Mockingbird

                                                           Mockingbird




         My wife used to tell me I should get a truck.  Not a pick-up, an eighteen wheeler, bright red, so I could drive coast to coast.
         “You could dress in drag,” she’d say, “and turn tricks in the parking lots of truck stops or waysides to make extra money.”
         I would grin and move to another room whenever she got that way.  I don’t know she meant it, but I knew she didn’t want me around.
         That’s the toughest part of the relationship, when one half knows its over and the other half hasn’t quite gotten it yet.  Or, maybe they see it coming and try to hold on to the way things were.  You know, refusing to let go.  I don’t know.  I just know I was the other half back then, miserable.  And I made her miserable too, even though I loved her terribly. 
         That was another bad thing.  I mean, I couldn’t ever see it.  She would act upset with me, I’d have no idea why, but I’d try to make her happy, write love letters, buy her flowers, dinner, booze, pills, jewelry… whatever it took.  But that just seemed to push her further away.  She’d say “Hmmph.  I don’t know why you bother.”  Then she’d tell me to go suck cock at a truck stop or something. 
         She would never leave either.  She would always stay and torture me.  Which, by the way, was another thing I love about her, she’s brutally strong.  She would say things like that to me and it was like I was a mosquito on her arm receiving that heavy tap, breaking legs and wings, spurning me to the ground crippled to die a slow death. 
         Anyway, I finally got the sense it was time to clear out.  I struggled with the stubbornness of refusing to let go of what we had, even though it was no good anymore.  Still, a part of me tried to grasp for what it once was.  But it was gone. It left long ago without me.  I finally got it.
         Amadeus played softly in the background while she stretched out on the couch.  She didn’t even look up from her book as I walked out the door.  I pulled the door shut hard behind me, but I doubt that even interrupted her.  A part of me hoped the finality of that slamming would have found that lost part of us and she would have this glorious epiphany or something and come running out after me, begging me to come back.
         But, there I stood, on the outside with a few changes of clothes, and toiletries all crammed into a small backpack.  Not knowing where to go I lit a grit and glanced up at the empty apartment window before engaging my soles with the concrete and steel of my destiny.
         It was a warm, clear evening.  The whores stalked the up and down the avenue like wolves.  Just walking by them made me want to return to the free clinic for another shot. 
         “Looking for a good time sailor?” a tall slim girl with long straight hair and daisy dukes asked me.  I didn’t respond.  I just kept walking.  But her question threw me back fifteen years earlier when, while a swabby in the navy, I was on shore leave in Brazil.  I found myself in a strip club where I saw this gorgeous, exotic woman with nice firm tits seductively remove her panties only to reveal a penis.  Her crank was bigger than mine.  Yes….  I believe it was, but anyway….
         I made my way around the corner away from the 'fille de joic' and continued on for a few blocks.  You’d be surprised at how much French I learned in Brazil instead of Portuguese.  You’d also be amazed at how quickly I lost it.  I remember that one though, 'fille de joic'.  Sweet salt of the earth I remember. 
I continuously rolled my situation around in my head.  I had no place to go, no real friends I felt comfortable enough with to impose myself on.  A rush of anxiety kicked through my gut as I thought of draining my account by renting a cheap room.  I knew I wouldn’t last more than a week or two.
         Knowing I needed to slow down and collect my thoughts I crossed the street to a dingy little bar.  You know, one of those small rectangular places packed between two other buildings with one window in the front just large enough to hold a neon beer sign to signal when their open.  Well, I went in there.  It was dim and grimy, just like every other one of those rat holes I’ve crawled into and out of before.
         An old couple was sitting down at the far end of the bar.  They were one of those odd looking couples.  He was bald, short and skinny.  She might have been bald and wearing a wig, kinda hard to tell in the light.  But I could see she was a big, juicy woman.  The old man was talking and laughing with the bartender, who was also wrinkled below a cap of white hair.  The old lady looked disinterested and sat quietly sipping her cocktail and smoking.  Aside from them, there were two middle-aged men shooting a game of pool.  No one else was in the place.  The numbers were pretty damn good, so I took a seat farthest away from everyone I could find.
         I lit a grit, and got about half way through it before the bartender limped his way down to me with a towel in hand.
         “What’ll it be?”  He sounded like he just swallowed a pound of gravel.
         “Have you got any single malt scotches?”
         He threw the towel over his shoulder, leaned against the bar and looked daggers at me from behind wire rims.  “You realize where you’re at?”
         “How ‘bout Cutty?  Have you got Cutty?”  I felt naked under his eyes.
