Atheists Who Kneel and Pray

by Tarryn Fisher

  “You have a beard now,” he says, scratching his head. “How do you eat pussy with a beard?”

  I laugh and we hug in the way men do with a few firm hits onto the back. I’ve always thought it funny that even in hugging, men show aggression. Ferdinand stays with me for the week and before he leaves, he tells me I need to find Yara.

  He’s nervous when he tells me. I’ve seen him play to crowds of eighty thousand not even breaking a sweat or vomiting like Brick did before a big show. He sits now on the arm of my sofa, his legs spread. His body is bent so that his elbows are resting on his knees, his hands dangling between them. He looks me in the eye, but he’s having trouble doing so.

  “Look,” he says. “I have a friend in London. He came to one of our shows once…”

  “Which one?” I ask.

  “Red Rocks. He came to Red Rocks and I asked him to keep an eye out for Yara.”

  “How does one keep an eye out for someone they’ve never met, in a city with millions of people?”

  “I showed him her picture. He writes restaurant reviews for a blog, so I figured if he was frequenting London’s bar scene he was liable to run into her.”

  “And did he?”

  “No.”

  I can’t hide the disappointment from my face. “So why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I don’t really give a fuck who you fuck. But, you changed after she left, and fucking all those girls didn’t help you. Neither did the album’s success, man, which I suspect was mostly written about her.”

  I pause to think about “Atheists Who Kneel and Pray.” The night I had fallen drunk on a stranger’s lawn somewhere in North Bend, on my way back from a bar. The snow was falling around me, shocking my face and hand with little pinpricks as it landed. I’d stared up at the sky and thought about how I didn’t believe anymore—not in God or his creation. Definitely not in love. She’d come as a thief in the night and taken it all away. How could a person do that? How could they have so much power? And as I lay there, in a drunken state of heartbreak, I’d written the song that had put us on the map.

  “You need to find her,” Ferdinand says. “You need closure, man. Or something else. Find her and tell her it was all for her. Whatever you need to do.”

  Ferdinand’s mother was a shrink. I take it that he gleaned all his wisdom from her.

  I rub my hand across my face. “Okay, man,” I say. “Okay.”

  I check my trash for her e-mail. When she used to send me e-mails they went straight to my trash, I never figured out why. I tried to make it so they went to my inbox, but she’d send an e-mail and it would be sorted into the trash. A forewarning perhaps. The e-mail I’m waiting for is the one where she offers me a sincere and heartbroken apology. It gives me a decent reason for walking out on me six weeks after we were married.

  I imagine I’ll read her e-mail and go, “Aha, I get it now. Thank you for explaining everything so well that I don’t have to hurt anymore.”

  Every day I check my trash for that fucking e-mail, but it never comes. Do the guilty not send e-mails? I’m checking my e-mail one day (the trash) when I see a title in the subject bar that says: NEED A PRIVATE EYE, I’M YOUR GUY. I open it partly because it’s cheesy and I think this guy, Ed Berry is his name, could come up with a better slogan for his business. Ed claims he can find anyone, and he can do it to fit your budget. I don’t know where Ed gets off thinking anyone would call him after that awful slogan, but I call him because I figure Ed needs someone to believe in him. I leave a message and he calls me back within two minutes.

  “What can I do you for?” he says in a dirty accent. I can’t tell if he’s from New York, Texas, or Minnesota. “All three,” he tells me later. “I’m a man who moves around.”

  I almost hang up on him, but I remember what Ferdinand said about needing closure. Yara and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary last month. I got a tattoo to commiserate, and then I got drunk. Where is my wife? That’s Ed’s job now. I needed a private eye and he is my guy.

  I tell Ed that I need to find someone and he tells me that international work doesn’t come cheap. I assure him I can afford it. When I hang up the phone, I know I’ve crossed a line there’s no coming back from. When you set out to find someone, you don’t stop until you do. And then you have to deal with what you find.

