12/8/12

Into the Flood Again
By Mike Pielaet-Strayer


It was 7 p.m. on a Monday, and I was in the violent last throes of a two-day hangover. I hadn’t showered; my hair was disheveled. A headache pulsed against the backs of my temples. I was wearing a necklace of love bites so savage it looked like I’d survived a lynching. I was hungover, stinking, and covered in somebody else’s musk, I was stoned, and the girl sitting across from me was glaring at me like I was some debauched, satanic apparition.
Her name was Joy.
We’d met the week before, on Hollywood Boulevard, on a hot howling Santa Anna night. Never trust those nights; the nights of the red wind; when your blood is up and pheromones seem to ooze from the tortured fronds of the swaying palm trees and every girl you meet feels like love and poison and danger all at once.
Joy was a red-head. Her green eyes glowered into mine from between her thin bangs of fiery hair with a combination of disgust and perverse attraction. Freckles were spattered atop the bridge of her nose, her cheeks. Her lips were drawn tight in a pink thin frown. Her jaws were set tightly, as if she was clenching her teeth—her whole face had a set, resigned look to it. Only her eyes seemed undecided. Green eyes. Lustful, hateful, green eyes.
“Who gave you those?”
I said nothing.
“Are you high?”
Again, I didn’t answer.
“You cheated on me.”
A simple declaration; it warranted no response. I’d known Joy the red-head not yet a week—for a mere four evenings of sweaty, frenzied fucking on the floor of her apartment, and then another two nights back at my place—and somehow she’d come under the impression that we were dating.
I burped, tasted vomit. Swallowed. Grimaced. Joy stared at me. Eyes wet and green, like dewy lilies. Pupils shivering in their baths of moss. Her hair framed her face, fell over her eyes, and I brushed aside a diaphanous wisp of it as if pushing away a tongue of gentle flame. She blinked wetly.
“Blake,” she said.
I kissed her.
“Blake.”
I kissed her. She kissed back. Exhaling sharply through her nostrils. Pressing her gums to my gums, wrestling her tongue with my tongue. Within minutes we were both naked and writhing on her couch, ruffling the cushions, together as one man and woman, her moaning and scratching, me thrusting away and trying not to puke. In an hour it was finished, and we lay snuggling in her bed—having migrated from the living room—and she was snoring softly and I was staring unseeing and sleepless at her ceiling, drawing patterns in the bumpy texture there like a child is wont to do with stars.
I could feel the hot, annoying weight of her hand draped across my chest; feel the pressure of each individual finger like skinny rolls of tingling lead. Her hand stuck to my chest, rose then fell with each of my breaths, as if the two had achieved some kind of organic symbiosis. I wanted to leave. I wanted to push that hand away and go home and go to sleep in my own bed. A choked snore escaped her mouth. As if to refute these thoughts.
You’re not going anywhere.
We lay, snuggling, and I stared at the ceiling—at the wan bar of light traversing its gnarled plains as the sun emerged over the cityscape to the east. I tried to sleep. I couldn’t sleep. And Joy was as content as could be, with me and her spooning in her perfume-reeking bed, sleeping without care, doubt, or regret. Why do I do this? I thought, yawning. She smiled faintly as she slept.
Why?
I yawned once more. Ever slowly, I drifted off into the empty realm of a dreamless sleep. As my eyes closed, a single thought went sputtering across my mind like a serrated tooth dragging:
This isn’t enough.
And then, suddenly, another—
What more is there?


