#2: A Baltimore Love Thing

“More coffee hon?” she asks.  Her tone is sincere, too sincere for this hour he thinks.  There’s also the matter of her judicious use of ‘hon.’  She had been using it from the initial greet to the presentation of the bill.  Maybe Baltimore stereotypes do hold water, he thinks.   

“No. I’m fine,” he replies with a guarded smirk.

He settles deeper into the plush vinyl diner booth.  The striated back soothes his backside, which is nearly numb from the trip.  Baltimore marked his fifth major city.  Every morning he woke with a start; eyes darting to every corner and window, his cerebrum slow to piece together his exact locale.        

Working in sales had its perks.  The expense accounts, free rental upgrades, the seemingly endless sushi.  Sometimes he swore he could tell exact temperatures of rooms from the mercury coursing in his veins.  Clients lack imagination. 

It also taxed.  He hadn’t had a stable monogamous relationship in five years and dealt with loneliness with hotel bars, tasteful suits and reality TV.  He avoided doing anything to excess; smoking and drinking claimed both his grandfathers before he was born. 

Overall he is satisfied with his trajectory.  Middle management seemed an inevitability once they put him to pasture from the road.  He calls a comfortable condo on Chicago’s north side home.  The furnishings had become less personal though upon every return.  The bourgeoisie and the hotels they frequent lack imagination.

For vices he gambles on sports.  Mostly professional, he fully embraces the country’s sports obsessed psyche.  It gave him an internal excuse to spend evenings engrossed at sports bars and chatting up anyone who would lend an ear.  Being in a town during one of their big games was definitive to his own story.  Without the incentive of winning though, he would enjoy it less.  Americans lack imagination.

The cab ride from the hotel to the diner had been soothing.  Outside a February rain fell, chunks of frozen bits lubricated the windshield but the wipers squealed protests. 

“New blades, huh?”

The driver bobbed his baseball-capped head slowly forward and back in recognition.

He chuckled to himself at the rhetorical nature of his question.  The blades tracked perfect convex lines that gave the impression the windshield was a huge turntable spinning two vinyl records in tandem.  He thought about tomorrow’s agenda.  Hotel breakfast, ten o’clock meeting with the in-house creative services team, eleven-thirty lunch meeting with the ad sales team.  Back to the hotel for a power nap and recovery from the several martinis sure to be consumed.  A rare phone check-in with his manager would proceed an early dinner.  Later he might find himself in a cab on the way to a diner.  He failed to notice his lack of imagination.

“You in town for like… business?”  The question forces his head and neck upwards like a heeling dog. 

“Excuse me?  Didn’t catch that….”

“Ya know hon, business.  You have that bleary-eyed look.  Your collar needs some starch and you’ve been staring at your check for quite some time.” 

“I’m a little tired yea, but I don’t want more coffee.  Could use some crayons though, ya know?  To draw on these pretty placemats.”

“Crowns?  Sorry we don’t keep those,” she turns back towards the bar.  It is only then that he realizes he is the last customer in the joint.

“Wait… I was just kidding.  I will take some more coffee actually.”  She glides back to his booth with pot in hand.  It is only then that he realizes she is somewhat attractive.  A knockout no; baby crow’s feet grace her temples and her makeup is tired from an all day shift.  Her plain floral dress snugs against the outside of wide, pleasantly pronounced hips.  God, he thinks, I lack serious imagination.

“To answer your question, yes I’m here on business.”  The pour hesitates slightly.  The response is unexpected.  “Are you some kind of psychic?  A psychic who moonlights as a waitress.”  A smile is earned.  Her forehead crinkles and crow’s feet flex.

“No.  I’m just plain Jane, serve ya coffee, serve ya sandwiches, Debby waitress.”

“So which is it, Jane or Debby?”  More crinkling as she brushes her black hair behind an ear. 

“I go by Sarah.  And you, what do they cawl you hon?”

The ‘hon’ makes him blush this time.  It disarms and no longer annoys.

“I’m Jonathan.  So Sarah, this place looks to be somewhat deserted.  Why don’t you put up your tired feet and share a cup with me?”  No sense in retreating at this point.

“Well gee golly whiz, plain ole’ me conversing with a fancy business man.  All, be.”  She flips her hair mockingly one hand on her hip, the other cuffed beneath her ear.  She returns with a porcelain cup and fresh pot.

