Day 37: Babies in Avocados (b.)

                                                                                 ***

All this and I am still drinking 20 beers a day. When Tiara asks me why she always sees me with a beer I tell her that I am celebrating. When she asks what I am celebrating I tell her that I am celebrating being so in love with her all the time. When she asks if I think I am an alcoholic I tell her that I am a writer.

"Still you need to be careful pounding that many beers a day. You should just give your body a rest. A couple of weeks without the sauce won't kill you."

Yes, I say again, kissing her lips.

 

                                                                               ***

I send Nina an e-mail and tell her that I am in love. I tell her about Tiara. I tell her that it is no one's fault because we figured she would be in South Africa with the Peace Corps for the next three years. I send Nina the article I wrote about Tiara two years’ earlier when she was battling breast cancer and I called her my hero. I tell Nina sorry. Nina says that she still wants to see me. We agree to get a hotel room half-way between Peoria and Chicago and meet under the provision that nothing can happen between us.

I tell Tiara that I am seeing an old friend.

"That's what I mean David, I have three kids and am going through a sloppy divorce. You should be free not to feel impeded."

I tell her I like being tied up and impeded upon. She says that is not what she meant.

"It can never work out between us David. Besides look at how much you drink and party all the time. I don't want my kids to be around someone who spends eight hours a day writing stories about sex while getting drunk at the lip of his keyboard."

We smile. We kiss again. We make love. She is pulling my hair like she is trying to uproot organic vegetables from a compost heap. Afterwards our bodies topple in limp ellipses on her master bed. I kiss Tiara's frontal lobe. I asked if she came and she nods. I tell her that I love her.

She looks back at me.

"Sometimes I think the only reason you say that is because of the cancer."

"What?" I retort, nonplussed.

 "That the only reason you even want to be with me is because I'm a survivor and because cancer killed your father."

I tell her that's not the reason.

I kiss her forehead again. I reel her in close to my body. She tells me again to have fun when I see my friend from South Africa whom she calls my 'girlfriend.'

I tell her it's not like that.

We fall asleep.

It begins to rain.

                                                              ***

 

"You need to wait here," Nina says. "You need to give me a few minutes to get ready."

We are in the hallway outside hotel room. I am next to two cases of beer. Nina is dressed to kill. She doesn't want to talk about South Africa or why it didn't work out. Our hotel is next to some NASCAR affiliated racetrack and the hotel is full of what appears to be inbred hicks leftover from Hee-haw.

The drag cars next door sounds like they are sneezing.

I am waiting in the hallway.. I have a twelve pack of PBR and something foreign I picked up for the WONKAVATOR next to me. I have been slamming beers all morning since before I left. I had a three bloody Mary’s when I made Tiara eggs-benedict for breakfast nine hours earlier. I kept pounding Smithwick’s because that was the only cultural beer the restaurant where Nina insisted on buying me dinner had on tap.

I still can’t cop a buzz.

Nina seems to be taking forever. The hallway in the hotel where we are staying smells like speedstick and weed. Every NASCAR faithful adherent that is male seems to be wearing the same wife-beating undershirt while ferrying a cooler of cheap beer as they waddle past. Momentarily my mind surfs in the gutter. I picture Nina changing. I wonder if she is going to open the door dressed in something frilly in an effort to seduce me.

She has been taking what seems like days.

When Nina opens the door the room is squinting at me. She has lit candles. She is dressed in the same emerald dress she was wearing earlier in the evening.

"Happy birthday!!" She says, informing me that she lit thirty candles for my thirtieth birthday.  It seems like the flames are individually winking at me in an almost Pentecostal fashion. It is beautiful. She has transitioned the room into an entire birthday cake.

 Outside a drag car sneezes past.

It feels like a menorah is trying to give me a hug.

I don’t know what to say. Fire is quavering in illuminating specks of light.

"You have one more gift." she says, opening up her laptop. Music begins to blare. Nina starts laughing.

“The B-52’s!!!” She exclaims. I give her a hug. I have never had a girl light candles for me. Much less play the B-52’s.

Tiara got me nothing for my birthday except we went out to breakfast at Denny’s and I got the meat lovers grand slam and afterwards she accused me of checking out girls’ at Barnes and Nobles.

“Okay,” She says, holding one candle up in front of me, “You need to blow them all out and make a wish because if we leave them burning too long the sprinklers will go off in the room.”

I close my eyes. I try not to think about Tiara. I try not to think that I am bound to her.

Right when I am ready to blow I feel her lips on my cheekbone wishing me a happy birthday.

I blow the candle out.

“Here,” She says dabbing her index finger and thumb in her mouth as if she is ready to whistle, before pinching the candles into floating question mark shaped wisps.

“Put them out like this. With a little pinch.”

I want to tell Nina that that is the most kindest thing anyone has ever done for me. That I am honored. That she has made me feel special.

Instead I pinch at the candles and watch as the smoke dissipates

I give her a hug. She is small. She is built like an Olympic gymnast. I swear she weighs only 80 pounds. It’s like if I placed her on the back porch of my apartment a spring zephyr would knock her off the balcony like an origami folded napkin at a Greek wedding reception.