***


I awoke the next afternoon and bid farewell to Joy for what I hoped was the last time. I told her I thought we should slow down; see other people; that even though I liked her, I wasn’t ready for a long-term relationship. Not entirely lies. She told me to burn in hell and slammed her door in my face. I stood there a moment, staring at the scratched and dented wood of her door, thinking. I shrugged. Oh well. It was for the best.
Joy lived at the Mayfair, on Wilcox and Yucca. I left her apartment and walked westward, walking into a crimson and gold streaked dusk. The palm trees were black in the twilight. Birds flapped soundlessly between the warbling rays of sun. The sun pulsed and throbbed like a thing breathing and it descended slowly before me into a bloody holocaust of carbon-polluted clouds and smog like the eye of some unimaginable demon returning home or fleeing the sky. I turned left, onto Sunset Boulevard. The sky darkened. Cars sped past me in incandescent streams. I milled between the waves of people, walking aimlessly. Adrift in thought. It was strange; to be surrounded by so much life, to feel so lonesome. The lights of the city illuminated around me. Streetlamps burned. I felt tired, felt like I was stumbling through a dream. As if I’d fallen asleep and wasn’t yet aware of it. Pretty faces loomed at me now and again from out of the ambiguous, shifting crowds of people—a blonde biting her lip; a smiling brunette. I ignored them and walked on. I was beset by the women of my life. They were all around, constantly, attacking me with the subtle rapaciousness of ocean waves at bird-shit covered boulders. Every woman had something about her I could fall in love with; something beautiful, unique. But, no matter the girl, no matter how charming or pretty, in the end I just wanted her to get out of my bed and leave me alone so I could fall asleep, and she would leave (pissed off) and I would lie, naked and dissatisfied, pondering another road not taken, another lifeline missed.
I came across a Coffee Bean and went inside. I was exhausted, cranky, and didn’t feel like going back to my apartment—my apartment, my empty bed, stinking of day-old whiskey and shame, unkempt, with sheets tangled and stained. I went inside, and the saccharine aromas of roasting coffee, vanilla, and cinnamon washed over me. Eddies of smooth jazz music murmured through the place in low, intersecting rivulets. I surveyed the room. Mostly empty. A businessman shouting into a Bluetooth. A happy couple leaning over a stroller. I walked to the counter, to the chunky smiling barista waiting behind it. Then, a flash of beauty caught my eye like the glimmer of a lure in a pond and like a gullible fish I immediately changed directions.
She was reading in a dim lit corner, alone. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and she was sipping on a mug of steaming tea and she was reading A Light in August by William Faulkner, reading and smirking to herself as if she and the book were the only things in all creation. In a dainty kind of movement, she turned the page. I could almost hear the paper crinkle in its well-worn binding. I approached her, dazed. Spellbound. She seemed to glow, even in the murk of her corner. My feet shuffled along as if of their own accord. My heart beat faster and faster with each footfall; my stomach clenched and unclenched, writhing emptily as I neared.
Closer.
What are you going to say?
Closer.
It doesn’t matter, say something, anything…
Closer.
Hardly a yard away now, she sat. Reading A Light in August and grinning as she read and drinking tea. I cleared my throat. She glanced up quickly from her book; she flicked her eyes over my body—messy-haired-head to worn-shoe-clad-toe; she returned to the book without uttering so much as a single syllable, back to the tribulations of Jefferson, Mississippi. She sat there reading, grinning no more, pretending to ignore my presence.
The silence thickened, amassed, threatened to burst.
Say something, idiot!
“I think that’s one of his best.”
“I doubt you’ve read it,” she replied.
I sat down, next to her. “What makes you say that?” I said.
“You don’t look like the type who’d read such things—there’s no pictures in it.”
For a moment, I was too surprised to speak. Then:
“With all due respect Barbie,” I said, “neither do you. To be honest, I thought you were faking it.”
She set the book open-faced on the table. For the first time, she looked at me; really looked at me. Her eyes were the cobalt blue of a deep ocean. They were beautiful, hypnotizing, and they gleamed with anger.
“Asshole!” she said. A faint flush tinted pink her cheeks. Her nostrils flared. “What do you know?”
“I know that you started it, I was just trying to be friendly.” I smiled, innocently. “And I know Joe Christmas’s life story front to back.”
Her resolve weakened then; I saw it happen. Her gaze softened; her jaw relaxed. Her eyes widened, widening into great blue halos of disbelief. In an instant she went from being annoyed and defensive to repentant and mildly interested.
“So you have read it…” she said.
“That and others.”
“What’s your favorite?” Her blue eyes fluttered in their sockets. Her eyebrows arched. A tiny smirk appeared between her lips.
“Sanctuary, I think,” I said.
She giggled. “It would be,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She laughed. “Never mind,” she said. “I’m Corissa.” She held out a small and milk-colored hand. Her fingernails were trimmed, unpainted. “I think I owe you an apology…”
“Blake,” I said, taking her hand in mine.
“No apology necessary, Corissa,” I said, smiling, smiling and thinking: It’s not often I get practical use out of those books… wow… Thank you Bill, thank you, I owe you one…

We spent the next hour discussing William Faulkner, literature, life. Before I knew what was what I was enmeshed in a conversation with the girl, this strange beauty, as if we two had been friends for years. We drank coffee and tea and we talked and laughed and time raced by on sex-laced roller-skates. I found myself genuinely interested in what Corissa was talking about—I wasn’t just nodding and thinking about something else, listless and apathetic, as what was said passed between my eardrums as transient as smoke. This girl was different. She wasn’t like the other silicone simpletons who plagued my life. She was smart, beautiful, charming. I could actually converse with her. Watching her, though, I couldn’t help but ask myself: Which of us will fuck it up… me or her? Knowing the inevitable, I considered leaving. Just giving up and going home. The hours slid into one another; the coffee house emptied. We talked and the Coffee Bean emptied and eventually only Corissa and I remained, talking and laughing and ignoring the impatient groans of the barista.
I invited Corissa to my house for a drink and she gathered up her belongings—a purse, the book, a cellphone—and we walked out of the Coffee Bean and into a warm, throbbing night. The air was warm and churning hotly, as if the breaths of some colossal dragon. We walked down Sunset hand in hand, talking, laughing, bracing one another against the sudden hot gusts of wind, electricity tingling between us, hormones radiating, the fronds of the palm trees flailing violently, like they were trying to speak and couldn’t find the words.

