Trouble & Attitude 1/Trouble and Attitude - Issue 01.iso/pc/pctext/wienerb.txt

Text File | 1995-06-02 | 12.9 KB | 274 lines

        "It's raining over there," says Colleen. "Can
you see it?"
        Owen looks up. The world is divided up ahead
by a moving wall of iron grey water. The rain gushes
in rolling sheets that smack against the windshield
and drench them in the second before Colleen has
pulled the roof into place.

        The seats are damp and steaming under their
warm wet bodies. Rain splats on the roof and pounds on
the hood and is everywhere surrounding the car like
thick smoke, turning houses and fields into square
shadows floating on seas of grey. The headlights serve
only to illuminate the raindrops in two long
yellow-grey shafts. It is tiring to drive in the
pouring rain.
        "I wanna drink," Colleen tells Owen. "You
drink?"
 "Sure I drink, Colleen. What do you think
anyway?"
 She laughs at him. "Owen drinks and eats
sandwiches and does his homework."
        "That's not all I fucking do, Colleen," Owen
says, scowling. He keeps scowling for the next two
miles and is still scowling when they pull into the
parking lot of Tillie's Bar 'n' Eats. He doesn't laugh
with her when they race for the door, rain drenching
them again in heavy cold wet pellets. He concentrates
so hard on scowling that he forgets to feel nervous
when they go inside, when dark angry faces turn to
look up at them shaking the rain from their heads.
        Colleen says, "Come on, sugar," and shakes her
ass as she walks up to a stool. "Fur Cap--it's goddamn
freezing out there," she tells the bartender.
        The bartender is tall and skinny like Owen,
but with a long black beard and a long ponytail. Owen
stares at the bartender's red suspenders and tries to
keep scowling. "Tequila shot," he growls.
        "You twenty-one?"
        "Oh, gimme a break," says Colleen and squeezes
Owen's thigh. "It's my boyfriend, for chrissakes."
        Someone in the bar chuckles. "Way to go," says
the bartender, setting them up. Colleen raises her
glass--"To nudie pictures," she says, and he smiles
finally and clinks her glass before tipping his head
back to toss it down, breathing steadily so he won't
cough. Colleen giggles and rubs her ribs. "Oooh,
that's better there."
        Thank god he was supposed to have paid the dry
cleaner--he has twenty dollars in his pocket. "You
wanna smoke?" he asks her.
        "You smoke too, Owen?" she says, but she
smiles flirtatiously, so he says, "Smoke, homework,
sandwiches," striding to the cigarette machine like a
twenty-one-year old might.
        Colleen has finally figured why Owen got so
mad. It hadn't occurred to her, what with his being so
young, but when she thinks about it, maybe he's not so
young. She was younger when she got pregnant. "God,"
he had said slow and breathy, just like she'd
imagined. And already she feels different and she
knows they are looking at her, those men in the bar.
She watches Owen swagger back, holding a cigarette
between his lips as he digs in his pockets for
matches. He walks like a man. Those men looking at her
think Owen is her boyfriend and that makes them think
of her in a different way. They look at her and then
also they think about her, about why would have this
young kid for a boyfriend. And they wonder what Owen's
got that would make this lady they are looking at want
to be with him.
        Owen is saying something, asking the bartender
for matches. He downs another shot. He lights two
cigarettes at once, looking up at her as he draws in
and the ends glow orangey-red and crackle. A few hours
ago he was just Owen, she thinks, just the kid from
next door. Now he's lighting cigarettes all sexy like
a movie star because he sees her in this new way and
is trying to act in a way he thinks will make her want
him. She takes a cigarette from him, brushing his
fingers with hers because now she wants to see how far
it can go. She can't see him as Owen. All she can see
is what he looks like to everyone else in the bar.
It's like all the eyes on her are the shutter eye. Her
whole body is buzzing underneath the hot damp cling of
her clothes and she is dizzy from the rum and the
cigarette--hot wet waves, pumping with her blood, seep
out of her skin into the dark air. The bar is full
with waves of her, waves of her washing over the men
in the bar, and over Owen, and through them; they are
soaking up air drenched with her.
        "Colleen," Owen is saying. "Colleen, why'd you
ask me to take that picture, Colleen?"
        It isn't Owen. She laughs and drapes her arm
over his on the counter.
        "Colleen," he says.
        It isn't Owen. She wants to see how far it can
go, this girl that was inside her, this ghost set free
in front of a million shutter eyes that stretch out
into forever. She leans in to him. "What, Owen? I
can't hear you, sugar." She closes her eyes and kisses
his mouth.

        Inside her kiss is deep silvery blackness that
fills his closed eyes, that fills all of him. The
bartender and his red suspenders are somewhere beyond
the deep silvery blackness; somewhere beyond Colleen
the bartender is standing with thumbs looped around
his belt loops, standing there watching him melt into
her. Her lips part slightly just as she is pulling
away, pulling away for hours, for years is her mouth
moving backwards away from his and she sucks the
silvery blackness back inside her and he is opening
his eyes as she turns from him almost smiling to suck
on her cigarette, pulling that smoke, too, inside her.
        It's like she's driving again, how she knows
just how to be, smoking and looking around her as if
she had to concentrate on sitting there as much as
driving a car, that way of concentrating where you can
still think about other things. And then there is a
smack like the rain on the windshield when she turns
to him suddenly and says, "Let's go."
        But still, he pushes her hand away when she
takes out her wallet, and puts his own money on the
counter with a big tip just like a twenty-one year old
might.

