Marriage

This was another false start to a novel, or more likely, a novelette. It was about a man who is going to see his old ex for her wedding. He accidently gets separated from his wife, who has his medication. The only reason I say this, is because the manuscript is pretty much unintelligible. In my defense, I was reading a lot of Kerouac.




This is about good byes.
Oliver rambled through the streets and back alleys of that corner town in the center of everything. He was lax and rolling through the streets, his head in his hand. Such was the time for rambling, pre-coming the time for knocking on doors. It's falling through things and then arriving at them.
“Oliver?” She says at the door.
He smiles and remembers her remembering him a thousand times before.
There she sits in her chair, there on her feet.
She is walking up and down the stairs and through his head. The background of a tens of thousands of pictures. The memories of the world in a woman's face.
But he can't dream about it anymore.
No more waiting and walking and falling.
The world is rambling and falling and rambling on.
“Come in, come in!” He hears.
Her mother ushers him in.
He is wandering. The carpet pressing into him, heel to toe. He digs in his toes.
His friends are smiling and taking him out to dinner. He can hear the glasses clink. The rolling thunder, the rambling lightning.
Suddenly he can't stop shouting.
He feels dead. The lighting keeps striking him and the thunder is in his ears. He can't hear anything. He can't see anything.
She smiling at him. The sun in the hair. His heart is beating and beating and beating.
It's not beating anymore.
So she's gone.
He's as good as dead.
Her mother offers him water and smiling.
She asks him something. His eyes look for her in the nooks and crannies. The little dark places where she would never be.
It's all beating in his ears. The old widow with a picture of her perfect family over the fireplace.
He wants to go, wants to through open the security gate and smash the pictures and pull out all of the doorknobs.
He can remember the night time. He can remember the night sky. He feels in his thumbs that he's waiting for someone.
He wonders if he's waited too long.
He wonders if it's right for him to be back.
The night sky and the graffiti. The beach and the walls.
He's thinking of grass and lips and walking hand in hand.The question comes around and around like a chorus in a song. He can just sift through everything else until it revolves.
“She's getting married, Oliver.”
He knows he's waited too long. He's wasted too much time. He should have come back sooner. But he was deaf and blind and lost.
He was searching for her in all the places she wouldn't, couldn't be. He hated himself for it.
It overcome him. He wanted to smash all the windows in his house. Break all the pictures of himself. His hate faded and he realized he was all alone. He was alone in the dark, looking for the wrong things in the right places. He needed to find the right one.
“Oliver?”
He couldn't understand it. Not with his head on the floor. Can't hear a question when he's so alone. Who could be around to ask it, he wonders. All alone. All alone.
Not completely this time.
Underneath his hate and loneliness, a new feeling is rising. He can hear the ring in his ears. He feels a quiet determination. He's at the bottom. He's on his own. He can find his way out.
The voice was still asking him something. He turned over, his head crashing.
“I missed you,” he said.
Everyday he thinks. But he can't say who. He can't say it at the bottom. On the floor, his water on the coffee table. The floor smells like a clean dog. The carpet, heel to toe, on his face. Soft and comforting. Thinking of snowballs and sick men. But he can't say it. Not at the bottom. He looks up at the ceiling. He feels the rush of adrenaline. He wants to go all over again.
A face comes over him. He looks up at her mother. He's come up again.
“Maria,” he says.
Chapter
Oliver is running alongside the trolley. He is throwing his bag over his shoulder and running full tilt. He bangs his hand against the red plastic siding. Maybe fiberglass, he thinks. Maybe kevlar. He runs out of platform and turns. He hears a shout like the report of a rifle.
His eyes are open.
He's looking for his bag.
He jogs back and a man punches him.
He grabs at the man's shirt and spits in his face. The man hits him again. He turns to look for his backpack. He grabs it from the man. The man steps back, his shoulders squared.
Oliver turns around and steps down from the station. He begins to walk after the trolley. His feet sliding on the rails.
The square man shouts after him. Oliver looks back. The wad of spit is still stuck to his face. His big red face. He wonders who this man kisses.
He thinks about his first kiss.
All the kisses after that one.
The first one in a theater. The movie over. He can feel her smiling. Can feel the nestling. The drum drum drum of the credits.
The sweet, the wet, the soft; all of it. He remembers it as his feet clack against the metal rails. Maybe people are shouting, maybe they aren't.
That time, Oliver remembers running from the movie. He remembers the smiling. More kissing. He's so turned on and he wonders if she is.
Clack clack clack.
Ruined my life. He's drowning. He wants to stare into the sun. Burn the memories. But he's back. His life is already ruined, he thinks. He looks around from the tracks at the palm trees and the green hills. He is looking at the apocalyptic highways and the breezy seventy degree air. The sun doesn't try to hurt, it only wants him to live.
