Tag: Fiction

The Tire Shop Space Lord

I was feeling a bit shagged and soggy on a wet day in a long-ago February of the regular world. I was driving my beat-up Mazda race car down the busy anal canals of this city when there came a bump and a thump and a wiggy woggy of one of my tires. I thought maybe I had hit a skunk or one of the green children of Woolpit.

I pulled off to the side of the road in a den of somewhere somewhat safe and took a look. I don’t know anything about cars, well not much. I can pump gas and put in windshield washer fluid and that’s about it. A mechanic could tell me, “You need a new Johnson rod in here. Be about three grand.” I wouldn’t know if he was bullshitting me or not.

Anyways… I got the car over to one of the local tire shops and they told me they could get to it in about six or seven hours. I glanced through the back shop windows and all the mechanics were laughing and goofing off. “Okay,” I said, and I handed over my keys and went to the seating area with all the other idiots.

They had the TV tuned to one of those home improvement shows where rich people boast about how much house they can afford. A female customer started crying when the guy behind the counter told her it would be $2,100 to fix her car. “I can’t afford that!” she cried out through her wet face. “How do you sleep at night!? This is robbery!”

“I’m sorry, mam. The cost of everything has gone up. We’ve got no control,” the man behind the counter told her. As if that would do any good. (And then he turned and winked at the invisible camera that’s always there).

“How am I supposed to get to work to get paid to pay for car repairs to a car I can’t even use to get to work!” She screamed. The man behind the counter reached for the phone to probably call the police, or the psychic hotline he readily used. As if that would do any good.

I noticed an older gentleman in unfancy clothes and who somewhat resembled the late, great Wilford Brimley sitting across from me. I could tell he was listening in on what was happening just off behind us. I could tell he was thinking, maybe not just about oatmeal and being grumpy, but real human and important things.

The woman who had been crying at the counter came and sat in the waiting area with us. Her face was red. Her eyes were wet and puffy. She reached into the small purse she had and retrieved some facial tissue to absorb her tears.

“They sure do get us any way they can,” the Wilford Brimley look-alike said to her from across the way.

The woman looked up at him. She tried to smile, but she just couldn’t. “They sure do. And they sure don’t seem to mind about it one bit. They sit up there in their fantastical kingdoms in the clouds, stuffing their pockets and getting fat while I’m down here working my ass off for them. And what do I get? More problems. More worry. More suffering. I’m half-minded to go tell them to just keep the god damn car and shoot me in the head.”

The Wilford Brimley look-alike man cocked his head as he looked upon her with warm pity. “I’m sorry for your troubles, mam. But today might just be your lucky day.”

She looked at him and snorted, disbelieving. “My lucky day? How could this possibly be my lucky day?”

“That’s right,” he said, and he leaned forward in his chair. “Do you know that I’m the only one who doesn’t have a car here to service?”

“What? Why? Do you just like to hang out in waiting areas at tire shops? That’s weird.”

“It’s not weird for you.”

“And why is that?” she asked.

“Because I’m the Tire Shop Space Lord… And I’ve been waiting for you.”

All eyes in the tire shop lounge grew wide.

The woman laughed as best she could. “Oh, boy. Not what I need right now.”

The Tire Shop Space Lord looked around the waiting area while the sound of an air wrench whirred back off in the shop, a tight grip on the nuts. “What do you mean by that?”

The woman sighed, frustrated. “I don’t need some bullshit prankster getting me worked up. It’s not funny. This is my life. This is serious for me. My livelihood is on the line.”

“Mam, I’m well aware of that. I’m not here to prank you or set you up with some kind of false hope. I’m here to help you.”

“Help me? Unless you’re prepared to give me $2,100 there’s nothing you can do to help me.”

The Tire Shop Space Lord got up from his seat and walked closer to where she was sitting. He stuck a hand in his pants pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. He carefully flipped through the bills with his fingers, the bushy white moustache that took up most of his face twiddled like a summer caterpillar as he counted to himself. He handed her the money. “Here you go. That should cover it and a little bit more for some gas and groceries. You look hungry, too.”

She slowly reached out her hand toward the cash. Her eyes were wide, her mouth was wide. “Are you serious?”

“Yes, mam. I’m very serious. Now, you take this and go over there and tell that fella to get started on fixing your car.”

