eight- Lovers Displaced

“Good job Hurt!” An important looking man in a very expensive suit shakes Henry’s hand heartily. He’s the vice president of Modern Real, the burgeoning real estate development company that Henry works for as Director of Operations for their Portland building, Modern Pearl. Here on one of the top floors of Modern Tower, the company’s headquarters located in the bright center of New York City, Henry wipes his head dry of sweat, having just finished a long, lively, dance of seduction in front of a table of executives tasked with deciding his Modern future.
“Have a seat in the next room. We just need to go over a few things. We’ll call you in as soon as we’re ready.” The distinguished looking man gently escorts Henry out of the board room, smiling as he shuts the double-doors. There is a gathering of lounge chairs near the windows. Henry loosens his tie and sits back on the one that looks softest. From this throne he looks out into the world— the center of the world. His eyes reflect the lights, all of the lights: the buildings, the neon, the cars, and the people. But all he sees is his own reflection in the glass of the spotless window. His face, tired but still handsome, looking back at him with a glint of pride. He takes a deep breath, and after a few touches with his thumb, brings his phone to his ear.

“Hi Audrey, I’m waiting for them to make their decision now…” He laughs. “Well did you?” Another laugh. “I told you so…” Silence. “Are you smoking? Don’t lie to me…” He sighs. “I thought we talked about this. I don’t want you smoking anymore.” He grips the armrest with his free hand. “I don’t care if it’s just one. Just stop.” He hears movement in the next room and fixes his tie with his free hand. “Sorry Aud’, I didn’t hear what you just said. Did you get my e-mail with the list?” He smiles condescendingly. “I don’t like what you have in your kitchen. Throw all the food out, and buy what’s on the list. Trust me, you’ll feel a difference within a week! Hold on hun…”
The double doors open wide, the vice president walks through and over to Henry, who stands from the chair holding the phone behind his back.
“Congratulations Hurt! We’re giving you the Pearl. Follow me back inside and we’ll make it official.” The man walks back through the doors, leaving Henry alone to end his call.
“Yeah, Audrey? I got it! I gotta run but I’ll call you tomorrow morning from JFK. Goodnight!”

“Goodnight Henry! Congratulations! I’m so proud of you…” Audrey hears her phone beep in her ears. The call was ended after she said Henry. She sighs then smiles at the young man sitting next to her.
“I’m sorry, that was my boyfriend. He just got promoted!” She drops her cigarette on the ground next to her bare feet.
“That’s ok. Do you want another?” The young man holds out an open pack. The two are sitting on the steps outside Audrey’s apartment. It’s the same young man from the East Coast back visiting his girlfriend, Audrey’s upstairs neighbor.
“I can’t, my boyfriend... Thanks though.”
“I understand.” He nods understandingly, thinking about his girlfriend upstairs and if it’s been enough time since their fight for him to go back to the apartment and apologize. Across the parking lot, another resident is by the bins throwing away glass bottles, one by one. The clanging is loud and sharp.
“Well, I think I’m gonna go back up. I got a lot of begging and groveling to do and it’s getting late. Nice meeting you, Audrey.”
“Good luck! Just tell her she’s beautiful, it always works.” She gives him a thumbs-up as he walks into the building and disappears up the stairs. She hears a door open and close and looks up at the window above her bedroom. A light goes on, a lamp light, making yellow-orange streaks out of the dark that filled the room for the past half-hour. She sees shadows; two blobs slow dancing around the white ceiling. They merge together into one fluid blob, flickering like a flame. The light goes off and Audrey is alone. She picks her phone up from the ground beside her, and dials her friend.

“Hey Nick! What are you doing? I’m watching the Big Bear crawl across the sky.” She switches ears. “That sounds nice. You haven’t painted since Maria… What is it of?” She laughs. “Oh, c’mon! Tell me!” She growls. “Fine. I’ll wait till it’s finished. Hey Nick?” She pauses. “I’m sorry nothing happened between you and Chloe. If she doesn’t know how amazing you are then she doesn’t deserve to know! Okay Nick?”

“Okay Audrey. Besides, even if she was interested in me, it would have been impossible with Sophie around all the time. I know she wants us to hook up but she’s involuntarily cock-blocking me. But I guess it doesn’t matter. Nothing happened and nothing will.” He listens. “Thanks and don’t worry, I’ve already moved on.” He laughs. “You too. See you tomorrow?” He sighs. “It’s alright. I can handle the shop alone tomorrow. Have fun with Henry. See you Thursday. Sleep tight.”