All the women he's know. Why this one? Why here? All the other girls. Even the ones he's never met. Doesn't know. Aren't they better than this one his has lingering in his head.
All of them, crazy and young and dangerous. All the women. This one shut him down. Her voice is like a song about the sunshine. She exists at the top of the world.
Here he is at the bottom, working his way back up.
He comes to a large bridge that crosses a freeway. He looks in the cars and sees the women. Sees them on the phone. He looks in the direction of the college and thinks about girls with books.
He laughs at himself.
It always comes out wrong, right?
“Oliver...”
He has to follow through right? He has to sing his own song about her sunshine. He has to work it out himself. He has to work out himself.
“Oliver, are you awake?”
He knows it's up to him to follow through. He wants to blink and look up at her. He wants to find himself found. No more lost Oliver, he'll be a found man.
It's the things she does.
“Hey.”
He's looking at a dark room. Can't be right.
He feels homesick for a bright yellow ceiling. He breathes through his nose. He isn't supposed to be here.
What a fool he is. He sobs to himself.
“Oliver, what are you doing here?”
It's a girl at his bedside. Some girl he knows. He wants to be home he thinks. He wants to sip wine and swim. But he can't because he's in some bed with a girl holding her breath. He wipes eyes and sits up.
“I'm a fool.”
He tips his glass and jumps into the deep end.
“Maria?”
“Oliver?”
“What are you doing here? You're supposed to be getting married.”
She laughs. He laughs back and tries to hear his heartbeat. He hears something, but it's more along the lines of a palm muted guitar.
Then it kicks in.
“Maria!” He shouts.
He's out of bed and through the door.
He thinks there is a bunch of people in the living room. He waves to them. He thinks her mother looks distressed. He feels the same way.
“Oliver? Are you okay? You're acting really strange.”
He turns around and sees her. Am I too late? Have I waited too long?
It's so simple.
“I love you Maria.”
chapter
He can feel the distance. He's looking out a window of a car. He can see the steps run by. It's something like euphoria. He wonders if he can ever remember moving this fast.
Some people never do. He thinks that the distance is nothing. He just wants to see her.
Maria.
See her there.
He is looking out the window. Sitting in the heel to toe carpet. It's opaque, he thinks, but he can see the spot.
He feels between himself.
Outside, the garden and the backyards sway. The mountain rises behind them.
He feels older. He's thinking in circles and looking at himself in the window.
At a shop, by the beach, she's picking out sunglasses and it drives him crazy. She laughs and looks at him. He's like her mirror. He is moving over and walking outside.
He feels like he's stayed outside for so long.
Now he's back inside, but he keeps looking out.
He wants to hold the moment like the glass in his hand, but he's changing and getting older every moment. Time grabs him by the shoulder and he runs, like the steps, through it.
He hears his name, and he's disappointed.
Someone sits down next to him. She looks like Maria. An approximation. He can't hear his heart, so he knows who it's not at least.
“Oliver, it's Amy, remember?”
He wants it to be something more than it is. Instead, he remembers the fake, younger Maria walking down hallways. She's always passing him going the other direction. But she didn't go to his school. He remembers this.
“It's too late, isn't it?” He asks solemnly.
“Too late for what?”
A smile breaks on the reflection of himself. He remembers that he enjoys Amy's company. He could sit and wait with her. Not for her, just with her was fine.
“Did I wait too long for her?”
“Yes, I think you did?”
The smile in his reflection fades.
His ears are popping. The window shows the mountains rolling by now. The air conditioning is turned off and he feels hot. He knows its better than the car overheating. Fast times, fast cars.
He feels scared. His reflection is a blue stare. People move in his peripheral vision.
“This isn't getting me anywhere,” Amy says, but she isn't talking to him.
“What am I doing here then?” He whispers.
“Well I have to pick up my dress and get down to the church. Is he alright with you?”
“He came here to see you, Maria. I know this is kind of a ridiculous time for it, but maybe you could give him a moment of your time?”
“Amy, I'm supposed to be on a plane to Fiji by 8. I don't have time for this.”
The air rushes out of Amy and he can tell she is addressing him now.
“Sorry, Ollie.”
He doesn't want her to be sorry. Doesn't want her to feel the strain of opening the door instead of her sister. She doesn't want to tell him she's gone when her car is parked outside. The lies. His face in clouds. The games.
It's the sudden burden of not her problem. She wants a drum roll for her success with other people's efforts. Wants to feel the brakeman put his weight to his work.
Instead, it's the buzz of electric guitar and people shouting.
Don't tell me how to love someone.
Oliver has all these words for her. His heart has a special place for things he has to say. He feels his scars and looks over. She isn't there. Not Amy. Not Maria.
