Temperance - XIV

Section of a Novella from Tarot Blanco

The endless mind perhaps ergo rallies

A ninety-nine calls everyone.

The dark was lit up over asphalt on Kenmore Square in the great town of Boston on judgment day. I forget the year it was, it was some in the 1980s and there was a low number in it. It was October, so the Red Sox weren’t playing anymore but the leaves were just turning to the bright flashings that would light up the Celtic’s season. The Citgo sign lorded it over everyone – though some penny pincher tried to disassemble it from its height - with the old neon lights with the White Fuel Sign worshipping on the corners. It was the twilight glow and the whirly-gig had just made it deliriously night and the gushing tar on the sidewalk gripped your feet.

Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.

The streets were cold and I wrapped up my beige leather jacket and hurried down to the Rathskeller to survey the freshest of meat. I pushed my way through the door and was immediately in a different world of musky scents from the dollar aisle of the local pharmacy because they are was a gap to pilfer some raw perfume next to the ballpoint pens of the Republic of Bic. The aisle smelled of d’eau de polyester rug. The fog of the air was crude and brash with patchouli oil and underwear worn for two days.

Up 3 feet on the stage was a band that no one had heard of except their friends and they had mastered the second cord in their repertoire with it and were ready to roar. White t-shirts with coffee spilled because there were other things to pay attention to while waiting for 1999.

It was the thrum that made it punk. It was Saturday night and the people hear had no place to go, and I was the no place that called them with cups flowing afore the red wings. And heh, I was a false blonde with a shine. Road to the nowhere that called for a bright and shining lie.

Then I saw the face that I pined for – the mopey hair stilted up with a blender hair dryer looked. The face that said it had no place to go. It made a stir in my nether regions. So, I went to get a drink to make chemistry with a twisted roll. But then I shock my courage with the cheap gin. I left the glass on the bar with a wobble And targeted the buxom chubby girl who passed only vaguely as a woman.

With two giant steps saying ‘Mother may I,’ I was up in her face. “I don’t recognize you on the dance floor.”

She turned her face down. “I am only here because I am marginally attached to the band.” As in 5 minutes attached to the lips of the drummer until she knew he was more permanently occupied. Her red lips were the Hail Mary – she would wash his feet to get some to osculate after the French fashion. She would be perfectamundo and a half.

We were along the edge of the stage. I looked up and noticed the picture on the unused cymbal. It was hardly G-rated. I nudged. She sighed. After that, it was an easy tango to get her to place her denim jacket on her left shoulder and go out the in the out door.

We wandered along the Fenway side of Kenmore Square she was looking up into the Citgo sign and wondering why she had come down to the Rath when she knew that it was a hopeless rendition of the same old rejection. We walked around Kenmore Square and ate some Drunkin’ Dognuts and looked at the traffic going stop and go each one waiting patiently for the chance to go even though they didn’t know where they would stop.

Then I took my hand and pointed her face upwards into mine. “Remember, this is the last day or the first.”

She nodded though I had her in a grip. She looked up at the fourth story of the buildings there cold brick glowering into her eye while the soft cement tried to ease the pain.

Then I let my hand down and slept it into my pocket and produced a set of keys. “Wanna a ride?”

She shuffled her feet glancing over the pavement. “To where?”

Then nonchalantly high grabbed inside my leather jacket, and from the inside produced a packet of Camels, with no filter. And I offered the cigarette with one easily extended out to her.

And she took exactly the one that I had hoped for. People are so easily fooled. Then I pulled out a matchbook and struck a match. Then there was the long antici- pation of the smoke and soot and tar that suited the lungs and raced into her bloodstream. That moment when she was going to go down the rabbit hole and she did not even know it. She took several drags while we walked over to my little red Corvette, which was clearly damaged and repeatedly repaired. I went around to the passenger's side and opened up the door. And she slid in - and the lock was sealed on her fate - and I think she even knew that.

It was a cold run up the pavement through the townhouses which were built in the style of some time past - made for pictures in a coffee table book that no one read but everyone knew the name of. But then I turned and then turned again into a street labeled Alleyway 441. By this point, she was nodding under the narcotic that I had slipped into the cool Camel that she had almost finished. It was a drowsy kind of silence and I knew that her brain was spinning but very slowly. And so with her body loosely joined to her consciousness, I lugged her out of my car and behind the trash pile.

And then I reveled in how my little knife could blossom into orchids of red and I could feel that feeling that felt so warm as her life petered out of her body and went outward to that place where souls go. The stabs ended in plastic and deteriorated paper. I could smell the rotten stench of ketchup and soured milk.

But then I was sitting in the car, and I knew that this would be the last time because I knew that someday perhaps today they would follow me and find me and do the paraphernalia which they called justice but I knew was really just a chance to throw the spotlights on the twilight of the chords. That tune that the people hummed but wanted to get out of their heads.

So I got out a piece of paper and a Bic to write down all of the names of the people who I had entranced to go with me and not come back. Mommy, why does everyone have a bomb?

And so the knife had one more bloody end in that little red Corvette. My face was comic in a tragic kind of way, floating up through the void through the endless mind.

1999 that grips your feet to party.