I came spiraling back into town, a loose tornado on a Thursday in early November. Subtle winds and scattered foliage aligned the rural outskirts of Highway 41. A late afternoon taxi guided me to her grim residence. I appeared at a local roadside intersection about four blocks away, suitcase in hand, buzzing, not quite drunk yet. She would be delighted to see me, or so I anticipated.
Being about nine years since the last time I saw Beth, I wasn't too worried, after all she phoned me. Not feeling any too fierce about our time apart, being all whirlwind and misgivings. Careless living placed way down upon the hierarchy of top-notch functioning.
Crimson words pour like blood from the bottle, evening dances upon her living room carpet. Sweat subsides in air conditioned intervals, eyes stare vacantly into one another. While outside suburban street kids hurl reckless moonbeams between fence pickets. Time intertwines, tense languid movement, her frail wrists portray. Brief love and life, soft instinctively gestures reckon stale sordid thoughts, vulnerable years of irreparable wreckage and tiresome laughter. Beth what happened to you?
How do you afford this place? Where are the kids?,
Early morning diner over eggs, she orders an artichoke salad. We put our menus down folded on the table, below incandescent light-bulb fixtures, steady hum of a ceiling fan. Domesticated waitress blues again, tied aprons and assorted magnets. Fatigue envelopes the fluorescent perimeter. Beer breath and yesterdays papers. Weekly bleached v-necks, ketchup stained fabric softener sheets. Beth's basement definitely needs some work. She could probably use a man around the house to help with things like that.
Before our high school portrait premonitions, her cunning adolescent demeanor bewailing . Youthful smiles pervaded voluptuous thighs and hips.We were in the grip of something beautiful and dangerous. Young adult books, and thesis papers. Ivory dresses left swaying upon porcelain surfaces. Your mother hated me, I drank rubbing alcohol and smoked filter less cigarettes in rolled up shirtsleeves. Post educational Summers by the winding lake, your dads single malt scotch. Not much has changed Beth. We're still in love, still got that raw cynicism we used to get by on. Red licorice and warm anisette, soda fountain teens left lingering on abandoned street corners through it all, our love remains. I still got that old handgun my pops gave me when I was 16, never used it and I don't intend to.
I'll stay for awhile, make my self at home, do my best to help out with the kids and all that. I Missed you Beth, my old friend.
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