The Long Tomorrow

April 10, 2018April 10, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

and if i leave

Ran held herself inside. She imagined hooks against skies of gray, black hooks, interlocking, pulling away from each other, like curled, intertwined fingers, or chains, holding together and rising out of slate-colored dust, holding on to a black monolith pointing toward the sky. She felt the links, invincible, lock and tighten, every little beaten piece of metal straining. She was straining, compacting, crumbling down. She was trying to stuff this down, slather it, and shape it into a sleek black or gray block of matter, like a block of garbage at the dump. But all of it kept slithering away from her, like slimy mixtures of greasy, forest green liquids seeping out between her fingers.

She was shouting so loud, in her head, that she was afraid someone could hear her. No, maybe, someone could see the thoughts spiking out of her, like jagged spires of black and purple crystals tearing out of the pink vestiges of her skin, wrapped tightly and futilely around a geological mass she could barely hold in. Or maybe, they could see her thoughts oozing out of her pores, like mustard-colored pus. But they couldn’t. They couldn’t see or hear how she felt.

Here she was, running all over herself, just begging for them to see. She blamed herself. But her face was an immobile piece of china, shaped into a neutral expression. This had never happened to anyone she knew. She’d only heard about it. Polycystic ovaries. Somehow it was her fault. It was all seeping out of her, a river of black gunk, flowing over the deck and leaving a black ribbon behind the ship.

Why were they going back to the Caribbean? To try again? To get the feeling back, under mango and breadfruit trees? To forget, in a land with dark hills and paths of red dirt with little stones that would get into her tennis shoes and cut her toes open? For what? Maybe, Alli sensed that something was amiss. She couldn’t stand her. Alli couldn’t stand to look at her, Ran thought. The chains tightened and jangled like they would pop.

“Calm down,” a part of her thought. But she raged inside her head. Always thinking, never doing. Always standing there, slack-jawed, arms swinging – when the doctor came to her and said those garbled words – always standing there, helpless! It was being done to her again. She stood there passively. Somehow it was her fault. “She has a cyst? That can’t be right,” she must have said. “Go back and check again,” she must have thought. But there was nothing they could do about it. The spikes grew sharper, driving their way out of her skull, forming a fuzzy purple halo. She had stood there helpless.

“What could you do?” her guru Briana had said, “It isn’t your fault.” But what did she know? What pain did she go home to nurse? Ran kept picking at it, probing it with her tongue, trying to flip it over and see the raw dermis underneath. Her stomach was roiling but she was still at the rail. Nothing would stay down anyway. Sweat covered everything. There she was on this cruise ship, the Queen Victoria, helpless. Navy-blue water, right off the brochure, stretched all around. She could get little pink umbrellas with her drinks. Ran was crumbling, crumbling inside – little gray specks of clay and rubbish fell off that compacted block inside.

“How do you keep such pain hidden away in your heart, like a black slug under a stone?” the guru had asked her. Pain from what? She didn’t know. Or she did, and she didn’t want to know. Flames of rage fanned out of her, like tongues of a peat bog fire sparkling, leaping in a hole. She didn’t know why. It just came out. She could bite her tongue until she tasted the salt of blood, but the heat of her fire would puff, in her belly. Somehow it was her fault. That unconfirmed, irrational fact, sat like a slug, like a stone, in her belly.

She couldn’t let Alli brood. She couldn’t sink waist-deep, in self-pity. She had to keep reminding herself that for however bad she felt, Alli was feeling ten times worse. But she couldn’t imagine feeling any worse than she did now. But she should go talk to her. Ran had the best understanding of how Alli was feeling. They were both going through this together. Her dry tongue slid over her teeth; she couldn’t find the words. The dry heat licked her belly. Do something. Stop thinking. Nothing but a dreamer after all.

“A drink, ma’am?” a waiter asked. Ran’s thirst clicked behind her teeth. “I don’t drink, I apologize,” Ran said. The waiter moved on and she stared back out into the night in silence. The moon hung over the water, dropping its moonbeams lazily into the ocean for the fish to twitch around in. There was much more to her than this – her current marketing firm, self-owned. But what if she had failed already? The chain links clinked.

She hadn’t known what to say. All she felt was soreness and a great desire to keep sleeping under the covers. Every time, she’d wake up, look at the red digital numbers and roll over. What to do? What to do next? Nothing but a dreamer after all. She wanted to roll over and not be bothered.

Banging around in her, clanking and scratching away at her cellophane skin was an odious black, twisted form, all arms and legs, with no head, trying to dig its way out. But no matter what, she could not vomit it out; she could not spew forth this poisonous lump – so it hung there in her belly, like a hollow, pockmarked, abscess-filled tumor, its black seepage trickling out of her pores. She could not give birth to it.

“I want you to remember the last time you were happy,” her guru had said to her, “Squeeze it out. Grab hold of it. Hold it in your hands. You’re there.” Ran imagined herself splashing in cool, iridescent water that broke, like tessellated glass, all around her, as she clawed at the air, looking for the lifesaver.

They had the requisite two careers, and a house in a ‘good’ neighborhood. Alli was staring at a wall in the cabin. Ran could go in there and do the right thing, talk to her. But the black, rusty hook rooted to the bottom of her stomach said ‘no,’ anchoring her there. Easier not to do anything. Roll over. Go to sleep. Easier not to do anything. A blank life stretched out in front of her, like the dark sea.

