mulch pit, chapter 2

I patted Lucy on the back. “Hey, I gotta talk to this one,” I said as she frowned at me.

“Why this one,” Lucy said, emphasis heaving on the this. She’d watched me turn down woman right and left in this place. “Throwin’ that pussy away!” as a friend of mine said to me at my 20^th high school reunion after I’d turned down a parking lot blow job.

It wasn’t the right time to tell Lucy about her. The woman who took out a rusty screwdriver and plunged it into my heart one night. On the phone. I was weeks from somehow finding a way to propose to her, finally taking the step neither one of us had been able to, but wanted to. At least that’s what I thought.

Instead, one night out of the blue she dumped me. And other than two trips to Florida – the first to try and save it, the second to pick up the scraps of a life – I hadn’t seen her since. And she’d made it pretty damn obvious that she didn’t ever want to see me again.

But there she was, standing by my favorite barstool in the world – since the passing of Nick’s on 2400 Tulane Avenue – with that same damn look in her eyes that made me melt way over a decade ago.

“Hi,” she finally said. “Can I sit down?”

I wanted to say “Fuck You!” and turn around. But I knew I wouldn’t do it. She knew I wouldn’t do it.

“Sure.”

As she sat down I noticed how much skinnier she was than the last time I saw her. But hell, I weighed about 60 pounds less than then too. She had taut calf muscles now. Something she never had before. She also had that cucumber smell. She’d left behind a bottle of that soap she used the last time she visited me in North Carolina. I never thought twice about until she was gone for good. Then I used it, very small dabs, every day. Until it was gone. I told myself when I started that I’d be over her when it was done.

That was the first of many things I did that I said to myself when it was over I would be able to move on again.

It all ended with me masturbating naked in front of a mirror with a gun in my mouth. I was even using a cookie monster hand puppet to stroke with. I’d say that was rock bottom.

More so than when I called my mom with four bottles of pills emptied out on my coffee table/foot locker. More than when I was sitting at a truck stop on the side of I-10 wondering if what was west was better than what was east. Way more than when I told my therapist that I hated the fact that all redheads reminded me of her. They still do.

But now, she’s in front of me. Smiling.

“You look good,” I say with no confidence at all.

“Thank you. You too,” she replies. But I know other than the weight, it’s not true. My hair is gone on my head, growing out of every other spot on my body now. I have early signs of diabetes and my muscles have all but disappeared from living a mostly sedentary life now.

I take a swig of my now warm beer. I figured she’d be the one talking, but she’s not. I order two Shiners, handing one to her.

“Thanks,” she says, drawing on it. “You remembered.”

Ha. I remembered. Every damn time I drink one of these things, I remember. I don’t even like the taste of Shiner. It has a soapy aftertaste that always bothered me. Until it was a way to feel connected, no matter how sad that was.

“Yeah. It’s my brand now too,” I said.

I watched her sit there. She was nervous. And I didn’t understand why. I was nervous, but I’d been building up this encounter for years now. More years than we were actually together at this point. Way more.

My calculations told me this would happen in Virginia. Either on the streets outside where she works – which of course I knew, but not because I sought it out, but because a friend of my best friend worked with her – or at some random place in the Washington, D.C. area. Hell, many times while driving by Arlington Cemetery I thought about stopping at her father’s grave. That went all the way back to when I was going to propose. I took a photo of us there, placed it on his grave and asked for his permission. I left the photo and always wondered if anyone took it away. If she did. Hell, I sometimes doubt she ever went back. Career in hand and all. All she ever wanted, I think.

I looked over a Lucy. She was staring at this redhead. I wondered what Lucy thought of her. I wanted to feel what she was probably feeling. Hatred. But I never could, and certainly couldn’t at this moment.

Finally, I leaned closer to her and looked her straight in the eyes.

“Why are you here?” It was the question that had to be asked. And surprisingly, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted her to say.

“It’s about us,” she said before taking a very long and deep breath. She exhaled and just as she was about to speak again, a loud crash sounded out behind us at the front door.

I couldn’t help but wonder what it was, but my eyes were glued to her. But her eyes were not on me anymore. They were petrified. And looking straight at the door.

I turned around, and didn’t want to believe what I saw.