  Ed sends me photos. Large 8x10 ones. He also sends the files to my e-mail. They do not go to my trash. I check the trash before opening the files. Nothing.

  In the photos I see Yara behind a bar. No surprise there, she had a master’s degree and refused to work as anything but a bartender. I see her walking down a street with plastic shopping bags, her chin tucked to her chest. I see her smiling as she sits at an outside table with another woman. Ed labels each photo with what she’s doing. Female subject eats at The White Knight at eleven hundred hours. Is joined by another female. They leave together walking west on….

  I don’t like that he calls her female subject. She’s Yara.

  I check my trash for her e-mail.

  I know where she is, now it’s just a matter of actually going. My tattoo gets infected. I consider having it lasered off. Bad juju when the tattoo you got to commiserate your second anniversary with your runaway wife gets infected. When it heals there is a spot in the middle where the ink disappeared. It’s perfect in a crippling way, so I keep it. When I check my e-mail, I rub that empty spot in the middle of my tattoo. It’s not something I was aware I did until Brick pointed it out. Brick can be painfully observant when there aren’t women around.

  “Dude, why do you do that? It’s like the same thing every day.”

  I shrugged it off, but it made me think. There was a story of a man whose wife died. He went to the graveyard every day, picked the same flowers, wore the same tie. He sat next to her grave and told his dead wife about what he’d had for breakfast, how the neighbor had raised her hand in a wave as he walked by. This was the way he grieved the love of his life, with ritual and consistency. It was a grab at control after the uncontrollable happened. Death. Me touching the blank space of my tattoo, me searching for her e-mail in my trash. I was lost forever in my grief.

  I hate being home, home being my family home where my parents have a lime green golf cart that they drive around the property proudly numbered 12. My sister keeps toys for her children to play with when she brings them over on the weekends. The house always smells of apple cider vinegar, which in turn smells like dirty feet. My mother has become a consumer of apple cider vinegar.

  “It kills the bad bacteria in your gut,” she tells me.

  To illustrate this, she pats mine right where the bad bacteria live, then points to her own. I take a shot of it to appease her and I gag. No one talks about Yara, that’s the rule. We carry on like she never happened. Sometimes I can tell my mother wants to talk about it, ask if I’ve heard anything, but she holds the questions in her eyes instead. For the first time in my life I’m grateful that we’re the type of family who avoids talking about things.

  It’s the sound of my sister’s children riding their tricycles along the pavement in front of the house that bothers me the most. I always wake up to it and put a pillow over my head to kill the sound of plastic wheels on hot asphalt. The grating roll of them, the laughter. I hate it. It reminds me of a happiness I won’t likely ever know—a family of my own, small humans who call me Daddy or Papa, a woman who I want to make them with. When I kiss my mother goodbye after the weekend and ferry back to the city I am inordinately relieved. Who am I anymore? Not the man who used to like hanging out with his family. Not the man who was thirsty for music. I go to sleep in my own condo; the hum of engines lulls me to sleep and it’s the best sleep I’ve had in days. Next week will be better. Next week I will try harder to get on with my life. Next week we play a festival in Seattle.

  I check my trash for her e-mail.

  She had fangs. Figurative ones, but also her incisors were sharp which made her look like a vampire. The fi
rst time I saw her I thought of the books all the girls were reading when I was in high school, the one about the beautiful vampire who falls in love with a mortal girl. I was the mortal boy and this girl—godlike—made me feel plain and insufficient. Later she told me that I made her feel the same way, and maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be—two people in awe of each other, who feel lucky to be with each other. I came back to see her again, thirsty for her attention. I wasn’t exactly starved for attention, but lately hers was the only attention I wanted. Maybe the first time was a fluke, an off night for my masculinity. But when I went back I felt the same thing—if not stronger. I flirted with her and she flirted back, but not with the soft pliability that most women flirted with.

