by Gregory Hill
Are you comfortable? Y or N
Do you trust me? Y or N
Delightfully, there’s been time for her to draw a smiley face:
Aw, Vero. Look at you, leaned back in Charlene’s wicker chair with that pencil casually tucked behind your ear. How many humans would be so calm, so cool, so funny when faced with a hypertemporal boyfriend?
Even when I’m not traveling a hundred thousand times the speed of time, I’m a difficult person to be around. I’m a hypercritical, hypocritical, unmotivated, entitled, socially-disengaged ass of a man. It’s a miracle you’ve chosen to remain in my orbit for these past several months, Vero.
The thing with The Blad, that was my fault. Every time we go out, I complain. The food’s too hot, the service isn’t too hot, the ethnic music playing on the speakers is too modern, the chairs are too high relative to the table. I’m difficult. No wonder you went out for sour cream on the side.
But it’s me you brought to St. Louis for your aunt’s funeral, not The Blad. You did your dalliance, yes, and decided that in spite of my mountain of flaws, when life gets shitty, you still want to hang out with me.
Eat it, The Blad. I fucking win. You can pound yer Rocky Mountain pisswater with Lord Elway all day long. Vero likes me.
I completely overestimated how long it’d take for Vero to read that note, which suggests that my time-keeping methods are far less accurate than I thought. I could refine my methods, I suppose. I could go back to Holliday and stare at the old 747 thru the old telescope, or I could drop pennies from a ladder and calculate their acceleration due to gravity. But I find that I don’t care. Screw time. Ever since I’ve been here, all I’ve thought about is time and I’m weary of it.
And so, I will no longer be a slave to the clock. My days are mine and Vero’s hours are hers. I don’t relate to Vero’s temporal experience any more than she could relate to a hummingbird’s. That’d be like worrying about how many molecules of air I inhale with every breath. I don’t even want to be aware that I’m breathing. I just want it to happen.
48
We were downtown one warm day, Vero and I. We’d gone to the art museum and were just enjoying the city. I pointed to the sun as it dangled over the Rockies and said, “That’s you. You’re my sun. I orbit you.”
Vero’s cheeks went rosy and then she said, “If I’m the sun, then you’re the Earth, Narwhal, and we live in a pre-Copernican solar system.”
End of story.
In Charlene Morning’s backyard, I touch my girlfriend’s hair. I’ll be the Earth, Vero, if you’ll be my sun.
Let me share a conversation Vero and I had the morning after she’d spent the night at my place for the very first time. It was a Sunday, we were both puffy-faced, an early spring rain was pitter-pattering against the window of my little garden-level apartment, and I was buttering toast.
Vero said, “Eighty-two percent of suicides occur on grey days.”
I said, “There are two ways to spell grey.”
She said, “I went to college for a while, at Boulder. Did I tell you that? My freshman year, by the time spring break rolled around, I was sick of the place. I was one of, like, three chicas on the whole campus. Everybody else was either white or on an athletic scholarship. And everybody was obsessed with skiing and snowboarding. When they weren’t skiing or snowboarding, like on the two days a week they actually had classes, they’d ditch school and get baked and watch snowboard videos.”
I said, “I prefer the version with the e rather than the a—g-r-e-y.”
“It was nothing but stoned conversations about counterfeit season passes and three-sixty dragon-flip face-boomers. I wanted to burn the mountains to the ground. Even worse, the weather sucked. That year, 1997, was cold all winter and grey all spring. I hated it. So for spring break, I decided to find some warm sand and lie down on it.”
I said, “On the other hand, when you pronounce it with an a, your mouth is compelled to smile. Gray.”
“I didn’t have any money, though, so I couldn’t go to that stupid Island of Drunken Assholes that everyone loves down in Texas.”
I said, “With the e, the word practically oozes out of your lower jaw. Grey.”
“I had a total of nine days to find a beach and then get back to Boulder. I loaded my suitcase, stood on the shoulder of a south-bound highway, and smiled pretty.”
I said, “Grey. Gray. The difference is subtle, but remarkable.”
