This is the first short story from the prompt table smaur and I are doing. Also, The Hazards of Love by The Decemberists, their newest CD, could be the soundtrack to Martha and Doug's life.  

o12. Orange: The Hazards of Love  

(you'll learn soon enough the prettiest  

whistles won't wrestle the thistles  

undone)  

(the hazards of love 1, the decemberists)  

The hardest part, they said, was getting through the front door—which Martha found laughable because so far that had been the easiest and the only thing she had done.  

There were brittle, orange flowers sticking oddly out of a discolored vase, stems huddled against one another, near one of the open windows of the church. They made Martha sad; so close to the outside earth, freedom licking at their impoverished, rough veins, yet stunted in a prison of malnourished crystal filled with too much water. Her seeking eyes found her thin, paper hands as they shied from the poor, pitiful things, and she found comfort in the groves of her knuckles—they were far more exciting than anything else in the small, church refectory.  

But Doug had stared at her with wide, brown, blinking eyes and a pale face—his mouth as stern as the cut of his words—exiled, banishéd, never to return, unless… Unless she agreed she had a problem, unless she agreed to seek help, unless she sought and received help.  

So here she stayed, whittling and vacillating, like a creature caught in the snow, her uneven posture being straightened by the back of a church pew, finding distraction in the dips of her own skin rather than the voices of others.  

Tuning out the other members as they divulged every, little indiscretion, Martha found inherently easy. She had found early on that her own mind was a far more interesting and safer place than outside of it.  

There are many things Martha Grimm has tried to forget, but one remembrance was not so easily shed, and it stuck to her; a last, lone limpet of her past. Miss Susanna took her to church every Sunday, hoping that God’s grace and mercy would turn a child from sin. She almost forgot the sting of nails scratching at tender, underarm skin, and the beat of the fat and flimsy lint roller against her skin. And, she tried to forget the side table near the entrance, the holy water, and the crucifix; even the drone of the Sunday sermon during nine o’clock mass. The one thing though that she remembered with haunting clarity was each perfect and precise spot of every leaflet, where they remained for parishioners to take comfort in.  

But Martha placed her faith in nothing she had ever seen on a pamphlet. It was in curves and whispers; and in an unholy face, and in lips that led her to this cold, hard season in this cold, hard place.  

The first time any of her fellow members asked her if she would share, it was a Wednesday afternoon, just passed three pm in the after, and Martha’s heart thumped at the suggestion. She shook her head and ignored the looks. It was easier that way. Martha just fixated on flowers and found comfort in her own head.  

Martha looked down at her cell phone in the empty seat next to her, and she watched it shake and shimmy across the grains of ragged pew wood for a few moments before looking to see who was calling her.  

A sharp intake of breath—Doug’s names beckoned like a demanding, military searchlight across the tiny screen. Martha excused herself from the others and huddled near the window with the dying flowers, and answered the call.  

“Doug, I’m in a meeting—” her voice that started out as a forced whisper rose with each oncoming sentiment, “I’m doing what you told—” Her lips stopped mid motion; frozen, parted.  

“What?” Martha’s face turned a ghastly shade of pale. “Yes, yes.” She fumbled with the cold metal of her phone against her palm under the onslaught of the fire in her ear. “I’m on my way.”  

1352 Hialeah was in a part of the old boomtown, and buildings, mangled at odd angels, stuck up towards the sky. It smelled of engine oil and human sweat. It made Martha gag and shiver, remembering the way her feet would kick and muscles would twitch—when waking up with the corrosion of orange juice heavy on the tongue and the after tang of vomit was better than waking up not at all.  

As Martha drove down the street, she could hear the retreating sirens. It took only seconds before Martha was parked and out of her car. Doug was hunched over sitting on the sidewalk with one bloodied hand curled against his chest and his head turned up and back against the sun, his chest arched up and outwards like his heart was trying to break free from its cage of rib bones.  

There was a cop standing a few feet away from Doug on the sidewalk, yakking, on his cell phone. He was wearing a cheap, ill-fitting suit, and scuffed loafers steeped in color confusion, as if they had no idea what color brown they were supposed to be. His tie, the pièce de résistance, could have passed off as a Picasso portrait. When the cop finished his phone call, he approached Doug. Martha immediately tensed.  

“Mr. Harvey, I’ve got all I need here, but if you remember anything else, here’s my card.”  

Martha started blankly at the cop. His short hair was turning grey and his jowl’s reminded Martha of a tiring bulldog’s. Doug did not move to take the card, so Martha reached out and snatched it between her thumb and forefinger.  

“Thanks, Detective,” she replied before fixing all her attention on Doug.  

She tried her best, but he did not answer any of her envoys into conversation, and before she could get physical, there was a flurry of blonde hair and bright pink velour. A plump, young woman stood too close to Doug with a carton tray of Starbucks balanced in one hand.  

“Here, sweetie.” She addressed this to Doug as she handed him a cup of coffee. “Hi, Martha.” She barely looked Martha in the face as she spoke. Martha nodded her assent to her, and her strained smile felt far too much like a grimace.  

Martha rose to her feet and pulled Sadie off down the street and out of Doug’s earshot.  

