweat. I was watching the dirt, and then I heard a whisper. I looked up to meet a large black rattle snake moving on the ground in front of me. He was monstrous and animated, with the hood of a cobra like a violent black cloud. It slithered in a circle around me. I was paralyzed. I could only watch the snake circle my body, hissing daggers, imagining its venom shooting through my veins. When it fulfilled its rotation, it crept away slowly into the oak woods. Relieved, I felt high, like a convicted man appeased at his execution, a light drunkenness. So I resumed my business in the dirt. Then the whispering returned. I raised my head, and a baby rattle snake lunged and bit my foot. A fire crept through my body and I screamed.

When I awoke at dawn, Adelina had left. I listened to the seagulls outside. The windows were open, and cool pleasant air streamed through with dawn’s sun gleaming on my pillow. “Ah! Another day to add to this great comedy,” I spoke as I rose. I put on my jacket and walked to the Post Office to pick up my veteran’s check, then to the store where I bought bread and a jug of wine. That day I sat on the dock between two large fishing boats, drinking my wine, watching the unending barrage of ripples and the sun’s rays dancing across the water; thinking of Adelina: how she was the warmest creature I’d met, and how even after one night I knew I loved her, like she said I would. I had a strong feeling at that time that we were meant to be each other’s guardian angels and save each other from our miseries and most of all help each other through these confused lives we’d found. I relived the night over and over again, sometimes cringing at my untrained mouth and actions, but those were merely grains of sand in my bed of joy. But I may have dwelled too much, being alone so often leads my mind to idle wanderings and strange philosophies. Most of all, I had acquired an infinite capacity for doubt. But the more I drank, the less I felt the anxious itch that told me she would never be mine, and that I could never have her all for myself. The more I drank the less I felt the big, obstinate anxiety that my life had somehow become a losing game, and that I was really buried under an immensity of sand and would never be able to claw my way out. By noon I was drunk and fell asleep.
Every night for five days Adelina came and stayed in my AV, which meant she wasn’t working. Maybe she’s done forever and will start a new life now, I thought. I couldn’t ask her about it for fear of ruining everything. Anyhow, her visits took away all my sadness and gave me hope. Some nights we took long walks around the town whispering to each other, smiling, enjoying the sights. Other nights we stayed home and played cards or just laid in bed, not talking just enjoying each other’s being. I could have laid silently with her for the rest of my life, doing eternal meditations on the sound of her soft breath and watching the universe open up to me on the infinite backs of my eyelids. Every night I fell more in love with her. One night she interrupted our silence.
“Arthur, it’s just that, you’re such a gentle, sweet man.”
“Thanks mama.”
“I just can’t quite understand why you live like this. I mean, you could be something, you are something.”
“Well,” I paused, “I guess we all gotta play the cards we’re dealt. There aint no use complaining about it.”
“But…this isn’t the place for you, here on the streets. You could go somewhere and have a life,” she said.
“Someday I will be somewhere great. I mean, God doesn’t want me to be like this for all eternity. When I die, I’ll meet him and I suppose he’ll say ‘Sorry Arthur, you’ll never understand why I had to make your life like that, but I’ve saved a place for you where there’s no war or sadness. Thanks for not disparaging too much.’ And then I’ll be free from all the things that happened to my body. And so will you.”
She looked into my eyes smiling, her fingers running through my hair. Then she kissed my forehead and turned over to go to sleep. I stayed awake thinking about us meeting up in heaven. The circumstances will be better up there, I thought.
Then, on the sixth night, I sat up waiting for her all night and she never came. And she didn’t come the night after. Like a fool I sat in my room every night for two weeks, waiting, not imagining going anywhere, face down on my pillow damp with tears. At first I sulked and pitied myself like a woman, with a million sad questions and intuitions. I couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t come even for a visit. I knew she loved me, I knew. People don’t just smile like that, people don’t just look into your eyes and smile like that! Something must be wrong. Well she’s just a whore, I thought, I’m a goddamn war hero, what business do I have with scum and sinners anyhow? What would my mother think? I arrested that thought, though, as to dam a flood of emotions that would have compounded my misery. But I was great once anyhow, and I wouldn’t lose my mind and manly spirit to some woman, much less a poor street-corner bitch.
Thus, to relinquish her figure from my imagination I left the AV on the twelfth night of waiting and walked toward Skip’s place to drink and talk. The night was warm and fine and walking down Hyacinth St. by the cafes with the sweet smell of fresh baked bread and pizza and espresso I had a small flash of blessedness and knowledge that the world was just one big ball of paint that mixed around constantly, that distinctions were just different colors and really the paint was all the same sort. The stars were one by one falling into place in the soft way they do in the city. Throngs of people walked about, women in summer dresses with hats and ribbons, men in shorts with their cotton shirts unbuttoned. Their shadows played under the café lights, growing, shifting, disappearing into darkness and then reappearing under another canopy. All this movement and busyness quieted my mind as I continued beyond the threshold and up the stairs to Skip’s apartment.
I knocked on the door. It flung open.
“Arty old buddy! I haven’t seen you in ages! Come in, Come in.”
“Heya Skip.”