  “Hey splinter guy,” she’d say because she knew it annoyed me. “Are you going to write a song about that?

  She threw barbs, they were well aimed and they made me laugh. If I were a different man I’d have a bruised ego. I took her jabs and molded them to me. She was something I knew existed but had never met: the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, the leprechaun at the end of the rainbow. Terrible analogies, I know.

  Yara

  And then she told me, after a lot of prodding—Yara.

  Her name was music.

  I’d leave the bar and think about her hair. Not her tits or her ass—her hair. What the fuck was that? I told my best friend, Ferdinand, about her hair and he called me a little bitch.

  A little bitch I was.

  “Do you want to run your fingers through it?” he asked. “Stick your face in it and get that good smell?”

  I did.

  “Fuck off,” I said, but he’d just laughed.

  “I’d rather have my fingers and face somewhere else, but suit yourself.”

  I invited her to my show. Once, twice, three times. I’d never had to beg a woman to come to one of my shows before. And then to make matters worse, she never came. Each show I’d climb onto the stage and look for her, her blonde hair—even if it was tied back I’d be able to see it. And then I’d climb off stage disappointed. She didn’t work the same way other women did. Other women had dials, knobs; nothing was labeled. Yara had only one switch and it was either Off or On. I wanted to speak her language. I wanted to be her language. This was obsession and I welcomed it. A nice change to not feeling anything at all or to feeling disappointed.

  We played The Crocodile the last Saturday of the month. I’d invited Yara again, but by then expected her not to come. We usually sat around in their greenroom drinking until it was time for us to go on. But, on that particular night, I couldn’t sit still.

  “Give David a hit of that,” Ferdinand said to Brick, who was smoking a joint.

  I waved it off.

  “It’s like you’re strung out on something, man.”

  Ferdinand knew me pretty well, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Yara had been different with me the last few times I went into The Jane—not as talkative and friendly. I took a shot to appease them a few minutes before the show started.

  “Who are you looking for?” Ferdinand asked as we walked onto the stage. Ferdinand knew who I was looking for but he liked to ride me about it.

  “Yara,” I said, without thinking.

  “The one you’ve been obsessing over? Dude…”

  “You haven’t seen her. You don’t know. Actually I don’t want you to see her.” I picked up my Charvel and ignored the way he was looking at me. Ferdinand was the bassist, but he got more ass than I did. As the face of the band, lead singers got the most ass; their name was the one most called out and remembered. He was six foot four and wide like a bull, women thought Ferdinand was a combination of mysterious and dangerous. In reality, he was a man of few words who had a kitten screensaver on his MacBook. He didn’t like to talk unless it was about music or his mother, and he cried when he got a nosebleed, but hey, the illusion was half the fun. It worked out well for his social life.

  “Who’s that?” Ferdinand asked.

  He jutted his chin toward the bar as he turned the E peg on his Fender. I lifted my eyes, tried to see past the bright lights that shone on the stage. A flash of platinum hair, but it could be anyone. Girls with that hair color were a dime a dozen. Her hair was so long it kissed her hips, hips that sashayed when she walked.

  “A blonde,” I said. “Wrong one.”

  “There are plenty of blondes you can pick from right here,” Ferdinand said. “An entire buffet of blondes.”

  I flipped him the bird and picked up my guitar. A buffet. Right. That’s what it had become. You could swipe left or right, go on two hookups in one night. If you didn’t like one there was another. Around and around you went, fucking groupies, girls on Tinder who said they wanted to have a good time but were looking for a husband. You could fuck your way through the Pacific Northwest if you were halfway decent looking and carried a guitar. It was all unfulfilling. Barren experience after barren experience.

