Part Twenty
“This one, too?” I ask, pointing at a large box.
Isabel is packing up, clearing out her apartment, getting ready to head for the west coast. Her place is littered with boxes and clutter, a very un-Isabel-like scene.
“I can get that,” she says, stopping to wipe a stray hair out of her eyes. “I don’t want you doing too much.”
I pin her with a stare, then bend and pick up the box. Christ – is this thing full of bowling balls? I hide my grunt of effort for fear she’ll come running to my rescue and alien or not, it’s just not cool in the Guy Handbook to have a chick carrying something for you. I bite my lips, hiding my strain as I limp toward my truck with the box. We’re loading up everything that isn’t necessary and putting it into a storage locker she’s rented. Her stuff will be here when she gets back. If she comes back.
I plunk the box into the bed of the truck and I swear it falls down to the axle. I take one peek over my shoulder to make sure she’s not looking, then lift the lid out of curiosity. The box is full of books. No freaking wonder.
Back in the apartment, Isabel is sitting Indian-style before her CD rack, making neat piles of discs on the floor.
“What are you doing?” I ask, hobbling over to the couch and taking a load off my tired leg.
“Trying to decide if I should trade some of these in,” she answers, reading the back of one of the discs. She wrinkles her nose. “I mean, I can’t believe I used to listen to some of this stuff.”
I tilt my head sideways and check out some of the artists. I can’t believe she listened to some of that stuff either. One could never accuse Isabel of having the best taste in music.
“Do you want them?” she asks, looking my way.
I shake my head. It’s also not cool to have a Shakira CD in your home. I glance around the apartment. All of the full boxes have been loaded into the truck, while others are scattered around the place in various stages of packing.
“What can I do?” I ask her.
She puts down the CD she was looking at and thinks for a moment. “Nothing for now, Michael. It’s been a long day. Why don’t we quit for now? I’ll get some more stuff cleaned up tonight and then maybe tomorrow we could make another trip?”
“Sounds good,” I reply, pushing myself to my feet. It has been a long day, but I’ve been thankful for the diversion – I didn’t really want to think about Mae today.
“Let me get my shoes and I’ll help you unload that stuff,” Isabel says, climbing to her bare feet.
“No need. I’ll drop it off on my way home.”
She looks uncertain. “Are you sure? I mean, there’s a lot there.”
I give a little grin. “Not a problem, princess.”
She smiles back at the nickname and I’m so relieved that we’re this comfortable with one another. “Okay, then,” she says, straddling a box to make her way over to me. Reaching for me, she pulls me tight against her in a familiar, loving hug. “Thank you for your help today, Michael. I really appreciate it.”
I close my eyes, for some inexplicable reason emotional about her kindness and affection. “Anything for my Izzy,” I say into her hair.
She laughs and pulls away. “Can you be back around noon tomorrow?”
I nod, then make my way to the parking lot. Isabel watches me go, waves as I pull from the lot. In the truck, alone, I feel so freaking isolated that I might go mad. I stop by the storage facility, open her locker with my powers – well, I thought it was her locker. I’ve opened someone else’s by accident. Flushing with guilt, I look around to see if anyone noticed, then move over to the next locker, the correct one this time. I shovel her boxes into the space, stacking them neatly with labels pointing outward, just like an anal-retentive alien would.
On my way back to my apartment, I’m feeling that lost sense again and I don’t want to go back there. I need to be around people and I realize with a stab of regret that soon there will be no one familiar to be with. I choose the unfamiliar instead – The Billy Club, Roswell’s dive of all dive bars.
I suppose if I were a drinking man, I’d be lining up the shots of Jack Daniels, or pounding pints until I could barely see. But I’m not a drinking man – I’m not even a normal man. So I sit at the bar nursing a soda water, my eyes fixed on my own reflection in the mirror behind the bottles of liquor. I look tired. I look haggard. There’s one consolation in that – no one in their right mind would hit on me tonight.
Alas, there she is, squeezing onto the barstool beside me. I resist looking directly at her, but I can still see her in the mirror. Holy cow – was a throw back to the goth age! She’s got Anne Rice hair, which looks oddly maroon in this light, there’s a ring in her nose and she’s dressed like she’s going to a nineteenth-century funeral. A necklace of large beads hangs around her neck and she makes all kinds of clinking, tinkling noises when she moves. Good Lord.
“Hi,” she says in a voice happier than the one I expected. I thought I’d hear a deadpan Daria voice out of her, or maybe that of the grim reaper.
“Hey,” I mumble, glancing at her. Her lipstick is the color of midnight, but her eyes remind me of those of a Siberian Husky. She’s striking in a disturbing kind of way.
“I’m Bethany,” she offers, holding out her hand.
I look at her fingers, loaded down with rings, making her look like a gypsy. I shake her hand and turn back to the mirror. If ever there was a night when I didn’t want companionship…
“I need a drink,” she announces, then hails down the bartender. She orders some foo foo drink, but then pulls a pack of cigarettes from the satchel she calls a purse. “Do you have a light?” Her eyes are hopeful.
I shake my head. I quit that, babe. Bad for you.
