Gunmetal Blue Read online

  •

  When Cal disappears around the corner, I feel exhausted all of a sudden. I unlock the door to my place. I can’t believe Adeleine is dead. That’s the whole point. It’s not just the dying that gets you. It’s the fact that they stay dead. That’s what I can’t abide. Even after all these years I keep expecting her to show up any minute. I keep walking into my place expecting her to suddenly be there. The whole problem with this thing is she was taken away so abruptly I can’t believe she’s gone, and now I feel all I do is wait for her to return even though I know in my heart of hearts that she never will.

  It’s this not being in a routine, I tell myself. That’s what’s gotten the better of me. There’s something not right with me. There’s been something not right with me for so long I don’t even remember when things were right for me. Whenever I try to remember back to a time in my life that was normal I always go back to my life with Adeleine. Adeleine is my Eden. My eighteen-year marriage to Adeleine was my heaven. I’m afraid to say I’ve been kicked out of Eden with her death and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to return.

  Since I’ve been kicked out of Eden I’ve been searching for a routine. At night if Rita and I aren’t together, I head on down to Murphy’s. It’s the only bar I ever go to. I know just about everyone in the bar. I don’t consider myself a regular at Murphy’s just because I know there are problems once you start admitting these kinds of things to yourself. You are better off telling yourself you are not a regular, even though you go to the bar on a regular occasion, than you are admitting you’re a regular. I like not being a regular, even though I come here all the time. For one, by not being a regular I can always say to myself: at least my life is not so lonesome I have to spend it night after night in a bar, like these guys. At least I’m not like all of these guys.

  I like coming to this bar because it is a nice comfortable place. What’s more there’s a steady stream of women who come in because across the street is a theater and often women will come in after the show for a drink and it’s a nice place to be if you want to see new faces from time to time. Occasionally I talk to one or another of the women. I smile. I try to be happy. I try to imagine if this is the place I’ll find my next one. That is, if things go south between me and Rita.

  The other night, for instance, there was this woman who stepped into Murphy’s. She was a sparkling soul. I don’t remember the last time I saw a woman so full of energy and life, such a light, and here she was swimming into Murphy’s. I even bought her a drink, and then she was gone, just like that. One drink, a bit of small talk, and then she was gone into the night never to be seen by me again. A stain on my memory. A bit of brightness. And where…where did she go?

  •

  One night some guy is sitting next to me talking my ear off. He’s a bouncer who follows strippers around on their jaunts. He’s telling me about one, and as I listen I order up another round of beers.

  He says: There’s this one woman I drive around, her name is Flower.

  Do you pack a gun?

  No. I don’t pack a gun. I wish I could, some of the scrapes I get in, but I don’t pack a gun. It’s safer that way, believe it or not. I want to intimidate, but not hurt.

  I could see that, I say, buying him a beer. It’s more dangerous that way, though.

  Yes. More dangerous. But it’s the price you pay if you want to be righteous.

  That’s the term he used: Righteous.

  Absolutely, I say, clinking his beer and tipping it back. To righteousness.

  Anyway, this woman, Flower. The things she can do with her cunt. By the way, do you do pills?

  No.

  Codeine, he says, pulling a couple of pills out of his front pocket.

  No, you go right on ahead.

  He takes his pills and washes them down with his beer.

  Anyway this stripper—Flower, her name is—she shoves all kinds of stuff in her twat. I once saw her stick a lit bong up her pussy and inhale.

  Where did the smoke come out?

  Can you believe it? She made it come out her ass! He laughs. Anyway, as a follow up to this, she likes to stuff her pussy with pickles. Those sweet little gherkin types. And then you know what she does?

  What?

  She tells the guys at the party to gather around and get a good look at what they paid to see. She spreads her legs; she takes aim and shoots ‘em one at a time at different guys in the room. And they shoot out, bang, just like that.

  They shoot out?