Nick is sitting on the edge of his bed. He looks at his phone, presses the red button and continues to stare. His thumb scrolls to a name and hovers above it, wanting to press it. He pulls away and throws the phone across the bed. With a groan, he lays back keeping his eyes on the canvas in the corner of the room. He told Audrey he had been painting. The brush in his hand is fresh out of its packaging. He can’t understand why he lied, why he lied last week about his attraction to Chloe, and why he felt he needed to keep lying about it. He groans and closes his eyes.
Neon lines streak across the black lids; a map of plane routes, arcing trajectories delivering one person to another; a map of phone calls linking one lover to another in a country where long distance isn’t so long a distance.
He opens his eyes to a clean white ceiling. In his head is a story. His hand, the brush, reaches up towards the giant canvas. He doesn’t reach, but begins to paint anyway. The brush swirls and sweeps, leaving permanent stains in the invisible air.
A path, a trail of dirt, surrounded by tall trees. Flowers of different shapes and colors lining the sides of the trail like light-strips lining the aisles of movie theatres; they guide the way. A woman walking away, down the path, frozen mid-step. She’s dressed for hiking, the way someone who doesn’t normally go hiking would dress for hiking. A man stands beside her, a hand around her elbow. His face looks confident, yet pleading. He is the reason they’re both frozen in this moment. Nick closes his eyes again, but only for a few seconds.
When he looks at the ceiling again, his creation has come to life. The man has convinced the woman to turn around and she follows him off the trail into a clearing canopied by the tall trees. They are no longer bound by a trail, guiding them one-way and keeping them from crossing the lines that confine. They are alone. No one sees what they do next. But they remember. A kiss concealed in the Tillamook Trail.
Nick grabs his phone and sits up. The ceiling fades back to a clean white. It doesn’t take long to scroll through the phonebook. He presses the green button.

“Chloe Clarimonde.” Her phone is turned off.
Chloe lies under her blanket naked, reading what’s left of a chapter before she closes the book for the day. It’s a novella about a girl who loves a man who doesn’t love her… as much. She finishes the chapter, catches a tear running down her cheek, and then turns out the light. Her eyes close and in her head a thought, one that returns every night before she goes to bed: why am I so afraid of love?

All across America, lights go out and people fall asleep. From New York to Portland, ocean to ocean, a vast darkness ever growing. The neon lines stretching across the lovelorn land flicker off one by one, I love you by I love you.

Chloe drifts into sleep and instead of a dream, she wakes up inside a memory. The beach at midnight; a scene of blue and white. Her sister asleep in bed; the allergy medicines ensured she would stay asleep. Did he get the note slipped under the heavy hotel door? Will he kiss me like he did in the clearing? Her answers come on time, holding in his right hand the folded note he found by his door. She runs to his arms.
Here on the edge of this lovelorn land, this country of young lovers displaced. Here where the end of the vast darkness meets the beginning of another vast darkness, they make love for the first time. The voices of the waves echoing their secret across the wide reach of the Pacific.



Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dactylx/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

four- Henry

Outside the Thursday Tattoo, Dylan smokes a cigarette, something she does rarely. She isn’t stressed. She’s excited. Nick is inside getting ready to close the shop and talking with the last customer, who is still looking at his new tattoo in the mirror. He’s the reason Dylan is smoking. His name is Henry.

Henry graduated from U of Oregon in Eugene, where he played Strong Safety for the Ducks. The cheerleaders had a nickname and a chant for all the players. They didn’t have a hard time coming up with one for Henry. His last name is Hurt. There are nights when he walks around his apartment, carrying a football, when he can still hear the girls yelling, “Henry Bring On The Hurt! Henry Bring On The Hurt!”
He moved to Portland after graduating and was hired to manage a Co-op in the Pearl District. He lives in a modern two floor apartment off Belmont on the other side of the river, in Southeast Portland. Inside his garage is a blue Challenger with black racing stripes and a black Ducati 1098, though he usually takes his bicycle to work. Henry was raised healthy and strong and is amazingly in better shape now than he was in college.
He grew up in a small town in Washington, played all kinds of sports, and was in Church every Sunday morning with his idyllic family. His first kiss was with Cinthia Orman in the eighth grade. He and Cindy used to sneak out of their houses at night and meet under the baseball field bleachers to make out and wish they were older. Henry was sure he was going to marry her… until he went to high school and realized that Cinthia Orman was not one in a million and was in fact just one of a hundred pretty girls in school. With this epiphany came a string of girlfriends and hookups that carried him through college. To be cliché, he could write a book.
Now, though still enjoying the occasional one night stand, Henry is older and starting to get tired of sleeping around. He often thinks about little Cindy and wonders where she is now and what would have happened if they went steady through high school. He wonders who it will be that’ll make him want to settle… to commit. He thinks about it more whenever there’s a girl in his bed and all he knows about her is her first name and natural hair color. He stopped wondering two minutes after he walked into the Thursday Tattoo; the moment he met Dylan…