As I walked in I saw an older blond woman seated on his strangely ornate couch, at least five years Skip's senior, reclining with a content look, obviously not much affected by my presence. I sat down on a chair across from her. Skip was about to sit, but jumped up and said:
“Oh these drinks have soiled my manners, Marlene this is Arthur, an old high school buddy and great war hero. Man, back in high school me and him used to chase girls up and down the halls and smoke cigarettes in the bathroom, causing all kinds of trouble; we practically owned the place. But we were young then, and now I’ve finally met you darlin’.”
She nodded in my direction and he plopped down next to her and kissed her like a drunk.
“Oh Arty you’re just in time, I’ve got a pot of jimsonweed that’s been brewing in the kitchen for about a half hour now and we can all drink it together, that is, if you’re savvy to that sort of thing.”
I said that’d be fine. I watched him go run and turn the stove off, pick up the pot and carefully strain the green water into three small cups. He walked back over and handed Marlene and me ours with a funny smile.
“Now you’ve gotta drink it all while it’s still hot ‘cause it’ll taste like the devil’s piss if you don’t.”
We finished the cups quickly, for there wasn’t more than a flask of liquid in each. Then we sat back and began a jumpy, petty conversation whose superficiality rested on the fact that each one of us was pretty nervous and didn’t know what was going to happen. But after a half hour we forgot about the tea and were all very relaxed and giddy and felt at ease with each other.
“The blues is the great American art form,” I said very triumphantly, “It’s a vision of man’s soul, every chord and holler; it’s a great transference of emotion and it infects you, man, it gives you power! And you know what, God gave the blues to the Negro, there aint no doubt about it. God gave it to them right under the white man’s nose, the most powerful force in the universe so they could live and dance its crazy energy and be enlightened by its grace. He gave them the key to eternity and we all just have to listen and try to piece it together but like time you can’t find eternity by adding up all the time because eternity is beyond time, eternity is beyond time! And the Negro gives us a little of his grace, lets us taste it, shows us it’s fruit; but we will never be the blues. We’ll never Know the blues, you know, Know with a capital K.”
Skip and Marlene nodded. Suddenly, I felt very dizzy and my eyes started to lose focus. I walked toward the kitchen and filled a glass full of water from the tap. I stood next to the sink, gulping, finishing the glass and filling another. I did this three times. When I walked back into the living room I found Skip and Marlene necking vigorously on the golden couch, his hand moving in and out of her blouse and their legs rubbing uncontrollably; it looked like the mating battle of two giant plump worms intertwined in horrible peristalsis -- seething mutants -- mistakes of God! I had a sudden panic that I was in some house of sin, some unclean place that would swallow me up if I didn’t escape. Without another thought I ran out the door, down the stairs, and into the street where I fell to my knees and vomited next to a car.
From there my vision blurred further. I looked up and the streets and buildings were shrouded in dense smoke. The street lights gave the scene a depleted yellow aspect that I found unpleasant; I would have preferred a dark night in the forest singing to the trees but I hadn’t the ambition nor the ability to leave the city in that moment. So I decided to walk back toward the lights and the cafes, the sentimental cafes, where just an hour earlier I had been a happy peace voyeur. As I got up, I stood for a moment watching my thoughts which seemed to have no relation, continuity or end, they just bubbled up and popped, displaying their contents for a moment and then dissipating into the grey night. If I could just go to sleep, I thought, but when I closed my eyes my mind raced faster and I began to spin, and besides I couldn’t keep them closed for long. Thus aware of the situation I’d been afforded, I began to ramble.
Walking toward Hyacinth Street I noticed a small bulge in my front coat pocket. I reached in and found half a pack of cigarettes. What a luxury, I thought! I took one out and put it in my mouth. Fumbling through the rest of my coat I found a pack of matches. I struck one, lit my cigarette and inhaled deeply. To my surprise half the cigarette burned in an instant and turned to ash. Cheap French tobacco, I thought. I took another drag and the rest of the cigarette burned down to the filter, which melted into shiny orange quicksilver and burned my hand. Cursing, I wiped my hand on my pant leg and took out another cigarette. Again, the cigarette burned down to the filter and melted onto my hand. I did this several more times, all with the same result, before I threw the pack into the gutter.
I could see the lights of the bars and cafes ahead of me. As I got nearer, I encountered more people, strange people. Two lovers walked past me. Their faces were wild and animated, like masks, with big mouths and long severe noses. They were laughing like mad, stoned children. I felt a hand on my back and turned around to see an unfamiliar old bum with vast crevasses in his face. He moved in close, peered into my eyes and whispered “Siamo contenti? Son Dio, ho fatto questa caricatura.” Vile beast! I was sure he was the devil speaking in tongues. Frightened, I pushed him away and walked faster. I mustn’t dolly and indulge among these fools, I thought, I must get to the lights where I’ll be safe.