“I don’t even know what to say… My, God. Thank you. I just don’t believe it.”

“And that’s just why I’m doing it,” and he looked around at everyone there. “Because you all live in a world where something like a random act of kindness and unselfishness is so hard to believe. That’s a sad thing.”

“Can I get your name, your number? I feel like I need to pay you back somehow,” she said.

“No. There’s no need for any of that.” He smiled at her. “You take care now,” he said, and he moved toward the door and went out of the building and into the remains of a blustery day like a vibrantly psychedelic Saint Winnie-the-Pooh.

A young man bathed in second-hand grief and grubby foolishness sat up and nodded at her. He had been watching everything with great interest. “You better check to see if that’s real money,” he said to the woman. “He might just be some kind of cuckoo puff getting his kicks messing with young gals.”

She flipped through the bills, felt them, studied them. “It sure does seem like real money,” she said. She put the cash to her nose. “Smells like money.”

“Is that right?” the young man said. He adjusted his grimy ball cap. “I guess it is your lucky day… But I sure do hope he’s not some old perv waiting for you out in the parking lot. You know, expecting a favor in return. You might want to be worried about that. He might snatch you up and carry you away.”

The woman wondered about what the young man said. Maybe it was too good to be true. Maybe she was in some sort of danger. Nobody does things like this. Not in this world. Everything has a price.

She stuffed the cash into her purse, got up out of the chair and went outside. The Tire Shop Space Lord was not in the parking lot. She carefully made her way down a grassy slope toward the busy street. She looked left, then right. Then she saw him. He was sitting all alone on a bench at a nearby bus stop.

And time rushed by quickly and the long, windowed silver minnow machine passed by her overhead and temporarily blotted out the sun. It paused at the stop where he was, and she watched the beam of light come down and touch him, and the ship drew him toward its lit belly and swallowed him like a reverse birth before shooting off to wherever they were from.

END

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Incandescent Valley

Photo by Hang Thuy Tien on Pexels.com

It was more than just a scoff scraping against his half beating heart like Flintstone flint on steel. It was an incantation of dehumanization. There they were, down in the incandescent valley of the broken, the spires of architects piercing the yellow cast, two cups of cooling coffee on a table at a red booth by a big window looking out upon the stepless street of shapes moving toward the bridge that crosses over to another place and time. The people there just floated.

Slowly he breathes. Her eyes are gazing down toward hell as she thinks, a glossy fingernail of race car red rhythmically tapping against the rim of her cup stained with the same mouth of scathing rebuke. “I don’t even know what to say,” she finally said, looking at him with those candle flame-colored eyes. “What were you thinking?”

There was a globule of chattering that floated in the air. Someone cackled like a witch. Everything suddenly seemed louder. Everything hurt more and more and more. “You don’t understand psychological torture, that’s all,” he said to her.

“You never make any sense,” she replied. “I can’t take it anymore. I need something better… Someone better. Someone who doesn’t shoplift.”

A city bus paused on the street outside the window. It looked like a white whale splattered with nonsense advertising. He sarcastically thought, I’m surprised humans haven’t come to that: Billboards stapled to wild animals… Imagine the revenue we could generate from a safari!!

He watched with painful disinterest as people got off, people got on. The bus lurched off, leaving a cloud of prosperity in its wake. He could almost taste the diesel in the next sip of his coffee. “It wasn’t shoplifting… I was making a statement.”

She parted her full mouth in disbelief. “A statement? What statement? Hey world, look at me. I’m an idiot.“

“That Capitalism is a prison for most of us. Everyone should have access to the same basic necessities of life… For free. It’s called sharing with and helping your fellow man for the good of all people. Not just for the good of the rich and the elite.”

“That’s not the way the world works, Lant. It just isn’t. You’ll just have to accept it and live with it like the rest of us.”

Lant started to imitate a sheep. “Baaaaa, Baaaaa.”

“Are you seriously doing that right now… In public?”

“Yes, Grace. I am.” Again, he made the sheep noise, but this time much louder. “Baaaaa! Baaaaa!”

Her eyes widened and she clenched her jaw. “Stop it!” she hissed through an exuberant whisper. “People are starting to stare at us.”

