by Karen Berry
He’s on Burnside, heading downtown in what locals call a ‘wet rain.’ Like the Inuit with their many words for snow, Portlanders have a taxonomy of precipitation. A wet rain brings out umbrellas in a city known for scorning them.
His car, an ultra-low-emission vehicle that sits so low to the ground that it would have trouble clearing a pack of cigarettes, throws up a spray. A defenseless woman waiting on the corner steps back, her face contracting into a rictus of disbelief. He shrugs in apology, but it’s December in Portland. What can he do? Stop the weather?
His body comes to a state of preternatural alertness as he nears Ringler’s Pub. He slows to a creep (appropriate, what’s left of his self-respect reminds him), eyes turned to the establishment’s many windows. He peers in at the wood booths, old signs, mismatched lamps and artifacts from Malaysian temples that somehow tie the place together. The effect is one of coziness, despite the 20-foot ceilings.
He’s firm with himself. He’s set some limits. Thursday is the only day of the week he lets himself drive past Ringler’s to look in the windows. If he commits this stalkerish act on Thursdays only, it’s not quite as pathetic as it would be any other night of the week. Audrey knits with friends at a yarn shop on Hawthorne every Thursday evening, so at least he won’t look in and see her.
Except, yes, that’s actually her standing by the booth, taking off her jacket. Her long arms, her slight dowager’s hump, her sweetly sloping hips. His mind swiftly removes the rest of her clothes before he’s even looked at her face to see how fatigue pulls at the sides of her mouth and hoods her eyes. She bends a little from the waist to finger comb her damp hair that falls in wavy, taffy-colored clumps. He remembers that hair sweeping the hairy mound of his belly and moans.
Someone behind gives a tiny tap on the horn, the Portland version of a honk. He starts rolling.
At the next intersection Jeff turns right, then right, and right again. How long can it take to drive three city blocks? He tells himself to stop, enough, calm down. Besides, with her hair that wet, she must have just arrived. She’s not going anywhere.
But she could have gone to the bathroom. She might have walked over to the jukebox, though as far as he knows she’s never used the jukebox, but who knows? Anything might take her out of his line of sight.
When he’s finally made it back to where he started, she’s comfortably seated, wrapping a scarf around her shoulders. She sits in their booth. The booth where they sat on their very first date. The booth he’s been driving past every Thursday night for six months.
His urge is to slam on the brakes, get out of the car and run inside. But he drives down the block. Again. Turns right. Again. And there it is on the west side of the building, an appealing gap like a missing tooth in a kindergartner’s smile. A parking space.
He angles the Honda in with precision and places a long hand over his hammering heart. Thursday after Thursday of driving past that window, and there she is. It’s pain, but pain is something. He’s grateful for it.
A deep breath.
He clambers up and out of his Honda and stands on the sidewalk. Beside him, an old bicycle leans against a light pole. It’s painted a matte white, the spokes threaded with ribbons and dirty sprays of artificial flowers, the seat and crossbar crammed with notes, beads, even a book or two. This is a Ghost Bike, a memorial to a bicyclist killed earlier in the fall. Do other cities have these? He has no idea.
He turns up his collar. Rain spatters his bare head, confirming the hair loss he still can’t seem to see when he looks in the mirror. His hands shake, so he shoves his fists deep in the pockets of his slacks. He feels like someone who’s been left out in the weather for a long, long time, a man who has learned to live without shelter.
Across the intersection, the windows of Everyday Music offer an alternative to Ringler’s; a glowing tableau of younger people in pea coats and down vests poring over old vinyl.
~
In the music store, fluorescent light pours down mercilessly from a warehouse-height ceiling. Behind the counter, two bored young men avoid eye contact, putting more effort into ignoring customers than any other aspect of their employment. He is old to them, he understands that, but he’s likely to have some money in his wallet. Shouldn’t that earn at least a passing acknowledgement?
He watches someone approach the counter with a copy of “Whipped Cream and Other Delights” by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. One of the clerks displays a little animation. “Oh, this one is GREAT!” He remembers wishing he could paper his room with that record’s cover when he was in grade school.
The temptation to linger in the vinyl room is strong, but Jeff has left vinyl behind, unlike so many of his generation who contend its infinite superiority to digital. He remembers warping, scratching and skipping. So he makes his way through the first cavernous section into the CD room. He takes up position away from the window and starts thumbing through a bunch of music he already owns. Across the street, in the warm light of Ringler’s, nestled in the safety of their booth, he can watch Audrey talking to the server.
She likes the server, he can tell by the relaxed way she sits, leaning back, shaking her head. Laughing. Of course, she seems to like everyone. He puts his hands on a rack of CDs to steady himself. When did he last eat? Lunch, a sandwich he’d brought from home, eaten at his desk, barely tasted.