“Four days later, I stepped out of a station wagon in some town in New Mexico. The south part. I can’t remember the name of the place. I leapt out the car and got blasted with hot. Like, a-hundred-and-five degrees hot. I was standing in front of a diner in a strip-mall and in front of the diner was an actual palm tree growing out of a squared off box of sand. The sun was bright enough that it made the sand look white. I was wearing a bikini top beneath my t-shirt and I took off my t-shirt and lay down in the sand until the manager of the diner came out and told me I was scaring away customers.”
I said, “The English generally use the e version and Americans employ the a version. Which makes sense when you consider the relative outward demeanors of the two countries.”
“Then I got up, crossed the street and hitched home. I had spent probably ten minutes total on the warm sand. I got back to campus just in time for classes, but I didn’t bother going. I didn’t care for college.”
I wrote Vero another note, a short one.
If you’ll be my sun, I’ll be your sand.
49
I entered Charlene’s bathroom to look for something to help with my sore knees. A few hundred milligrams of any old over-the-counter anti-inflammatory would do me fine. The soreness had become a constant, but it wasn’t anything that would have kept me out of a game. Stay on top of the pain, lay off the marathons for a while, and I’d be fine.
Good ol’ Charlene, she had a family-sized bottle of aspirin in her medicine cabinet, between the tweezers and the Q-tips. Behind the aspirin was a prescription bottle of hydrocodone. The label said to take them for back spasms. Charlene’s back must have made a full recovery; the bottle was still half full and the pills had passed their expiration date six years ago.
Here’s where I have to be smart.
I’ve seen what happens when you start with the scrips. Careers in officiating can last thirty, forty years, well beyond anything an actual basketball player could manage. You can’t do that unless you listen to the old guys. They show you how to shuffle down the court without pounding your joints, where to stand so you can see as much action with as little motion as possible, how to gracefully dodge careening balls, and how to flamboyantly employ your hand signals as a means of stretching your upper body. I sometimes call offensive fouls as an excuse to put my hand behind my neck and stretch my upper back.
But when you hit your fifties, as happened to most of my colleagues several decades ago, not even the hands on hips and full pelvic thrust of a blocking call will offer relief from the accumulation of ache and strains. Which is why virtually all of my colleagues have a secret pocket in their duffel bags where they store their plastic baggies full of multicolored pills.
It always starts with an ankle sprain; the doctor suggests a few Meloxicam or Sulindac or Naproxen or any of the other easy relievers that sound like they were named after the Grand Commander of an alien warrior species. That lasts a year or two and then somebody, usually another colleague, offers thon something a little stronger. Next thing you know these old fuckers are gobbling down opioids and ADHD meds like teenage rockabilly musicians. We’re talking five pregame pseudoephedrine, a halftime cocktail of Oxies and Ritalin, and a postgame handful of Ambien.
Typical conversation:
“You know any doctors?”
“No, but I got a guy.”
“Put me in touch?”
“He’s not taking customers.”
“Come on, man. I’m low on frog liver extract.”
“No prob. I got more frog liver than I need
. Gives me acid reflux.”
“Talk trade? I got a surplus of bennies and a mason jar filled with Mexican Viagra.”
“Deal.”
With some of these guys, I think the drugs are the only reason they stick around.
More substance-abuse commentary: Somebody on the Number Twelve bus once said to another body on that bus that he had seen photos of Chris Farley’s corpse. I was sitting in the seat directly in front of those buddies. My stop, two blocks away from the garden-level apartment Vero and I shared, arrived before I could finish eavesdropping on their conversation. But I’d heard enough. Dead celebrity, tragic, internet.
When I got home, I made Vero turn on her computer and we sought and found the photos my busmates had been discussing.
Chris Farley was a comedian, he was fat, he was messed up on drugs, he was desperate to get well, he was a genius who died shirtless on the floor of his brother’s condo. The prostitute he’d spent the evening with had thrown a handful of dollar bills in his face when he was convulsing and foam was coming out of his mouth and he was begging her to stay and help him. Then she took photos, then he died. Technically, the pictures Vero and I looked at weren’t of Farley’s corpse. They were of him turning into a corpse.
After we saw the pictures, we ate some ramen in silence.