“Damn,” she says, then hails the bartender once again. He seems amused by her. She sips her drink, smokes her cigarette and for a while I think maybe she’s just passing through, that maybe she’ll leave me alone. No such luck. “Why are you sad?”
I glance at her. “Who said I’m sad?”
She shrugs. “No one had to say it. It’s obvious.”
I blink and look back to the mirror, see that my lips are pursed – I think I do that without even knowing I’m doing it.
“I know,” she baits. “A girl, right?”
Well, she’s a regular rocket scientist. Aren’t most men huddled alone at a bar with a “Do Not Disturb” vibe coming off them nursing a broken heart?
“Wow,” Bethany says, drawing on her cigarette. “She must’ve been something special to have you so bound up like that. Why don’t you tell me about her?”
Because I don’t want to…wait a minute, yes I do. I don’t know why I do, but I do nevertheless. So I spill all of the gory details, about Mae once upon a time only meaning sex, then meaning something more, then my being kicked to the curb when she found a lesbian lover.
The whole time, my new friend listens, sips her drink, crosses her legs patiently under her long, black skirt. Occasionally she nods her head, but she doesn’t really say a word and she doesn’t act like she’s bored. I can’t quite figure her out. She’s not like other women I’ve met in bars.
When I’m done telling my story, I feel drained, but not necessarily exposed or embarrassed. Strange.
“Wow, that sucks,” she says, snubbing out her cigarette in a glass ashtray.
I nod. “Yeah. And the last of my friends is leaving the state.” I stare despondently at the wooden counter top. “I’m alone.”
Bethany grins a knowing smile, which makes me shift uncomfortably in my seat. She orders another drink and we sit in silence for a long moment.
“It’s no fun to believe you’re alone,” she finally says. “Such an empty, lost feeling.”
“Exactly.”
“Especially after the relationship you wished for didn’t pan out.”
“Exactly.”
She draws in a breath. “So, what are you going to do?”
I scowl slightly. “How am I supposed to know?”
She looks surprised. “Well, if you don’t know, then who does?”
I stare blankly at her.
“You’re master of your own destiny,” she says, lighting another cigarette. Wonderful – more talk of destinies. “You have free will. You can do whatever you please.”
I snort. “Yeah, but what about the consequences?”
She laughs, a sound that is familiar but not quite. “Well, that’s where your better judgment comes in. Just because you’re free to do something, it doesn’t mean you should.”
I give her a one-sided smile, then I realize that I’ve been doing a lot of that. I’ve slept with women indiscriminately – single, married, barely legal, it didn’t matter. I even screwed Mae in an elevator when I knew she was committed to someone else. I know that Mae claims to be free and liberal in her beliefs, but I hypocritically did something against my own beliefs. And now I’m paying the consequences.
“You’re too hard on yourself,” Bethany says, blowing a stream of smoke over her head.
I snort. “How would you know?”
She shrugs her slim shoulders; she’s a tiny woman under all of those black, baggy clothes. “I just know. I can tell.”
Oh, Christ. Another one like Mae. I roll my eyes and look at my reflection again.
“You wanna know what I think?” she says.
Do I have a choice?
“I think that you’ve been blessed.”
I turn back to her, my brow furrowed. What a crazy bitch.
“You have,” she affirms happily, nodding her head.
“How do you figure?”
“Because you’ve had someone to love,” she says simply.
I blink, then sigh and turn away again. “And look how far it’s gotten me.” In a hole of a bar, talking to an obnoxious lunatic.
Bethany breathes a soft sigh. “One day you will see,” she offers quietly. “It’s far better –”
“To have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?” I interrupt, close to snapping at her. “I know that cliché.”
One corner of her mouth lifts upward, but she shakes her head. “No. I was going to say that it’s far better to have known what it was like to love, than to be loved in return. Being able to feel love is a precious gift.”
I look into my glass, trying to digest what she has said. Is it true? Am I a better man for feeling the things I have than if I’d also felt someone loved me in return? I’m not so sure.
Bethany digs in her purse again, pulls out a wallet. “My time’s almost up,” she says, rummaging for cash.
I look at her curiously. I’ve heard people say “I’ve gotta run” or “I’ve gotta go” but never “My time’s almost up.” She sounds like a shrink or something.
She plops a twenty dollar bill on the bar and starts to hop down from her stool. I raise an eyebrow – that’s quite a tip she’s leaving, for someone who dresses like a bag lady. As she hoists the humungous purse over her shoulder, she puts a hand on my arm and I feel a tingling there. Like static electricity, but not really.
“You hang in there, Michael,” she says with a twinkle in her eye. “Your path is before you, you just can’t see it yet.”
What an odd little woman. The door opens and a gawky man in a Cubs hat walks in.
“There’s my boyfriend,” Bethany says. “I have to go now. It’s been nice talking to you.”
With a smile and a whirl of fabric, she floats out the door. I can still feel the slight buzzing in my arm and it’s quite a unique sensation. Unnatural, really. There was something bizarre about that little woman, but I don’t really feel threatened by her. Spooky.
I start to lift my drink to my lips, but the glass slips out of my hand as I lose my grip. Looking into the mirror, I can see the surprise that is written on my face. She called me Michael.
And I never told her my name.
tbc