“Are you okay?” A small girl stands next to him. She’s dressed in a black skirt, striped stockings, and big white shoes that remind him of Peewee Herman. She has on several t-shirts, the outermost of which bears an anarchy symbol. Her features are sweetly blunt, like those of a koala bear. “Hey. You look kind of pale.”
“So do you.”
She smiles. Her face is painted white, her eyes ringed in black. She’s painted a rosebud mouth over her whitened lips. The effect is very Clara Bow/Manga. “Can I, um, help you find anything? Since I work here and all.”
He shakes his head. “No, I’m okay.”
“Oh come on. It’s like, stupid slow here tonight. Let me help you find something.”
He smiles politely, wondering if he can just spit it out, tell her that he’s there to spy on an ex-girlfriend. It’s pointless and embarrassing but he’s committing this act and he can’t stop. “I’m afraid you can’t help me. Unless there’s a section of music that will help me understand women?”
“Are you serious?” She looks excited. “How old of a woman? Not like, my age, right?”
“No, not your age. More like in her forties.”
Her face betrays her relief. “Is she like, okay with being in her forties, or is she one of those older women who tries to be younger?”
He has to think about this one for a minute. “She’s at ease with her age, I think.”
“Okay. Though personally I don’t see how anyone can be at ease with being forty, but whatever you say.” And she laughs. She leads him to a rack, flips through. “Here’s one my mom lives by. She says it’s the soundtrack to every woman’s life. There’s one song on there, ‘School Night,’ that Mom and her friends seem to think is really meaningful. So if you listen to that one, maybe read along with the lyrics, it will help you.”
“Help me?”
She raises her eyebrows. “You said you wanted to understand women?”
He looks down at the gold cover, two lower case “r”s back to back. “Well. It couldn’t hurt to try.”
“Great. I’ll ring you up.”
He casts one last look over his shoulder at Audrey before he lets himself be led to the register. He’d wanted a place to spy, not a CD, but here he is, bluff called, liberating money from his pockets.
Since he has some cash, the transaction is swiftly accomplished. He’s been unable to look out the window while the clerk has been helping/humoring/insulting him. Could Audrey have left yet? But when he reaches the door and looks across the street, Audrey is still there. Still washed in the glow of the lamp next to the booth, still alone in the booth where they had their first drink together.
He has a vision of her staying there. Always. Living in that booth. He wants to stare at her until she summons him back from this terrible place he’s been for the last five months, three weeks, two days and sixteen hours. All he needs, he thinks, is to be seen by her. That will bring him back to life.
She doesn’t see him.
~
“I was across the street.” He holds up the plastic bag, a reasonable explanation for his presence. “I looked over here and saw you. So I thought…”
“Oh my gosh!” Her smile. “I was just thinking about you!”
“Likely story.”
“I was! Well sit down!” He sits. On command. If he were a dog, his tail would be wagging. She seems happy to see him. “I can’t believe it’s you. Isn’t this the booth we sat in on our first date?”
“Could be.” He peers around as if situating himself. “Now that you mention it, I think it is.” Under the table, his hands clutch at the plastic bag desperately. “Still at…” There’s a pause while he reaches for the name of one company, afraid that he’ll accidentally latch on to another. But she interrupts before he can get it wrong.
“Yes, still there. I never change jobs. And you?”
He nods. Of course he’s still at the same place. “I’m still there. You know. It…”
“…pays the bills,” she finishes for him, as if she can’t bear waiting to hear him utter the phrase he no doubt uttered a hundred times in their year together, trying to explain why he stays at a job he dislikes. He remembers now, she doesn’t like it when people repeat themselves. But she’s still smiling. “I’ll buy you a drink. Where’s that waiter? They’re always so slow here.”
Her eyes move from table to table, person to person. He’d somehow forgotten this in the last six months. He’d forgotten her restless eyes tracking whoever walked by, leaving the impression that he was not quite interesting enough to hold her attention. It’s a facet of her behavior that his mind has conveniently polished away.
He clears his throat. “I thought you were knitting on Thursdays?”
She emits a little scoff. “No more knitting. I sold my entire yarn stash. I got about a fifth of what I paid for it all, but at least it’s out of the spare room.” She sounds a little bitter. He wonders if she’s had some kind of traumatic crafting experience. She changed her mind often. He remembers that, now.
He smiles, but she’s distracted by a young man lurching toward their table. He’s white, with a fine head of dreadlocks. Stumbling under the weight of his backpack, wearing shorts and Keens in the winter, he’s an assemblage of so many Portland clichés that Jeff feels embarrassed for him. He smells of sweat, rain and cheap beer, and looks at Audrey just a beat too long as he maneuvers past on his very drunken way to the bar, where he makes a little noise to the bartender, trying to get served, even though it’s clear he’s too drunk.
Audrey turns back to him with a determined smile. “So how’s your mom?”
