I had just finished eating my McDonalds, mouth still dank and warm from the chewing of the burger, when I looked across to the driver’s seat and saw Hilary’s face, and the scowl that sat on her face like a reluctant mask, I knew she was upset that I’d bought McDonalds, I knew she was furious I’d eaten the burger because of all the effort she had put into the making of the sandwich and other surprise dishes for the trip, and I knew she’d get off Scot-free in 9 out if 10 court room trials if she killed me for not also buying her a burger or some fries or an ice tea the way she likes it (sugarless and devoid of taste.) I knew all this before I ate the burger but still defiantly, like a child or an abused dog, I ate the burger because who is my girlfriend to tell me when and where and under what extraneous conditions I can eat my mother fucking McDouble.
“Are you going to pout the whole drive?” I ask with vile terseness, the sort that has and will continue to beget arguments ranging in intensity from tawdry recreational-bouts to ‘I’m packing my fucking shit up and calling my mother to come get me you pig.’.
“Just shut up Otis.” Hillary says, index and thumb fingers massaging her the bridge of her nose. Her skin is graham cracker brown but sometimes, without any accurate explanation I've been able to concoct in the last 4 years of our on courtship, her digits will go ghost pale, as if the blood in her fingers freeze.
“I’m serious, I was hungry and we have literally a 3 hour fucking drive. What did you ant me to do starve?”
“Correction I have a 3 hour drive, you have a 3 hour time to nap and make eyes at women in sedans.”
“That was one fucking time and I tell you literally every time you bring that up, which is tortuously often, that she looked like my cousin my family hasn't seen in 2 years.” Which was true, the woman did look my cousin Shawn, but there wasn't any real inkling in my head that the woman I saw in that sedan was Shawn, I was in fact, regrettably (but only to a point) looking at her cleavage which was ample and prosperous and usually I stop myself but the fact that she looked like my cousin combined with the sheer magnitude of those most stupendous tits made a shameful, exotic, erotic cocktail that my weak brain couldn't (Nor really wanted to.) resist.
“Whatever Otis we are getting on 87 and you know how much I hate highways so please just give me a fucking break, I can wear my face however I want, so just leave me alone and enjoy your burger.” She sends me that last verbal knife and it cuts but not deep enough for me to continue, after all she is driving, I opted out because I’m a little weary of 87. Last time I drove down 87 I had a flat tire and my decrease in speed coupled with the distinct lack of awareness of the material, physical realm (He was on his phone) of some jackass named Roger Welda lead to me being violently rear ended. The collision that lead to a fractured wrist that swelled and morphed to the size and hue of a grapefruit. While in my hospital bed, Hilary talked to me, like she hadn't in years, about her Dad and Mom and her new hobby of knitting and how when she was in college she’d do headstands while reading school books because it made her feel like an ‘efficient ass bitch’. I watched her small mouth, never opening too wide but articulating fully. Her lips, full but not bulbous, looking slightly like duck bills and slightly the curved line that divides yin from yang. I saw them as thoroughly kissable and magnificent and for the rest of the night, long after patient visitation hours were over and Hilary had driven to our apartment, I thought of those lips and the their peach color and soft majesty and the all the sudden the agonizing sensation of a wrist full of splintered bones didn't bother me so thoroughly. I’m sure the Hydrocodone drip and hospital bed blowjob played their fair share in my recovery as well.
We’re on the first hour of the trip cruising on 87 and we haven’t said a word which isn't the most ideal way to start what was intended to be a restorative excursion to an un-meddled by human hands, tranquil, woodland paradise known as the Catskill Forest Preserve. When I moved to the east coast 5 years ago from the Midwest I’d heard the name Catskill’s mentioned in various contexts and it always seemed like it had a faint familiarity, like a song you hear in an elevator know the chorus to but aren't quite sure where you've heard before. She proposed it the trip four days after returning from wherever the fuck she went after our big fight. My natural reaction was distinct aversion, 3 days in the woods sounded terrible. Terribly dull, terribly dirty, terribly inconveniencing, terribly Caucasian, just plain terrible. But in order to fix things that are severely (fatally) damage, one must withstand terrible circumstances, like paying a swindling mechanic to fix a carburetor or allowing the pimple faced intern to send not-so- sly-but he thinks are very sly- insults at you as he fixes the Xerox machine. We must endure unsavory things for the betterment of one’s personal standing.
Hilary love’s camping, loves nature, loves animals and insects and I’m sure would choose to be reincarnated as a tree rather than a Saudi princess or Amazon Warrior. She is a child of the tree’s, she’s the Lorax’s hot sister. (Mustache and Danny Devito voice included.)The Catskills were her idea, having been only once as a small girl, her mother took her and her brother for a Parent-Kid bonding weekend that completely changed the families’ paradigm after the father took his third and what would be his final impromptu, unannounced, motorcycle pilgrimage to visit a brother no one had ever met in Alaska. Having a dad leave on a motorcycle vacation is one thing, having that dad abandon a family of 3 without a goodbye or clear reason, instead leaving 35,000 dollars in a shoe box on the bed is a whole other. They struggled that first year without their father, even though to hear her tell it he was always sort of a shit bag; inconsiderate, harsh, absent even when he was around, but still, a kids need a father and a mother needs someone to help lighten the load, both financially and when the endless menagerie of bullshit two teenagers can conjure. At any rate she claims that 6 days and 5 nights in the Catskills repaired what could have been a tragic reality of a broken home. And if it can mend family ties, it has to be able to mend what we have.