“Henry Hurt?” Dylan read from the post it on the desk. “You’re on time.”
“I guess I am,” Henry grinned. He noticed her blushing and felt a few butterflies himself. She was pretty but also interesting. There was something unforgettable about her.
“So Henry Hurt, what can I get you?”
“Black ink, Old English font, middle of my shoulders right under my neck, I want the words Sine Qua Non.”
“Without which not…” Dylan replied, now very interested in the handsome yuppie in front of her.
Henry just smiled and nodded.

Nick had heard the exchange and cut in, “Sine Qua Non? Let’s go see how big you want the tattoo and we can get started.” Dylan stared at Henry as Nick rushed him to one of the stations. She watched him take off his shirt and saw that he had other tattoos: the number 45 on his right shoulder and the name Evelyn wrapped around his bicep. Her heart sank when she saw the name. This surprised her. She couldn’t remember the last time she was infatuated with a guy she just met. She decided that she needed a cigarette.
“Nick, I’m going down the hill, do you need anything?”
“Green Tea with honey, hunny,” he smiled. “I’ll give you the money when you come back.”
“I’ll be back in a little bit.” Dylan grabbed her coat and walked out. Nick and
Henry watched her as she left and noticed each other looking. A sudden thought crossed Nick’s mind. It worried him, but he was never one to worry. As quickly as it came, the thought left Nick’s mind.

Dylan took her time walking to the store down the hill. She took even more time walking back up. She was hoping that Henry would be gone by the time she came back. He made her blush. He made her feel shy.
She set the tea on Nick’s desk and he thanked her without looking up from Henry’s back. The tattoo was almost done. Dylan had almost forgotten about the cigarettes when the sight of Henry’s beautifully sculpted torso reminded her…

Outside, Dylan smokes a cigarette down to the filter, the sun is setting slowly and the wind is warm. Nick and Henry exit the shop and Nick locks the door behind him.
“I need to rush, thanks for the tea!” Nick kisses Dylan on the cheek and starts to jog down the hill towards the bus stop. He doesn’t realize till weeks later the mistake he made. He left Henry alone with Dylan.

“Can I ask you a question Henry?” Dylan is ready to have her hopes dashed. “I saw that you have other tattoos…”
“Evelyn is the name of my hometown.” Henry is used to people asking him about that tattoo. “Now, can I ask you a question?”
Dylan is embarrassed but relieved by his answer. “You may.”
“Are you hungry?”

Henry and Dylan take their time walking down the hill towards the bus stop. When they get there they see the bus standing, as if waiting for them. They look at the bus then at each other and continue walking. They walk and talk down Burnside, across the bridge, all the way downtown, where they find a small Chinese restaurant off the Waterfront. The sun sets completely and the wind blows a little colder. There is that smell in the air, when the seasons are changing and the feeling that something new is coming.

three- PDX

At around 10 p.m. a young man leaves Deschutes Brewery where he just had a fight with his girlfriend who walked out 20 minutes ago and is now on a bus headed back to her apartment. It’s cold and he wraps his scarf around his neck in a simple loop tie. He’s not sure where he is so he walks down the biggest street in the direction he thinks is downtown. Left with a cigarette and his pride, he decides not to call her to apologize and instead determines to walk back to her apartment on his own. He didn’t realize that he was almost an hour away on foot and that the clouds gathering above were about to take a long hard piss all over him.

Ten minutes of walking, smoking, and regretting finishing the pitcher of beer before attempting to chase after his girlfriend, the young man from out of town recognizes where he is. He sees The Boiler Room, a karaoke bar the couple went to the first time he came to visit, and realizes he’s walked into Chinatown. Feeling smug and proud of his genius navigation, like a true New Yorker, he struts into the closest convenience store and rewards himself with a fresh pack of cigarettes. A click of the lighter later the victory march resumes and he crosses Burnside Street into Downtown.

He passes Voodoo Doughnuts, waving at the line of hungry hungry hippies, drops a buck in the cup of the guitar wielding cowboy-goth hipster reciting the gospel according to Al Green to the newly college-graduated California emigrants on the corner of 3rd and Yamhill, and doles out cigarettes to three teenage hobos dipping their feet in one of the fountains near Pioneer Square. He knows he’s still far but the Hawthorne Bridge is in sight and across it is the Southeast part of town where the apartment is.

