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I'm soaking in vagueness under a sky in bleak November, twisting a weed and lapping up the last of day, feet propped on Charlie's tombstone (covering up the "C" and "e"). It hits me I forgot the dark beer. The clouds move and one looks the way my brain feels. Puffy. A wind picks up through a nearby maple, which quivers, wakes up my skin like it used to when Charlie would tell stories about teenagers he and Sergio would find dead. A woman sobs nearby, rhythmically. I scratch the ground above Charlie and think about digging him up and cremating him, like he wanted. The Lutheran church just down the hill points straight up.I see Charlie both vividly and blurred, like when the sun would catch the metal on his paramedic uniform and take chunks out of my vision, make me squint and rub my eyes, create halos that exploded spots on his chest. Did he snore, or was that something I would say to watch him vehemently deny it? What did his sweat smell like?
When sex became impossible, he bought me a bright orange vibrator, which is rooted in my sock drawer like a carrot. He gave it to me, and a tiger-striped kitten, one Christmas, "I refuse to give up," he said, dragging it down my side. The low buzzing, awkward at first, became a pool in which we swam. He would joke, ask me if I got horny when we passed a barber shop and then kiss me lightly on my hand. I imagine dying, and my sister and her husband finding the vibrator and shaking their heads. Poor lonely girl they'd say, holding my cat.
The woman crying has on a tacky Hawaiian shirt and cat-eye sunglasses that make me think she's an FBI agent, which doesn't make sense, it's just she's so wrong for November and graveyards. Beyond the woman, an elm rocks back and forth and both nod at me as I pass on the way to my car. Night begins to bleed beyond the overcast sky.
I think faith is a size I've grown out of but never stop trying on. When we moved off Perkins behind KFF Bakery, Charlie started growing plants. I asked if Midas had a brother with fertilizer fingers because we would watch them crown and stretch to the light. When Charlie disappeared they gave up.
n
In med school, before Charlie, I met a guy over an open cadaver. We were digging in a vacant stomach, looking for evidence of parasites when he said, "How heart would it be for you to eat dinner rib me?"
"That must have taken a while," I said.
He smiled. "Was it too cornea?"
Over spaghetti he told me he always wanted to do it in a morgue drawer. "The closest I've come," he said, "was this physical therapist once," his eyes were wide with the telling. I smiled in amusement. "And," he said slurping a dark, red wine, "it was just a blowjob in a traction machine." When I think of dating again, I think of him.
n
When a car pulls up, its headlights sweep across the gravel making the ground swirl for a split second, like the reeling lights of Charlie's ambulance. Charlie wanted to be cremated but his parents insisted that he be buried, though Charlie said he'd rather drink piss, which is the way he looked from all the embalming fluid - an image burned forever in my mind from the open casket (his parents insisted). I lost it in the bathroom.
I recognize Sergio's car next to a Bradford pear tree. It begins to rain and the fat drops streak my white blouse and make my flesh wet.
Sergio slams his car door on his overcoat, just as a 16-wheeler screams by, masking his cussing. He still has on his chalky-blue paramedic uniform. He kicks his car, shakes his fist, then quickly rubs his eyes from the rain. I'm thinking of the time Charlie sauntered into the bedroom - bald by then - with a ring of chocolate around his mouth, wearing my satin robe and smoking a joint.
It begins to rain harder and Sergio motions for me to get in his car. He drives an old station wagon and the fabric lining has separated from the ceiling, so his hair is always messy.
"I just bought this damn coat after work and I've gone and ruined it," he says squeaking his door shut. Sergio looks impossibly young with a smooth face and the body of a 16-year-old headbanger with too-long hair on his neck. His Italian coloring saves him.
Sergio puts on a battered cowboy hat with a scraggly peacock feather bent over from the ceiling that balloons down. He turns off his car and says, "You want to get dinner or just go home?" As always he jabs me on the shoulder. I've seen him do this with patients: it's his way when he sees they're scared. "I can see your bra where your shirt's wet," he says.
"How about something close?" I say, ignoring him. "Let's pick a place before we start driving in this crap." He smacks the lining by his head, where it sticks for a second, and he reaches behind him and pulls out a shoebox filled with coupons.
"I think I've got one for the Salt Lick, two for the price of one," he says, and begins digging. The back of Sergio's green station wagon is stuffed to the windows with broken lamps, a ripped beanbag chair, writhing cables, boxes of magazines, musky clothes, and other liquidated treasures. Remnants from a Garage Sale habit.
"Got a dark beer back there?"
