HE made sure he was in the waiting room when it happened. Things had been planned out along the loop and he had worn his best suit. Brown. Not black. That was something for mourning, and that wasn’t for anyone today. Things were worked out. The loop always ferried itself to the curry. The walls were white and his suit was brown. He moved his hand into the pocket and waited for the last thing he said to sink into her eyes. The loop was right, she would stop him. She was standing there, in that little blue thing that she wore on the days when he liked her and all the moments around her best. It was always the wonderfulest when she had that thing on. It was all he ever wanted on the loop. To see her wearing that thing with her skin underneath it. Sure, there were the parts he could see on the regular. Her legs and her arms with that light moving down across it the way she walked. It wasn’t the shade or the sun of the day that made it out of her. It was that walk and that lilt that carried him. Let’s just be friends. It had always been that way. It was going be all the proving before he could take that. Just a fadeaway to the see you later and a how doesn’t it suck that we have to get different jobs away from each other. He was a smart man. He was an intelligent man. That was the barrier need for the wearing.
Would you come with me to the doctor’s office? Sure. No problem. Of course. It’s alright, isn’t it? I mean, it’s going to be alright, right? Yeah, of course, it’s just; I’d like it if you were there. Listen, we’ll go for something at that place with the brown walls like basement wood paneling that you said we’d like when you walked past it. I’ve seen it. It looks like a good place. Oh come on, that place is so expensive, I mean, I’m a regular girl. I don’t need that sort of thing. I know, I know, but you’d like it. We’ll go, alright? We’ll go, and we’ll have a good time. Come on, I bet those drinks are the same, but out of glasses like that it cant be that far from something right? Lets’ try it. Okay, okay, we’ll go. But only if everything’s going to be all right. It’s going to be all right. Trust me. He’ll probably tell me to pucker up my baby fat or something. Baby fat! What are you talking about? Any thinner and you could pour yourself into one of those fancy glasses.
He didn’t want to fuck her. That had never been part of the loop. It was always them just lying down together, him touching her and kissing her a bit and then a bit of a repeat fade right to the beginning. Something that would pull her out just a bit closer to that little bit of him that was in the loop. Just her in that little blue thing with no one else around for a while. Then her time. She would be there, the face in his face of daywake. They would stick, and there would be none of that. There would be something forged, because, if the loop said right, that was all they really needed. All those things about her with those moves her arms and her legs and all the other amazing visible parts of the outside of the little blue thing would be clear in him with him and there would come the gamble of next. That’s when it would all get together and the new would begin. He had never been one for planning ahead, but hell, he wanted that. Hell, it wasn’t going to work any other way.
Would you like to hit up some coffee this afternoon? How bout a drink? Ha, sure, a drink. How bout it huh? Sounds gooder! Ha ha ha ah. Shared. A hundred of these. All the times together. Over at her house. Sitting next. Touching a bit. That one time with all that booze when her friends were over and that roommate that wouldn’t get out of the kitchen long enough. Just grabbing her that one time. You can either be my lover or my friend. Something a bit extra. In that second. Just grab me. I can’t. Why not? I respect you. Shut up! Shut up! I want that all right?! I want that! I just… What? It’s not enough! Just take me from the back of the head and pull me back you understand? Either or. My lover or my friend.
Either or.
Something a bit extra.
So it had gone on like that. He had not been able to do it. Not the whole way. Oh sure, he pulled her hair back and shoved his tongue into her face and sent it down there and poked around. Even grabbed a bit of that breast. No real mystery there. It was a nice one. Exquisite. A regular handful. A cheruberry. Plump and small. She had something crawling down there though. In the dark. It was all over the beat. Something a bit nasty. Little things that lotions and sprays and injections and surgeries could not take care of. Genetic. Mutation. Transmitted. Bad business, up and down. A chain letter that didn’t work for anyone.
She was a dollymop all right, but she was his dollymop. There wasn’t much outside of those little flakes on the skin of his water. Just the clothes he wore and the actions he committed. Just something exciting, looping about. He had seen it in his dreams to the where when it came out of his mouth in slobbering laughs. I’ll do it! That’s the point where I’ll remember again how it happened in my sleep! Yeah cool. Deep. Crazy. She’ll stop me, and then it’s going to have to come out the right way. Why don’t you just chill out? God that little blue thing she wore. The slit at the waist where the match of bottom opened showing the tattoo just above her curve. That kind of mystery. The bulls flag. Not that he was any bull. Slight build, missing the packages sent delivery from discipline above the waist even through all the apropos infrasupply was there. He was a scaffold of admirable and limited probability.
