What Happens Next What Happens Next
by bkMarcus
She will be beautiful ... a vision of gently curved lines, falling away from her, the soft waves of dark blond, the subtle angles of her limbs, the sweep of her thin summer skirt, pressed against her hips by the draft as she opens the door. I sit in the bar I am destined to sit in. I sit on the stool I will remember sitting on, the one with the best view of the door, where I will see her enter, the woman who will break my heart.
I am tired of these visions, of my helplessness as the future overwhelms me.
This woman, this dark blonde source of suffering will enter the bar, a slim silhouette against the sunset past the beach. She will carry her sandals in one hand. The bartender will tell her she can't come in barefoot.
Her name is Sandi, spelled with an 'i' -- not like the adjective which describes both her hair and her well-tanned feet. She wears a gold chain around her waist and one around her left ankle. She has a diamond ring on one of her toes. She will stroll down the length of the bar, past all the empty stools, to sit at the table nearest my corner. She will brush the beach from her feet and put her sandals on while the bartender watches. I will want to offer her a drink, but I will not manage the courage. I never do.
As a boy, I could see my mother out-of-focus, double-exposed, the image of her middle-aged sickness superimposed on her young-mother self, cancer-hollowed cheeks against full youthful flesh, brittle yellow hair mingled with her young, fiery red curls. With dread, I watched the older dying woman replace the younger one. I tried to mourn her when she finally gave into the sickness, but I was all mourned out. Holding her hand as she took her last rattling breath, I felt relieved that the scene had finally come and gone, that I would only have to see it now as one of the fading memories of the past, no longer one of the sharp, anachronistic memories of my future.
In college, senior year, I asked my professor to let someone drive him home from the wine-and-cheese. He slurred drunken promises, but I knew he was lying. I had already filed a request for a different thesis advisor. I'm not sure why I had registered with the doomed alcoholic in the first place, since I knew before I met him that he would not survive the semester. The philosophy department held a memorial for him the next weekend.
Have you ever watched someone knock over a wine glass? Have you ever watched yourself knock one over? When everything slips into slow motion, the shift of liquid, the unsupported tilt, the stain, spreading. The shattered glass.
You can tell from the first misstep, the first gesture gone awry what the result will be. And yet you watch as events march forward according to plan, and wonder afterwards why seeing it wasn't enough to stop it. Sometimes you wonder this while you're still watching it happen.
She will wait for the bartender to answer the phone at the other end of the bar. She will ask me for a light for her Virginia Slim. I will take a matchbook from the glass bowl next to the peanuts and paper napkins. I will light her cigarette and tell her how my mother died. She will sit at my side, pull the ashtray toward her from two places down. She will crush the Slim into the ashtray. She will say she's quitting here and now. She will ask me if I'm interested in being her moral support.
We will go home together, to my apartment. She will stay for eight months. We will make love passionately, constantly, breaking only for fights. She will cheat on me, repeatedly -- though she will never smoke again. I will accuse her often of her infidelities. She will deny it, perfunctorily, never convincingly. We will both know I don't have the willpower to kick her out. She will never give me friendship, nor comfort, nor love, but she will never let me hunger, always attend to me physically and we will both know that I will be unable to give her up.
And when she leaves me, I will go dead inside. Outside, too.
"You'll have to put your shoes on, miss. State law."
She walks barefoot down the bar. I had not remembered how her hips sway inside the fabric of that skirt. She sits and brushes the sand away, gently, lightly. She smiles at me. I say nothing. She takes the soft pack of cigarettes from the waist of her skirt. I had not remembered the butterfly tattoo above her navel.
The bartender answers the phone. She approaches me, puts the cigarette to her lips. My heart, high in my chest: one hard thump in the frozen moment, then time resumes. I feel the blood leaving my face. She smiles.
I stand up before she can speak. This is not how I remember it happening. She looks puzzled. I mumble Excuse me and rush past the empty stools, past the bartender on the phone, past the swinging doors and into the rich dark reds of the sunset. I don't know what happens next.
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