“So,” Lant said, and he lifted his cup of coffee to his mouth and took a sip. “I don’t care what other people think.”

“Well, I do!”

Lant chuckled, and then started imitating a cat. “Meowww, Meowww.”

“You have some serious problems… And you wonder why I’m breaking up with you.”

“Really, Grace? The reason you’re breaking up with me is to be with that beach bum boyfriend of yours.”

“He’s far from a bum,” Grace let it be known. “He’s an architect… A very rich and handsome architect. He lives in Malibu. The view of the ocean is orgasmic.”

Lant made a mocking noise and turned away to look out the window and dream of a better world.

“I’m sorry,” Grace began. “What is it you do again? Hmm. Let me think… Oh yeah. You work at a convenience store.”

Lant turned back to look at her as if she had eaten his first born. If he had a first born. “It’s not just any convenience store… It’s Pump n’ Jump.”

Grace laughed out loud, the force of it tossing her 90s Laura Dern hair into the diner’s butter-laden air. “Pump a Lump is more like it.”

“You’re just jealous,” Lant said to her.

The shadowy waitress brought the check and Grace dug in her purse for some cash and threw it down on top of the small rectangular shaped piece of paper colored light green and white with red numbers printed on it. “I’ll take care of this. Because, well, you know. You make like six dollars an hour.”

Lant soured. “I’ll have you know I’ll be eligible for a substantial increase in a year.”

Grace laughed again and started to work herself out of the booth. “Right.” She stood, slung her purse over her shoulder and looked down at him one last time. “Well, I guess this is it,” she rattled like a snake with a six-shooter for a tail. “Goodbye, Lant. It’s been… It hasn’t been much at all.”

He watched her as she left the diner and stood outside on the sidewalk. She had her cell phone against the side of her head now and was smiling and laughing while she spoke with gusto. The Saint of Everything on the other end was just leaving his office in downtown Los Angeles. It would be a while. The traffic. The congestion. All that battered heart failure leeching out of the asphalt. Grace and her Ken doll architect were planning to rendezvous at their favorite hotel for lava-like hot love… Island lava. Spewing lava. Lava that burned. And when done they would bask in the afterglow of the incandescent valley and reality would be selfish and all nonsense to them.

Lant enjoyed the view through the diner window as she balanced herself on the curb. She wasn’t paying attention to anything, he thought. And he knew something bad would come to her, and he almost felt sad. His eyes narrowed as she stepped into the busy street to get to her car parked on the opposite curb. Then Lant heard the screech, the thud, the screams… And for a moment he saw Grace floating in the air like some broken angel across the pale of the City of Angels, the coffin keepers of the incandescent valley ready and waiting with the padded lids wide open and singing welcoming hymns of a spiraled Heaven.

END

By
Aaron Echoes August
Asphalt Whiskers

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

He simply thought to himself as he rubbed at his temples: What do I have to do to make all the noise in my head just stop?

His name was Asphalt Whiskers and he was sitting in a fast-food behemoth of burger places, one out on the Brass Highway that mingled with all the rest, the chain of chains, and he was looking down at whatever it was he was about to eat. Asphalt looked up to the electric visuals slowly rotating by the menu board above the cashier’s counter and the milkshake machines. The pictures showed food and beverages that looked perfect, beyond appetizing, the penultimate of delicious and refreshing. Then he looked down into the greasy crinkled yellow paper at the half-squashed hamburger that was his lunch.

We live in a world of illusions, he thought to himself. Everything is purely an illusion. Even I, Asphalt Whiskers — I am merely an illusion. And if I am an illusion, I can do anything I want. I can get away with anything I want. No consequences. Like a dream.

He picked up the hamburger and took a bite. The meat was cold, the cheese like a loose flap of fake yellow skin. A pickle slid out and dangled at his chin and he clumsily worked it into his mouth with his fingers. Some ketchup dribbled down onto his shirt. He nearly knocked over his orange soda as he reached for a white paper napkin. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed, if anyone was staring.

But then he remembered that no one cared about anything other than themselves. All the heads of dead thoughts were lost in their own listless worlds. Children were running and screaming in the play area, and out of the play area. A table of overweight adults was oblivious as they talked amongst themselves at megaphone volume… Words far drifted from any ordinary wisdom. One of the men was wearing a dusty sweat-stained ball cap that read: Free Moustache Rides.