Just that plush heel to toe under his rump. He feels like a cat in the sun. He wants to stay; wants her to stay right beside him.
He begins to ache for reality. This fabrication hurts altogether too much.
“C'mon Ollie. Since you're here you can still help me out.”
Amy with a keys and a purse.
So many friends, he thinks. He has these plans.
The jokes on him, luckily, he's abandoned himself.
Chapter
He gets out of hand. It's all joking around, but he knows he does more wrong than fun. Not everyone wants the joke on them.
She's crying in a parking lot, talking about birthdays and literature. It's all in his mind.
He can feel her inside him. She's sobbing and talking about time and needs. Her hands are just as soft as kisses against the felt lining of his feeling organ.
Love is fine, right?
“We can make it through the day, right big guy?”
He nods. He'll make it through today. He can't even think about tomorrow.
This all amateur. He shouts at his laptop and looks at the doorway. A woman stands in the doorway. Not a girl. Not a Maria.
She tells him what he can do. Where he can go. He wipes his brow and reaches out to her. Her with the yellow ceiling. Her with the smiling and hugging. He holds her and wants to wake up.
The air flows over Oliver's ears. Amy's convertible zips through the lanes. His heart aches. How can he stop the dream? Burn the bed and the body. Leave him to his real life.
He never wanted it to be this way.
Amy smiles at him. He can see his heart reflected in her sunglasses. He can't catch her words. Can't follow it at all, so tragic. He feels too far gone.
Too far from a girl with a perfect face. A girl with a camera. He pictures her big with child, but knows she's not. She's taking her time. He watches her and knows he's found himself. He can hear the choirs sing.
Her asks her if she is a professional. She laughs and says it's just a hobby. She's beautiful and yellow and golden. Her camera is a big black tool in her hand. It is Athena's bow. Zeus' lightning. Such is the perfect unity of user and instrument. He can feel home.
She makes up her mind. Follows him to a dinner. He's trying to prove that he's safe. That she can say what she likes.
It's a last chance. One last time. The end.
It's not like she's gone. The stars don't ever leave, you just can't see them.
Can't hear them in Amy's convertible. The pass a black SUV and he watches Maria step out.
“We gotta get some folks, Ollie. Don't worry, I'm sure she will be able to talk to you soon.”
Oliver laughs. It is a cold and brittle thing. He knows that Maria doesn't see, she is seen.
He waves to Amy and clicks on the radio.
The thrum of the box runs through him and he feels happy to be far from home.
“I talk to you now and again.”
Some guy is wavering before Oliver. The man is reaching out to him, but Oliver feels that the man is lonely. He smiles like he wants a job.
“Remember me?”
The man must be gripped with loneliness to reach for Oliver. Oliver knows he has nothing to show this man. The man has the whole country to look for someone to spend time with him. Oliver doesn't have time.
“Honey? Is he alright?”
Amy comes from around a pillar. Oliver thinks the pillar withholds the kitchen and the Brady Bunch and Monday Night football. He can't be sure.
He thinks the man is called Hank or Hal or Honey or something Oliver can't be bothered with.
Amy calls him Chad.
“He's fine Chad. He's just kind of...”
She can't continue because she knows just as little as Oliver does. Oliver is practically comatosed. He put the cat in catatonic. His liver is an empty seat.
She is laughing. She wonders where the nearest hospital is.
“He came to see Maria. We knew he way back when. They, he and her, used to...uh...”
Chad isn't getting it. Oliver leans closer to him. He looks into the man, the Honey, and he addresses his soul.
“Who do you think you are?”
This guy has got an attitude. Oliver isn't going to be stringing him along any longer. He can't help him. He can't fake that he cares.
“You think you're the only one who's right? I can't help you.”
Chad is looking at Amy, but Oliver doesn't think he can see her with his brow wrinkled that way.
“What's he talking about Ames?”
“We don't know. He says he can hear Hawaiian feedback.”
“What does that mean?”
“We think it's something to do with his work.”
Chad looks back at him. He is assessing something. Oliver looks all over. He can't find his grades. He would give the man his GPA, but that is lost too. I'm not ready, Oliver thinks. I wasn't appraised of a testing schedule.
It was like angst ridden teenagers screeching in his ears. It was a thousand pop punk classics.
“What is he doing?”
Oliver had had enough. He stood up and walked to the kitchen to silence the calls of Marsha Marsha Marsha and reduce the howls of the astroturf.
You're so kind. So kind Chad. You've taken in the sister, even if she doesn't make hearts beat. He think of all the right lines. He can't think of the right times.
It's all shadows and wasted time. Women.
He doesn't want to live alone. He wants pictures like Chad has of him and Amy on his fridge. He wants to ask Chad if his heart is beating in this pictures. In a moment, he wonders if it's beating now.
He races to the living room.
