Falls (Pt. 14): Frail Was the Girl

33.

Bev and I shared another couple of rounds, the first in silence and after she began to speak.

"I don't know why it's a problem," she said.

"She's just worried about you," I said. "After Tom."

"I know. I get that, but..."

She drank from the can and I finished my last before switching back to what remained in my water bottle.

"She doesn't have to though," she said. "I mean, why bother?"

"She loves you, Bev. You're our friend. We worry. She worries."

"She loves me. Yeah."

In my head the Beatles sang and I smiled a little to myself. I considered singing it soft to Bev, maybe it would make her feel better, but maybe it wouldn't. I didn't.

Bev finished her last beer and I left twenty dollars on the bar. "Let's walk," I said.

"To where?"

"It doesn't matter. Just get some air."

"Okay."

We left the bar and I held her hand and kissed it and we walked together along the shore and soon there was a bench and Bev sat on it and pulled me to it and I sat next to her. In the late afternoon the sun danced in orange balls across the ripples of the lake, forming trails and piles of glowing promise and I missed August. I missed July. I missed June. I missed coming out here and I thought maybe I hated being here now. She pulled herself into me.

"We never do this," she said.

"What's that?"

"I don't know. This. Sit close. It's nice."

She was light against me, and I thought I could fit her in my hands. Frail was the word. Light in the air and in my heart and in the world. Frail was the word and frail was the girl. Her hair smelled of the day trailing behind her and the watermelon shampoo we had at the house and then, as I had taken to doing, I kissed the top of her head.

"No," she said after a moment.

"No?"

"No." she sat up a bit and re-positioned. She looked long at me and her dark eyes were rounder than I remember. Red around the lids and strained, but beautiful. A vacuum. "Not there." She leaned in and I pulled back and then with only hurt she pulled back too.

"Bev," I said.

"What?" her voice slid. "Why?" 

"Bev, it's just... it's not like..."

She stood off of the bench and stood only a few feet away but seemed to tower above me. "Not like what?" Her brows came together and I should have kissed her. "Like I'm not fucking good enough? Right? You come down here. You buy me drinks, you take me down here by the shore, you kiss my head, you keep telling me you love me. You tell me you fucking love me and you can fuck me but you won't even kiss me?" Tears came silently and instantly from her.

"Bev. Marie..." I said.

"Oh, no I fucking get it. Yeah, Marie. Marie and not me. Marie and never me, right? You and never me. Both of you. I'm great when you're shitfaced and bored for you guys, but oh, god forbid I need something else! Love. I get it, James. I get it." She leaned in close to me. Her hair smelled of the day trailing behind her and the watermelon shampoo we had at the house and I wanted my fingers through it and her eyes, dark and round, and her skin, and her mouth, and... "Let's just pretend nothing means a fucking thing."

"You don't understand," I said.

She took a breathe, paused and said; "No, James. I understand perfectly. Have another fucking drink. I'm going home." She turned, and walked and the setting sun shone through her dress and she was form and body and I wondered what the hell I was doing.

I finished my water bottle, threw it in the lake and after a few minutes, followed.

34.

The sun sets behind Hope Mountain, casting screaming sheets of dying sun across the town and the lake and crashing into the mountains on the east shore, burning up the forest lining and the day gone. Climbing the hill  it was in my face and I was glad to have an addiction to sunglasses. My head swayed with the wine and beer and in a haze I thought I had fucked up. I knew I had fucked up.

"Bev," I said under my breath rehearsing and stumbling toward the house. "I don't know what you want me to say. I thought we were just living. I think you're great and I love fucking you and I think I'd rather be near you than most people and I think you are beautiful, and you're a girl for me, Bev, I think you're a girl for me Bev. I think Marie is the girl for me and I don't know what that means. I love being near you and I think I said it wrong, Bev. I said it wrong, you know, and I think you're a girl for me."

In the fantasy, Bev understood. She nodded and smiled and Marie was there then and she nodded and smiled and said "Kiss her, James. Kiss her, I want you to. I want you to love her, and I want to love her." In my fantasy, drunk and stumbling, I pulled Bev to me and held her close to me. She wasn't Marie. She was smaller framed. She smelled differently and she smelled differently and when we closed our eyes and I kissed her she tasted differently and she kissed me differently but all of those things weren't worse or better. They were Bev. They were Bev, and in my fantasy they were right and I stopped at the corner of our road and thought shit.

Falls (Pt. 13): The Fall Had Begun

30.

September 1st. I couldn't understand why the date mattered, or why it had any bearing on anything, but it did. The world felt different. I was standing on the front porch, taking a break from the tension and it was a little before noon and the world felt different. Something had shifted overnight. I was ignoring it.

It was the mid-day and I was standing staring at the rustling leaves and sipping from a bottle of Merlot. I was never a fan of merlot, but it was that, cognac, or chardonnay. I thought I might walk to the beach. Walk it for the thousandth time. Walk to the park. Walk it for the thousandth time. Walk to the boardwalk. Walk it for the thousandth time. I wanted nowhere. I stayed on the porch, stared at the leaves, sipped the merlot.

