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It was raining outside, on Juliet. But the rain was light, so the dirt wasn’t mud yet when I slid down the precipice into Alana’s yard. On the way down I watched the bird, still balled up in defeat under the ladder against the palm. I walked toward her and she wasn’t growling anymore, just sitting there getting wetter.
The sun wouldn’t be up for four hours, but the night sky was bright. Had it been darker I wouldn’t have seen Alana’s fingers in the grass and I might have stepped on them when I walked by the tree. Or worse, I might have walked by without noticing her. She leaned on the other side of the tree, next to Juliet, with her head in the vice of her knees, black coal hair raining down her shins, no face anywhere. Her state had her wetter than everything around her.
I bent down to her, my knees under my chin and my back pockets over the watered grass and said, "I’m so sorry Alana…"
There were more words after that, but she crumbled at her name. She tipped into me like a drunk, her chin on my knees, her soggy, limp arms around my neck, fingers locked in back. I couldn’t see her face for the hair. When she cried hard, the memory of her hitting me boiled up real again, but when she died into a quiet sob, my pride deflated and I didn’t think about it anymore.
"We should go inside." I said to her. Between the rain and her eyes I was wet now too. She didn’t reply, so I straightened my legs out dirty, ass on the ground, giving her a place to collapse. She fell further in and, using my neck, pulled her body into me. When I was supporting her, she wedged her hands under my armpits and her face in my neck and we lay there resting. It was wonderful. Over Alana’s shoulder, Juliet was pathetic too. "C’mon, lets go back in." I urged again.
She still didn’t reply. I reached down and dug my fingers into her black seaweed hair like dragging the guts out of a pumpkin, brought her face to mine and spread the hair away for her face. Her eye sockets were full of tears and other water, obscured, but I could see, way back in there, that they were open. Underneath them, her nose sobbed and her mouth was loose like folds of wet, cold cut roast beef. Same color too. It was ugly but I was dying with love and I had to make her stop crying and I kissed her face, and there is something about tasting a salty wet face that makes you feel like you can fix it; you taste the saltwater, and maybe you can follow it to it’s source, down into the well of heartache. Though I wouldn’t know what to do then.
I said, "Romeo was fine when I went in last night, I promise…He chased me in the door right up until I was in your room…I looked out your window at him as I went to sleep." The last part was a lie. But then I said with honesty, "I know I didn’t hit him hard enough to do that…it was just a little smack…"
Her face burst open with more water and sobs and behind it all she closed her eyes. I panicked when she did this, I had this feeling like she might die, like how when someone hits their head, you shouldn’t let them fall asleep because they won’t wake up. I yelled almost, "No, Alana!" And In my hand I took her smooth part between the chin and the throat. "Look at me," I commanded, anger building at her disbelief, or belief that I killed her bird, or maybe anger at Ilka for destroying things, her own daughter, or anger at myself for not knowing Spanish. But watching Alana cry, it was easy to avert the anger, turn it into my own tears, follow her lead. Through mine I said, "Tell me you believe me…I’d never hurt an animal and I wouldn’t lie to you. Tell me you believe me."
The declaration, "Y…e…s," came from her with a third wave of crying that turned in on itself and crashed before she reached the S. Then she grabbed my hand and put it on her heart. It felt like it would explode, or like maybe it already had, and the burst lines were spraying haphazard blood under the skin.
"You promise?" She cried, pressing my fingers there. Behind her, Juliet’s eyes were closed and I feared they might seal up from being shut so long, the way mine had all those hours in Alana’s bed. But Juliet didn’t notice the wet beating her. I hoped to god I didn’t kill that other bird. I said, "Yes. I promise."
When I continued, "I really don’t think it’s…" Alana squeezed my hand hard, causing me to hiccup on my words. She dug the nails in a bit. I’d forgotten how much I liked that, but the pain thing had really been recontextualized since then, though I still liked the feeling of her mad pulse pumping in her fingers. I kissed her wet head. When she eased grip, I started over, "I really don’t think that it’s good…to be out here in the rain. We need to go in."
She was very calm now but still teary. "No, Juliet need me." She said.
Any other night, sleeping outside would have been perfection, but even the warm rain needs an umbrella. Protection. I slid out from under Alana’s crying head and stood up. She seemed to have her spine back and she leaned it against a tree in my absence, as I went around the strange yard collecting palm frawns. When I had six, I returned and splayed the frawns out against the Ladder to Nowhere, until Juliet was protected under the leintu. I was finished and Alana’s crying head smiled. For me. She smiled when saying, "Thank you." But there was still so much sadness.
I extended my hand and said, "She’ll be fine tonight."
Maybe she nodded or maybe her neck just gave out, but when her head went forward I took it as a yes, and I bent over and collected her fingers, pulled her arm up, her body rose like a ghost.
"Ow, you pull my arm hard." She said as she landed on her feet.
"I’m sorry," I said.
Over the hum of rain on so many leaves, I heard grumbling from Juliet as I walked past, supporting Alana’s limp frame, and walking it into her house.