They are looking back at him. Their minds must have wondered. His stupid games and schemes. He can see the heartbeats. He knows who they are chasing. He smiles.
He can't feel himself though. His own heart isn't doing anything.
“Is he the same one who did that one with the girls and the ghosts, Strangers in Night Time or something?”
“Yeah, I think that was him.”
Oliver remembers book people. He wonders who could forget them. You sign and sign and sign and it doesn't matter how many are signed, there are so many that are not.
Maybe Chad is one of them. But he feels tired. Too tired to sign for Chad.
He feels like no one loves him anymore. Not here, not anywhere.
He feels empty next to these full people.
Chapter
There is a church on a hill. He walks by it on his way to somewhere he's forgotten. He sees an outdoor stage and remembers Julius Caesar. The stage betrays him with memories. He remembers faces in a crowd.
Maria in the front row.
He can smile and run and act. He can run on his sword and stab at the Caesar. There's fighting and dying and he smiles through the tragedy. But the beat changes. Et tu brutus? Her hand in another's.
The lights die and he feels silly in his costume, with his thees and thous and his lost emperor. Caesar's ghost lingers on stage, turning and smiling to other people. He spots the taken Maria, led about on the leash of some man's arm. First on her hand, then like a yoke across her shoulders. He put his back to hers and throws himself through a door.
Do you want to know what I think of you? He thinks. I've never been better. I couldn't care less what you have to say. I am a solo of shrill success. What did you think? Of the play? Didn't understand it? Well..
I couldn't care less, he thinks. He throws a toga, the pitiful slump. He tells himself he doesn't care. He doesn't want to talk to anyone. Doesn't want to call on the citizenry. Give his reasons for the slaying of his friend. Shakespeare says lover. The foot note says it means friend.
I don't want to talk to you.
He passes the church and groves of tree and neighborhoods. He passes parks.
He thinks of betrayal and being lost. He thinks of his car parked next to a park. The bright primary colors. Every days the same here. The swings swing. The slide slides.
Maria in the suburbs. So what. Her with the perfect man. She never misses a day of work. Every day the same.
He can remember crying in his car.
He thinks of her floating in her pool. Her with her daily chores.
She doesn't know what life is about. She's drowned in her trite life.
He sobs at the primary colors, daring their brightness.
He wants to throw up the memories and leave them here. He wants to shed them the closer he gets to her.
Pretty soon, he thinks, he'll be able to vomit her from his heart completely.
Pretty soon, he'll be static and background noise.
No more colors, just dull gray metal furniture smoking in the sun.
How many neighborhoods can a man pass through before he doesn't know himself anymore? When he can't connected places to memories to places or memories of places to memories. No more memories, no more person.
Amy's tires drift over the speed bump into an apartment complex. Honey Hal is in the backseat. He is probably thinking of things he wants from Oliver.
Oliver is ready. He can only give what he can, he hopes Honey will realize.
There's an old woman up in the building. Lots and lots and lots. Oliver knows he will recognize her when she sees him. Everyone has a grandmother.
The pool is like a bowl of ice cream on a sugar free world. Oliver licks his lips.
“Maybe we should get away for a while?”
He's looking at a map of Madagascar and trying to think of a way his characters can die alone and afraid. His love, his life. A diamond in the bland dessert.
He's thinking of toasters in the bathtub. He's trying on different shoes of death.
He's sitting in the front, hearing in his head Hal asking to be let out.
Amy is motioning him out. The old lady she's waving and walking down in practical heels. He's only been up there once or twice, but he knows the carpet isn't heel to toe.
He remembers swimming with someones imminent bride. He changed in the bedroom. As if she cared. He wasn't the only sexual presence in the place. How trite, he thinks.
The bed looked lumpy, the old lady wasn't sleeping alone. No one fools around like AARP members.
He laughs.
In the pool, they kiss on the far side away from the elderly.
Oliver remembers other pools and other places.
Maybe it's vomited now, he thinks. Maybe I can leave this place and the memory and the beating person who lived there.
“Grandma has to go in front Oliver.”
Oliver nods and slips behind the wheel. He holds out his hands for the keys.
“No way Ollie.”
“You know someone who knows where he's going better?”
It's that old hand on her hip, the lopsided stance of doom. He smiles, trying to let her know he's hapy not to be alone.
Amy doesn't know how crazy people function. She isn't thinking in doctor terms, she's thinking in vet. She thinks it's cleared his system somehow.
Maybe she has her own memories of him driving, he thinks. Oliver driving to church. Oliver parking for a movie. She must remember his first car as well as him. Oliver thinks she might need to vomit her memories someday, but not for him. He smiles knowing he'll always be there.
The clinking keys touch his hand. He can feel strings stretching from her to him. He can feel her tug them back. He's sure she'll tug from the back seat as well.
The door clicks. Another string turns his head.
“Where to, Peggy Sue?”
Chapter
He doesn't have everything he wants.
He's watching a burrito disappear from a block away. He's filled with regrets. He regrets the trolley and the window. He regrets his tardy nature. He wants to take off his shoes. He's not afraid of the glass and hypodermic needles his parents watch on TV. It's a crime he can't get service without them.
He wants to laugh at every word she says. He wants to bury his face in her hair. He can smell it. The clock behind her spins his strange dream of love. He is diverted and distracted from their conversation by everything she says. So many secrets stuck in so many folds of fabrics. He wished he knew the right things to say. His ice cream melts in front of him.
He's in a forest. A girl is holding his hand and she's looking at the stars. He hopes she won't knee him in the groin. He hopes he can kiss her without crushing her camera, or spirit. He loves that yellow glow. He can't smell her hair over the pine trees and night noises.
He follows her to her door. He thinks of Maria at the church, marrying some prick from up North. He hopes the guy is gay and will leave her after two and a half years.
His ice cream melts and he can't believe the dream. Years later, he still can't.
He wants to take her camera and wrap her in his arms, but he doesn't want her or it to break. He settles with scaring her. He tells her that he can hear tomorrow coming. What could he say.
It's you and you and you.
“Mom called, she says that we need to pick up the dress because Maria is still getting her hair done.”
“Did they print off the tickets yet?” The old lady says.
“Did you hear they are going to Fiji?” She says to him. He can tell.
“Believe me, he knows.” Amy says. It's funny, Oliver thinks, the tires running around the road. Amy's a funny gal. He can't bring himself to laugh.
He wanted her to smile. He wanted to tell her that he didn't want sex. He just wanted to make her happy. It takes two to try to make each other happy. It takes two to fail he thinks.
His pants are off. He's changing for the play. Changing from the pool. Always changing.
Thats the old lady's house. Nothing but change. Him for her.
That should change, Oliver thinks.
He's walking alone. His directions are muddled like bombastic bass solos. He can't figure out where the sloppy notes fit in. How can he when all of the houses are the same. They change the colors and call it a different family. Don't talk to me, just change the numbers.
Just another vagabond now. He's lost in the suburban redundancy. He might as well be in a desert filled with green rubber hoses and mowed lawns.
He wants to talk to her about her food. He sees her and wants to feed her. She won't eat. He thinks she has some sort of disorder. He has seen her eat so many other times. Why not now.
He finds out later. Finds out she's worn holes in the lining of her stomach. That's bad he wants to tell the hoses. The steering wheel. The purple pillows.
He wonders if she's sitting at home thinking about him. He thinks he's wasting his time out here in the thinking sunshine. The mind is a wealth of knowledge. He's making room for some.
At the beach, he puts on sunscreen and is sheepish and concerned with his body. He can feel his flab and wants nothing more than to be out in the waves, were weight doesn't matter anymore.
He lost the weight, but he still longs for the water. He wants a clear glass and a heel to toe carpet. A window to look through.
He thinks that's the problem with getting what you want; it's tied with all these weddings and memories and vomiting he didn't ask for.
He doesn't want anymore dreams. Doesn't want to play with the what if. He wants to burn it to the ground and never take it again.
Ladies and gentleman, the new man is walking down the street. He can hear his feet coming towards him. The mirage of the old. He with his youth and flab and love. Him in the pools and beach. Back when he loved the water, before he tried to stand on it. Before his rage drove him to test the ocean, test what was good in his life.
Before he burned his dreams and left his beaches.
The old man smiles at the new and for a moment, neither knows which is real.
“These aren't reasons!” He says to the old lady.
“Well, I think they are.” That Honey bunny Hal. It's nothing but take take take with the man. Straight from the start.
“She loves the guy, why shouldn't they get married? Give me a reason!”
He doesn't even have to think.
“The sun is blue. The wood is brown. The fire is hot. All of these are reasons!”
“Well, they don't make any sense.”
Who can drive in these conditions. Freeways, were the one only needs speed and directions. This, and rhythmic drumming and teenage screeching. A deep voice shouting in a telephone line. All of it playing into this soap opera senate of a car ride.
“They make perfect sense to me, and I guess that's all that matters in this sort of situation.”
He hopes she won't soil himself in front of him. She might cry herself to sleep over it. Oliver does want to see a woman cry on a wedding day. Unless it's Maria's husband. He can cry all he wants. Oliver hopes he has erectile disfunction.
Oliver drives the car. He can feel her sleeping on the seat covers. Another night driving her home. Another movie. Another misadventure.
But tonight, Maria doesn't love him.
It feels different, but Oliver knows this isn't the first night. Just the first instance where the feeling was mutual.
He's looking for love on a radio that wants to sell him lies.
