|
|
|
Pensile, Pendulum
"I slept with Wendy O. Williams right before Pat Smear," he told her within days of their first date. "In fact, you wouldn't believe how many women marry rock stars right after dating me," he said emphatically, blue eyes alight. His predilection for proximity to the notorious did not rely upon probity or virtue. He routinely dispensed with moral discrimination for the famous or likely to be. Decency was fine, provided it were highly regarded by others. The cruel and criminal were just as well, too. So long as he could stand just beyond the halo of eminence, he was content to bask. That way, he didn't have to muster any of his own. When anyone they encountered complimented her for anything, he scrutinized them, doubtful they were serious. If they were, his hand gripped hers a little tighter. It seemed he was incapable of loving for the sake of love. Value among others increased his own esteem and seemed to source from how he might benefit if others found worth in what he did not. Worth to him was whatever delivered his own gratification. When an unexplained fire took a well-regarded woman from the community and from those who loved and needed her, he exclaimed in horror: "I always wanted to go out with her!" He could not disguise his disappointment when she and others were saved appearing as witnesses in a high-profile court battle. His aplomb for artificial gestures was usually unrivaled. "He says what he thinks somebody wants to hear," a roommate of hers once observed. But this time, as she enthused that she and the rest of the unwilling cast could avoid hellish remembrances while still seeing done some measure of justice, his truth unwittingly came into sight. The gears were too busy regretting the spoils he would not be able to squander. "You fall into shit and come out smelling like roses," he said one afternoon, twinge of envy, pang of anger rising and falling in his voice and in the silence as he studied her across the room. "You sure do." He seemed to find her resilience personally uncomfortable. "Aren't you embarrassed?" he asked her after she appeared in a briefly televised interview about a theft. It might have occurred to him that she were a witness, not an offender. That night, a few people called to praise her composure during the rigorous cross examination. Later, he looked over at her a long while before saying, "You don't need my help. You do fine by yourself," his voice resonant with regret. During their first separation, the bank approved her for a substantial mortgage, and called his home, the number she'd given, to tell her. Within days, came his knock at her door. She was napping, and her roommate hurried down the hall, alarmed. "Ava! Tex is at the door!" He wasn't welcome, but he stood on her porch, hands in his pockets, shuffling with a little-boy-lost half smile. Margaritas, he suggested. Over a salted rim, she took him back. They went to bed. She enjoyed sex. Too much, he complained once or twice, before lowering to fulfill himself in spite of her burden. Maybe it was she who suggested they take the photographs. Looking back, she didn't remember. She found them titillating to take, and to share with someone she loved and found exciting. But one night he drunkenly threatened her with legal action because she had opened a letter from an attorney addressed to a former roommate who'd left her with formidable debt. After that "conversation," she became concerned for the fate of recent images he'd taken of her. If he'd make of the worried act of opening a debtor's letter as a means to control her, she wanted a dialogue with him about how they wished to treat explicit photos. Since he had twice angered when she called him at his part time job, she did not phone him to ask. On her way out the door, she slipped the camera in her bag to secure the photos until the couple had discussed their use. Within hours he called in a rage, and accused her of theft. No amount of explaining could convey to him her desire for a rational dialogue, the reason for her apprehension. He hung up after spitting incoherently into the phone without pause for fifteen minutes. The following afternoon, she went to his house when she knew he wouldn't be there, to extract every item she owned. Before she made it across town, he had phoned her apartment, and left a gentle, wounded message. "Honey, just tell a stupid guy what's up. Okay?" She returned his call. Two hours later of tears and apologies, they were on again, a rainy Sunday she believed would mark their progress each day to come. Before midnight, he called in a blackout to rail her for everything, for nothing. When she rose in the morning, disheartened and groggy after a sleepless night, an email from him lit her Inbox: "Smoking a fag in the English garden," expressing his great love. Pendulums don't weary. Those swinging by their arms do. He often called her a pretentious poet, called her a drunk. He called her names she'd never heard before, and her daddy knew them all. What he'd seen, but wouldn't mention: She had hands that went to work. One night she looked down at them, at fingers too old for this. She knew she'd fall off the pendulum during some inevitable, violent swing. So she looked at her hands and let go.
|
|