Asphalt Whiskers just wanted to ascend away from the moronic, to go to his own private mountain and meditate. But he couldn’t. The end of his lunch break would be another end to his life. The monotony and the freezing rain on Mt. Olympus were killing him, so he thought as he looked out the window at the sunlight spilling and splashing along the Brass Highway. It was the main artery through the medium-high city of the Great Plains.

There was no true mountain. He wondered where all the beautiful water was. All he saw were backlit yellows and dirty grays and asphalt purples. He wondered if Asphalt was his real name. He reached down and pulled out the wrinkled birth certificate that he always kept on the inside of a sock in case he was stopped and had to prove his identity. He uncurled it and looked at it. There it said in completely legitimate and legal print: Asphalt Reginald Whiskers.

He picked up some French fries and dabbed the golden ends into a pool of ketchup he created on the paper with squeeze packets. They were salty and greasy. But they tasted good as they were masticated in his mouth and then swallowed. He suddenly became catatonic like he often does. It comes on without warning and the triggers are fathomless.

He wondered if it was the food or the atmosphere or just his own mind again. The way he sees his mind is like a clock and every once in a while, the second-hand may get caught on a piece of stardust before returning to the true sense of time, but then with an infinite lag. Does anyone even know what a second-hand on a clock is anymore, he wondered. Then he didn’t care. Because they didn’t care.

Asphalt’s eyes were then absorbed by the world around him. His hearing became muffled, but it was still loud. He wondered if he was underwater. A pain radiated through his arms, and it felt as if his heart was beating faster, like in an impending drug overdose. His mouth became dry. He suddenly got up from his seat, wobbly like a drunk. This time he did spill his cup of orange soda and people looked at him. Asphalt Whiskers just stood there as the orange soda puddled and then ran off the edge of the table and onto the dirty floor.

A man with a white Wilford Brimley moustache and half his hair looked over at him. “Are you okay?” His wife leaned into him and whispered, “Just ignore him. There’s something obviously wrong with him.”

Asphalt cocked his head in her direction when he heard what she had said. He reached toward and took what remained of his hamburger and clutched it in his hand. He threw it at the woman as hard as he could, and it hit her in the face. She made a noise like “Oooof.” It forced her head to turn to the side, and then Asphalt saw that exact event over and over and over again in his head like a comical movie in front of his frozen eyes… The hamburger flying and striking her face in slow-motion, the way her skin moved at the point of impact, the sound she made, the turning to the side of the head as in true human reaction to something hitting one in the face. Like a bug, maybe. But it was a hamburger. A disgusting fast-food hamburger prophesized by the corporate gods of lies and rained down upon the land by the billions.

The husband stood up in his wife’s defense. “What the hell is wrong with you!?”

Asphalt Whiskers looked at him in a robotic sense of the way and smiled, but it wasn’t a big smile, it was a straight-line smile with no teeth, just a flat horizon of mouth. “I need to use the restroom. Do you know where the restroom is?” And Asphalt wildly moved his head about scanning the entire restaurant for the restrooms even though they were close by.

Then the recognition clicked in him. “Oh. There they are,” he said, and he moved away from his table and walked by the man and the woman, and he paused and raised a threatening fist toward them and play-acted like he was going to really throw a punch and the husband shrunk back in fear. Asphalt retracted his fist and laughed. “I wasn’t going to hit you,” he said. Then he laughed again. “Not this time!” He disappeared into the men’s restroom.

Another man was like a firehose at the urinal when he went in. Asphalt stood there and watched him. The other man noticed him leering like a pervert and made a face. “What the hell’s your problem?” He quickly finished, zipped up and walked around him and to the sink.

Asphalt watched as the other man washed his hands. “I like your beard,” he said. And the burly man did have an impressive flowing motorcycle-riding guy kind of beard, wild and long and full of freedom.

“Back off before I knock you out!” the motorcycle-riding-looking kind of guy barked as he made himself large and threatening, like a Kodiak bear. “Do you want to be dead!?”

Asphalt looked at him and sadly smiled. “Sometimes.”

The motorcycle-riding-looking kind of guy scoffed at him, backed away, and walked out of the restroom.