        It isn't raining anymore, and the grey is
melting away across the hills. She'll have to drop
Owen off at the end of the road so John won't see her
car.
 "Where we going, Colleen?" Owen asks her.
        "I'm taking you home."
        He looks straight ahead and flips on the
radio. It is a song he doesn't know, but he shakes his
head in time with the music.
        "I ain't a-missin' you," Colleen sings.
        "It was a strange day, wasn't it?" he says
without looking away from the road.
        "I sent that picture to Playboy magazine," she
says. "I just wanted you to take it for Playboy
magazine."
 He looks out his window so he can't even
see her out of the corner of his eye. He pictures Lou
and Nick taping the picture up in their locker. It is
the picture of Colleen on the laundry machine that he
took except he is in it, kneeling at her feet, kissing
her hand, surrounded by sheets that billow over him,
sheets that cover him on his knees below her.
        "I'm gonna be in it, too," she says. "I know
I'll get in--don't you think I can get in with that
picture?"
 He closes his eyes and leans back against
the seat. "Sure, Colleen."
        At the end of Elm Road, she stops the car.
        "I gotta let you out here, okay?"
        "You running away?" he says, still looking out
his own window.
        "I hadn't thought about it that way," she says
and suddenly she is afraid that he will say, "Of
course you didn't, puddin'," but he doesn't. He starts
to flip the handle to open the door and then he turns
quickly and pulls her close in and kisses her mouth,
opening his mouth too this time.
        "What'd you mean, `I wish you'?" he whispers.
        "I meant, I wish you were real," she whispers
back and he holds his breath. The silvery blackness is
like a whirlpool whose center is at her mouth. He is
being pulled in.
        "But I was talking about myself," she says
(knowing it herself suddenly) and he lets his breath
go and he is slamming the door on her, running up the
yard to his house to the door and he bangs his hip on
the banister, pounding up the stairs to his room where
he gets to the window just a second too late to watch
her driving away.

        She drives out to the Grove, where she used to
go in high school. Sure enough, there's some trucks
parked out off the road, deep mud tracks across the
grass, kids standing there under the trees. She stops
the car and gets out to walk on the road, which is
covered with dark splotches from the rain. Her heels
click on the pavement.
        "Hey, girl," someone calls from the trees. It
is a girl's voice. Colleen doesn't answer, doesn't
look up.
        "Hey, girl, yoo hoo," shouts a boy's voice.
It's really a man's voice, like Owen's, thinks
Colleen, and suddenly realizes that she is alone there
on this road where no one comes. It is not night, but
it is grey and murky out, left over from the storm.
She thinks of her tiny weak body. That is how she must
look to them from under the trees, like a little black
shadow. She turns around and starts back towards the
car.
 "GIRL!"
        She starts to run and almost trips.
        "We can see you, girl," someone shouts and
everyone under the trees laughs.
        She pulls off her shoes and runs, picturing
her little black form as they must see her, flitting
through the trees. She pictures herself and she
pictures the car and she pictures the distance between
them getting smaller and smaller as the kids under the
trees close in with their eyes. The pavement is rough
and damp under her feet. "I see you, I see you," she
sings frantically, finally at the car, fumbling to
pull open the door. Their stares are tunneling into
her back, she is shivering, throwing herself into the
front seat. "Don't be afraid," someone yells, laughing
like Dracula, and she has the car started, it is
coughing and bolting forward. "I see you, I wish you,"
Colleen sings at the top of her lungs, but she cannot
help turning the car towards home.

        "Why are you so dressed up?" John asks her at
the door. "You been shopping?" He kisses her cheek.
        "Nope," she says, stopping herself from
pulling off her heels at the door, though her feet
have started to ache.
        "You gonna make dinner in those things?" he
says, walking back into the living room.
        "Yup." She starts for the kitchen but then
remembers the basement. She stands at the top of the
stairs, at the doorway to the living room. She can
just see the edge of the drier.
        John is behind her in the living room,
smoking. "Where you been?" he calls.
        If he sees the basement, he will know her own
private secrets. It's the housewife's harem room, and
I am the housewife, she thinks. It's my own fucking
harem room.
        "At Lili's," she says, but he's not listening
anymore anyway. He's reading the sports page. She
starts down the stairs, careful not to trip over her
heels. She doesn't turn on the light, and the only
light comes from a little window at the far corner of
the basement. It's the same murky light from the
grove, but it's soft from the round full shapes of the
sheets. She sits sideways on the washer, twisting her
legs and arching her back like in the picture, one
hand on her ass, one on her right thigh. She leans her
head back and whispers, "I wish you."
        "When's dinner," John calls.
        "Just finishing your laundry," she yells back.
She opens the cabinet without getting down from the
washer and takes out the September issue. She rips out
the first page with the address on it, slowly, so John
won't hear. She takes off her shoes and jumps down
softly from the washer, climbs silently up the stairs.
The screen door doesn't squeak anymore since she oiled
that top hinge.
        Colleen stands on the front porch and looks
across the yard, folding the page from Playboy into
smaller and smaller squares. Beyond the yard that way
is Cleveland, and in Cleveland is a bedroom above a
busy city street. Fabric in bold dark colors and wild
patterns hangs from all the walls, across the ceiling,
around the bed. She sits on a cushion by the window.
No, she sits in the window, which has a seat built
right in. The wind blows against giant purple and
blue-patterned curtains; they billow up around her,
soft on her skin. Long ivy tendrils of the plants
hanging there brush against her face. She has her
knees up, her back against the windowframe. She pulls
out a clean white sheet of stationary. "Dear Playboy,"
she writes. Not clean white, but that yellowed kind
that looks antique. She has scented it with lavendar,
and her pen is felt-tipped. "Dear Playboy, I have
moved." She leans her head against the windowframe,
looking down on people passing in the grey light of
the Cleveland dusk.