When I finally made it to the café and sat down at a table outside, it seemed like days since I was at Skip’s. My mind was buzzing at the sights and sounds of the great drama in front of me. Most of the men were soldiers in tan uniforms with white hats and black brims. Some had metals on their lapel. Some were already drunk and had their shirts half unbuttoned. I saw three of them walking down the street speaking excitedly to one another, no doubt about the woman they’d made and the ones they’d make tonight, not giving a weighted thought to the horrors that would befall them in a week, or two weeks or a month. Three chums out to live, doing the best they could, gracious and unphilosophical. Hadn’t I been one of them? Was it that long ago that I was drinking beer every night, trying to convince a girl with a cigarette, because they were usually the easiest to make, to take a soldier back to her house and find out what’s underneath a hero’s uniform? What happened to me? A nauseating fear hit me at that moment and my body froze. What was really wrong with me? What was the difference between these people and me? Scars? Was my soul scarred enough to make my spirit die? Was my intelligence really any worse then it had been? I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember what I had been before. Then, like I had been standing on a running hose and the water had become too powerful for my weight, a burst of memories cascaded all around me. My whole life before the war became corporeal and arrested my vision and the lights and the people and the night transformed into a running wheel of memories popping in and popping out, painful ones, happy ones, memories I had forgotten about since childhood, an early morning sunrise, my mother bringing me cake in bed for my birthday, my father beating me in the field for using harsh words against him, my first kiss on the school bus. These visions were as bright and vivid as the day of their birth. The memories came faster and faster, and soon I couldn’t think about them but could only feel them pulling me from fear to pleasure to disappointment to love and I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up and shook my head and the great spectacle disappeared. All that remained were the cafés, the lights, the people sounds, the night, and the knowledge that my mind had been wrong for a long time, and now there was work to do. I am a man, I thought, over and over. I’m a man. I was born into this world naked like everybody else, and I can survive in it. In fact, I could take the whole thing if I wanted, I could hold them all under my finger and breathe fire against their walls until they see what they’ve made me. I began to make promises to myself, but before I could finish a thought, my heart sunk.
Adelina was walking down the street toward me with a tall man in a hat. I knew who he was. I seized up. But before I could react, they turned into a bar on the other side of the street. I sighed. This is it, I thought. This is my chance to tell Adelina that I can take care of her and we’ll make it together. That she is really mistaken about me and we were meant to be together to erase each other’s sorrow. I got up and walked to the bar door, spoke a little prayer, and went in.
A blast of warm air hit me, and the stench of raw meat. The bar was musky and hot and I began to sweat immediately. On the walls were heads of bear and elk, and skins of what looked like ferrets stretched out like ancient vivisections. One of the moose was smirking. When it was shot, was it laughing at death? Or perhaps the hunter’s attire? Maybe. Impalpable veils of smoke rose from each table, diffusing through the crowded room, making more ominous my mood and the buzzing in my temples. I felt my pulse in the back of my head, and when the beats came I could locate my thoughts as they ran through my mind. The sonar pulse kept beeping and throbbing, straining my nerves. Creaking, voices, dark smells and demonic laughter jogged my senses, further distorting the already blurred faces. There was no use surveying from afar. Everything was brown opaque dust. I began to walk between the tables slowly and cautiously, feeling conspicuous. Then I saw her seated at a table with two men: one was the tall man in the hat, the other a short, fat businessman with a swollen face. The fat one was giggling obsequiously at something the tall one said. I walked up to the table and stood there for a moment. I couldn’t look her in the eyes. The men didn’t notice my presence until I spoke.
“Adelina...”
“Who is this?” the tall man said to her, looking me over, “A brother? Or have you been turning tricks for nickels without me?”
She said nothing. I still couldn’t look at her face. No one spoke.
“I think your drunk friend had better leave,” he said. Then it came.
“Adelina, I love you. And I am someone if you’ll just trust me. And I swear there aint no one sorrier than me for not realizing when you tried to help me, and you’re the sweetest woman that ever lived and I can see that and we can love each other. For now you’ll just have to trust me but I’ll show it to you soon. And I know you love me and hate all this but you couldn’t be with a bum but I know now that I aint supposed to be like this and I can change and I will be a real man and take care of you…”
The tall man stood up. I realized what I was doing. He pushed me.
“I can’t hardly believe it. You understand – this is my girl, and you gone and tried to steal my girl, right out in front of me.” He pushed me again. “Don’t you know that this girl don’t love no one for free anyhow? Especially some ugly bum.”
I stood in shock for a moment. Then my mind went blank. I could only feel my blood take control of me. All the years of thoughts and sadness disappeared and left just Raymond the animal, Raymond the left behind, Raymond the violent will of the world. There was no more self-pity or guilt, just vengeance. The tall man raised his arm. I saw a shiny revolver appear on his belt from beneath his jacket. A great energy overcame me and everything turned white. Five shots rang out through the bar. There was a smooth ringing. Then the room came back, and the ringing turned to silence. Two people lay on the floor. One was the tall man, writhing and moaning, breathing heavily, holding his stomach with both hands. I looked to the other and choked. It was Adelina, lying completely still. A pool of blood was forming all around her. Waves of woe tore through me at that moment; I tried to scream. I moved to Adelina, but what I saw stopped me. I rose slowly from the floor, put the gun on the table, and sat down with my head resting on my arms. On Adelina’s face was the look of hate.