All those nights. Wow. Couple of days too. She had held his head and one time he had even cried after all the time drinking and standing up and running his mouth that fast blabber that made them go wild with wonder. One time a girl, pretty, had put a note written on the torn off portion of a cigarette pack in his notebook. Never forget you have a beautiful mind. He’s just found it. Right there in between the ages of a few things jotted down loose on the lines and some other close and tight with the paragraphs making the edges and running back to the next.
Beautiful minds if there was a use for it. It was hardwired to resist in the worst way ever. Looking for that little bit extra past the accepted method. There was no end to the kiddieland. That need and crying lust that all the leave behind just wasn’t in him. That game wasn’t in his reach. He’s spent time studying the rules. The meat practice of the theory kept getting away from him. He was a smart one all right. He understood the theory. It still walked away from him. Always the loop pulling him back to the initial appraisal and double treble directional side pulling him out to the start, where it was raw and willing to challenge. Repeated futility presenting only understood future failure. The double see-ya-later.
Hey, are you all right? I’m okay, I’m okay. Hey, you want to go down to the valley later, or to the hill under the telephone building? We could just sit there, chill for a while. Smoke a joint or something. Yeah! For sure. Let’s grab a six pack along the way.
Going up to the office now. The magazines were always too old and smelled of fingers. The trees on the way were still growing and the cars on the street were still burrowing. They were making it all right, up the stairs now. Almost time to call it off. There's going to be an inquest and what are you doing? This doesn’t have to happen. No, the loop, that’s the deal for it. It’s been forever the dream predict now. He was at the point where he could tell what the topic of the next serial cartoons was going to be just by remembering it in the shower. This was to be trusted.
Up, up up, step step step.
That one time at the restaurant with those paintings of hot dog trees on the wall. How am I going to find a good man? Help me find one! She was holding his hands with both of hers and she bent her head down to the table. You’re looking at one right now. She gave the grin, that sorry grin. Fuck, who needs the metaphor gang when we’ve got her face right in front of us? That squeeze after, her eyes looking up, we’re walking in the country of the paddled arse. This is the gang bang for the face plaster. Here is the brain tonic of the present. All the fuck abort here. Too bad there wasn’t a crowdacrows joining in on this, it could be dispelled amongst them. No, this one is all mine, with the artificial plant hanging against the paint on the walls like the bulbs are still burning. A good man right here. Nice little smile. Change the subject. Did you get the salad?
Nothing changed after that.
Step step step, up up up. Almost there. Devotion.
They got in there and the light was white. Magazines hanging on the racks. Toys in the corner with the rug creeping up over the kiddiepen partition from the floor without interruption but a seam. Couple of them were in there. Little rollie pollies, fumbling with blocks and discarded imaginations. Few doors, one leading off into an area where there were samples and equipment on the walls and desks and counters. Another into the examining rooms, lined up in march.
HER NAME. He said. What? His hand went into the pocket and he pulled out the silver with six chambers full. It came up and there were a few gasps and after those the clackle of a telephone receiver and then a mumble of presses on keys. The receiver went back down, then there was snap snap snap and then a more concerted and brief mumble of key clacks. A bit of a shriek came out from one of the others, but she only gasped. Just like in the movies, and to his surprise, in real life, her hand went to her chest and then to her throat.
He put it to his head and said “I’m not going to be able to take this much more, and it has less to do with you than what it has to do with me.”
His fist tightened and following so did his finger around the steel. He paused for that one single beat and trusted the loop. She saw and screamed and splatted her hand from her chest out to his wrist and it went off in the white room around his brown suit. A little black hole appeared in the wall next to a magazine rack. It was part of the scenery now. It had worked, she had stopped him.
In the seconds after, over the screams of the people in the reception, was the wail of a mother in the next room. Screaming for her four year old son to wake up, and that this wasn’t happening.
copyright 2004 robert jay lutener
illustration copyright 2007 patrick henaff