  Just like that. She tells me she aims for the whites of their eyes. She hates men. That’s what she says. That was her complaint, night after night. How much she hated her job stripping for men. She hated stripping. She hated men. So how did she solve her problem? She shot at them with pickles pushed from her twat. It made her happy. It gave her relief.

  If she didn't like men, then why did she strip for them?

  Cash money of course. But I’m telling you this. Had she a real gun and not pickles, had her gun been real, I guarantee you. She wouldn’t have thought twice about using it and killing every man that felt he had to see her up close like that. She hated them. Meanest person I ever saw naked, but with her clothes on she was really quite friendly.

  But she, too, didn’t have a gun…

  Yes. And I suppose in that way, she too was righteous.

  •

  Some nights, Rita appears through the doors, finds me here and drags me home. She can’t stand to see me hanging out at this place. She calls everyone who drinks here losers. She calls it a loser bar and drags me out of there like I don’t belong here but then she calls me a loser.

  You’re a loser, Art. I can’t believe I care about a guy like you.

  You don’t have to care about a guy like me if you don’t want to. No one is forcing you.

  There you go again. I’m half-tempted to leave you right now.

  Then why don’t you?

  Because to be honest with you, Art, I’m holding out for something…

  What’s that?

  I’m holding out for you to finally getting around to being truthful.

  I am truthful.

  You’re a sack of shit is what you are…but as pertains to the truth, you’re a far way from it buddy.

  And how might I get closer, if you don’t mind me asking?

  You might get closer by telling me how the hell your wife died.

  You know how my wife died.

  In fact, I don’t.

  I told you it was an accident. She died in an accident.

  And what kind of accident might that have been? There are all sorts of accidents.

  An accident accident…As far as I can tell there is only one type. And that’s what she died of.

  You're a fool, Art, for not being truthful to me.

  I am talking truthful.

  You’re drunk is what you are. One day though, I hope we can revisit this conversation.

  •

  I suppose I should be grateful that Rita cares so much for me, but having her show up and drag me home from Murphy’s is disconcerting and embarrassing. I’m a man, goddamn it, and if I want to spend my night at the bar getting soused, goddamn it, well then let me spend it at the bar.

  You said you needed time alone to visit with your cats and do your mail. No need to drag me home.

  And yet when she does this, everybody at the bar sits there, watching. I know what they’re wondering. They’re wondering how it is a guy ends up in this state—out for a drink, and then the girlfriend arrives and drags him home. They’re hoping that it’ll never happen to them, never, not in a million years, so help them God, it’ll never happen their woman showing up unannounced come to make fools of them and drag them home.

  Rita usually shows up unannounced—which is the embarrassment of the whole situation.

  Anyway, there I’ll be at Murphy’s minding my own business having a conversation with someone or another like Eddy, the bartender who is the guy who owns the place. Eddy’
s no businessman, but somehow or another he’s done OK by this bar. It’s a mystery that both baffles me and attracts me. I have my business, which is failing, but Eddy has his bar that he does well by. I’m curious how someone can have a business and be anything other than a failure. But he has a strategy that I’ve come to admire. Between the regulars and the theater crowd, he does OK, and there’s something about him that I admire. Something hard to put my finger on. He goes about his business day after day just as I do, but he gets by, whereas I’m always wondering when I’m going to hit the bottom of the pit. He gets things done in his own way and he ends up being successful, and who knows how I’ll end up? I keep hoping for the best but in this life, at least, there are no guarantees.

  I’ll be talking to Eddy about guns because Eddy, like Cal, is a bit of a gun nut. I'll tell him about Cal’s Uzi or about my Ruger. Eddy likes to hunt big game. I myself have never gotten into hunting, but it’s interesting listening to him talk about some caribou or something that he’d taken down with a bolt-action .308 Winchester Model 70 from two hundred and fifty yards out. A fly-in camp near the Arctic Circle, no less, and the trekking across spongy tundra and the big sky filled with waterfowl and distance in all directions like nothing he’s ever seen and the great wash of fast moving rivers across gravel and the brown bears like spots on the horizon that you would peer at through your scope to get a better look and nighttime in a flimsy tent listening to the noises outside and the aurora borealis that was so beautiful he named his kid after it.

  The way Eddy talked it would take you away to a different place, and one morning two hundred yards outside his tent he saw a small gathering of caribou cows and some juveniles and fifty yards yet further out there was a big bull standing all by himself sniffing the air with his nostrils then dropping his head to nibble a bit at the tundra and then came the scramble for the Winchester as Eddy tried for the shot of his life and he felt the throb of heart in his head as he tried to steady the gun and there it was the big bull with the massive rack jerking around the inside of Eddy’s scope and then the gentle squeeze of the trigger and Eddy got him straight through the carotid artery first the bullet hit the bull then almost in slow motion the caribou turned its head around as if scanning the horizon for something—that peaceful, curious look animals get—almost human on its face—a human with horns—and then as if it had been detonated from within the bull collapsed like a building—boom—hitting the turf and then they had to call the fly-in plane and while waiting, there was the cleaning of the caribou and the eating raw of the nearly-still-beating heart. Just then the door opens and to my surprise it’s Rita come to claim me while Eddy is mid-sentence and holy shit why me because I want to know what happens next.

  Hi Art, she says, grabbing my arm.

  Hi Rita.

  Time to go, Art.

  One more drink and then let’s go, OK?

  No. I want you out of here now, OK?

  OK, I say. For what other choice do I have but to say OK and goodnight Eddy?

  Goodnight Art.

  Nice talking with you as always, Eddy.

  Same same, Art.

  By the way, how was the heart?

  The heart?

  The caribou’s heart? You said you ate it raw?

  And before he can answer Rita’s tugging at my arm.

  I don’t want to listen to this.

  And how do you do it, I yell into the place, as she drags me out. I scream into the place as she drags me out: How do you, Eddy? How do you run a successful business and live a successful life? Tell me how do you to it? I need to know!

  Shut up you crazy drunk, Rita says, pulling on my arm and dragging away. You’re talking stupid.

  Off Rita and I go, off into the night. With her shouting: Truthful, truthful, I need you to be truthful, Art.

  Truthful about what, Rita?

  Truthful about what you’ve become.

  What have I become, Rita?

  You’ve become a loser, Art, just like all the rest. And tell me, what would your daughter Meg think if she saw you like this?

  What if?

  Yeah, Art, what if?

  •

  The crowd at Albert Volares’ funeral is getting antsy.

  The kid in the pink housecoat steps away from the gathering and sits on a tombstone with a girl who has long blond hair that blows in the breeze. Another boy stands in front of her.

  The one kid in the housecoat tilts his head upward, and the girl pushes the hair from her face and looks at the dirt near her feet. The other looks off in the direction of the priest. They seem nonchalant. Disconnected. Sculptures to eternally disaffected youth. Some way to get out of school, witnessing the grief of others. I feel I don’t understand them. I feel born of a different generation.

  The mother of the deceased, on the other hand, I know what she’s going through. I understand what I’m seeing there. She is trying mightily to keep from breaking down. Her husband stands behind her and grips her around the waist trying to keep her from exploding. The priest speaks in a monotone as if he’s done this thing a million times before, which he probably has.

  Albert was a good boy, the priest says. Now he is an angel in heaven. He was an altar boy who helped serve communion. Now he is an angel in heaven. It is in communion that we are gathered here today to put Albert to rest. Let us pray that his life was not in vain. Some of us are given to living long lives, others of us, the Lord will take before our time, but it is not incumbent on us to divine the Lord’s will. It is only enough to understand that the Lord has a will and a plan for each of us and it is his will that we pray, may be done.