“So Jonathan, what type of business are you in exactly?”  He can’t tell if her tone is coy or sarcastic.  She’s nervous and covering it, he thinks.

“Well, I sell advertising.  See that billboard over there?”  He gestures to the distant harbored cityscape glowing up through the window.  “Well you can’t see it from up here, but I have  a few products that I maintain around the harbor.” 

Sarah leans forward on her elbow places her mouth on her wrist and takes him in for the first time.  She makes eye contact.  She gives slight pause.     

“I hope it’s not Phillip’s.  That place claims they make the best crabcakes, but I know for a fact they use more filler than they would care to admit.  My ex took me there once – ” She breaks the contact and eyes dart to the black and white tile. 

“We all have skeletons,” he offers.  “No sense in parading them about, especially to people whom you’ve just met.” 

“I agree, no sense in p’rading.  Say, what’s your favorite color?”  The false air had been dropped and a forced cheerfulness squeezed through muslin arises to take its place, altogether as forged. 

This time he betrays himself with a gaze that peers away from her face to the neon of the harbor below.  She obliges a smile and they both draw upon their mugs.  Good intentions abound in the air. 

“I should start my shift work, it’s really getting on.” 

“Why don’t you finish up and we can continue this?  I’m staying just up the way.”

“What…. what’s ‘this’ exactly?”  They both mirror smiles.  He cocks his head slightly and in doing so, acquiesces first.  Without further word, she slides out into the aisle.  His lack of imagination startles him.  

For the next five minutes, he alternates between sidelong steals of her polishing and the bottom of his mug.  He doles out cash for the bill and leaves a precisely appropriated tip.  On go his coat, rich deerskin gloves and bowler.  He walks stiff and upright down the length of a bar with a measured gait. 

“Green.  I’ve always been partial to green.”  She pauses half-hunched and wipes a lone drop of brow sweat with a backhand.  Her eyes loosely focus on the window with a view, neon fuzz growing and swelling until the diner itself is ablaze. 

“That’s nice,” she whispers.  Her gaze not breaking stride she delivers the colloquial epilogue reserved for all: “You come back now hon, ya hear.”

Jonathan glances at the empty whiteness of her eyes and advances quickly to the door.  He shudders deeper than the night dictates as he scans for a cab.  Suddenly the well-appointed hotel bar seems enticing; perhaps they will be showing a west coast game.              

#1: Old Bulls

A low-slung moon spills in the tiny window by the open shelves like a frozen case job. 

Bradley takes a short pull from the hexagonal glass, the legs of the dark liquor restless and long to settle.  Perched atop a folding kitchen chair from the 50s, his gruff, grey winter beard hides a deceivingly soft jaw line and tiny pock marks. 

“Martha, bring me my slippers when you come.  The floor is practically on fire!”

He realizes how bitter winter makes him, especially New England ones.  It has intensified with each of late; growing out his beard in the fall is an itchy chore and no longer pleasurable. 

He rises and approaches the kitchen potbelly stove.  Bradley slowly takes one knee, cocks his head and swoops low near the grated door. 

“Christ,” he says.  “Damn wood is whistling wet.  Should have known better than to trust that swindling excuse for a neighbor.  Tree was only fell since late fall.”

He opens the furnace door.  Straw oak peers at him.  Heavy smoke perforating every split and crevasse, upwards climbing towards the heavens like an ancestral signal willing its way through the narrow stovepipe, creosote pulsating and sparkling to the unfettered rhythm.  A few harsh pokes, a few exaggerated grunts and the meager flames fan.

He returns to the chair, slumps and takes a long pull from the glass extinguishing the contents.  His chapped lips burn as the liquid vapes.  He realizes that Martha is taking unusually long.  He realizes he feels spinning drunk – an intense stage of buzz that rarely lasts.  He wonders if she is actually taking long or if his sense of time is skewed.  His face is flush from the stove and scotch, his feet burn from the cold tile and mind throbs from the woodpile betrayal, and the scotch.

“Brad, again…. tonight?!”  Martha says as she gestures towards the suddenly debased bottle.

Bradley doesn’t wait to be told.  Slippers are snatched from clenched fists, stepped into forcefully, rifle is slung from the right shoulder and he stomps out into the night.  A few minutes are taken as his eyes adjust to the grey blue which blankets the farm.  Shadows reserved for the day are where they should appear, but more intense, the black deeper.