Sergio stops his digging and looks at me. "Belinda. You forgot the dark beer? That's great, I mean...maybe this is a good sign. You're dealing with the pain."
I give him a narrow look and he raises his eyebrows and stretches his lips into a stupid grin. "I have one," he says and feels behind my seat, "but I don't have an umbrella."
The beer he hands me has a ripped label, war-tattered. Now the rain is steady. "I'll be right back," I say, "Look for that coupon."
On my way back up the hill I picture my mother, who died three years ago. I imagine Charlie sitting on a couch in heaven, watching me on the interstellar channel for the dead, perhaps laughing. They've lost the remote.
Charlie made me promise that once a month I'd pour a dark beer on his grave. The beer splatters the wet earth, foams up rain and tears.
"Here's to you," I say.
n
I pull my blouse away from my chest. I hate air conditioning because it makes my nipples look like Hershey's Kisses. Sergio pulls away from the church and starts up Valleydale. It's a slow incline and, as we ascend, the front seat starts to slide backwards and a floor lamp jousts between us. "It's broken," Sergio says. The seat moves further back and he hangs on to the steering wheel and stretches his leg to the gas pedal. One of his wiper blades is missing and the metal scratches the windshield.
"How the hell can you drive this?"
"Wait until we slide forward, we'll be kissing the dash," he yells.
"I hope there's no charge," I say.
It was four years ago the first time Charlie drove with Sergio, and their first call was a full cardiac arrest. Charlie said Sergio burst into the old couple's living room and managed to bring the woman back. Sergio ripped her terrycloth bathrobe open and went like a man possessed. The only survivor of a full arrest Charlie had ever seen. He told me about this over a gurney, said he couldn't help but feel he violated their world, even if it saved the woman's life, which is exactly why I fell in love with him. My mother gave me a hard time because I was dating a paramedic, a subordinate.
I met him in ER, positioned by an old naked man with no heartbeat, a flatliner. Paramedics and nurses perched like tall white birds, and while they slid IVs in,
and beat on the old man's chest with drab urgency, like they were pumping gas, I
saw Charlie bend, whisper in the man's ear, stroke his gray hair and adjust the pillow. Personal touch, and it charged the room;
it caused us to quicken, grit our teeth,
save a life.I wore Charlie's scrubs for months after he died, inhaling the fabric until I thought I could smell him. I'd wear his socks.
n
A long Chrysler with black windows pulls up, on my side, next to us. I look close, it's stuffed with people wearing bandanas, and they all slouch. It rains harder now, thunders. A boy in the back seat rolls his window down and screams, "I want to lick you." When the light finally turns, they match our speed and I catch a glimpse of the same boy pressing his ass against the window. We ignore them and they fall behind us. Rain hits the street like oil in a frying pan. Tree branches are matted with wet, dark leaves.
I bought some goofy wigs for Charlie when he lost his hair. I snuck him dark beer and red meat, even though we knew it would zonk his stomach. One day he said, "Belinda, I don't want my ashes scattered. Why don't you blend me with ice cream. A milkshake, and that way I can pass through your system." He coughed until his eyes got watery. "Promise," he said.
The rain is relentless. We duck into the Salt Lick and it's suddenly bright - white inside. The floor, walls, booths, even the cook's aprons are white as hospital linen. We get a booth and I notice the same Chrysler pull into the parking lot. I can see them downing beers, stuffed like sardines in a long metal coffin, and I imagine lightning cracking down and welding the doors shut. We'd have to call the Jaws of Life. They file out of the car, one by one, like storm troopers.
Sergio raises his menu. "Why didn't you go to Dr. Saul's party with me on Saturday?"
"Was it fun?"
"It was okay."
"I bet Dr. Saul's house is beautiful."
"Yeah, but no one would dance. I figured at least if you came, I'd have a partner."
"Next time," I say.
I get the shrimp, and Sergio gets ribs and starts eating. He tells me that today a scared, smacked-out kid, running from the police, shoved a loaded revolver up his ass and the hammer cocked. Nine hours of surgery and the doctors had to wear bullet proof vests.
"Why would anyone shove a gun up their ass?"
"Beats me, but he did." Sergio pats my hand. "I heard the surgery video is being circulated."
I look up and fluorescent light captures the drunk boys in the door of the restaurant. A heavy chinned waitress seats them. I dig through my shrimp. They've been de-veined.
"Look, Belinda, Charlie would want you to socialize. He told me to keep an eye on you, and darlin', your cat and television aren't going anywhere." Sergio squints his olive-smooth face. He tears at a long, meaty rib. "I'm not saying d-a-t-e. Just get out more and stop being so selfish, get it? Why not go to happy hour with us on Friday?"
I think about this and remember just a few months ago my remote control running out of juice and digging with popcorn-salty fingers in my sock drawer for the vibrator. This is sad, I thought, opening the back of the bright orange penis and sliding out the batteries. They didn't fit the remote anyway.
The table of young punks fill the clean restaurant with noise. I've just started my shrimp when the tall boy with black hair, the one that mooned me, looks at me and flicks his tongue.
Sergio wipes his hands off. I pry a shrimp open and look at the pink meat and translucent shell. Outside the sky threatens and I wonder if we'll be stuck here.
The black-haired boy walks up to our table, lanky, his shirt says Young Life. "Hey," he slurs to me, "Even though your tits are small, I like blonds. Bet you love fucking."
Our waitress looks at us, worried. "Everything okay?" she says nodding, then disappears.
Sergio stands up. "Now's the time to return to your table," he says slowly and concentrated to the black-haired boy.
"What are you going to do, hit me?" The other punks laugh and two of them stand.
"I'll take you to jail, my friend."
My head feels light like driftwood. I look around the room and the light feels funny and for a minute I think I'm getting a headache. I eye the pile of empty shells and continue to eat my shrimp. The black-haired boy is taller than Sergio. "Why don't you cool it?" I say into my food, fumbling with the last shrimp.
The black-haired boy thinks I'm talking to Sergio. "Hear that pepperoni? She wants you to sit down."
I look into the boy's eyes, and notice something alive, horribly free and sure. Wrong for his face. It looks funny, ironic. This boy, his wet and disheveled hair, and his smile still unfamiliar with loss. I crack my last shell and drop the shrimp.
"Listen here you little shit," I say standing up, "I've sliced open boy's chests and rammed tubes bigger than your pecker in their heart, so before Sergio opens your head like a rotten fruit, you better know we won't be quick fixing you up."
Red strobing lights swipe the other punk's faces. Outside police cars in the parking lot, frozen. The punks slide out of their booth. The black-haired boy turns a shoulder to us. "Fuck you," he says.
Sergio grabs the boy's arm, twists it behind him and slams him onto the table, rattling the plates. The cops splash up to the restaurant and duck into the doorway. I recognize them from the hospital, and they nod. One of them says, "Hey Doc, what do we have here, a situation?" One of them handcuffs the black-haired boy who jerks around a little, looks surly and pissed. The fat one talks to our waitress. The last cop whispers to Sergio who nods and joins me.
Sergio puts a thin arm around my shoulders and leans his face into my neck. "Mike said they're going to put some scare into this kid. You want to press charges?"
I look at the black-haired boy in the corner of the restaurant. He faces me, eyes glued to my feet. One cop pokes him in the chest and tells him to straighten up. "Send him home," I whisper back.
We follow them outside. Sergio pushes the door open for me. "Stay here," he says, "I want to watch." He jogs up to the policemen and pats one on the back.
The rain has softened to a sprinkle. It cools my face and I watch my wispy breath rise above me. The cops are frisking the black-haired boy and digging through the Chrysler. I hug my shoulders and lean against the glass door. I feel like I did the morning I stood on the steps watching Charlie leave home for his first chemo treatment.
The police duck the teenagers into their cars and turn off the lights. Sergio waves off the cops and begins to walk back. It's a weird time to think about shopping but I imagine treating myself to new bed sheets. Maybe a bottle of wine.
Sergio pokes my shoulder, "Well that takes care of that," he says and leads me back inside, walks over to our table and picks up the check. "I hope this didn't ruin our dinner," he says.
"It's okay Sergio," I say and open my purse, "Here's a ten. I'm going to use the ladies room and then let's go to the car, I'm tired."
I push the door open and step into the tiled bathroom.
It has to do with the light, the whiteness that washes over me in the mirror, lightening my brown eyes coppery. I take a deep breath and feel weird - desperate even - as if whatever has been falling inside me has landed and now looks for a place to become permanent, part of the core. In the darkest corner of my purse, I find a silver lipstick tube, its burgundy like the color of hearts, easy and vivid on my lips like hope. I'm ready for anything to pass through me.
Sam Gelfand was born in Syracuse, N.Y. Except when he had fun earning a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona, he's lived in Austin. Now he works in Interactive Marketing. The only cheese he eats is feta. (July 1995)
