37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI7X2EMNAm6
It’s the same dream every time. I am walking through a dark hallway. It must be, because I can move forward and back but there are walls on either side of me. The darkness is complete until the click of a switch spills light from under a door. I hold my breath for a second, waiting, before cautiously releasing it. But then… click, click, click. Light gusts from the bottoms of doors on my right. On my left. And I know now what this is, in that felt-way that only dreams have. The way that a place can appear nothing like it does in waking, but you know where you are just the same. I am in my own head.
On the other sides of these doors, I can feel the hidden things that wait there. I know I’ve put them there, but I can’t remember doing it. The hallway echoes with the sound of me slamming each door shut. Each other-side harbors things that I can’t contend with. They all run together in my mind, jumbled in the remembering, but still inked in their specificity. Each of the door’s light scares me in its own way and I know that I can’t let any of them touch me. I walk heel to toe in the space between the slivers of rectangular light creeping out from under the doors. But then the light on the other side of one of the doors swells, illuminating my left foot…
I sit up in bed my hand clutching the front of my night shirt. When I look around, I see that I am here. Not there. Here. The knowledge does little to loosen the vines criss-crossing my chest. Tears course down my cheeks long after the feeling loses its edges. And even as a logical part of me begins to wonder what could be so scary about the doors, the light, my body knows that it doesn’t matter. It knows that it doesn’t have to make sense. The threat is real and even in consciousness, there is no escaping it. It’s within me. It’s made me.
I read a thing, once, about time travel, and it said that if we could travel faster than the speed of light we could go back in time, and I remember thinking, is that all that the past is? Light? It seems like there should be more to it. The first time I ever had the dream about the doors and their light, I woke up knowing that I was right and wrong. The past isn’t only light, but it’s light is enough. Enough to take you back. Enough to ruin now. And that, that’s what life and everything else is. Not spectacular. Not bursting. Not what you thought it would be. Just, enough.
37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfsNS4I6vlE
I slide the dead bolt closed, resting my cheek against the door’s smooth surface for a moment. Even with the calm that comes with being on this side of the door, I can still the feel menacing whip of the Santa Ana winds against my skin. They do for me what they do for everything else they touch; push and push until everything is on fire. I feel restless and over-stimulated and I can’t tell if the dryness in my throat is from the flames ravaging the dry California hills or from the ones raging in my chest.
I think back to earlier tonight, when I was talking to the man. The sunset itself seemed to be ablaze, glowing red and casting an eerie pink light over everything it touched. The wind shook the leaves in the trees, filling the park with an agitated rustle. The kind that you only notice when it stops. The first leaves of autumn littered the ground, and they crunched under the man’s saddle tan, leather boots as he rounded the bend in the path. My eye traveled from his shoes, up the lean line of his body, in its rich blue suit, to the contradiction that was his face. Though it looked chiseled and angular from a distance, even attractive, as he neared, it became clear that it was not. The angles became too sharp, and a distinctive asymmetry revealed itself. One blue eye bigger than the other. The tell-tale slant of a nose broken a few too many times and one side of his face protruded the slightest bit where the other dipped. But it wasn’t these things, necessarily, that were off-putting. It was his awareness of them. The defense they evoked in his eyes that was, at once, a fortress and a plea.
I wore a full face of makeup as I always do in public. Ten years was probably enough time for my face to have faded from public consciousness, but I still wear a heavy smokey eye to augment the look of them. It’s not the warm brown of them that’s distinct but the three delicate freckles arranged in a crescent around the outer corner of my left that the makeup conceals. It took me three applications to get it right and me eye skin stings from scrubbing the mascara and liquid liner off three times in an hour . It had to be perfect, though. Much deliberation also went into selecting the high waisted, nautical style, belted shorts and the floaty, scoop-necked tank that I tucked into it. I wanted to look care-free and natural, bordering on confident. My demeanor made it all but impossible to embody a state even confidence adjacent, as I crossed my arms tightly across my cheste to stay the quiver in my hands.
I looked away from the man when our eyes met. I’m sure he thought this was for the same reason that his subordinates did so. To avoid being seen too clearly by him. Fearful his light eyes might find fault. But for me it was the opposite. I didn’t want to see him too clearly. To truly understand the kind of person I was dealing with. The kind of person I was lining the pockets of. I wanted him and this and what came next to pass through me like a winter freeze in Colorado. Forgotten as soon as it thawed.
Up until now I had been working solo for ten years living off the proceeds of one to two sales a year. I picked the item, and the purchasers came to it. I had never been tasked with a specific procurement as was the case with the man, though. His wasn’t the first offer for collaboration, but it was the first I couldn’t pass up.