He feel the girl in the mountains. Feel her laying beside him. Can feel her stroke his face. He smells the wood. He doesn't smell like smoke anymore.
He's in a car. They kiss and he tell her he loves her. The radio plays traitor and tells her that he's lying to her beautiful face. He laughs at the absurdity. She cries.
On the drive home, he thinks about her ex and his jealousy. He thinks of her teeth. Never smudge with lipstick, but more and more yellowed. He thinks she's taken up smoking. On kind of another. He wants her to bury him and much as he wants to bury her.
Instead, it's nothing but the infinite strands of music stretching into oblivion.
The lines of music from chorus to chorus.
Chapter.
He hopes this is the last time.
He doesn't want to discuss the dead conversation. He want the facts about what's going on. He wants his sleep deprived brain to flip over and listen to the choral calls of the birds in the morning. He wonders why the scrubjays never seem to leave. Their blue mohawks are always hanging around when he wakes up.
But this is only his side.
Oliver knows this. He knows she probably grew to like him just as much as he adores the taste of cheesecake after supper. She probably looked for him in all the small and hollow places before finding him in the bright tapestry of a sanctuary he never thought he'd enter. She's getting married in that church. He wonders if she remembers anything at all.
“This is the last good thing in the part of town.” The old lady is like a rabbit, kick drumming her way to the door of the shop.
“Let me out Oliver.” Amy slips out into the daylight. Oliver stares at Hal as he welcomes the grand view. The outside air smells like it's going to rain. But instead of rain, Oliver fancies it to be ringing bells. Bells caught up and trapped in the top of the church. They amount to noon and lunch and committee meetings he isn't interested in.
Oliver in the church. Not growing up, just existing mostly. Oliver outlasting the nimrods and sampling the friends. He finds an ample stock of the rebelliously boring. He finds people with ideas in his head. There is a store of love here to last him a great while.
Up until he can't function. He's brokenhearted and banging away at a guitar. He screams his praise, not leading a group as much brokering his own problems with the man upstairs.
Saturday. He can see the open doors of the chapel. This one opening to a dingy smoke filled orifice. Music pumps like the warm, salty blood of the great wild waste. He doesn't have to listen, doesn't need to understand. Underneath his understanding is something more. More than errands, more than sitting in the aggressively less heel to toe.
“Open the trunk.”
Always a button to be pushed. He couldn't stop doing if he wanted to. It's all about Maria and missing and vomiting. It's too much to vomit the readily occuring. He gives up on it. He's going to have to deal with it all later.
“Come back with my keys.”
At the top of the playground, on the swings. He beats around the bushes as long as possible.
He works to the beginnings of the beginnings.
Where is the Maria without these places? It would be unfair for him to stop existing her to keep right on going.
Here on the swings. Even if Oliver was such a sucker as to burn them and himself, she's still left over. It's food for a party no one ever came to.
Here's to forgetting everything about you, Maria.
“Get back here!” That Honey Bunny, demanding I tell you.
At his elbow, Amy is talking to him in a quiet calm voice. A civil tone. A tone that tells him that she belongs there talking to him. She wants him to believe this. He can only concede.
“I don't think I can go through with this.” He tells her. He hopes she believes him.
“You'll be fine,” She says. She thinks he's a bruiser, he can take the hits.
The things I went through to avoid you. To hate you.
But here again he clicks on the light and answers a phone that isn't ringing. It tells him in a foreign tone that she doesn't feel anything, not anymore. It tells him that she is missing someone else.
He lays back and dials her home. He leaves a message to a voice that doesn't exist anymore.
Apologize? Don't hold your breath. It's no regrets at home. Nothing but pickup trucks out in front and dogs in back. It's a yellow sunlight and phone calls from the unbroken.
What a world, so filled with people.
In a turning chassis of a car, he follows Amy. He isn't wondering about where they are going. He is only hoping he can let his hate dissipate to something more appropriate when they get there.
“It's in the details.”
“Are you sure?”
That beautiful lens, covered in a black cap. Looking at him in the most endearing sense of reflection. That crushing voice. He isn't forgetting about her. He couldn't hate her if her wanted to. He just wishes he wanted to.
He wouldn't have to hate or miss or repress. He could crush everything that bothered him and save everything that mattered to him.
Crush the movies and the hearts written on notebook paper.
Chapter
It's like a parlour filled with ghosts. A gypsy mausoleum of the incorporeal. The maidens in their ghostly unwed nature. It's the flutter of fabric, lacking the musting emanations of proms and promises.
It's oriental silk meets American excess, the damnation racism of the market of the beautiful. It's a thousand things you used up and throw away. They are like the rooms of dead sons and daughters. Preserved in plastic in the back closets of the world. It's a clean swept symbol of the unimportant qualities. It's a useless article in an otherwise lasting and impossible ceremony. The fine stitching and hand woven. The laudably late and lackluster early. All this piss and stiff upper nothings leading down an aisle woven from the heels and toes of the factiously subjective.