  Time to start. Brick was on the drums. “One…two…three…”

  It was her. I realized that halfway through our first song. Energized, I moved around the stage with new vigor. Ferdinand raised his eyebrows, tilted his head slightly toward her as if to ask, That her? I nodded. He pursed his lips, dipping his bass guitar and closing his eyes. This was his favorite part of the song. What would be Yara’s? I sang, played to impress. I didn’t want to scare her and for that reason I didn’t make eye contact until we were three songs in. She was here, she had come. I was into it. She wasn’t just going to be my muse, I was going to make her my wife.

  A lot of good that did me. A lot of fucking good.

  I count the days she’s been gone. I count them until it becomes painful to know there was an actual number pushed between us—a number that only grew. Would only grow. Days, then months, then years. They tell you it gets better but it doesn’t. I make a list of things I want to forget because it hurts to hold them in the forefront of my mind.

  That one time she cussed out my brother when he told me to get a real job.

  That one time we were playing a show and I saw her in the crowd with her eyes closed and her hands raised like she was worshipping.

  That one time she was so angry with me she threw a loaf of bread at my head and told me to choke on it.

  That one time she licked the tears off my face and said she was craving something salty.

  That one time I felt sorry for myself and told her I was a lousy artist and she told me to write a song about it.

  That one time she filled the vodka bottle with vinegar and when I started coughing and choking she told me I needed to stop drinking so fucking much.

  That one time she convinced me to let her wax my balls and told me it wouldn’t hurt at all.

  That one time she drew boobs on my face with a Sharpie while I was sleeping and then I had to play a show later that night.

  That one time she sang to me when I wouldn’t sing anymore and it was so bad and so good at the same time.

  That one time we got married.

  That one time she left.

  When does it get better? Can someone give me a time frame?

  If someone doesn’t want you, the only self-respecting thing to do is to let them go. Truth, honest to God, I’m not lying to you. It’s that or a restraining order. I’ve seen those guys who wouldn’t let go. Their girls would peace out and they’d lose their shit. Man, those fuckers reminded me of beggars; stooped shoulders, watery eyes like they’d just hit a joint. How do you let yourself get to that point, man? That’s pathetic. What bothered me most about those guys was the type of girls they were grieving. Shallow girls, cover girls, too much lipstick—girls, none of them even a little bit like Yara. I judged those guys so hard and I guess I shouldn’t have. We all have someone to grieve even if it’s not Yara.

  I made a new list of things I wanted to forget.

  The way she cooked my meals when I was a zombie and carried them over to me, placed the fork between my fingers, and told me in her gentle
voice to eat.

  Her cold fingers when they smoothed the lines on my face.

  How she never complained about the months when I disappeared, she never brought them up after.

  The way she’d lash out at me, accusing me of cheating on her.

  Those girls, the ones who were not Yara, their speech was fickle, their voices high and twangy. They never asked a real question, just hinted around it. They sounded cheap, like those plastic recorders they teach you to play in middle school. I’d had those girls, I’d listened to them speak, and say my name, and ask me non-questions. Yara’s voice was deep…elegant. Her accent was regal and her tone matter-of-fact. I added something I wanted to forget to the list of Yara’s questions.

  Why fuck a girl and lead her on if you have no intention of being in a relationship with her?

  Why are you whining that you can’t write a song when you haven’t tried to write a song?

  Why do you let your brother speak to you like that?

  Why do you want to marry me anyway?

  After a relationship ended and you went through the initial grief, it was time for the groveling (or bargaining as the shrinks called it). Groveling was a rite of passage. It’s where you got to look so pathetic no one would want you anyway, but you were sad enough to try. I didn’t know where she was to grovel or I would have. Fuck, I would have gone the whole nine yards with the groveling, been a beggar. I skipped that stage and went straight to the asshole stage. That’s the best one. You get to drink a shitload—and you don’t even care what you’re drinking. There’s a lot of “Fuck that bitch.” And, “I’m better off without her.” When you get tired of the hangovers and your dick won’t get hard anymore, you stop drinking and you medicate with fun new things: friends, the gym, brown rice and chicken breasts perfectly portioned, and random hookups with girls you meet at the gym.