There were no pills. Only coke.

It had been an argument.

Bev had climbed into the shower. Stumbled in.

Marie sat on the toilet and talked her down and when Bev was done she had opened the shower curtain and reached for a towel and fell out of the shower, knocking over the towel rack, the toothbrushes, and her purse, which spilled the entirety of it's contents across Marie's lap and the bathroom floor. Among the lipstick, the wad of balled up ones and fives, the bobby pins, was a corner of a plastic bag, tied off with a hair band.

Bev had laughed and tried to shovel everything back in and Marie let her and apparently said "I'll be in the kitchen."

I sat in the living room with cognac and Nick Cave and Marie had come out.

"We need to talk," she said, still stoned but sobering.

I had followed her out to the porch and as she relayed the last twenty minutes to me we could hear Bev stumbling and stomping around and then the attic door opening and closing.

Marie wanted to kick her out at first. Then she wanted to get her help (whatever that meant). Then she thought she might ignore it.

I only listened. I didn't know what to do. Maybe it was nothing, I thought. Maybe it was just now and it wasn't forever and maybe it was never really a problem to begin with, and maybe, just goddamn maybe, it was none of our business.

Maybe I was hiding.

Marie had slept with the anger of loss and I thought it was unjustified, but it wasn't my place to judge that either. In the morning Marie had gone to the attic and for fifteen minutes I had heard nothing. I had a bowl of granola cereal. Then yelling and Bev had said loudly what I was thinking and I thought that might mean I was wrong. Marie came back downstairs and took a shower. I finished my cereal and when Marie was done showering she came to me in the kitchen and said "I don't know what to say," and then she got dressed and left.

I showered and put my cutoff sweat shorts on and took the Merlot out onto the porch and told myself Marie wasn't upset because she had fallen in love. The fall had begun.

31.

In September you could still swim, though you never want to. You could still barbecue, but you never want to. In September you waste days and you are a criminal. Winter hides just behind the next couple of calendar pages and then in December you think of the last day you laid in the park and the long warm month that followed it and 'why didn't I go one more time?'. You get drunk on summer and when you're drunk the night will never end and the summer will never end and there's plenty of time left and then you're out of time and you look around and you think 'fuck'.

32.

Bev came and went. Marie painted and came and went. I didn't write but I laid on the couch and watched Marie paint and drank wine and sometimes the thought that I was lying in rubble would come close to the front of my mind, but I never paid it much attention, and before long I'd be thinking about something else.

Three days later I was shitfaced and around three I decided to walk to the bar. I didn't know if it would be closed or not, but I figured I'd give it a shot, worse come to worse, I'd get some air. The whole fucking house had been silent and odd and I was tired of it. After Tom, and after Bev and Marie and myself, and now this. I was fucking tired of it. Fresh air would be fine enough.

During the week the streets were empty and with my water bottle of wine I moved down and through them and I know that people looked out there windows and saw me and thought "there goes that fucking guy," and "does that piece of shit live here now? fucking great" and a million other things. The summer was dead and they wanted me gone. Drunk and stoned and music and arguments and fucking and "goddamn", they must have thought. "Goddamn, it's supposed to end in September."

I could not have fucking cared less.

I walked heavy and loose down the street and to the bar I had grabbed a burger at a month before. The bar Bev had thrown shit looks at some girl before that. It had become mine. The sun was warm. The walk was long. The air was clean. The tension was nowhere, as long as I ignored it in my chest.

Through the neighborhoods and across the main drag and down the strip and down the hill. The lake was still beautiful and I was still in love with it then. I still am now. I can't blame the lake.

When I got to the bar I wasn't entirely surprised to see Bev there.

"Hey," I said, pulling up to the bar next to her.

Her hair was pulled back but barely. She was high and she tapped her fingers against the bar in a beat I couldn't comprehend. As I sat and spoke she laid her head on my shoulder.

"I love you," she said.

"I know, Bev."

The bartender came to us. It was someone I didn't know and I thought that maybe the college kids had left. Maybe she was an owner. Maybe an owner's kid. to fill the weird spot in the season. Always making up backstories. "What can I get you?" she asked.

"Two beers. Whatever's cheap."

"Sure. PBR?"

"Sure."

She nodded and took two cans out from under the bar and handed them off and walked off.

"You okay Bev?"

She kissed my shoulder. "I fucked it all up."

"Why?" I drank from my water bottle, cracked my beer and set it in front of me. I cracked Bev's beer and set it in front of her. She drank from hers.

"I fucked up Tom. I fucked up you and Marie. I fucked up, I don't know."

"You didn't fuck up Marie and I," I said. "We love you. We're just worried about you."

"I don't know what to say. I love you. I love Marie."

"We know."

"No. You don't." She drank from her beer. "You don't."

"Of course we do. What do you mean?"

"I mean, you and Marie, you'd fucking, I don't know, you'd rot without her. You'd cut your arms off for her. She is everything for you. Right?"

"Of course."

"I mean, she's your wife. She's the girl for you. She's, everything."

"Right."

"That fuck's me up, man." She kept her head on my shoulder and drank more.

"Why?"

She was silent for a moment and sighed. "Nothing. Forget it."

She looked forward and I looked forward at the mirror behind the bar and at Bev and Bev let tears roll down her cheek and her fingers tapped a rampant alien code against the wooden bar.

I kissed the top of her head.

Falls (Pt. 12): Tangled and Unruly

28.

I wanted to forget writing. I wanted to sit around and drink and fuck my girls and paint and burn out the summer but I paced around the kitchen. I sat in the attic. I stood in the shower mumbling back stories and character names and heartbreak and it wouldn't shut off. 

Breaks from the noise would come. In drinks or girls or sleep but the noise was never far. 

I had something coming out. I was in contractions. I had the hospital on speed dial. I had a diaper bag packed and I was waiting for the water.

I paced around the kitchen and sat in the attic and mumbled to myself in the shower.

29.

Bev was at the bar. Marie had her hair up and was sitting on the floor of the living room dabbing chunks of black over a blue and white canvas and Nick Cave played soft on the stereo. I was two bottles of wine in and my body was electric and numb and I felt all right. I felt no deadlines. I felt no contracts. I felt no stress. No  marriage. No worry. Nick Cave sang of microscopic cogs and I was pacing and talking to myself and Marie nodded her head to the music.

"...but he wakes up. Wife's gone. It's been years. You know. Just, an eternity really," I said.

"Yep," Marie said, having no idea what I was saying.

"I mean, people are always like 'I'd wait' or whatever. You know. Like they should wait and just forget themselves. Like I'd know the fucking difference.  I'm in a fucking coma, you know."

"Yep."

"So, like, what the fuck do I care? Go fuck somebody. I'm as good as dead. So fucking what. But, I don't know, try not to get AIDS or whatever. I might wake up."

"Mmmhmm."

"So he wakes up, forever has come and gone. You know, the world has just, moved on. Whatever. It's gone. He wakes up, world's gone, she's gone." I sat on the couch and drank from my glass. "What do you think?"

"Sure."

"Sure?"

"Yep."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Hmm?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I don't know... I..." She twisted around and looked at me. "What?"

"I was talking to you."

"Oh, sorry. I was in the painting."

"Oh. Right on."

"What did you say?" she asked.

"Nothing. It's fine. Just rambling, I guess."

She gave a puzzled look. "You sure?"

"Yeah."

"All right." She twisted back to her painting. 

Bev burst into the room. "Fuck. Guys. Hi."

"Hi Bev," Marie said and laughed.

Bev's hair was tangled and unruly. Her make up was everywhere.

"You all right?" Marie asked.

I drank from my glass. 

"Um. Yes." She spoke quick and in bursts. "Listen. Let's get stoned." She rifled through her purse. "You know, maybe kitchen."

"Okay," Marie said.

"Sure," I said.

We went in the kitchen, not that it mattered, and sat around the table. Bev pulled two joints out of her cigarette pack, lit both together and passed one to Marie and one to me.  

Nick Cave went on in the living room and after the rotation took over (Me, Marie, Bev, with two joints in play), I was glad for it. 

"So you guys are painting, or, you know..." Bev said.

"Yeah, I don't know what it is yet though. Pissing me off."

"You all right Bev?" I asked.

"Yeah, listen, I don't know. This guy downtown. He gave me this fucking pill but I mean, he was a fucking asshole, you know, giving pills and shit to girls or whatever I mean, I just came home. I was like, you know, where's you guys? I just wanted to you know, you guys wouldn't fucking pill me up."

"Yeah we would Bev," I said.

She nodded. "Yeah, well, I know, but that's fine you guys, you know. You're mine. My guys. You know. You're not going to be a fucking villain or horrible. I love you. You know. So, I was like, where's you guys."

"Maybe you should take a shower, Bev," Marie said.

I agreed.

"Oh, yeah. Fuck," she laughed. "Don't I know it. I mean, I saw my fucking face. I don't know I don't..." Bev stood up. She took both joints and pulled off of them together. "I was hoping the fucking pot would calm me down. Marie, uh, you know, just hang out with me for a bit?"

"Sure hon," Marie said.

"Okay. James, I mean, I love you too, I don't think, I mean, I don't want you to think, but you know, women know, you know?" She bent over and kissed my forehead. "My dude," she said and then stumbled through and out of the kitchen.

"Jesus," I said.

"Yeah." Marie looked worried. I had no idea what Bev had taken but we both knew we'd be up for the rest of the night.

I switched to cognac and marie made a pot of coffee.

I wished we had a television in the house but I had thought it would have killed the "romance". Whatever the fuck that meant.