The bridge is longer than it looks and the wind faster and colder. The scarf is losing its warmth and the young man zips up his brown faux-fur bomber jacket to the neck. His legs begin to get tired as he reaches the middle of the bridge. The cold stings his hands and he forces them into his pocket, leaving a lit cigarette held loosely by his shaking lips. He looks ahead across the bridge at the town and feels sad. There are no skyscrapers and no bright lights. The buildings and houses are no taller than four stories and most of the lights are turned off. He realizes for the first time that he still has forty long mostly quiet and desolate blocks to walk on this cold and dim night in the Pacific Northwest. And as he breathes in deeply to muster his courage, he feels a cold wet drop of water land on his head and roll down his face. A few minutes later and nearing the end of the bridge, it begins to rain… hard.

The first ten blocks is painful. His legs start to cramp underneath his drenched jeans and his feet are wet and sore. Hawthorne Boulevard is a gradual uphill incline and there are points where it resembles California Street in San Francisco. There are a few cars driving around and fewer people on the street.

The next ten blocks takes him past a pub and a couple strip clubs, this city is known to have the most strip clubs per capita with 50. He thanks God for the strip clubs; the bright neon lights remind him of New York and the guys smoking outside are the only other people on the streets besides himself. For a few minutes he feels less lonely.

The rain lets up a little as he reaches Southeast 30th street. Just nine more blocks down, a left then five blocks to her apartment. Tired, wet, and starting to get depressed he makes it up the last uphill section of Hawthorne and sees the big funeral home he noticed on the bus heading downtown two and a half hours earlier. He smiles thinking about how close he is to the apartment.

The next nine blocks is bright and filled with people. He passes Cup and Saucer Café, Chopsticks, Cold Stone and Bridgeport Ale House. It’s raining harder but he no longer feels wet or sore. He’s numb but also relieved. He pulls out a cigarette and lights it under the awning of a Bank of America. Across the street is the Fred Meyer Supermarket that sits on the corner of Southeast 39th. He crosses the street, turns left onto 39th and he’s five blocks away from his girlfriend’s apartment on Belmont Street.

The rain has slowed to a drizzle and he feels his phone vibrating in his left jean pocket. He pulls it out and sees that he has 2 missed calls and a voicemail. Without checking who called or listening to the voicemail, tired and miserable he immediately dials his girlfriend ready to tell her he’s sorry. She has been waiting for him at the Walgreen’s on 39th and Belmont, worried and also sorry.

As he walks the last couple of blocks he remembers how he felt leaving Deschutes an hour earlier. It’s his fault that all over his body he is either sore or numb and every piece of clothing he has on is soaked all the way through. But every minute he had walked he thought about her and how he should have stopped her from leaving. Every minute he had walked he felt more and more sad that she wasn’t with him.

On the other side of the Walgreen’s parking lot, in front of the main entrance, she is standing in the rain looking across at the young man from the east coast. Both smile as he walks faster and faster towards her. It took him over an hour to find his way back and though she’s still mad she brings him close to her and starts to lead him back to the two-story apartment building. She asks him if he’s cold and tells him he’s an idiot for walking all the way back. He tells her he’s sorry and she replies that he’s an asshole.

They reach the apartment and head straight into the bedroom, shedding their wet clothes along the way. Naked they dive under the thick blanket, wrapping themselves in each other’s arms, each trying to keep warm in the other’s embrace. Outside the rain has stopped and it doesn’t take long for the two to fall asleep.

In the apartment below, unable to fall asleep, Dylan is sitting with her feet up on her couch and a six-pack of a local microbrew on her coffee table. Three of the bottles are empty. On her legs is her laptop playing another episode of Dead Like Me. She thinks the main character is a fictional T.V. version of her self, except for the undead grim reaper part. It’s after midnight and both the episode and the bottle in her hand come to an end. She opens another bottle and puts on another episode. In a little while, she’ll finish the last beer and she’ll lie down in bed waiting to fall asleep. Around the same time the two upstairs will wake up and have the makeup sex they were too cold to have before. All around her in the apartment complex, couples will be having some kind of sex: the married couple next door having angry sex, the lesbians across the courtyard having loud sex, and the dog in the apartment above them having guilty sex with a giant teddy bear. Another Saturday night in Portland, Oregon that Dylan is spending alone.