Asphalt Whiskers looked at himself in the water-spotted mirror of unclean humanity and decided that he didn’t even look like a regular human being. Asphalt felt he looked like he should be living on another planet behind a wooden rail fence usually reserved for longhorn steers. The sky would be nearly black all the time and the three moons above would all be a different shade of lack-of-oxygen blue.

He put his hands beneath the automatic faucet and let the cold water chill his knuckles and palms. He splashed some up in his face. He stuck his head beneath an automatic hand dryer and kept it there until it started to burn.

When Asphalt walked out of the restroom there was a police officer talking to the woman he had thrown the hamburger at. Her husband pointed. “That’s him!”

“Sir,” the officer called out to him. “Sir! I need to talk to you!”

Asphalt pushed on the bar of a nearby emergency exit door and bolted through the parking lot. He stopped at the curb of the busy Brass Highway as if it was the edge of a cliff overlooking a rapturous sea. He looked back over his shoulder as he tried to maintain his balance. The police officer was giving chase and yelling, “Stop! Stop! Stop or I will gun you down!”

Asphalt Whiskers then stood on the edge of the curb like it was a diving board. He closed his eyes, the smell of pool chlorine wafting up the passages of his hobbled imagination and memories. He then dove into traffic, arms out in front of him, legs held close together, breath held in the waiting room of copious amounts of fear. He felt the warmth of Acapulco in that anorexic sliver of a moment.

Asphalt was instantly and violently struck, and his body twisted and flew into the center of the roadway like a hurled deer carcass. Drivers in both directions slammed on brakes. Horns blared. People screamed. Air raid sirens wailed. A murder of ebony crows made a scattering from the treetops. A mushroom cloud splashed upward from the floor of a once beautiful now forgotten desert ruthlessly betrayed by greedy madmen. The police officer radioed for an ambulance with a winded voice.

A shocked crowd gathered around the broken body of Asphalt Whiskers. Hands were clamped over mouths, eyes were closed by dismay, heads turned away to avoid the unbelievable. Maybe they had forgotten the way the world is. Maybe they had forgotten meat comes from living things and broken hearts run to foolish errands in the end.

END

By
Aaron Echoes August
Pascal’s Banana

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I was hanging with my friend the glass guy at the ice cream parlor in a place called Fordham, Kansas. It was a flat and yellow place, lots of golden grains and things like that. There was a cereal factory on the outskirts of town.

The parlor was quiet because it was the middle of the afternoon, and Pascal was sad. He told me he just found out his wife was now into women. She had told him everything.

He started to cry while dipping a silver spoon into his banana split. It made me uncomfortable as I licked at a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. I asked if it was maybe more than that. He said he had been working way too much, working on windshields. Pascal complained that the company made him wear a uniform and smile… “And for what? So my wife can discover new longings.”

He told me that she confessed of being tired of always sitting at home alone waiting for him while he worked. Then a friend of hers encouraged her to go out. They got lubricated with liquor during a luncheon, drove home, and tumbled in the sheets while poor Pascal was working on someone’s newly cracked windshield in the woods. Pascal said it was a crazy older couple who were out looking for Bigfoot. They hadn’t seen him but blamed him for the crack. “He’s a lot smarter than most people think,” the man had said. “He’s got a gift for mischief, too.”

Pascal set the spoon aside and pushed his banana split away. “I’m so upset, I can’t even enjoy this,” he said. “What am I going to do? She wants a divorce.”

I bit into the top rim of my sugar cone. “Give her one,” I said. “And maybe you should take what’s left of that banana split, take it home and throw it in her face.”

Pascal looked at me like that was a seriously dumb idea.

“That’s not going to solve anything, man.”

“It might make you feel better,” I tried to convince him.

He dragged the banana split back in front of him and continued to eat it. He was really cutting into it and spooning it into his face like an abominable snowman. I pushed the end tip of my ice cream cone into my mouth and wiped my hands with a paper napkin that was far too thin. I drank a cool glass of water. I don’t know why, but cool water is always so good after ice cream.

Now Pascal had the banana split boat in two hands and he held it up to his face and was licking it all over. “This is what she was doing,” he said through the sloppiness. “To another woman.” He continued to lick the banana split boat until it was all nice and sparkling clean. He set it down with a rattly thump on the small table in the booth where we sat.