“She’s fine. Still bowling.” She’d found his mother’s bowling league hilarious, and enjoyed going to the alley to watch the ladies in their colorful shoes taking engraved balls from their cases. “Shall I tell her you say hello?”
She sips her beer. “Sure. But doesn’t she dislike me?”
“Of course not,” he sputters. Well, maybe. His mother remembers her as that selfish girl you dated, oh what was her name. But he doesn’t think of Audrey as selfish, not really. He understands how careless you can be when you hold the upper hand, because you’re the more beloved. He knows because he’s been more beloved in most of his relationships.
It wasn’t that way with Audrey. The reversal baffled him, left him struggling in a wake of unmet expectations as she churned out of the harbor and on with her own business, her eyes restlessly scanning the horizon.
Her eyes scan the room while she’s sipping her drink and waiting for him to say something interesting. She turns her restless eyes to a couple sitting at the bar by the pool tables. The color in the young man’s cheeks is high and fresh. The girl smiles, her mouth opening to show tiny, regular teeth. The young man leans down and applies his mouth to hers in a thorough, determined kiss.
All so urgent. It had been the same for them. They weren’t young when they met, but they’d still burned with urgency, they’d sat in booths or stood by her car, kissing passionately, desire an engulfing furnace. Could he make her remember? Sweep her into his arms and watch the color rise across her cheekbones?
She takes a sip of tea.
He takes a sip of water.
“How’s your dad?”
She shakes her head.
“So, bad?”
She just shakes her head again. He doesn’t push it. He never knew what she wanted from him, ever, but he knows she doesn’t want to talk about her father’s poor health so he leaves it alone.
They slide into less meaningful conversation. Local politics. She’s not really invested in the City Council doings, but she’s murmuring assent, obviously distracted. She was much more engaged in his memory, wasn’t she? Her hair has dried in an unattractive rockabilly-looking swirl over her forehead, and she didn’t used to have so many crow’s feet by her eyes, did she?
He realizes that he’s disappointed.
They are discussing the death of the bus mall when the young man with the dreadlocks wanders past on his way out. Audrey watches the drunk kid as he stands at the bike rack and tries to puzzle out the intricacies of a lock. He can barely stand, the streetlight shining down on him where he stands next to the Ghost Bike, luminous in the headlights of passing cars.
“Oh my god,” Audrey moans. “He’s going to ride his bike in that state.”
For once, he knows what she wants from him.
~
“Dude, listen. I’m not that drunk. Can I have my bike?” The young man is wet and confused and drunk. There is a whiff of truculence, the possibility of resistance.
But Jeff won’t let go of the handlebars. “It’s a bad idea for you to ride right now.”
“Dude, I understand,” the kid slurs, shaking the matted ropes of his hair. “But I ride everywhere. I’ll be fine. I just want to go home. I won’t go anywhere else, I swear. I just want to go home.”
It’s raining, the wet rain of Portland in December. Rain washes Jeff’s forehead, runs down the back of his neck. He inclines his head to the corner. The ghost bike shines, festooned and chalky under the streetlight. “We don’t need any more of these.”
The kid studies the ghost bike for a moment, weighing the evidence of his impaired senses. There it is, with its bunch of sodden artificial pansies, a rolled and swollen copy of On the Road, a pack of Camel straights that’s been ripped open and partially looted. It’s ghastly and beautiful.
“Okay. I’ll walk my bike home. Really. I won’t get on it. It’s just a few blocks from here.”
Jeff considers this idea while he inspects the ghost bike, draped with Mardi Gras beads, surrounded by empty beer bottles, notes and signs, plastic daisies. The white frame is almost invisible under the weight of all these offerings. It’s tragic and necessary like the roadside crosses in Mexico. Losses must be marked, but it’s more than a marker. It’s a warning.
He wants to kick away all that memorial detritus. Free that bike from the weight of the past, climb astride and pilot it away from this gloomy, sodden street corner, riding it fast into a future where it’s more than a grisly marker. He wants to bring that bike back to life.
The young man staggers, sways, stays upright only by grasping the handlebars. “Whoa,” he says. “I’m drunk, dude.” He’s surprised.
“I’ll help.” One last glance at Audrey where she sits in the booth, warm and watching. She waves. He waves back. He takes the Music Millenium bag from his coat pocket and hangs it on the handlebars of the ghost bike. The boy takes one handlebar, Jeff takes the other. “Let’s go.”
They walk on in the wet rain, sharing the weight between them.
Karen G. Berry lives in Portland, Oregon. She is interested in micro-societies and the heroic nature of everyday living. Karen’s work has been published by Inknest, The Offing, Herstory, Flash Fiction, Rust & Moth, The Gilded Weathervane, Hot Pot, Ekphrastic Review, and many other journals and anthologies. Learn more about Karen at her blog, I am Not a Pie.