         “You want that neat or rocks?”
         “Rocks.”
         “Right, right,” he gruffed and hobbled midway down the bar to the bottles set up on the shelves in front of the mirror.
         He was a combat veteran.  I could tell just by looking in his eyes.  I can always tell combat veterans.  They have a particular look about them.  I don’t mean the thousand yard stare.  No, this is different.  This is a quiet intensity of having gained knowledge they never wanted.  I don’t know.  Maybe that’s not quite right.  But, whatever it is they all have it.  I’ve tried to fake it, but it can’t be done.  You have to see real action to get it.  The only action I ever saw was on shore leave.  Anyway, I figured his pant leg was concealing a prosthetic, having lost the original to a blood-soaked field in some foreign country.
         Gimping back he set a tall glass full of ice and Cutty in front of me.
         “Two-fifty,” he gruffed.
         I gave him money.  He piled my changed in front of me then returned to the skinny bald man and the fat woman.
         After a few sips I lit another cigarette and waited for the venom of the drink to seep in.  My thoughts returned to my situation.  Where the hell was I gonna stay?  I weighed options, a room, the shelter, the Y.  Then the teasing thought of returning back to the apartment flashed through me.  But there was no way I was going to do it.  Not then.
         I was half way through the first glass of scotch; I had narrowed my choices to renting a room or taking a bus out to the country and just living off the land.  It was then the old couple started arguing.  I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying, their words were slurred and mumbling, but it was getting intense.  I could feel it all the way down at the end of the bar.  Finally he made some wise crack about his wife being fat.  He held his drink up, as if raising his arm in victory, and laughed a shrill cackle.
         His wife shook her head.  She turned to the skinny, bald, wrinkled man and uttered the only words I understood from that end of the bar.  “You’re an alcoholic, an alcoholic and a drug addict.”  Then she turned to the bartender.  “Cletus, give me another Manhattan.”  As he went to mix her drink she pulled another heater to her lips and fired up.
         I wondered how long they had been imprisoned together and why they never made a break.  I mean, how long could you stay in a miserable situation being torn apart by love?  Who knows, maybe they did try to make a break but it didn’t work out and they were back to where they started.  I don’t know.  Maybe they were like me.  Maybe they just kept holding on to the way things used to be.  Maybe they just couldn’t bear to let go of the past.  Maybe, maybe, maybe….
         The bartender hobbled his was back to me.  “How ya doin’?” he barked.
         “I’m ready for another,” I responded.  The effects of the first round were already slowing the tensions and anxieties I had created for myself and walked in with.  Perhaps, I thought, the second round would make me more decisive.  The bartender returned with a full glass and withdrew what he needed from the money heap in front of me.
         Half way through the second drink the old man got off his barstool and stiffly walked to the jukebox.  He dropped in some money and went right to his selection.  Then he moved over to his wife, offering an open palm.  As Frank Sinatra began echoing through the bar she delicately gripped his hand and moved into his dancing embrace.  They moved slowly but were surprisingly graceful.  They looked into one another.  They smiled and laughed as they danced.
         They still had it.
         Seeing them embrace like that after years of madness from imprisonment and torture made me wonder if we still had it.  I began to suspect the booze had betrayed me.  I entered the tavern convinced I was out of it, that I was leaving her for good and that nothing was left behind.  Remember?  I had figured it all out.  I just came in here to forage for alternatives and the courage to see them through.  But, then I realized if I left her I would just spend my time wishing we were still together, or hopelessly searching for what we had with someone else.  The longing to give her another chance overpwered my senses as I got closer to the bottom of the second glass.
         Seeing the old couple, hearing 'Blue Eyes', it all made me long for those days when we were like that.  I’m not even sure how it came ‘bout that we lost it.  But in seeing that old couple I regained new hope we could find it again.  I thought maybe if we remembered those good times forgotten instead of dwelling on how we had lost it we could find it again.
         Damn, those good times were good.  I wanted to be back with her.
         Filled with liquid resolve, I finished my glass, grabbed my bag and headed back to her through the forest of prostitution and addictions.
         Taking a deep breath I climbed the stairs to the door of our apartment.  I quietly let myself in and set my bag on the paper crowded table.  I could hear water running in the tub behind the bathroom door.
         “Rachel?”  I asked quietly.  There was no response, just the sound of water plunging into the full tub.
         “Rachel?”  I called again louder.  The moments passed as I stood behind the wooden barrier.  The sound of water spilling over the side of the tub splashing on the greasy tiles pounded sudden anxiety through my chest.