I lived a few blocks away, on Sunset, on the second story of McMannon’s Bar and Grill. As we approached, the rhythmic beat of music greeted us—even before we could see the building. McMannon’s was big and orange, and the parking lot was full of drunken people ambling about. Music blasted from the batwing doors and the sounds of revelry and girls shouting and men shouting, of glasses breaking and things spilling and the inarticulate mob voice of inebriation. We went around back, to the staircase there, and went up and went inside. Music shuddered up through the floor. You could feel it in the soles of your feet. There were empty beer cans everywhere. Holes in the walls. Holes in the ceiling. Corissa regarded her decrepit surroundings, my home, shocked and befuddled.
“You live here?” she asked.
“Sure do,” I said.
“But how?”
“Human beings have a remarkable ability to adapt,” I said. “Now how about that drink?”
I led her to my room and we drank. Me and Corissa. Her blue, blue eyes gazing into mine. My heart thudding madly. In a kind of drip-by-drip progression, we inched nearer and nearer to one another. Laughing. And then not laughing; only breathing. A moment that felt like eternity. Then…
We kissed.
We kissed and our clothes came off garment after garment and we were naked and rolling atop the tangled mess of my sheets. Kissing. As if we would never kiss again. Like we were trying to melt together. I tore off her panties and threw them and they landed on my doorknob and hung and seemed to watch with their own sort of curious sentience before losing their grip and falling to the floor.

The pale sky of a predawn seethed through my window pane and fell in a glowing rectangle over my carpet. The music from the bar downstairs had been turned off; it would begin anew shortly. Corissa and I lay cuddling in my bed, sweat drying on our skin. My heart walloping a tattoo inside my chest. Corissa sleeping. All quiet, but for the occasional screech of a passing truck. It was then as we lay, waiting for morning, sticky and stinking and hugging, naked and tousled, that something very strange occurred to me.
I didn’t want this girl to leave.
I almost couldn’t believe it, but it was the truth. It blared in my mind as if being projected from one of the speakers downstairs. I didn’t want Corissa to go; I wanted her to stay. For the first time in a very long time, I felt fulfilled. The swirling black chaos of my life made a little more sense. How odd, I thought. How wonderfully odd…
The smell of her perfume filled my nostrils. Her warmth draped over me like the world’s most perfect blanket. The sun rose, and Corissa with it. She awoke with lust in her eyes and biting her lips she kissed me and then kissed me and we had sex bathed in a mote of early light golden and dusty. When it was over we lay again, intertwined and panting. She stared at me. I stared at her. I could see my reflection, hazy, muddled, in her eyes. I stared at myself, at myself in her eyes. I spoke. She blinked and turned away and my reflection vanished.
“What did you say?” she asked.
I sat up. “I think I like you,” I repeated.
She watched me silently for some time. The silence stiffened. Like a crouched predator.
“You like me?” she asked, at length.
“I think so,” I said. “I mean, I don’t just want this to be our relationship.”
“Our relationship?”
“Well, yes, I mean, you know, fuck I don’t know…”
“Oh Blake,” she said. She flopped out of bed and started putting on her clothes.
“Where are you going?” I asked, panicking. “You don’t have to go yet.”
“Yes,” she said, dressing. “Listen,” she went on, sitting next to me, now fully clothed, “listen, I just got out of a relationship and I’m not looking for anything serious right now.”
“But—’’
“No, I like you, but I’m not ready for that kind of a commitment. I’m sorry.” She bent and kissed me and I couldn’t speak and then she stood and left. “Goodbye, Blake,” she called, and there came the sound of my front door opening, closing.
Silence.
And I was alone. I lay there, alone, stunned. Thinking. The smell of her perfume lingered, clinging to my sheets like a stubborn ghost. I lay there utterly alone and thinking, longing for a drink, alone and pondering the inevitability of karmic justice, the universe, women, thinking about semen-soaked reveries, loneliness.
I got out of bed naked and poured myself a drink. Two fingers of cheap whiskey. Old Gran’ Dad. I slugged it down and it bubbled in my stomach. Then the music turned on downstairs and there came a knock at my door.
“One second,” I rasped, guzzling whiskey. I wiped my mouth and opened my door, wondering who I’d find; hoping it was Corissa, back with a change of heart.
It was Joy. I stood there naked and drunk, staring at her.
“Blake,” she said.
“What are you doing here?”
Her eyes quivered between the strands of her red hair. “Blake, she said. “Blake I want to talk to you. Can I come in? Please?”
I stood, blocking the doorway. Joy watched me.
“Fine,” I said, finally, to no one in particular. Perhaps to myself. “Fine,” I said again. “Come in.”
I stood aside and Joy brushed past me and I closed my eyes and breathed in and out and then I closed the door and turned to join Joy in bed. Beneath us, the music thumped, pulsed, unceasing, and it seemed like it would never stop.


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I am a young writer from California, and my work has appeared in Edge Literary Review, Fantasy Short Stories, and the anthology of flash fiction, Tahoe Blues.