for Death and Delusion

For months he had been vacillating, back and forth, the way the needle of a metronome will swing in that precise time that is the hidden underbelly of a melody; but for Richard, only half back from his own black season of melancholy, the machinery was not working any longer. Barely winter, and his joints were already creaking like a length of old twine, twisted tight to the verge of snapping; a knot — something figurative — along the length of his mortal coil had frayed over the past months. One quick jerk, a hooded glance, the hint of an aspersion — just a little pull, really, and he could have stepped into the abyss. No sway. No turn of the neck to look back at the past. No break from the rasping annoyances of day-do-day life. No groan of dismay. No spring in the step. No break.

He dodged a puddle and stepped up from the gray, empty street to the butt-strewn sidewalk in front of The Tulle Box. He liked the quiet this time of day, the way the silence took on the drab quality of the light, how the cold water from the morning's rain had that sharp, surprising metallic glint to it. There wouldn't be a customer for an hour or two yet, Richard thought, and along the entire block, there was no living thing large enough to interrupt his line of sight. He watched this narrow corridor of concrete and brick and rusted metal and glass, his vision figuratively spraying in front of him as if he could shoot photons from his eyes, making things real, or at least probable, with the power of perception. This was a game for him, one he played when he was bored of his own mundane thoughts. A chipped two-tone marble nestled in the Y of a sidewalk crack. A pane of glass painted in a wash of mineral scum that shifted its colors as he walked past — yellow, orange, blue, purple — a pigmented network like a river delta or the branching of bronchial tubes in his lungs. And here, layers and layers of posters so old their images had blended into a soft chaos of color and drabness like lichens on the granite face of a cliff.

At the entrance to the club Richard paused to look back down the street. He had sensed someone behind him, and there he was — a young man in a scuffed biker jacket, standing motionless, as if the glance had pinned him to the wall. He must have come up from the side alley; he must have had a light step, thought Richard. Why is he staring at old flyers? He seemed to be looking into something behind the garish pastel papers, into the concrete wall itself. His shoulders sagged and now Richard noticed that he was swaying, subtly, back and forth, listening to some private noise. When he turned to show his quarter profile almost lost in stringy blond hair, Richard finally recognized him. It was Jonathan. And now he wasn't surprised at all because he had just dreamed about him that morning.

"Hey!" Richard called. "Jonathan! You look really shitty, man, like the walking dead."

"I'm not walking," said Jonathan, not looking around. "How are you, Rich?"

"I'm okay. Come in and have some coffee with me. It'll put some life into you."

"Who needs it?" said Jonathan. "But coffee sounds good."

< 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 >

[ back to hornRim ] [ turtleneck.net mainPage ]