We continue to pinch out each candle as if acolyting in reverse. Nina then reaches her hand under the shower nozzle as if she is giving it fellatio and water begins to gush. There is a about three inches in the tub and then Nina turns off the water. She takes off her sandals and, with her dress still on, gets in the tub, sitting on the side.

“Come on,” She says. She has become pensive all of a sudden. I stomp down on the heel of each shoe and peel off my sox. I sit down next to her in pier broken unemployment fashion. We don’t touch each other or speak. We look at the flank of our feet in the translucent pond of tepid water below.

The room still smells like expired candles from my birthday gift.   A gravid silence envelopes between our elbows. We don’t say anything. I feel compelled to thank her for the gift. I feel compelled say something witty.

“This feels like our Garden State moment. You know, being in a bathtub like this and not saying anything.”

“I thought you said you liked Garden State?”

I like when they were yelling into the abyss and there was nothing there, I say, quoting the anthologized Nietzschean maxim about how when one stares into the abyss the chasm of  unalloyed emptiness that is the abyss the abyss is simultaneously staring straight back into them.”

Nina nods. She says that she really liked that movie. She rhetorically inquires that she thought I said that I liked it.

“ I mean, I liked the movie and the concept only I fucking can’t stand Zach Braff. He plays the same character in every role he takes. And he looks like a young Ray Romano  and I fucking   can’t EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. It’s one of those shows yuppie married couples watch when they don’t have sex anymore and laugh at same moments even though the humor is not that funny.”

“The one thing I hated most about Garden State was when he comes back from the funeral and his aloof father says, “Other than that how was the play Misses, Lincoln.” After my father died I went back to my apartment and my classy gay roommate was there and we didn’t say anything for a long time, we just sort of stared at the floor and then he said, “Other than that how was the play Misses Lincoln,” and I just started crying and I was gonna entitle the memoirs of my father’s life that only know, thanks to fucking Zach Braff everyone will think I plagiarized that line.”

Nina is still looking at me. We sit on the bathtub ledge. I  crack open beer.

“Sure you don’t want one?” I say to Nina. She swipes her chin in a latitudinal whiff.

“I’m fine. That’s like your tenth one since the restaurant. You still drinking every day.”

“Like a fish,” I tell her, “And you are my mermaid.”

I slam the beer I am nursing and crack open another one.

“Okay,” I say, standing up, sloshing in the linoleum tiles. “We can’t kiss but come here.”

She stands up. The water inches up just slightly above our ankles.We begin to dance, sloshing in the mixture of our reflection below. Nina has her eyes clamped shut and her head is pressed into the center of my chest.

“It’s hard,” I tell her. She is crying. She nods. I tell her not to move. I tell her thank you for the birthday gift. I tell her that we can’t have sex but I can hold her close the whole night.  Outside the bathroom the B-52’s sound like they just got out of the mystery van and are in search of a Scoobie snack.

I turn the overhead shower faucet on. We are being baptized. We are being sprinkled with indoor rain.

I continue to hold her even though we are getting drenched.

Outside a vehicle sneezes past.

I tell Nina there is no such thing as time.

Babies in Avocados.

 

                                                                        ***

It is the morning after. My bus is scheduled to leave in a couple of hours. Nina asks me what I want for breakfast. I tell her I want to go somewhere PoDunkish where I can get a breakfast beer and gravy slathered on everything. She tells me that she knows where to take me.

It is July and it is hot. I have had something like 30 drinks in the last 24 hours. No one says anything. This is typical.

We sit down. The diner is also a bar and has slot machines and everyone is smoking. I tell her I love this place. I tell her I can see Hunter S. Thompson cramming at a bar like this smoking his pipe because everyone is more real and no one will fuck with him.

Nina smiles.

“I have a weird request,” Nina says, blinking. I tell her what.

“Do you mind if I sit next to you?”

She is sitting across from me on the antipodal side of the table. We are facing each other. She tells me that since I’m with Tiara and all, she’s not sure when the next time is that she’ll be able to see me and that she wants to spend as much time next to me as possible.

I tell her I feel the same.

She slides next to me and the two of us our facing the same direction seated as if in a church pew. The moment I buckle my arm around the lithe contours of her shoulder blades I feel a piercing jab in my lower right side. It feels like a bird is trying to peck its way out of my abdomen using something serrated and Ginsu affiliated  in lieu of a beak.

“What’s wrong?” Nina says. I tell her I feel fine. My face scrunches up into a twist tie. I feel sick. I excuse myself. When I leave I fall down. I can’t stand up straight. I ‘m holding my side as if being penetrated by an unassuming bullet.

“What’s wrong?” Nina inquires again. I tell her I don’t know. The manager of the restraurant is looking at me as if he needs to call an ambulance. I scowl. I hold up my hand in a halting fashion.

If my body were a little tea cup I it hurts right where at the base of where here-is-my-handle would be located.

I slap down a twenty-spot on the table and tell Nina that I need to go. As we get to the parking lot I vomit what looks like a puddle blood. I can’t move. Nina is flipping out. The next thing I know  I am on the ground and there is a tire in my face.

Nina says not to move. She says she is getting help.

I want tell her I am sorry but every time I open my mouth blood comes out.

I can’t move.