Oliver is standing at the doorway in an ocean of processed air. He can only see the sights of the store beside it. In his mind, the scrubs for nurses line the walls in Scooby Doo blue. The olive pinks and purples of the v-necked master race responsible for filing our fees and finding our fathers. Romeo, shot and killed and sent next door for tests. Where fore art thou diagnostics?
Maria in a gown she deserves. Maria in a face that doesn't abide. She with the looks and the frowns and the questions, her with the accusations and the evil spirited sweetness. A poisonous organ flowing out to him a flowery immenation of the doom of himself and his cause. He beau must be abouts.
She isn't there. It's just Amy at the counter and Wansome witch priestess at the wallet. She's smiling with her ticket, the maiden server saying her congratulations.
It's a kosher scene, meeting the orthodox needs of the day in question.
Where for art thou Oliver?
“Oliver, I need to talk to you?”
Oliver with the rage and dissension. Oliver in his corner with his eyes staring into space. The space between a thousand moons and stars and wonderful frightening things is nothing more that emptiness in a mind that cannot find the brightness. Here is he all alone with her.
She is smiling and they kiss in on the sly. These sly kiss, these theatre trists. She is warm and crushed wonderful and smiling thin lipped joy. She cannot see the movie for his face. Her laughs at all of the attrocities, seeing only her expressions to them.
Where has she gone.
Where am I now.
The plate of round protein. The curds and whey. This bread and cheese with a cola. He can't see them when she sits down.
All the meals. His whole life spent eating or asleep. The length and breadth of his accomplishments a map of his calories and hours. He sees her beside his chicken. Here she sits beside her beef. Now she is saying about the day and whomever and how he is so busy and how happy she is. She is smiling not looking at him and he doesn't mind because he isn't looking at her. He can see her hair move and the curve of her smile. He knows it's not for him, so he chooses to ignore it and not see her at all.
“Oliver, have you called anyone?”
“Sis, really he's fine with me for now...”
“If you say so, but you realize he can't stay like this forever. We are gonna have to offload him somewheres.”
Amy shrugs. Good old Amy. She's got brains no one can see but her. Oliver can tell they are there though, working away like all good things. The rush of use before we all end up dead. Rabbits running like madmen with their loot. These cheetahs showing off and generally wowing all but the most cynical gazelle. Here we sit at the lunch table, Oliver raving at the top of his voice.
“I CAN'T ABIDE THIS!”
The jumpy hairs don't move. They play possum, impossibly, in front of the wolf. Oliver can speak regularly and in the fashion of his liking.
“I have a gun in my pocket and I'd like you to walk with me to the ice cream shop so we can talk about all the little things that bother this world into it's abolition of my spirit.”
It's like walking. Like they used to do before the big meltdown. The holocaust of their mutual attraction and affection for one another. The catalyst of swingsets on a bright day on a hill by a park. He might be the one you think. With his irresponsible selfishness. He swears he would never take it back.
“What do you think we should do?”
“I don't know,” She says.He can sigh all he likes and he does. He wonders if she will ever know, if she can conceive of the answers. She knows she doesn't try. It's like the easy way out. No gold hanging over the Alps. Nothing harder than walking away.
It's like crying and it leaks from his face to the ground and into the earth of that spot. Forever it will be wet and the days that follow will be rainy.
“Why'd that happen, Maria?”“You know why, Oliver.”
“I don't, I really don't; and I wish you would explain.”
She can shout all she likes. And she does. He supposes this might be the first instance she's stood up for herself. He knows her less and less.
“You were depressed, Oliver. You didn't want to do anything. I had friends, you didn't like them. You were just wrapped up in this weird self destructive loathsome spiral...”
“That's good enough. As long as you know what you know you know.”“Honestly, it wasn't a big deal.”
He draws his gun and shoots her down. Leaves her dead and bleeding. She stands there and smiles as he runs through the parking lot, spitting on new cars and laughing into the air.
Chapter.
Oliver could never be lost in his hometown. As long as lines can be drawn, he can draw them down stream to the farthest corner. It's triangulation. It's finding your way home. The silly gravity of the earth and the moon and solar system. Like fate in a juicer, spinning him homeward. He can make the oranges sing and smile at him, their pulp babies crying as they disappear.
The trudging, up the mountain, gets worse. He knows he has to return and contemplate the decision of the evening. There's a girl down there somewhere. More like a woman. She knows he loves her and wants her and needs her. She can see the baggage he's got hidden away and she pulls at the zippers. Luck is as fine a mistress as any.