Vero said, after a while, “The prostitutes always get fucked. Chris Farley. Entwistle. Hendrix. Sam Cooke. It’s always the man who does the coke, eats the pills, approaches the hotel desk drunk and horny, screaming about who stole his fucking pants. It’s always the man who dies and, after it’s all over, everyone blames the poor prostitute for not taking the idiot to the hospital in time.”
I said, “Chris Farley was not an idiot. More of a tragic figure.”
Vero said, “I didn’t mean idiot, exactly. How about sap?”
“It’s said by those who’ve seen them that the police photos of Elvis’ death scene are some of the most horrific images ever taken.”
Vero said, “My point was more about the prostitutes.”
I said, “They get the short end of the stick.”
“Correct. Whores are paid to do things that sad, lonely, pathetic men can’t get anyone to do for them for free. And yet it’s the whores who get called the moral scoundrels. No wonder they always leave the scene without calling for help.”
I said, “I think the term is sex-workers. And Hendrix was with a girlfriend when he died.”
“Are you listening to me?”
I said, “Yes. A non-mutual love affair can only work if at least one person pretends it’s not real.”
Vero shrugged. “Close enough.”
I said, “We’re real, Vero.”
She fell out of her chair and pretended to convulse.
If anyone ever had an excuse to jump into the unsanitary pit of scrip addiction, it was me. Sore knees, isolation, no job, no alarm clocks, product available behind every bathroom mirror. All I had going for me was the driving force of irrepressibility. And that, kids, is why I didn’t eat any of Charlie’s hydrocodone. Because the first thing to go when I start on the painkillers will be my astonishing ability to keep on. If I lose my drive, I’ll turn into a slobbering turd, licking pills off the necks of Lauren Bacall look-alikes.
I dry-swallowed four aspirin and returned the bottle to the medicine cabinet. The cabinet was old wood, chipped pink paint. The door itself was awfully thick, a fact that I attributed to ancient methods of cabinetry. But to what could I attribute the little hook latch at the top of the inside of the awfully thick door. Apparently, this was one of those old-fashioned medicine cabinet doors that included a secret compartment. I unhooked the latch.
Contents: The nub of a No. 2 pencil and an old notebook.
I extracted the notebook from the compartment and held it carefully. It was a spiral, like a kid would bring to his first day of fourth grade in 1978. The cover was red, decorated with a print of an Indian. The edges of the paper inside were sun-browned and stained with finger schmutz.
With hands aquiver, I brought the notebook out to the garden and sat across from Vero, whose eyes had not yet alighted upon my latest note.
50
If the newspaper articles under Charlene’s bed had been a cryptic tabloid tell-all, this notebook was her authorized autobiography, not so much a diary as it was a captain’s log written in the form of experimental prosody.
Excerpts:
June 24, 1974: Hot. No rain. Job boring.
October 31, 1974: Bradley went to the football game with me. Dinner at the café.
January 3, 1975: Blizzard. Lost power for nine hours. Ate ravioli out of the can.
Oct 23, 1975: Blizzard (another?!?). Lost power (again?!?). Spent night in store to stay warm.
For someone whose nametag declares that she doesn’t talk about the weather, Charlene sure likes to talk about the weather.
A month later, we have our first Riles sighting. In a departure from her daily haiku, Charlene commits an entire paragraph to John, the older brother:
Nov 22, 1975: Sunny. Johnny Riles brought a poodle to the store. Kitch gave it to him for his birthday. I think Johnny likes me. He’s so nervous. He’s always under Kitch’s shadow. Has a real nice way of walking. He’s a cowboy who doesn’t act like a jerk. Too bad I’m taken.
Then…
Nov 27, 1975: THANKSGIVING! Snow is melting. The whole family was here, plus Bradley. Fun until family left me alone with Bradley. Maybe Johnny’s right about him.
Dec 12, 1975: No weather. Bradley cheated on me.
Dec 13, 1975: Mid-forties. Skipped work b/c of the cheating asshole. Johnny stopped by. We went to Strattford for a movie. I got drunk. He wouldn’t give me a cigarette. I didn’t invite him in. Not sure if that was a mistake. Am sure Bradley was. Little prick with a tiny p—.