“Nice to finally meet you,” he said in a smooth baritone. “I’m sure you understand the necessity for this kind of business to be done in person? No virtual trail when it comes to the specifics?” He paused for a moment waiting for more of a response. When it didn’t come, he said, “right then, shall we?” His arm extended toward the path we stood astride, inviting me to walk with him. I nodded in ascent, keeping up easily with his long, purposeful gate. “I sought your help in this endeavor for your discretion. I’m pleased to find that you are so beautiful.” He paused here and I stared straight ahead despite feeling his eyes boring into my temple. “If anyone had ever seen you in the flesh,” he continued, “that detail surely would have been amongst the few things known about you, but it wasn’t, so I know that you are as exclusive as your mythology would lead me to believe.” I again nodded. My tongue began to ache between my teeth where I held it, preventing the nervous twitch in my jaw I knew could be seen by onlookers if I allowed my tongue to obsessively slide over the backs of my teeth, counting each again and again.
“This is a rather large payout as I have communicated with you previously. I haven’t the slightest idea how you work, so I’m not going to give you any direction on the how. Whatever that may be is irrelevant, as long as the item is procured,” he’d said.
I nodded.
“I understand that all you need from me is an address, and the items description, yes?”
Another nod from me.
“There will be travel required for this job,” he’d informed me. I already knew this. I never undertake anything I don’t have every detail on going in, but he didn’t know that. Didn’t know all the back doors in his computer’s cyber security that I had easily slipped through.
A nod.
“The address is 275 Feather Lane, Aspen Colorado 81611. The item will be in a small, red, velvet box; like a jewelry box. It will be hidden and under lock and key. That is all you need to know. It’s probably best that you don’t know what’s inside. Plausible deniability and all.”
Nod.
“Don’t say much, do you?”
I turn my head toward him, meeting his dominating gaze with a blank stare.
“A man might start to think that you have something to hide acting like that,” he says with a smile limited to the curvature of his mouth. My blank stare goes on without interruption.
“Ok,” he says casually, like he didn’t just threaten me, “and you’ll meet me at the Santa Monica Pier Friday August 20th at noon. I’ll get the artifact, you’ll get the payment you were promised. Two million American dollars. One million now. It will be deposited into your account at the conclusion of this meeting, the other million upon receipt.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Okay, then. You won’t be able to contact me again until the exchange.”
I Nod.
“Well, then, this is goodbye.”
He stared at me a moment, a smile quirking the corner of his mouth as he tried to awkward-silence me into speaking. I didn’t. I reached my hand out to him for a handshake and, taking it in his, he brought it to his lips. A chill went up my spine feeling their damp warmth against my skin and the prick of goosebumps traveling my limbs. The man took note of them creeping down my arm, and his lips lingered a moment watching their rapid migration toward my wrist. He stepped away with a satisfied grin bowing shallowly before turning to swagger away in the opposite direction. I waited until he was out of sight before loosing my tongue to rampage around my mouth. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. The shake in my hands I’d managed to keep at bay consumed them in the man’s absence and the nails of my thumbs began to methodically move over the knuckles of each of my fingers counting and recounting them. Then I use the pads of them to press the skin away from each nail bed, inner, outer and top, in turn. Then counting again, then pressing again then counting until I got home.
Now that I’m home with a door between myself and everything else, the shaking leaves me. I knew I’d be on edge. Interacting with another human, in person, alone is enough to put me there, but that’s not the whole of it. That man. This job. There’s something about it all. A lot of somethings, that stir up all kinds of dangerous things inside me. Memory. Desire. Anticipation. It’s my biggest job. It’s my last job. And it’s the first time I’ll be back in Colorado, since this all started.
I can feel the press of it all in my temples. The way my head feels full of static and cement at the same time. I just need it to stop. I go into the bedroom to change into shorts and a white T, then return to the living room to sit on the couch. My eyes close and my fingers find the familiar smoothness of frayed fiber on the left arm where some cat also went to relieve itself of the anxiety of existing.
I found the couch that way; pre-loved; pre-mutilated, in the alley behind the apartment complex when I moved in here. It’s maximalist floral print and shredded left arm weren’t exactly appealing, but I had used all my money for the deposit on the apartment and a computer. I’d stood there, in the aley, looking at the couch, trying to figure how I’d get it upstairs. I was about to go ask the front desk for a dolly when a guy named Dave came out for a smoke. He offered to help me move it and after not accepting his offer several times, I did, just so he’d stop talking. He called me a bitch after I declined repaying his selfless act with an invitation in. He said, “I was just trying to be a nice guy! I don’t know why I even try. It never pays off. Especially with ungrateful bitches like you.” He stared at me, waiting for the insult to land. He didn’t know it would take so much more than that to get a reaction out of me, like dropping an atomic bomb directly on my head.
