The Eagle and the Sparrow

         9
The Eagle and the Sparrow

***
         It seemed that people long ago threw away the solid, brick mystique apartment buildings. They replaced them with hollowed out ones. The bricks and stone and roughness that used to be so common in these places, had become cement and plaster and straight edges. These apartments sprang up out of nowhere from large construction companies and seemed to pile on top of one another along old train tracks. They appeared nice, with communal areas, and easy to use access to all things that come with ease. They had concierge & security in the lobby, free parking and were, most importantly, cheap. But these apartments were the ones that fell apart quick. People who lived there seemed to notice thin walls and pests of all natures crawling in their attics. They started to notice petty thefts in cars and realized that, although most of the town was relatively gentrified, no white-walled charisma could keep out neighboring communities.
So was the case. These apartments were reserved innately for the young and poor, and the old and useless.
The balconies all faced each other overlooking a public pool. Each balcony, looked as the identical as the last. They had transparent doors that slid on a dirty white grid. His view went into a small, carpeted flat that was also connected to the kitchen. The apartment had no smells of home as it got fumigated every month and a half.
This particular day was clear and there were no clouds in the sky, which was all he could tell.

The man sat on a rail with his back poised over a balcony. His body was dainty and fluid with his arms sitting noodle-like at his sides. His legs dangled facing the apartment, and in front of him, someone stood and held his back slightly fixed over the drop below.
His head bent back. Not in an elongated way, only slightly and was heavy on his neck. The back of his neck seemed to sag and contort in a way that looked unnatural. His head faced upward as the only two things stopping him from falling was a hand gripping his collar. He sat on a cold railing, but he didn't feel a thing.
The balcony itself was a peach colored, water droplet filled thing. The balcony had a single, fake Yucca Tree in the corner that was left from the previous owner and was dreadful.
If anyone wanted to know of the lifelessness of the entire place, just sit on the balcony and stare at that fake Yucca Tree, he thought.
         In the man's wondering eyes, he hadn't looked once at the eyes right in front of him. The ones whose hand was holding him above the precipice. Perhaps he was afraid, and perhaps he didn't want to see what stared back at him. He knew what was to be, and he didn't know how to feel about it. He assumed she would have done it a better way.
His eyes closed for a moment and a small amount of liquid sprouted from the edges. He opened his eyes and simply stared motionless through a blur of water.
He tried to feel the wind, or the sun, but couldn't feel anything. His only sense was sound and sight and smell, which was now distracted. He heard muffling at first, then it was a loud sheathing. It would stop ever so slightly, then slowly work up again to its chafing, then fade away into its transcendent location. Then it would begin again. It sounded like thick paper was being wiggled back and forth by a violent child. This noise was distracting him from his position, and from the woman standing in front of him, who had not shuffled and had no indication of noticing the sound. Now the sound started to rub harder together, and these mystical sheets of paper began to whirlwind into plasticized machines that were ever so slightly touching. It would stop suddenly, then, like the wind, begin again. He found himself waiting for its sound and was completely useless to its onslaught. He wondered what it was and wanted so badly to cover his ears. He wanted to get away from the balcony and this place, and his eyes began to leak more from the edges as his helplessness became more apparent. The sound had went from annoying, to excruciating. He peeked into the corner to see the movement of the Yucca Tree and the wind he had not felt. He saw its leaves moving against the roughness of the wall in perfect harmony with the noise he heard. He would have laughed, laughed as a mad man would at his situation.
His darting eyes slowed, and then shuffled from the tree to her feet, then to her face. Her cheeks protruded and had mascara that ran down them as she hadn't thought of fixing it. She had brown hair, with speckles of greys. She had always aged well. She had a small nose and trenches under her eyes in a very Greek look. Then he made his way to her eyes.
         From what he knew of his heart, it was ripped from him. Her eyes were large and blue, with tan wrinkles at the ends. They were bloodshot, and an array of emotions flooded from them. He had long avoided her eyes, and when he could, he'd close his. As he looked, he could see she gazed at him with surrender and anger and passiveness. He knew then he wasn't in the presence of an animal or a far-off foreigner. She was someone who had suffered, and who understood.
         As these thoughts went through his mind, he didn't notice, finger by finger, the collar loosen around his neck and her thin hand slide gracefully away. His body reeled backward, faster than he had anticipated, and fell down.
***
Noel Alanis was the son of Greek immigrants. He was one of the many that inhabited the West Coast of Florida community known as Tarpon Springs. His father almost ran for Mayor once, or at least that's what Noel told people. He had the classic Greek household of a strong father and a soft mother that would embrace her children whenever she could. Where his fathers loved ended, his mother's began. And this love was strong and pure and Noel knew that, allowing him from a young age to take advantage of it. In those days, the entire community spoke Greek or English-Greek, and they all basked in that common bond under a beat Florida sun.
By all nature, Noel Alanis had the capability of being an upstanding citizen. He was fairly keen, attractive and his imagination was beyond belief. He would entrance people in his stories of the sea and what he and his brothers would see on the sponge boats. He would explain that the moon and the sun were synonymous in nature, but were entities that hated each other, hence why they came at different times of the day. The sun would disappear beyond the Gulf and an array of oranges would bounce around the waves with an auburn. Meanwhile, the moon began to rise from the east and would show small slabs of silver. These forces would fight at moments, and meet somewhere showing a depth of the water and the blue of waves with a white coat.
Slow moving manatee, and the blue and white fishing boats would make their way home to Tarpon Springs, often unaware of this undying conflict.
During winter in Florida there was no snow or ice, nor winter swirls off the coast of the Gulf. The vast array of colors didn't cease and were embraced with a wind driven coldness that seemed to encapsulate all that made Noel who he was.