Ran wanted happiness and love, not this clear, mushy feeling that broke up and slipped through her hands. How far away was the shore?

better places

A City Upon a Hill

April 7, 2018April 8, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

GUCCI LOUIS FENDI Prada

Alli looked around: there were men in tuxedos and women in sparkling dresses, folded into long shawls. She looked down at her polka dot dress, purchased that day from Forever 21. Her clutch was covered in embroidered hearts, for crying out loud. The last time she had worn a dress slipped from memory. The men laughed loudly, already buzzed, their silver Rolexes glittering in the orange street lights. The line snaked around the corner and didn’t seem to be moving.

Checking and re-checking herself in her tiny CoverGirl compact mirror, Alli scolded herself for losing Nealy, who had invited her in the first place. Where had she gone? The line pressed against her. Everybody was laughing with somebody.

She went down to Crawley’s with the rest of the gang every Friday, but always in her office clothes – brown pencil skirts and puffy white blouses, things like that. Here, she was sure no dress had been bought at Banana Republic, much less Forever 21. After stretching her mind to think of any high-end designers, she gave up.

The laughing man in front of her shuffled forward, so she shuffled forward too. Alli craned her neck to see the door, yards away and then craned her neck up to see how tall the hotel was. It was at least ten flights up, she thought. They were going to get a rooftop view, Nealy had said. Where was she? She was probably off in the cigar room.

Her phone vibrated in her clutch – it was Nealy. “Hey, I’m already upstairs!” the text message read. Alli sighed and pounded back on the touch screen, “Almost at the door! See you soon.”

More and more people were arriving by taxi. Alli had counted at least four limousines, one of them white. Just another Friday night, Alli tried to tell herself. Most every other woman was in heels; she was the only one in flats.

The line shuffled forward again. Alli could see the bright blue and violet lights flashing from within. She shifted from foot to foot and checked her compact again. Alli had put on a little foundation, a touch of blush, but hadn’t wanted to overdo it. Now she wished she had. No one else had her round, bulbous nose, her boring eyes. She wanted to melt into the wall of the hotel, covered in pillars, laurels and grapes carved into the white stone.

The overly-sweet smell of booze filled the air. Alli sniffed irritably at the oily beer fumes, the high, dry wine odor. People walking by on the street didn’t ogle. There were from this neighborhood, with expensive, wood-paneled, palm tree-filled restaurants on every corner.

Alli hadn’t had anything to drink. She had hardly touched her dinner at the benefit. It was mostly finger food and more drinking anyway. The waiters had kept every glass full, but Alli had hardly touched hers. The laughing man and his companions in front of her had recently enlarged their party from an overflowing taxi. More glittering sashes twisted in the night breeze.

With a little more shuffling, the door came into view. Tall, bald body guards, as wide as two of her put together, checked passes from the benefit dinner. Alli’s skin grew warm; she couldn’t believe she was going in. She fretted about being turned away at the door – the burning face, the uncaring onlookers. The bouncer behind the dark shades took her pass and handed her a bracelet to put on.

The lobby was crowded. It seemed like everyone who had gotten in had stopped right there. Alli could understand why. The walls were covered with famous people who had visited: The Rolling Stones, Cheryl Crow and the like. People were taking pictures in front of them to put on Facebook. Many-tiered chandeliers hung from the white ceiling. Blue and purple lights flashed from panels everywhere. People were sitting on red couches spread out all over the gray marble floor. Waiters whirled about refilling glasses. This was just the lobby.

Alli didn’t know where to go. She moved away from the doorway, as another party poured in behind her. Smooth jazz played. She had forgotten the rooftop view.

There was another line at the golden elevators. Beefy guards only let so many in at a time. Drunken guests whooped and pumped their fists. Alli looked back at the lobby where one person ordered platters of shots for his couch full of friends. Alli lived in a studio apartment, in the last neighborhood before the bad part of town, past J Avenue.

She was at the head of the jostling line. The golden doors opened. The elevators looked so small inside even though they were covered in lights and mirrors. The beefy guard, dressed head-to-toe in black, beckoned and Alli crested a wave of revelers.

The doors closed. Alli found herself stuck in a corner. The experience was not unlike when she decided on an impromptu trip to the top of the Empire State building. She had been born in New York; why hadn’t she seen it yet? The experience, for twenty bucks, hadn’t been what she had expected. Most of her time had been spent in a clamoring line of tourists, bent, like a pretzel, into a floor-full of velvet ropes. At the top it had been so crowded it had been almost impossible to move, much less get an unobstructed view. She had managed to see an orange sea of lights in the direction of Queens.

The golden doors opened. Music – Kylie Minogue – hit her ears. She tumbled out of that mold, along with the rest of the group. The top floor felt small and cramped – some twisting beige hallways, a dark dance floor, a bar facing the rooftop view. Once again, it was difficult to move.

There were low black VIP tables set near the windows, lit with red candles. Alli squeezed past them to look out. She saw little white dots below, twinkling like stars and little else. An illuminated flag flew atop a courthouse far away. She tried taking some shots with her phone; they all came out blurry, the distant lights streaking and wavering, like they had entered some deep haze.

Alli bought a glass of water, the least expensive item at the bar. A waiter had offered to open a tab, but Alli had politely declined. She could buy a lot of things with eighty-five dollars.

Kanye West’s “Flashing Lights” came on from the packed, sweaty dance floor and Alli allowed her plain self to feel a tad glorious. Here she was at the Wilbur. She was going to try to have fun, in her own way, but the heat rolling off the dance floor just wasn’t beckoning to her.

The bar was well-lit. A woman, Maserati car key spinning around her thumb, started gushing to Alli about some bachelorette party she had went to. She looked at Alli like she was the best person ever. Alli smiled, self-conscious. She looked down at the dress she wore. The woman was still talking to her. Alli turned her full attention to her and her friends. She didn’t get to do this often.