  ¤

  After that Italian dinner when we first met, Rita and I wandered into the hotel across from my office. We took a room on the thirteenth floor. Neither of us had bags, and the fact that we found ourselves here, going up in an elevator, astonished me a little. It’s funny the curveballs life can throw you. One minute you’re throwing flowers on your wife’s grave. The next moment you’re going up an elevator with a strange woman you just drank too much Chianti with.

  I never do this sort of thing, she said.

  Neither do I.

  I hope you know I don’t normally do this sort of thing.

  No need to apologize.

  I never do this.

  Neither do I.

  I’m not so easy as this. It’s only…

  Listen I’ve been married forever. It’s new to me too. Nothing to worry about.

  It’s only that I. You have been a real comfort to me today. I want to thank you.

  She wore just the faintest perfume that was slightly alienating.

  I tried to ease the situation with a smile.

  It’s OK to try something different. We only live once.

  Yes, isn’t this what this is about?

  What do you mean?

  About living once. We met in a cemetery. This is about life, living, the recognition that we…that we live once and then we die.

  OK…

  She paused, took a breath. What are we going to do in this hotel room anyway?

  I suppose we’ll just have to go into the hotel room and find out. By the way, let me say it again, that’s a nice sweater.

  My mom knit it.

  She must have been something.

  She understood me.

  I’m sure that was nice.

  For me, it was everything.

  The elevator binged and we got off.

  •

  She sat down on the bed and I sat in a chair across from her.

  How have you been since your wife died?

  How have I been? Terrible.

  But do you feel like I feel?

  I don’t know.

  You don’t know how you feel?

  A little. And I suppose I don’t know how you feel.

  Alone is how I feel.

  I do too, I suppose. Though I have a daughter. And my office is across the street. And I know lots of people so I don’t feel quite so alon
e.

  What’s her name?

  Who, my daughter?

  Yeah.

  Meg. She’s down in New Orleans. Tulane. We sorted through a bunch of things after the funeral and then abruptly, she left. And so she’s there and I’m here. But yes. I don’t feel alone so much as…

  What.

  Uprooted. Broken. Hurt. Unable to go on…Shall I go on? I feel disoriented. Lost. I don’t have much desire for anything.

  They say it will pass.

  I hope so.

  It will pass.

  I don’t know. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. We’ll see.

  •

  An El train catching orange hues of light rattled the tracks outside our window. I saw a blur of passengers on the train flickering by. They were packed in, standing room only, plugged into their headsets or looking blankly ahead. Rita and I sat there for a while talking. The late afternoon sunlight was filtering through a south-facing window throwing a trapezoid of light across the edge of the bed, lighting her lap, and falling across the floor. I sat in the shadows near a bureau looking at her and she was lovely, really, and vulnerable, and I could tell she knew as little about these things as I did. It was as if we sat there trying to assimilate not only to the reality of our new losses but to the reality of each other, to the reality of this new person right here in front of me; I was taking in this three-dimensional flesh and blood breathing human being who was stranded on the scabrous shoals of the planet just as I was and who still wanted to take a stab at what new adventures life might have in store.

  She was a stranger really, and in some ways she has never stopped being a stranger to me, just as I must seem a perpetual stranger to her. She is some combination of signs and signals that I have never been fully able to interpret and understand. Even then I felt her frequency was tuned for a different receiver, and yet I felt it was incumbent upon me to discover that frequency nevertheless, and understand it as if what it were transmitting were meant for me, and not someone else.

  We sat there in a not quite comfortable silence. I didn’t know what to say or do next. We had made it this far without thinking about it, but suddenly thought kicked in, and self-consciousness and worry, and that wonder that had gathered about us as we had sat on the tombstone sorting out our separate losses disappeared, and I felt tricked. Who was this person? Why were we here? Why should we do anything next? Why not just turn around and go back to our loss, where we belong, to the life we had before the moment we first saw each other on the tombstone?