Age grew, and his ever moving, ever imaginative eyes, began to face the town.
He worked, as most did at that time, in the sponge business. The sponge boats would go out far and when they came across sponge, a diver would go overboard and begin to dive. Often times the diver would be naked and would have to fight against the naturally buoyant salt-water. Often times, they would tie a rock around their waste that would allow them to sink quickly to the depths to collect more sponge. The diver would cut the sponge loose, wrap what he had in a net, and then ascend back to the top, leaving the rock that helped them sink, behind.
Noel didn't like this work. He lacked the lung capacity and the drive to go about it. He remembered a time from his youth, during one of the winter months. He had gotten stuck with the rope around him. The rock pulled him downward and his eyes stung from the salt water. His flailing limbs were slower under water. He tried to swim upward, up to the colors he could barely see, but all he saw then was a deep blue. It started outward and he tried to push from the sand below, soundlessly. But the deep blue started to come from within and take hold. The warmness of the Gulf grasped his body and he prayed to be back in the winter winds above. Noel slowed to the petty jerks seen only in dying animals, until he thought he was taken by the sea.
Noel was saved from other divers, and wasn't conscious until he made it ashore. To the dismay of his friends and family, he refused to go back out to sea and decided to become a book keeper instead. This worked allowed him to live his early days in relative comfort. Noel had earned this, he said to himself, never again would he let life slip as it did then.
Noel hated the labor and toil he saw around him, and he hated his community as well. He saw them as backward, as vagabonds and Greek dreamers that thought too much of their homeland. He was a predatory soul. And that never ceased to be. He preyed on his schoolmates and their culture, as he preyed on girls alike.
He took what he could from his family and neighbors and traveled throughout Florida. His appetite still large, he went to the great cities he always heard about. Los Angeles. Boston. Las Vegas. New York. Saint Louis.
He worked lightly where he could in odd jobs, usually given to him out of tough luck or need. When he didn't feel up to working, he begged.
He would never admit he needed taking care of, but with age, something pointed him in the direction of reliability. The story of Noel was a truth of man, and about its inability of change.
Noel married. He had known her a little, but thought he had known her his entire life. Nae, selfless and transparent.
It wasn't before long he fell into the same pattern he had seen in his life. It started with small amounts of skimming from the family fleet of sponge boats. As the family accountant, he was allowed to skim off the top here and there for small pleasures for him and his family.
With knowledge and experience comes the understanding of self. Something happens to a man when they begin to doubt their own authenticity and their place in the world. Noel was the worst of creatures, the one that knows his discretions but finds any array of excuses for them. He was always a victim of some horrible illness or affliction. And the very few times in his life someone caught him in one of his many wrongdoings, he would plead like a child for forgiveness and he would be forced to take that cyanide pill of truth he hated to consume.
Throughout time, his wife stood still by his side, defending him from the rumors of neighbors and the town.
Noel began to frequent bars just a bit out of town and find himself with a variety of ethnic women. He would disappear for days at a time with love interests and promise a life of luxury to them.
She would defend him still, and ceased to go to the market and family events. Even after he was excommunicated from his family, which for the Greeks was the death knell of life, she stuck by his side. Her husband and her were alone against the world and they were one in the same.
He would begin to bet, and bet big. Dog races and card games became common place and he would try to supplement the money he always lacked. With that, came the desperation all men have when faced with social and finance ruin. He gazed into the mysterious, ever changing face of insecurity. In the case of Noel, he would suffice with an assortment of cocktails that would make him numb. This is when the abuse came.
He believed being dazed himself, he did not know he, in fact, exposed himself. His wife, the delicate thing she was, would see the wrong side of his knuckles too often. When she tried to defend herself, she would be abused more. When she went to the police, they said it was between her and her husband, as they did back then. It wasn't until she was pregnant with twins, and one drunken night of abuse and a miscarriage later, did she realize what she was going to do.
It was dawn on an April day. Roosters crowed from a farm out of town and it was already hot enough to force anyone outside to sweat. Noel laid on a lawn chain asleep in the moistness of the salty air. He smelled of whiskey and ouzo. His wife, the delicate thing she was, stood over him. She must have stood there for hours for all anyone knew. She glared, as if staring at a sleeping tiger. She attempted to muster all she could within her and this gave her a look that was unyielding.
By the time he opened his eyes, through the blur, he saw her blue dress and the glimmer of the silver pistol she held. His eyes wide, his mouth knotted to say something as if to speak but it was stopped by the dryness due to alcohol from the night before. His hands went up ina surrendered motion and if he squeezed out any syllable, perhaps his future would have been different for him.
The bullet entered at the base of his neck, terribly shot, and hit his spine. Noel Alanis couldn't speak of his attacker, nor could he speak at all. He was rendered paralyzed and no longer able to take care of himself. His wife, the delicate thing she way, decided it best she take care of him despite his family's insistence to put him out of his misery.
And so it was. Years piled on top of each other and Tarpon Springs changed. People moved from their small white houses and into large apartments and the Greek community became sparse and died out. What was left over was gift shops and large freighters who harvested the sponge. Noel tried to find God, but had long been rejected of that. He had finally found the excuse he had sought in his life, and was unable to ask for forgiveness. The purgatory set foot. An inflexible reminder of who he was, had been, and the unwillingness to die.
***
Noel Alanis fell for what seemed like a long time. His head shifted back, then forward and he saw his legs and arms in their complete wateriness. He was a shell, and the only feeling he had was his stomach churn and his eyes scurry feebly. Noel was being pulled down to the depths and he was unable to feel the sea or the air or the winter.
         His head flung back, facing the sky. He saw the dark face of his wife staring down at him, and thought he might have saw a tear.