He scans the foreground.  Soft rolling contours of dirt pass for hills, latticed posts pass for western fences.  His property line extends out of eyesight from his current position, day or night, and abuts the Ramer plot on three sides.  Bradley’s means stem from a government pension, he served two tours in Southeast Asia in the 70s, and cold cash garnered from the slaughter house.  Two hundred Hereford head bray lowly and crowd to stave the chill.  His fence line used to extend further onto the Ramer land via a grandfathered right-of-way, but the eldest son quickly put an end to that when he took the reins this past summer.  It made for several weeks of painstaking post digging in the heat, not to mention the recent sale of a half cord of questionable firewood.

Bradley sighs and steps towards the closest fence line when an unmistakable sound grips the hollow air.  Deep on the westerly fence line, line of sight disrupted by a downward slope, frantic brays coupled with a gnashing of thick skulls and hooves on the frozen ground serve as a prelude to panicked yelps and quick snarls. 

“Damn cai-yote.  Poor timing,” he chuckles humorlessly.  He consciously left horns on a few of the biggest most senior bulls.  A nightmare for the slaughterhouse hands, but insurance against losing small calves and cows to the omnipresent menace.  On a usual night he would hear the combat from bed and rest easy.  On a usual night he wouldn’t be this drunk, on a usual night he wouldn’t be fuming from his wife’s grumblings or neighbor’s recent actions.

He walks to the near fence line, stops and backtracks his gaze to his house.  The small A-frame was built in the 70s with lent money from his parents who sympathized with his emotional scars from the war.  It was the summer of ’74 that he started raising cattle, the winter of ’76 he married Martha, and the bottle sometime during ’77.  The land and herd held all his equity, the house was in dire need of remodeling, but Bradley had no intention of undertaking that anytime soon. 

He pulls out a slender 100, fumbles with the metal lighter and inhales a few quick drags. 

No, the house wasn’t a priority, he thinks as he slides over the bottom rung of the interior fence.  Martha could consider it an eyesore in the face of the Ramer’s new log cabin and Bradley wouldn’t give a damn. 

Moving with purpose now.  The sound of the struggle still pitching.  Eyes adjusted to the steely ambiance, rifle un-slung and held under the crook of his shoulder.  The key was to approach from above, survey, fire a few warning shots and retreat victorious.  A chain-smoking, hard drinking vet of a Jesus, tending, always tending.

The struggle dies down.  He sees a few flashes of white horn in the light, one might have been stained red, can’t tell.  Two bulls, one horned, surround several cows and a calf.  There is no sign of the intruder.  They stamp nervously, pupils shine wide-eyed, but the threat passes.

He laughs a smoker’s cackle and pitches to and fro on uneven earth. 

“They knew better than to stick around,” he says to the group. 

The bolt action snaps open then closed, safety never on like a wily gunslinger; smooth large caliber brass rises into place the rim slamming against the barrel opening halting a premeditated skyward launch.  Two clicks of the trigger and pin send plumes of fire from the barrel’s end, the bulls’ sockets glare against the flare.  Quick snap of the wrist, forestock slams into outstretched offhand, shock against his gold wedding ring like a mini report, single fluid move shell ejected, spring advances, heel of his hand locks the bolt handle’s silver marble down – He exhales sharply through his nostrils, his trigger finger drifting off course. Something catches his eye beyond the exterior fence.

The main reason for the Ramer boy revising the property line was so their main farmhouse footprint could be increased via a deck addition.  A monstrosity of a thing, the porch was unscreened, yet fully furnished.

Despite being a couple hundred yards away, Bradley had the advantage of elevation.  He swore he saw something pass through his line of sight across the porch and obstruct an interior light.  Why this registers as his business, he can’t self-articulate, but feels an urge to investigate.  Not enough time would have elapsed after the report for someone to react and venture outside.  No, whatever it is had to have been outside prior and surely had seen the muzzle flash. 

Something inside of him tugs on his shoulders in the direction of his A-frame, back to the sputtering fire, the lamentations of his wife, the vapor of the dissipating bottle like a bottled apparition suddenly released.  He shoulders his rifle, crouches and moves to flank the porch from the north. 

Sometimes it is best to leave the horns on the patched and weathered ones, he thinks.