The couch matches nothing else in the apartment but that matters little given that nothing in the space matches this century much less one another. It was all similarly and haphazardly acquired. The peeling desk and lopsided chair from the same alley, the singular plate, bowl, knife, fork and spoon pilfered from an estate sale in Venice Beach. I only needed one of each, after all, and then they could still sell the set. No harm no foul.
It was all so very dated in 2008 when I acquired it, but now 15 years on, it might actually be fashionable. It would be a look if it were intentional, but it’s not so it’s mostly just sad. How it looked was just about the furthest thing from my mind back then. I just needed something for now. Just, for now. I didn’t know that for now can be an eternal state if done with the right amount of immobilizing fear and self-doubt. I didn’t know I could be stuck there for so long, waiting, until-ing.
The only things that are nice in this place is the tech. The TV, my computer and the state-of-the-art home gym in the second bedroom. I slump onto the couch digging in the cushions, looking for the remote . The TV’s flat, dead black dissolves into menu. I flick through the options of viewing. Toxic Romance, No. Medieval bullshit made by men that wish the standard for being a good guy still allowed one to beat up their wife, No. How to make your house look new even though this low-quality shit’s going to fall apart in six months, No. Then I select what I knew I would the whole time. Majik.
Resume Season 5: E1? the screen asks. I respond affirmatively but my eyes roll, immediately when the scene opens with stupid-ass Dakota talking to Willa about her blooming relationship with Malique, the main character of the show. I roll my eyes because everyone knows Malique’s true love was Talyah, whom he had to kill at the end of season three because, as happens with dark wielders, the darkness over-took her. Every love interest of his beyond that point gets exponentially stupider. Season five is a solid 2.5 relationships post- Talyah and well on its way to unbelievability. The later seasons aren’t without their redeeming qualities, though, the most important being that Medi Dar, who plays Malique, gets exponentially hotter with every season.
I fast forward through Dakota and Willa agonizing over whether or not it means that Malique likes Dakota, that he keeps showing up at the Wiccan store when she’s working.
I press play when the façade of Malique’s stucco, Spanish-revival style home fills the screen. The scene opens on Malique’s exposed back as he searches for something in a drawer. His dark skin is covered in the sheen of shower water and the warm light of the room dances on the slight flexion and relaxation of muscle. Broad defined shoulders descend to a compact waste line encircled by a towel just below his lower back dimples. A sound makes him turn his head to the side as his body tenses. The profile of his face reveals the straight of his nose with a delicate hoop in the flair of his right nostril and the bountiful rounds and valleys of his lips. The lines of a manicured beard frame high cheek bones and melts seamlessly into a skin fade at his sideburns.
The magnitude of his tall frame comes into focus when the angle pans wide, sinew lacing his limbs and the swell of muscle characterizing every visible inch. I take my first full breath since getting home and my body becomes liquid. Something is right in the world, it seems to concede. There is something safe. There is something that will always be good. And that thing is Medi Dar. If I ever see this man in person, I swear I will eat him alive. It’s unreasonable, the obsession I have with him. For some reason I feel connected to him. Not so much like I know him, but more like he knows me. I tried so many times to explain the distinction between the two to Andi, but all it ever got me was a look of amused confusion and the recommendation to check myself into a mental institution. The last time I went on one of my rants about it, she said, “I think there needs to be a new award for the year book this year.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know, like best dressed, most likely to be famous, that kind of thing?”
“Okaaay,” I said.
“They should add one, ‘Most likely to be arrested for stalking a celebrity.’ You’d win it. Hands down.” I laughed then and told her I didn’t expect her to understand the kind of undying love that there was between he and I. I was only half joking.
After five episodes, many premium-cable sex scenes and less than premium plot lines I turn off the TV, knowing there’s only one way to get the ick of a tv binge off me. The gym calls to me, complete with a mirror thing, a bike thing, a treadmill, and adjustable-weight dumbbells. I pull on my high school track and field t-shirt with holes in the arm pits and bike shorts and get to work. I burpy, plank and run myself into oblivion, as my screen coaches guide and cheer me on. When I’m done, two hours have passed and I am too exhausted to think. Perfect.
My body drags with exertion and I am so hungry that I burn the roof of my mouth on a crispy spring roll that I eat directly out of the microwave. After washing and drying my plate, I replace it next to its companion bowl in the otherwise empty cabinet. Exhaustion overtakes me. On my way out of the kitchen, I grab a box of cereal and, walking it the ten steps from pantry to bedroom, put it on the floor next to the mattress before grabbing a handful to eat under the covers.
37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv3IhI7Dpav
37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMosyESJoyW
