Snapshots - The medium and the short of it

by Exley Steward

“Oh, father, when can we give up and stop caring about the world?” “Soon, Charlie - soon. But now I need to concentrate if I ever want to finish this model airplane.”

*****

It was sunny for eight straight days. On the ninth, it rained. They complained about the rain. I’d been alone in the room a plump three hours before she stirred, softly rustling the sheets. “You have cigarette?” she asked. “Oh my god, I feel like shit.” “Nope.” She looked like shit. She sat up, exposing her bare chest. “Did I sleep with you or something?” she asked, scratching her head. “Nope.” The rain showed no signs of slowing. It came down in clean silver stripes. I could smell the earth soaking. “Do you have a cigarette?” she asked again. “Nope,” I said again.

*****

When Jimmy and Serge came over, it gave him a chance to play the songs he wouldn’t otherwise admit to liking - the songs Michelle would always frown upon.

*****

I waited patiently until he had left, then sauntered over and sat down next to her. She looked at me blankly, raising the only eyebrow she had ever used. She wore a dark purple dress, her straight black hair neatly tied back, with only the bangs on the left hanging over her eye. She waited for me to speak. “Oh come on,” I said, my voice cracking slightly as it peaked for effect. “I’m much better looking than that guy!” She looked uncertain.

*****

We sat down panting. Larry’s legs were comically long for the seat. “Thank god for fat people,” he said. “How would I ever catch a bus without them?” He didn’t care that we were going back, but I had my reservations.

*****

“You promised you would stop!” she screamed. She was crying hysterically, hitting his chest with the meat of her palms. He stood there, stoic, but in a childish way, stubborn and bored and superficially apologetic. “You promised. You swore!” Shuffling backwards with the weight of confrontation, he put his hands up feebly to quell her attack but it was more as an afterthought, out of a sense of duty. “Oh come on,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.” He averted eyes. She was manic, like a box of shaken wasps. When she suddenly stopped, the silence was constricting. She was trembling when she spoke again, her face etched with shock. “You dare do it right in front of me! As we discuss it?” He removed his finger and sighed, “God baby, I’m only picking my nose.”

*****

It was hot. “I would hate to live in a world without clouds,” he said, looking upwards. The wooden deck jutted elegantly out into the woods at tree-top level. “I could never love in a world without clouds,” she answered. She was worth more than his love but his love was all he had to give.

*****

“You are such a slob,” she said, and I promised again that I would stop walking around with an oil stained piece of toilet paper hanging out of my ass crack.

*****

“Hey Pete, been a while. Wow, you look great, d’you lose weight?” “Huh?” “You look like you lost 20 lbs you old dog.” “That’s not funny.” “What’s not funny?” A change in the wind carried in fragments of music from Skater’s Road. “For Christ’s sake Charlie. I had my leg amputated in April.”

*****

“Here you go.” I had a headache from all the phone calls I had made for Serge “No, I want a warm sweater - Something big and soft that covers me up.” I went back into the other room to see what I could find. I was surprised that it was so late, and that it had stopped raining.

*****

He would call her his little supositoire in a quaint French accent. He said it in jest of course, being very American, thick in the shoulders and square in the chin, always a flute of sparkling wine in hand. She was a small brunette, quiet and attentive. He offered her a bite. “Avocado is so luxurious, it’s almost naughty,” he said, his glass caught up for a second in the white satin curtains blowing wildly into the hotel room. She politely declined, knowing he would enjoy it more. “Are we having company tonight?” she asked, re-brushing her hair. “Would you like us to have company my little supositoire?” he responded, perfectly willing to put down the contents of either hand to pick up the phone and make some calls.

*****

“I don’t know,” he sighed, taking advantage of a break in the jazz to bring home his point. “I destroyed myself immensely in my twenties. I’ve just thought so many things with a murky mind.” Perpetually in between the off beats of a yawn and a cough, I stared at him. I had never been able to stand people with strong English accents talking seriously. *****

“It’s a speed ball,” he says mixing the dope with the coke. He calls dope ‘D’ but he the coke, Cocaine. One grows longer and the other shrinks in semantics but they are joined together now. “It’s what killed River Phoenix” he adds snorting a line. “But this is a very small amount. It won’t do anything,” and I believe him. *****

I follow the curve of the sickle path out of the woods towards the store. A couple of cars slide by. I walk for thirty minutes and buildings start sparsely appearing. The smells get thicker. There’s Margie. She’s always kicking away dirt and leaves in the woods hoping to find a corpse. “Hi Margie.” We come to a standstill on the sidewalk next to a low brick wall. It smells like urine. “It smells like piss here Walter,” she says. “Yeah.” “How long are you out for?” “Not long. Back to the city soon.” “You’re going to miss the woods,” she says. I look back over to where I came from. “Yeah. I think you’re right.” *****

We sit at one of the tables near the large mirror even though the dirty empty plates haven’t been cleared away yet. I keep trying to remember what it is I am supposed to be worrying about, but I can’t. Larry sees it on my face. “Stop it!” he says loosening his tie. “If you worry too hard, you might drop a little shit out of your ass hole.” *****

There was garbage blowing through the street, an urban whirlwind of gray dirt. I came out of the subway, and started walking home. They were on the side of the street, by the intersection, in the middle of the circling dust and candy wrappers, kissing. They came apart, he smiling, she smiling, but a little less enthusiastically. She was a small thin girl with a long and pale face. He walked forth alongside me as I crossed the street. She, going in the other direction stayed behind. He suddenly turned to tell her something he had forgotten, holding his right hand up to the side of his face to wall the words. “Chocolate” he said with arrested volume, and when she had turned, he repeated it in French to clarify: “Chocolat.” She smiled in that same reserved way and turned to walk away again. *****

“Why not,” she said, shrugging her jeans into nakedness. *****

“I just feel so trapped in the colloquial perpetuity of repetition,” she said, her voice stretching habitually into that whiney end note she had owned since she was 14. “You want fries or salad?” I asked, leaning left into the aisle to find the waitress. There’s is that part of her that sings the death song - that chants the nowhere riddle. “Fries, and a root beer,” she said but she probably wouldn’t eat much. *****

I smelled something terrible, like a baby diaper. I gave the other people in the car dirty looks and sat in discomfort for five minutes. Then, with a shock, I realized I had shat my pants. *****

“I don’t like her,” Walter was saying about the Italian girl we had been spending time with. “She has a fat ass, and bad breath, and fat calves.” He lowered his voice as the bartender, an olive skinned semi-beauty, approached and dropped her fingers playfully into the crease of the laminated menu. “Anything for you boys?” she said and Walter said, “Do you really mean anything? I have some pretty perverted tastes.” *****

“Do you have any drugs?” he asks, his face like a boxer’s, with nose all bent out of shape. The room is large and clean and too brightly lit. “I have malaria pills,” I say. “Malaria pills?” “Yeah, Lariam- Mefloquine Hydrochloride - left over from my trip to Ghana.” He stares at me. “Want a cigarette?” I ask. “No, don’t smoke.” We decide to crush the Lariam pills and snort them. And so it starts for us. *****

There was a lot of laughter inside but it wasn’t warm laughter. It was obnoxious laughter. “I know he’s a fag but I love him,” she sighed, looking over at Quentin. “He certainly is a loveable fag,” I answered quickly, and headed inside, unwilling to listen to another outpour. *****

At the next table over, a thin lady with the fat lips sits eating fish and chips, licking her delicate fingers with her stubby tongue, her makeup smudged at the corner of both eyes, perhaps purposefully, but not entirely symmetrically, her hair like a black wig, bangs trimmed, tapering to straight cascading curtains at the sides. Her boyfriend, a thick set corporate type goes to grab a chip with his hairy, knuckle-heavy hand, but she slaps it away, leaving a slim, delicate grease mark on the back of his palm, like a designer dress flung to the floor of a hotel room during an illicit romantic rendezvous. *****

He adjusted the seam of his left pant leg. “I’m sorry, that’s incorrect,” he said smirking- “There is no problem, was the correct answer.” *****

“Oh my god! What a mess.” Rita burst into the bathroom without knocking “How did that happen?” Her top was loose and she was wearing no bra. We were all drunk. Grandma was sleeping but she knew what we got up to and I knew she liked us to have fun. She would cook us breakfast in the morning, laugh at our hangovers and send us off to the lake to swim. “I don’t know,” I blurted still holding the culprit like a cigar between my fingers. “I just couldn’t hang on to it.” *****

The woman beside me smelled like a dentist’s office; like fluoride, or blue stained spittle. She had the type of thick eyebrows you could hide a sandwich in. “I’m pretty sure coffee is giving me a back ache,” she yawned, stretching backwards while holding onto the edge of the bar. The other three had left large heaps of uneaten food resting atonally on their plates, not even attempting to cover up the inadequacy of the evening. I must admit though, that the chicken pot pie had been excellent. *****

He doesn’t go down on his girl after he has eaten a sandwich because he is sure he will give her a yeast infection. *****

“Want to play checkers, Mister?” asked the girl. She could only have been 12 or 13, but by god she had hairy arms. She was a veritable gorilla. I had not been in favor the cruise but I had to admit that I was enjoying myself. The endless supply of fresh sea air and tempered sunshine along with the myriad of brightly colored beach towels and summer dresses constantly on display had me quite dizzy with relaxed satisfaction. “Why not?” I replied. “Now where’s that waiter with my drink?” *****

I walked out into the back yard. Margie had put a swinging love couch out over looking the cliffs and I went to sit in it. It was kind of in the shape of a giant vagina. I felt more comfortable with it than I had ever felt with a real vagina. *****

The sickly stench of perfume shattered any sense of dignity in the room. Arthur, pretending to want a closer look at one of the black and white photographs, sidled up to me. A thin man with a fat face, he smelled like a fishpond. He smiled and took a sip of his drink, which was all ice. “Why is your girlfriend so nasty to me?” he asked, remaining submissive. “Because she doesn’t like your face,” I replied. “Oh,” “Yeah; she doesn’t like people who look like Charlie Sheen.” *****

It was late morning. We were lying on the floor, on our backs. “When I have a hangover, I don’t feel sick or have a headache - I get incredibly sad,” she said. I looked over at her and took her hand. We wrote letters to each other for a few years. I don’t remember what I wrote but it was all about love. *****

“I’ve never been attracted to Norma Jean, not even a little. Brittney and Christina yes, but never Norma,” he said as we tried to find an ally way through all the bald, cologne soaked douches. Charlie could drink a lot of beer. He would stand in the same place at the bar all night and put them back. “Check it out,” he said. I turned to look where he was looking. “Those guys are making a lot of effort with those two girls but they’re not going to get laid. They won’t get laid because they are Indian computer geeks, and Indian computer geeks don’t get laid by girls like those.” *****

It was very sexy outside - sunny and breezy in all directions. Our clothes were warm to the touch as we removed them. She was so beautiful, and she was naked. I felt like I was on the vergina of something great. *****

“There’s some nice poetic stuff in the black Harris Nesbitt notebook,” he said without looking up, entirely engaged in his work. “In case you need it,” he added with a squint, placing the tip of his spectacles pensively into his mouth, staring at the screen. Rita was annoyed. “I doubt I’ll need that stuff to make this fly Larry.” Rita was annoyed even though she was sitting by the pool and her maid was sporadically topping up her gin and tonic. *****

He hugs when he should kiss, shakes when he should hug. He’s the type of guy who will get it wrong every time, and I guess it endears him to some people. He is like a fat little happy dumb piggy but they were old whores, long past minding inadequacy. *****

“I said - it turns out that the woman who looked like a classic actress from the 50’s…” “Who, the rich one?” There were five or six too many people in the apartment. “Yeah her, and she looks so classy. Anyway, it turns out she was servicing the dishwasher, the African fellow who just came over from Sierra Leone.” “Really?” I was eating the ratatouille, which was unusually spicy. “Yeah.” “Huh.” It was one of those minimally decorated apartments you wished you had but would have done somewhat differently. *****

The door bell rang and I made ready to answer it. “Remember Charlie, this man is not here to talk to you. He is only here to deliver Chinese food.” “Yes, father.” I descended one flight of stairs to meet him halfway. *****

In the strip club, they were all crippled by their inability to touch. Dollars flapping in the wind, their faces looked stupid. “All these butchers with soft knives, delicately performing heart surgery without license. Cherished, worshipped and beheaded, it only resembles another campfire story now.” “God, Walter. Do you hear yourself?” “Not really buddy. Not at all, really.” “Well I do, so have some fucking pity.” *****

I met this girl at a party and she gave me her number. Every time I call her there is loud music and there are loud voices in the background. I have come to the conclusion that she is a party girl. “How was that Quarter Pounder with cheese?” “What?” “I saw you come out of McDonalds, so don’t try to deny it.” “I was just using the bathroom.” “Don’t lie to me.” She had that look again. She needed change. *****

The two other people in the elevator smelled like Chinese pastries, or perhaps it was the elevator. “We want to feel guilty because we are guilty,” Jimmy continued. “Can’t we just go eat without discussing this again?” “I guess so,” he said, but it was difficult for him. *****

We stopped in front of my apartment. “Everyone has to bear the burden of unexpected sainthood Larry, even Mr. Donbuster.” There was a rat in a garbage bag, rustling. We had been walking all day. *****

Essentially, I felt perfect. Everything was spot on. The booze, the coke, the music I would never normally have listened to- All perfect. “Why don’t you come over here?” she asked in a sexy voice. She was lying on her back on a thick blanket on the floor. We were drinking brandy loudly out of tall red plastic cups. She got on her knees for a second to take a sip and then slid heavily back down again. I felt perfect but I didn’t go to her. I waited until it was too late and then I fell asleep beside her. *****

“Open a wine.” “Which one?” “Any one.” “Surely not any one!” “Yes, any one.” “But this, for instance, is a 1990 Haut B-B-Brion. “Don’t ever let wine make you stutter, Larry. The Haut Brion is a fine choice.” *****

There’s a film of dirt that keeps me together. I would fall apart if I took a shower. *****

The crisp sky was bursting with cloudlessness. The winter waves broke onto the beach as perfect moist moans. I sunk down into the well worn comfort of a wooden chair. The boardwalk spread pale gray in front of me; a limited doorstop to the centuries of sand and sea that so catered to my senses. A round woman temporarily crashed my painting from the rear, fetching a dollar bill that had blown onto the sand. Once retrieved with a struggle, she cut back to rejoin her fellow. I had to turn to see what kind of a guy could be with such a fat cow. *****

“I really like you,” I said, adjusting the nozzle of the air stream above. “You are smart, charming and beautiful- but you smell like onions all the time and I can’t take it.” The bus pulled out of the station. We had 650 miles to go. *****

I felt so happy on top of the Belvedere Castle, looking at the swallows. I kept thinking, “If I didn’t fuck up too much already- I’m golden- because I ain’t fuckin’ up no more.” *****

The grass in the shade of the oak tree was cool. She got up and stood over him. “You think everyone can change? That everyone deserves a chance!” her tone hardening. There were some people around but few enough to ignore. “What about if they raped me?” she spat. “Would you give them another chance then too? If someone hurt you I would want to kill them but that’s just me.” She looked away, taking a few seconds to register something. “That’s nice Walter- real nice,” she said, shaking her head. *****

He leaned forward over the thick Mahogany table, a white hot sliver of sunlight, neatly framing his face. “Perhaps,” he said and paused. “But I feel it’s more probable that that’s bullshit.” *****

We were sitting on the steps outside waiting for Larry to come and open the door. None of us liked to carry our keys around. “Reading books is dangerous! Very dangerous indeed. They impregnate us with the will to change and the challenge of beating mediocrity.” Margie looked up at him and rolled her eyes. “Oh God, there he goes again.” I couldn’t have been more in love with her. *****

He was a big man dressed in khaki, his mustache yellowish from the nicotine. He had one foot up on the short brick wall, leaning an elbow on his knee. “It took me till now,” he said, without looking up. “To do what?” I asked, trying with difficulty not to concentrate on his belly tucked somehow neatly behind a straining belt. “To realize all the things I always do that I don’t need to.” His accent snatched the words out of the gravel at his feet and then curtly ended them, like victims woken up solely to be murdered. “All of them?” “Yes - every single one. He looked out over the dry landscape, flicking his cigarette butt out into it. “I realize them all fully now but I still do them.” “Will you stop doing them?” I asked, keeping eye contact as he straightened up. “I don’t know,” he coughed. “I hope so.” *****

“I’ll do it tomorrow,” I said, annoyed that Serge hadn’t left yet. “Tomorrow is the worst possible day of the year to start something on.” “I just want to sit here and drink my beer- OK?” “OK,” he agreed, but he didn’t leave. We sat in silence. *****

“I swear to god, when she takes a shit, it sounds like someone laughing.” We had been sitting by the pool all day, drinking cocktails. Neither of us was a swimmer. “When I shit, it lands straight in hell,” I laughed. “God, when you laugh it sounds like someone taking a shit.” His face was a little too twisted for my tastes. *****

I was in the bar and Arthur said, “Why are the Yankees playing in Tokyo to open the season. What about the fans?” and I thought about how I couldn’t give a fuck about the Yankees or the start to their season. “I can’t wait till I never have to see baseball or basketball or screaming fans ever again,” I said but she wasn’t paying attention. The smell of mint spread though the place like a miracle “Let’s go somewhere a little more crusty,” she said, grabbing her bag. Dirty phrases echoed in my head, and it was my voice speaking them. She said she wanted to go somewhere a little more crusty. *****

I rolled over onto my back; then quickly sat up to drink from the glass of water next to the bed. She looked at me as if I was mad. “But I did not say stop!” she said. *****

The TV was on with the volume off. “I’ve been doing much better now- now that I have stopped smoking marijuana, now that I have stopped crying like a baby at night.” “Good… good.” “It sounds silly and redundant but the only point in life is to live it properly.” “You are absolutely right,” I said, nodding, but I was thinking instead about the time when I fell down in the street and a Russian guy helped me up before riding away on his green bicycle. *****

He picked up his glass and touched it to mine. “You go out; you find out what’s available; you work them; you get lucky. Tight short pants and a smile and suddenly you have a life again.” © Exley Steward 2007

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