Dec 15, 1975: Another warm one. In a couple of days, I’m going out with Johnny. Not a date. Maybe a date.
Dec 17, 1975: Windy in the A.M. Calm in the P.M. Bradley called to apologize. I canceled the date with Johnny. He was upset. Bradley arrived late, we talked later. Love was made. He’s a human.
Dec 25, 1975: Snowing. Fucking fuck Bradley. He got a girl pregnant. We’re over. Johnny stopped by. We drank rum and necked a little. He left to feed his cattle. Planned to come back but he got stuck in the storm. I’m drunk. Warm.
Dec 26, 1975: Melting. Johnny didn’t actually get stuck. He drove into the ditch because he was drunk. I visited him today. He wants to get off the whiskey. I’m not to visit him for five days. And then we’re going to Denver to see Kitch play against the Nuggets!
Dec 31, 1975: Unseasonably warm. Heading out to Johnny’s. After the game, we’ll probably stay overnight in a Denver hotel. I think he’s a virgin!
Jan 1, 1976: Snowing. Oh god. Please be okay.
Jan 4, 1976: Cold. He’s gone. Kitch did this.
Jan 8, 1976: Cold. In our last phone call, Johnny said to drive north of his house in case something happened. I did but I didn’t know where to go. The sheriff doesn’t know his ass from his ankle.
Jan 15, 1976: Cold. Oh, Johnny. I crossed the river in my car. There are no roads out there. The prairie beats my car up. No signs of humanity.
Jan 22, 1976: Cold. No sign of Johnny. Police don’t have a clue.
Jan 29, 1976: Cold. I don’t know where to look. I wander around north of his house, watch the clouds, sit, cry.
Feb 12, 1976: Cold. Missed a week. Hope is gone. Bradley called. Told him to fuck off.
Feb 19, 1976: Cold. I found Johnny’s truck. It’s in a bowl valley, all burned up. Told Chester. He came out and poked around. No sign of anyone, no bodies inside. He left the truck where it was.
Feb 26, 1976: Cold. Sheriff Chester says Kitch probably took Johnny out north and killed him. Or Johnny killed Kitch. And then whoever did the killing killed himself and they both got ate by coyotes. The sheriff finally hauled the truck away.
Mar 4, 1976: Thawing. Wind. When I can, I go to the valley and si
t and think. There’s nothing there but thinking. I hate Kitch.
This continues for six more months. Every week, she drives north of the Riles Place, to a bowl-shaped valley, to meditate on the disappearance of Johnny. I suspect that this is the same valley where I saw the tornado.
On September 2nd, big news:
Windy. Drove to the valley. Walked around. Heard a sound. Looked under a sagebrush. I found a baby wrapped in a lady’s nightgown. His eyes are barely open. He’s my miracle with a tuft of hair. He’s my little unicorn in the deserted ocean.
Beneath this entry is an actual pencil sketch of a unicorn. Stiff-legged, but otherwise pretty good.
Followed three days later by:
He won’t stop crying. People will hear. He’s tiny. I can’t do this.
Sept 6, 1976: I left him at the courthouse, with his name pinned to his blanket. It was like cutting off my own head.
And then there’s a drawing of a grim-faced narwhal, complete with a tuft of hair on its round head.
That’s the last entry.
The jury is in. I am the mysterious baby. Why not? Charlene Morning found me under the sagebrush and left me on the courthouse steps.
It also appears, to my disappointment, that Charlene Morning is not my biological mother. That is, unless she went the duration of a gestation without realizing she was pregnant and then accidentally gave birth to me on one of her weekly trips to the Valley of the Riles.
Once again, I am motherless. It’s about as heartbreaking as one would expect when one is me. Still, even if she isn’t my mom, Charlene saved me from being raised by coyotes and so I’m grateful to her.
Charlene adored John Riles, that’s fer sure. Of the two Riles boys, I’m now hoping he’s my father. Kitch, in spite of the fact that he’s a basketball hero, is starting to sound like a real pain in the ass.
51
Wake, eyes open, another dreamless sleep. I’m on Charlene’s bed, and I’m confused and lonely.
