Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an attempt to garner your sympathy. I don’t want it; consider this an explanation, a sigh before the departure. They said I should write a will.
Will you love me forever?
Yes, forever.
Is this love?
Yes you know it is, I love you.
I hear it every day before I sleep.
I will start at the beginning, I can’t remember it all but I will do my best.
It was an angry October afternoon. I was rolling out from beneath the damp-with-sweat covers when the thick grey clouds finally broke. I needed a drink and the rain wasn’t going to stop me. I spilled a few painkillers down the back of my sticky tongue then took the Commodore out to Derek's Tavern.
Derek was totting a couple of empty kegs around the back when I pulled up. His heavy brow fell as he studied my windscreen. I let the car stall and opened the door.
“Paul? Chirst,” he began dropping the kegs to scratch at his greying hair, “I didn’t expect to see you this early, not after last night.”
"Sorry if I made a scene, Derek. it’s the first time I have seen her since... well you know.”
“Yeah, guess I do.”
I asked if I could get a drink and he told me he wasn’t opening up for a half an hour. So I said I'd wait in the car, he sighed and said "Come on in, I s'pose."
It was last night’s scene, well what I can remember of last night. Except the tables had been turned back on their feet and the glass had been swept away. The stale petri dish air itched my lungs like fleece and the TV recycled sports highlights.
“A Bloody Mary, A shot of tequila and a Pint of stout please, Derek.” His eyes moved sideways before he turned and poured my order, he set it on the bar then moved outside with a keg under each arm.
I got to drinking and boy did it help. My dad’s old trick, ‘hair of the dog,’ he had called it. Bloody Mary, first, Tequila next, then the stout, which goes down by the mouthful.
It wasn’t long until I had forgotten my aching jaw, my throbbing head and sandy mouth. Derek reluctantly poured me another Stout and it went down like medicine. From the miserable gray outside came a few of the locals, all double taking when they saw me, then consoling the percieved hurt with, hey pal, forget her and him, it’s not worth it, before finding their usual spots and leaving me alone.
They were talking about my wife, but she has nothing to do with what happened and neither does her new man, Jock (or Dom, or Kramer, who cares?) so I won’t mention that whore again. All I can say is they won’t be turning up to my local again anytime soon.
I drank steadily through the afternoon and half the evening and the place was starting to look a little crowded, some co-eds had stopped by and Derek put the game on for them. They came over and stole away the stools surrounding my spot but I didn’t care, I wasn’t there for company.
I didn’t realise how much I had drunk until I stood for a leak and damn near lost my footing on the way to the gents. Derek saw me slip, or so he later told the judge.
When I got back my stool was gone, but I didn’t mind, I really didn’t. I didn’t mind leaning on the bar, but journalists would explain this was what started it. Believe me when I tell you, this had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t ready to make another scene like the night before, so I ignored it. I did notice one of the co-eds was sitting; he had been standing before I left for the bathroom. He was burly, in a black letterman, a Jock if ever I saw one. But like I said, these things don’t get me down and it didn’t that night.
I kept drinking, leaning on the bar, tipping Derek big to keep him from rejecting me another. It was early in the evening but I was drunk and he knew it. That’s when she came in. No, not my wife again. Not even close. The finest thing to ever step in that hick-town dive. She seemed to sap the warmth from the room, but in a good way, like ice on a burn. She had those deep black eyes you see in horror films, the sort of eyes you have to stare into for a moment before you can look away. She came by and everyone watched her, and as she walked closer to me I could feel my heart thumping and not even four fingers of stout could curb the bubbling excitement (I say excitement, because I really don’t know what it was, anxiety, panic?) Then she got close, and the black of her eyes shined, like fresh drops of ink on milky parchment. She had a head like Mona Lisa, not because she was beautiful, now I know she wasn’t, but it was in her oval face, the way her long hair fell straight and her slender frame.
I wanted to say something clever but it never came, instead she spoke first.
“What does a lady have to do to get a seat and a drink?”
“What are you drinking?”
“Vodka tonic.”
I ordered one and another stout for me. She asked me what my name was and what I did, and I wanted to say I’m an author, Paul the author she would have said. But I wasn’t about lying.
“I’m a mechanic, well I was but I quit. I want to be an author,” I said pausing for a sip, “ I didn’t catch your name.”
“Lerra,” she said and she reached out for my hand and when I gripped it, I was suddenly sober, surging with energy.
“That was my mother’s name,” I said and she laughed.
“So I have a drink, you going to fetch me a seat?”
I turned, casting about the place. There were a few truckers downing beers and the locals moped about at the other end of the bar, and there was those damn co-eds, flipping coins and slamming back shots and throwing their heads back in laughter. I walked over to the big boy in the letterman.
“Get up.”
“What?” he said, standing, turning and looking down at me with a scowl.
“This is my seat,” I said, “ And that one there is my girl’s.” I pointed at his buddy who wore a dopey grin like this was all his favourite sitcom and the punch line was coming. But it never came. Derek hustled along the bar as quick as he could leaving a pint foaming under the tap.
“Now Paul, take it easy pal.” Derek began, then he eyed the big boy with wanting eyes as if to say leave it alone. I’ll be damned if those two jocks didn’t up and give me those stools.
She was impressed, she didn’t look when I returned but I could tell she was impressed and it was the best feeling in the world, making her happy. It wasn’t sexual. Any other young thing that came my way I would have sapped over her with the sad old tale in a bid to get her home, but not Lerra, no she was different. The longer she stayed with me the stronger it grew. Derek was chuckling down the end with the locals, and those Jocks had enough tequila and Bud in them to stir a bad idea. Eventually it came, accompanied by protests from their girls. With chests full of courage, they steamed toward me.