“Pascal, my friend,” I said. “That’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

“What… Do I disgust you or something? Do I disgust you like I must disgust my wife!?”

“Pascal, come on. Settle down, man. It will be okay.”

“How the hell do you know how everything will be!? I feel like my life is over.”

I tried to think of something to say that would hopefully cheer my friend up, but all I saw was him sliding deeper into despair. “You still have your job.”

Pascal scoffed and rolled his charcoal eyes at me. “My job? Yeah, great. I’m tired of people coming to me all freaked out and losing their shit because they have a tiny little chip in their windshield. They act like if they drive any further the whole thing will just come crashing in and kill them.”

“But I thought you enjoyed smiling and waving goodbye to your satisfied customers after a job well done.”

Pascal looked around before he spoke. “Can I tell you something?”

“What?”

“I don’t really feel that way. I mean, inside my true self, down here in my rotting guts… I just want to scream and run and jump off a cliff.”

“I had no idea you were so down.”

“Yeah… I’m what they call melancholy. I’m not the sparkling, happy soul I pretend to be.”

“Maybe you need to talk to someone,” I said. “Like a professional.”

“A professional what?”

“You know. A counselor or someone like that.”

Pascal made a negative sound with is mouth and waved his hand in the air. “Not for me. I don’t like talking to strangers. I’ll deal with this myself.”

The waitress in the pink and white uniform came to the table and set down the check. I snatched it up, looked it over quickly, and handed her some cash. “Thanks.” She smiled and stepped away without saying a word.

Pascal started to climb out of the booth. “What are you going to do now?” I asked him. “Wanna go see a movie?”

“No… I’m going to go home and try to talk some sense into her.” Then he laughed. “I’ll whip out my powerful burrito and convert her back.”

I grimaced at that thought. “All right. Call me later if you want.”

“I will.”

We stood near each other and embraced like men do, with a quick hug, our heads to the side, and a few hard slaps on the back.

Then he looked me dead in the eye. “Hey. If you ever get a crack in your windshield… Promise me you’ll take it somewhere else to get fixed. I don’t think I could deal with it. You know, with you knowing what you know about me.”

“Okay,” I said. “I promise.”

He attempted a smile, clamped a hand on my shoulder for a moment, and then walked out of the ice cream parlor and into the bleached golden light. I didn’t know it then, but it was the last time I ever saw him.

END

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Gravy Canoe of Wild Wyoming – 6

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Steel and Veronica drove in separate cars over to a place called Mango’s Tangle. The owner of the bar was named Mango and he had gotten into a lot of tangles in his life. He was from Miami, and no one could ever understand how or why he ended up in horrid Berlin, Wyoming.

He worked behind the bar a couple times a week because he liked the people and he liked to talk to them. He was loud, but mostly kind enough, depending on who you were. Mango shaved his head and had a creepy black goatee. He liked to wear Hawaiian shirts with the top buttons undone and his thick chest hairs were always crawling out and trying to escape. He wore overtight jeans with those Hawaiian shirts, and his skin, once perpetually bronzed by the Florida sun, had now faded to the cold pale flesh tone all the rest of them in town wore.

Mango smiled when he saw Veronica Eyes walk in but then frowned when Steel came in after her. He eyed Steel suspiciously as he reached for Veronica’s favorite bottled beer and set it down in front of her. “Who’s this guy?” he asked her. “Is he your new boyfriend?”

Mango had a crush on Veronica just like most of the men in Berlin, Wyoming did. He looked at Steel like he didn’t trust him, didn’t like him. “You going to have something to drink?” he snapped.

“I’ll take a tequila shot and your best IPA,” Steel answered as he reached into his pants to retrieve his wallet. He spread it open and pulled out some crisp bills and threw them on the bar. “I’ll take care of everything tonight.”

Mango snatched up the money, counted it, and put it near his till. He turned back around and tapped at his glistening head with a stiff finger. “I’ll be calculating in my mind… All that you drink.” He poured him the shot and put the beer down. “Are you new in town? I’ve never seen you in here before.”

“I’ve been here about five months,” Steel said.

“He works at the newspaper with me,” Veronica chimed in.

Mango raised his chin to study him from another angle. “Oh. A newspaper guy, huh. Do you do the writing, or take the pictures, or what?”