- - -
Inside, her sisters curled like kittens on her bed. It was late but at the sound of us, they raised red-heads synchronously, fast, as if they’d been waiting up, only fell asleep by accident, only for a second. The girls beamed on Alana but there was fear there too. Their big sister pointed to the other bed and they leapt up and transferred over, resuming exact positions, still watching Alana from the other bed like waiting for her to throw the ball. Their full mouths hung open a bit under swarms of buzzing freckles and far away eyes, bones and muscles wrapped in translucent brown gecko skin. And then the red hair too. They will drive men insane soon enough.
"Didn’t you say they slept in another room?" I asked Alana, whispering for some reason. I tried to cover it but there was whine in my whisper. Alana noticed it and asked, "What the matter, Patri-que?"
It struck me smiley to hear her say my name and I almost made a joke about , ‘OK, we can all sleep together in the same bed.’ But no way. I went the other direction, "I want to be alone with you." I said.
Alana spoke Spanish to the girls, and as they shot up like a team of fighter planes and flew out past us, hair blowing, dressed for sweating at night in tank top shirts and tiny, little girl underwear, I looked after them, memorizing the colors. Babies. But soon enough…
Alana still leaned on me boneless.
"Let me fall," she said. "Onto the bed."
"Your clothes are wet." I said. I wanted to remove her black jeans and white ruffled tube top strapless, under the armpits and far above the navel. It was the first time I’d seen her in civilian clothes, instead of a PIZZA DIVE uniform. And it was only the second time I’d see her without clothes. The first was so long ago, it was a shame that, this second time, she was so sad. When I unzipped her pants, her depression was so loud that it was hard to take serious and I couldn’t help smile as if she were joking as I worked her wet shirt up over her slumped shoulders, unhooked her bra. When she was down to small white cotton underwear, I buzzed looking at her, and the refreshing cool nakedness had her smiling too. We stood staring at each other smiling for a good while. That was great. "You can fall now." I told her.
As if her spine were the sword from the stone removed, her frame folded onto her bed in a mass of long damp hair. And when she landed, the joke was over; she was crying on her side, loosely grabbing her knees as if about to have a rectal exam. She had to be younger than 17. She was a fetus. It even surprised me to see kinked black hairs peeking from her briefs. Though I’ve tried not to think about the age difference, I had vaguely predicted this problem; from angles she is a petite but perfect beautiful, full grown woman, and from others she is a child’s skeleton.
"Alana." I said, with nothing to follow it. But it had the desired effect, disrupting her position. When she rolled over to look at me, she stopped crying but her smile was nowhere. Fresh bad memories work like inverted birth contractions, coming back at farther intervals until it works itself out from your guts.
She was sad when reaching up behind her head and grabbing the headboard so that she was stretched out full, a long woman again. Her bellybutton was tight and small. Tense like a closed crying eye, and I stared at it like waiting for it to open.
"What?" She asked as if something were the matter.
"I don’t know." I said, quoting her, trying to make her laugh. She didn’t. Her head rolled over and the eyes shut and I let them this time. I just stared, searched her body for a mistake but couldn’t find one. I hardened looking at her, unbuttoning my shirt, about to jump in. When I untied my shorts I noticed I wasn’t wearing underwear and when I chuckled, Alana heard me and her face turned back up and her eyes opened at me again. I held my shorts up. We both said, "What?" at the same time. Then we laughed. She was naked and smiling at me. She stared at me holding the fly of my shorts and I couldn’t make words while looking at the yards of her, and thinking that in some vague way that was mine…
Then she said, "Thank you baby." Delivering it into my eyes, shoving it way back there. Everything would be fine.
"Yeah, it sucks that this all had to happen," I said. "Right when we finally see each other again."
With that she turned onto her side again with fresh sobs. She cried with her eyes closed, so I dropped my shorts and slid in behind her, but not against her, because suddenly it felt strange to be so close to her. We were both dry now, except for her hair. It was nice enough to just lay there, staring at her brown back with the little nubs of angle’s wings. But after a minute she reached back for my wrist, which seemed especially large and hairy between her small fingers as she brought it around front and hugged it to her face. At the end of the hug, she held my hand in front of her, vertical like half a prayer.
"Your hair on the arm is very red." She cooed. I could hear she wasn’t crying. She put the flat hand between her young skin breasts and hugged them together around it, then relaxed, my hand still laying there. I fully hardened when I kissed her bare shoulder and she leaned into the kisses, then she reached around for my other hand, and brought it against her mouth. I watched her kiss it over the horizon of her dry cheek, and I brought my hips against her and slipped into the trisection between her two legs and the white cotton, like a holster.
"Patri-que, no." She said softly, and I heard her almost crying again.
Embarrassed, I slipped out and pulled my hips away and copped, "No, I know…I didn’t want anything, not when you’re so depressed…but I can’t help that it turns me on to be here like this with you."
She hugged my hand hard again as if she believed me.
(click here to post your opinions on this s(h)ite. --- Ed.)
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