I could see them, but I didn’t flinch, Lerra had me dazed, until I felt a big hand clap on my shoulder and grip like a manacle. He pulled me, swung me around on the stool.
“You want to go outside, old man.”
I’m don't enjoy fighting. But I was overcome with an unfamiliar rage, and I think the boys got a whiff of it as a little weariness appeared in their eyes before they shook it and forced their faces into that hardened stare their football coach probably gave them. Lerra was whispering do it, I swear to god she said it and I would have done anything she said at that stage.
I turned to her and her breath was cold against my skin as she spoke.
“Kill him.”
The last time I had that feeling was on my wedding day. My father wasn’t invited to the ceremony but no one was going to keep him from the reception. That’s when I decked him, first time I ever saw him cry, last time I ever saw him alive.
I didn’t wait to get outside. I hit the big jock good. One - two, nose and mouth. I felt it crunch, then the blood came. He swung his fist like a brick on a chain. I ducked then got him once in the gut, pulled his shirt up and threw him to the ground. I lifted my boot, and pumped my leg. My heel came down with all my weight then up and down like a piston. His shoulders slumped and his head turned after the first stomp, but I didn’t stop. Blood was starting from his eyes and ears and mouth.
People screamed. His buddy watched for a second, unsure whether to hit me or run, then he came at me like a line backer. I wasn’t done. I shrugged him off and let go with an elbow to the nose. Then I was back with my heel, the sound was like fresh kindling being split, one stick at a time.
His buddy had recovered.
“You’re going to kill him.” There was a desperate inflection at kill.
Others were moving toward me now, I let go, he was done. I rushed for the door, everyone was too stunned to stop me. I was fifty yards up the thirteen, away from the glow of the single lamp outside Derek’s tavern, when I turned back. She was close behind, there in the moonlight, in her hand was a gas can.
“Do it.”
Dad used to tell me, when things get bad you get busy running or you stand up and fight. I never knew what he meant until that moment. He ended his life with a hand gun on his sixtieth birthday, he left a note for me.
I took that gas can. I circled that bar as quick as my old legs would take me, pouring that can ‘til the sound of gas splashing against the wood panels of the bar ceased. I knew the cops wouldn’t be far off. Lerra lit the match, I swear it, and I swore it when they asked me in hospital. No one believed this. She took that match, her eyes lewd and frenzied. She lit that sonofabitch and up it went. Flames clutching at the moon.
Most of them survived, a couple of those damn co-eds burnt to death trying to get their buddy out. By the time the police and firefighters whirled onto the scene, I was so far up the thirteen I could have left that town forever, might have got across the state, up through Minnesota and into Canada. Start a new life with Lerra, so they say. I had the Commodore up around one-twenty but I couldn’t keep my eyes on the road, no. Not with the way she was looking at me, her eyes shining like polished jet and her lips parting.
“Do it.”
I would be damned if I didn’t grip that hand brake and yank it, sending the Commodore spinning into the gravel medium.
Dad used to tell me women come and go, family is forever. But he was the biggest sucker for big tits and red lips I ever met. I walked in to my parents’ room when I was ten years old and there, squat up on his dick like some grotesque caramel apple, was our plump neighbour, her thighs road-mapped with varicose veins, her eyes ecstatic, and when she stopped the folds of fat kept rocking. She was my mother’s friend before my mother died. “Paul,” she said and I screamed. I have never told anyone this, it’s funny what you can get out when you know you are going to die, ha-ha!
When it was over Lerra stroked my face with the back of her fingers.
She still watched me, and I put the Commodore back in gear and stood on the pedal. The cab filled with the tang of singed rubber but we just laughed. She reached over and held my hand. I got the commodore back up to one-twenty, I still didn’t have a plan, though looking back Canada was mixed somewhere in my thoughts. I remember thinking I can drive this old Commodore into Remmars Quarry up the road from my old home and I would die happy, me and Lerra both. She must have seen the thought cross my face and as we thundered along. With no light but the beams cast outside, she spoke.
“Will you love me forever?”
“Yes, forever.”
“Is this love.”
“Yes you know it is, I love you.”
Then as we approached Hunters Bridge, before the over pass, she reached over. Her slender hand wrapped the wheel and she whispered.
“ Do it.”
Then together we pulled that wheel down. The tires squealed in protest as we turned hard. I remember when we hit. And no one believes me, not my lawyer, not the judges, not the journalists. But you can believe me or you can be damned because this is what happened. When we hit, the Commodore seemed to fold over itself and hurtle up onto the rail. We were suspended for a moment, in an impossible limbo on the edge of the bridge. She looked at me and seemed to age by the second, her skin fell loose and elongated into a melting wax mask. Her hair was suddenly wisps of grey tangled in black. But, her eyes were still cold dark. It felt like a gallon of concrete mix sunk down my throat into my gut. She was fading.
Then the balance broke and as we fell, she stood, slipped and escaped out the window. That is all I remember until I woke in hospital. It’s a funny thing. I was a few ounces of blood away from death, but they saved me, just to kill me later.
The survivors can’t remember her. After Jimmy Lowe almost beat a man to death in the car park, Derek had a camera installed outside. They showed me the footage, and Lerra must have known it was there, because she avoided it. They tell me that the vodka tonic I ordered sat on the bar until that place went up in flames. They say she’s not real; the shrinks talk about my mother and my father and my whore wife. And I laugh and spit in their faces, because that’s what Lerra would want. I know she’s out there, I hope she makes it to Canada before they find her. Cause she lit that match and it’s better for me to die than her.
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