“Sadie, what happened?”  

“You really want to know?” Sadie’s tone was clipped, and the corners of her mouth shaped the ends of a contentious frown.  

“Yes, I really do.” Martha scowled. Why wouldn’t anyone just answer the question she asked?  

“You sure?” Sadie’s voice rose to a squeaky pitch at the end, and her round face was pinched.  

“Yes, Sadie. I am perfectly sure.” Each word she spaced the same beat apart. The muscles in Martha’s jaw tightened and twisted and strained as she spoke.  

She look back to the still immovable, incognizant Doug crumpled on the sidewalk. When Martha turned her gaze back, Sadie locked her baby blue eyes with her’s.  

“Drury’s dead.”  

“What?” Martha, shocked, looked in askance at Doug’s bloody hand.  

“Ezekiel Drury is dead.”  

Sadie Quinoline’s profession rang as if in benediction for whom the bell tolls; cacophonous like the sharp end of a quarrelling jest.  

It was to Martha as if she had just been a few too many rounds of a tilt-a-whirl; nothing about this made sense and a touch of vertigo claimed her brain. And, when she forced Sadie’s declaration out in her head, her heart clenched. Her first reaction was to slap Sadie across the face and call her a liar: Ezekiel Drury can’t die. But Doug’s current yet absent circumstance confirmed Sadie’s statement better than Sadie ever could herself.  

Martha looked from Doug to Sadie before posing her next question.  

“What happened?”  

Sadie clicked her tongue and dusted some imaginary lint off her magenta track suit. “Found him under the causeway, bullet in his head.”  

“They find who did it?”  

Sadie sighed in aggravation before answering Martha. “Nope.”  

Martha let out the breath she was holding. “Damn.”  

“The nice detective who just left said they would.” Sadie’s voice sounded so convincing, but Martha arched an eyebrow in response to it.  

Martha had her suspicions—the causeway was a notorious place in the city for body dumps and last moments for suicides and junkies; and Martha doubly doubted Sadie’s faith in the nice detective, whose card was still burning a hole in the front pocket of her jeans. She was sure the cops had better things to do than track down Ezekiel Drury’s murderer; no-account, penniless flake that Drury was.  

Martha nodded at Sadie, and made her way back over to Doug. She wrapped a hand around Doug’s upper arm and tugged.  

“Doug, come on,” she pleaded; her voice low and soft.  

Surprisingly, Doug was pliant and relented rather effortlessly, letting Martha help him to his feet and guide him into the house. Inside, the place was dark; all the blinds had been let down, and in the dim, Martha strained to be careful as she guided Doug within.  

After leaving Doug slumped on the couch in the front room, Martha made her way to the bath. Once there, she reached up into the medicine cabinet and rifled through it. When she found what she wanted, she dashed into the kitchen and grabbed a glass, turning on the faucet with her empty hand as she did so. The glass was cool against her hands, and the sound of running water from the tap calmed her.  

When the glass was full, she returned to Doug. She bent down next to him, and pressed the back of one hand against his cheek. He didn’t seem to be feverish, which was good, but he was still pale and unresponsive—most definitely still in shock.  

She handed the water and an aspirin over to Doug, placing them in an upturned, left hand. Doug accepted them without comment, swallowing the pill and chasing them down with the water. Martha was about to leave when he clasped her hand; she turned back to look at him, and there was such sorrow and craving in his face, she remained beside him on the couch.  

In silence, they sat. Martha staring at the empty TV set. The worn couch cushions sagged under Martha’s weight and the fabric abraded her skin. Martha turned her gaze from the TV and stared at Doug. He was still as handsome as always; though his greenish brown eyes were vacuous and vacant; void of their normal spark of fire and conviction.  

She felt a goofy smile pull at her face despite everything that had happened, and her fingers itched to tug at a piece of auburn hair that stuck out long from behind his left ear. Martha leaned forward and reached out to take Doug’s large, warm hand in hers instead. When she had entangled her own hand around his, she rubbed her thumb over the back of his freckled hand, and spoke. “I think I should leave now.”  

Doug turned his head towards Martha and their gazes locked. She smiled bittersweet at him and let go of his hand. She started to raise herself from the couch.  

But before she could, a hand was pulling at her and she toppled back onto the scratchy, multicolored couch. “Doug, what—,“ she spouted.  

Martha felt his arms as they encircled her waist. She could feel where one hand rested against her skin under her shirt; his blood so close to the skin, she crackled from the burn.  

His unshaven face was comforting where he rested it against the crook of shoulder and neck. And, for the first time, he murmured, “This won’t be easy.” But Martha had known that from the very start.  

Martha, full on the sweet taste of prospect, smiled at the light of day as it glanced through the blinds and onto the carpet. The light made these little orange kaleidoscope patterns like stencil etchings of little burnished flowers as it shifted across the floor, and for the longest time Martha couldn’t stop smiling.  

The hardest part, they said, was getting through the front door—which Martha found laughable because it wasn’t getting through the front door that was the hard part, it was staying there.  

(let’s go said he  

not too far said she  

what’s too far said he  

where you are said she)  

(may i feel said he, e.e. cummings)