Steel winced after he downed the tequila shot. “Something like that.” He chased the strong drink with the beer.

“Well,” Mango began. “No one will be as good as this one.” He gestured with his head toward Veronica and smiled. “She’s on top of everything… And on the bottom, too.” He winked at her and smiled again. “Isn’t that right, Veronica?” He laughed out loud.

Veronica shook her head. She was embarrassed and excited and almost proud all at the same time. She enjoyed being popular with men. “Really? Exposing my weaknesses in front of the new guy.”

Mango laughed again as he poured someone else a drink. “Oh, you’ve been exposed all right.”

When he momentarily stepped away, Steel leaned closer to Veronica and whispered, “Why do you let him talk about you like that?”

She smiled and her eyes sparkled as she wrapped her mouth around the beer bottle she had. “Because it’s true.”

Steel looked at her face. He saw soiled perfection in everything. His heart thumped and he was getting warm from the liquor. “Can it be true for me?” he asked her in all seriousness.

Veronica giggled as Mango returned and replaced her beer with a fresh one. He poured Steel another shot. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m still trying to figure you out. You’re an enigma or something closely resembling one. And you’re still kind of weird. You need to be genuine and penetrable for me to give myself up to you willingly.”

Steel was dejected about being called weird again and she took notice. “See… Like that.”

“Like what?” Steel grunted.

“You’re much too emotional. You take things way too personal. You have to loosen up and just be comfortable in your own skin. If I don’t see that in you… You’ll never be in me.” She got up off her barstool. “I’m going to go use the pisser. Think about it.”

When Veronica came out of the ladies’ room, she saw some people she knew gathered around a round table talking and laughing. She went right up to them and joined in the conversation. Steel envied the ease at which she could be so comfortably sociable. He watched her as she smiled and laughed. She reached out and touched a guy’s arm. She was invited to pull up a chair and be among their tribe. She glanced in Steel’s direction for just a moment, and then turned away to join her more straightforward and transparent friends.

Steel slipped out of the bar and into the night. He leaned against his car and smoked a cigarette, but he what he was really doing was waiting to see if Veronica would come out after him and invite him back into the bar. He waited and waited. His heart jumped every time the door would open, and the noise inside would rush out, then quickly fade when the door shut again. It was never her that emerged. He figured it never would be. Steel threw his cigarette to the ground and harshly snuffed it out with his shoe. He got into his car and drove home.

When he walked into his cold and dark overpriced apartment, Steel Brandenburg III wondered just what the hell he was doing with his life. He felt like with the rising of every new sun, he was dying inside more and more. He glanced out a window at the ugly city bathed in its ruins of economic depression and the dead spirits of its inhabitants.

He believed deep down within his own unfurled guts that moving to Berlin, Wyoming would turn out to be the greatest regret of his life. He was already beaten to hell when he had first arrived, and the beatings continued. He was so ready to chuck it all, take the losses, and just get the hell out of there. But the means to survive…

His phone suddenly lit up. Veronica was calling.

“Where the hell did you go?” she wanted to know.

“You drifted off to be with your friends. I just thought… I felt like you didn’t want me around anymore.”

He heard her sigh. “You fucked up again, I hope you know.”

“What did I do?” Steel wondered. His hot nerves started to kick in.

“You should have taken the opportunity to come over to me and meet my friends. Instead, you just took off. That was kind of a letdown. I was really hoping you’d stand up and be a man. I wanted you to be brave and step into the circle. But you just ran.”

“Jesus. That’s all a bit harsh.”

“You need to know I speak my mind… Completely,” Veronica said. “I’m just being honest. Don’t you value honesty?”

“You want me to be honest?”

“Yes.”

“I thought it was rude of you to just leave me hanging there at the bar. You ditched me. It was selfish and snobbish.”

“I’m selfish and snobbish!?” Veronica protested. “It’s a small town. People know each other. People are friendly to each other. We greet each other and gather, not fade into the wallpaper. You should have pulled yourself together and come over.”

“I think I’m done with this conversation… And this town,” Steel told her, and he nearly ended the call.

But then she breathed, almost in a longing desperation. “Wait… Can I come over?”

TO BE CONTINUED

By
Aaron Echoes August