He never took Maria for hikes. He didn't think she would enjoy them. His dad spoke to him in cars and told him to do the right thing. His dad didn't know for days after the bomb had dropped and the soaking earth was undryable. Who can drain the ocean of take the tears from concrete? God can. He uses his sunlight and destroys all these little immaterial things. He takes our water away from us by cleaving it's structure into something new. Maybe can cleave me, Oliver thinks.
He wanders, forever drawn homeward.
The first time he braved these hills and gullies, his mother drove him. He won't ever forget his mother, no matter how much he loves the others. This play date. New friends over ping pong and a football game no one remembers. Not even Oliver. He can only see ruffled hair that won't lay flat and a dog that will die someday. Somewhere back, before he had a cell phone, he lost signal here. He always had. Something about the lee side of mountain. It distorts the reality into simply a figment.
Later he looks up the mountain and thinks of wolves and coyotes and the death of all things hovering above them.
He tells the Maria ghost he loves her. He can't remember why, but he knows it isn't the first time.
But this is just gossip in the mouths of the unfaithfully earnest. The young lover is a useless seed wasting itself on the cliffs above the see.
He can't see the rogue wave. He couldn't do anything if he did.
“Hey man, I didn't know you were back in town.”
The used lovers of women are like boats. They circumnavigate the same globe. Oliver knows he is chained to them as much as a slave to his oars. Each of the abandoned rows with the same hearty nature to the pointed rocks and the sirens song. They glance sidelong and believe that their hearts tell them true. These men with hearts. Oliver heard the song in his heart beat and thinks superstitious Greeks were only following his reading in their rowboats.
“Hey.”
“You, uh, need a ride?”
“Sure.”
“Hope in.”
The must of the car is as familiar as eucalyptus. The clanking automobile and its almighty sounds. The silent maw of the radio as the caravan shakes in it's spurs and plans to end them.
“You off to the wedding?”
“I was going to Maria's.”
It's all these questioning looks. Surreptition and seditions in the ranks and files of the phalanx will not do. Do not doubt, my brothers, that I am a good and noble Roman. That I know full well the spots and shine of my shield as well as I see the sweat of your brows.
“So how have you been? Staying out of trouble out there in Vegas?”
This man is a youth function. He wobbles amongst the brave. Oliver at once discounts him and hoists his opinion. There is now jealousy of the human being. He does not pity that which time has tore. He can but love the prose of the wreckage. The mind of the machine still functions like romantic poetry. The dynamo of the cosmos still turns in the down cast eyes of the weary traveler. The forsaken believes himself unforsook. Unto himself he is rendered changed in the character of his trade. He smiles at the children and they love his face. He works with his gifts and never can he be forgiven for his kindness.
Oliver remembers him as tall and mighty once, in cabins far from those of his love life. These members linger on the smell of maple syrup and of campfires. He will never remember a thousand sermons the way he remembers the stories of the man who drives him.
The labrynth moves on.
Oliver maps it, searching for an oasis.
As a young man, Oliver was given to rage and madness as any young phillistine. Never had he exchanged blows with another man in the womb of war.
The lost arts are all around him, just waiting for him to slip his hands to them.
“Hey man, where are you going?”
It's a foot race to the finish.
He traveled a mountain for her, before his chariot brought them a bedroom unto their own. This seat of splendor, the memories and moans, as fake as cherry lipstick the rearview mirror of Oliver's mind.
He walked up and down the hills. Maybe here is where he learned it. The art of leaping. The faith of wandering. A leaf adrift to fate.
Were he a better man. He would be less inclined to find himself in her. Less inclined to be so lost and so frightfully daft. A better man would never had asked for an injunction. Oliver kicks himself for the selfish behavior he learned from the Shining. The idiot wisdom of a novel. The call to action of fiction.
Here is a man made up of his heroes.
See how he dodges bullets and beats up the wrong and unjust. He saves the damsel, he saves the day. True love conquers all. If he doesn't conquer, is his love not true?
Everything on this world is so circular, it's amazing anyone tries to run away.
Sooner or later, the a world revolves. Never the twain shall part.
“If you could name a child anything, what would you call it?”
“Anything but Travis.”
He can't feel the bones. Not now. Not ever. His hand is a muffled bleating tumor of pain and foolish dreams. He cannot feel any righteous anger against his Lex. His Joker. His Kingpin.
There is only the waning shadow of pitiable anguish washing over a bridegroom.
“What's your problem!”
The lunacy of a thousand swings and misses. These misadventures for those without the knack. This a the Travis man's third time up to bat. He's doing nothing but chopping the air.
But the balloon is gone in Oliver; all the air let out. He is bored and more with the marriable man.
At the top of a hill, he stops and looks out. He wants to see the Eiffel tower and the Mirage. He can't see either. Everything is a taco shop nation on its way to the sea.