“Look at that!” She says as she reaches for the nob to turn the radio down. (The radio; whose music to play and when to play it was another volatile issue that could have catapulted us into a verbal melee so for sake of shaky peace I decided to relinquish control of the tunes to her. Mature of me, isn't it?)
“At what Hilary?” I mutter, not feeling like matching her energy, even though I could, and should and would have if my head wasn't so far up ass.
“That!” She sang, her voice concise, full of feminine edge.
I look over through her window and we are zooming past a road side stand of some sort with a large ceramic Native American in front of it. The statue is about two stories high and is missing a leg from the knee down. Yet there it stood, as I can only assume it as been for a great long time.
Hillary turns her head sharply and looks at me with a child-like glee. She is sick of being mad, she is beckoning me to be as well.
“What do you think his name is?” I ask, cracking a smile myself that I hope doesn't look fake because I’m not faking it, I’m happy I just don’t know how to smile.
“Hmmmm…Travis.” She says unsure, now with both eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel.
“Nah, Travis is too cool a name for a one legged Indian.”
“Mark?”
“Mark is too white a name for an Indian.”
“Yeah but who knows Native American names.” She says with a sneer.
“They used Animal names I think. Like little bear or black fish and something.”
“Oh where did you learn that from? Some cartoon when you were a kid.”
“No really that what they used I think.” I reach back to where I’d heard this bit of information, and I’m almost certain she was right, that it had been a cartoon but I say nothing.
“They probably called him flamingo.” She says thoughtfully, eyes level on the road.
“Why flamingo?” I ask.
“Because the way he stands reminded them of the way flamingos stand, on one leg in the water.”
I let out a pleased sounding introspective grunt. She leaves the radio on low for awhile longer, hoping I say something. But I’m tongue tied, I consider saying something about eating a flamingo, or talking about Native Americans more, or something about how her legs have a brown tint like egg rolls fried to perfection and how she has a smile better than a hundred dollar bill found in your pants before you put them in the wash, but it all seems shallow and pedantic and grossly insensitive given my transgressions (The ones that brought us to this trip). So I let the silence bubble until she turns the volume back up, unsatisfied with me. Almost more than I am.
Three toll booths, four highway wrecks and a piss break at a Sunoco later and the only thing we have said in the car of substance was “You should change out of your work clothes. I bought you some more comfortable camping attire. Its in the red duffel bag in the back seat.” I oblige her and before too long I’m out of my Fred Perry sweater and into some blue, ventilated shorts that come up a little above the knee, an orange tee shirt with a cartoon of a duck repelling down a rock wall and some red hiking shoes and ankle socks. She smiles breezily at me, potentialy because of the similarities in our outfits; She wears a red under-armor with shorts and red shoes. Her hair is tied into a bun that resembles an obsidian birds nest. Stray, wavy strands poking out at random, she looks bookish, she looks literary. And in many she is literary; her appearance is something akin to a dream I had as a little boy, looking at racially ambiguous children actors and rueing the fact that there were no girls that looked like that outside of a Hollywood production studio. She’s short with with curly hair and skinny limbs and one time I saw her stretch her skinny arms over her head as she woke up and it made her head seem adorably gigantic. Modest hips but surprisingly plump ass, good breasts, and perfect areolas. She has a birthmark on her right elbow. It splotchy like eczema but the pattern is identical to the Galapagos islands.
She’s unique, anal-retentive about covers, blows her nose in her palms in the showers. Sometimes she wakes up whimpering and it’s a sound that could break any heart. She’s trouble, but life is trouble and she is my life, well sometimes.
It’s nearing dusk when we first see the rolling mountains, they look like humps in the backs of giants. It’s fairly majestic looking. How the sun erupts over the mountains like foam out of a champagne bottle. How the wings of the birds arch and fall and look like mouths smiling and frowning in bi-polar glory. Hilary puts her hand on her thigh and I grab it from her. I feel a warmth like a flare or a fire or a bag of popcorn. I’m happy, for the first time maybe in weeks.
After a short drive through a pathetic looking town we pull into a camp ground. We pay $85 for a parking voucher for three days. As we unload the car I survey the area. Cars of all makes and models and colors and conditions make up the population of the lot. We strap back packs on, I’m carrying the tent we bought for the occasion, it’s a four person with this conveit little interior for zipper for dirty shoes. The packs were heavy, sleeping bags, pots and kettles, ponchos, two pairs of boots, toilet tries, a flash light that could easily double. I felt the weight, and I’m 5 ‘9 and relatively strong for a man my size. I cant imagine she packed our packs much differently, maybe 5 pound difference, maybe she even decided to pack her bag the heaviest, knowing that if my bag was too heavy I’d complain and bitch and say something hurtful, that’s the type of person she is, a person who is willing to bare the weight for what she believes in.
Shes got a brown paper bag that looks like it has weight on it. I’m excited to see what she made for food. On our first date she made me chicken nuggets in spaghetti sauce. She blamed it on college living but that’s hardly an excuse. I didn't hate it, but she shamed her so for it I thought that maybe I should. She’s come along way since that first dinner, since that first day. From nuggets in sauce to whatever deliciousness was in the bag. From being my student in my Thursday poetry writing class to the woman I’d signed the lease to a two flat in Brooklyn with. From that girl to this woman.
Fuck what have I done? How did we get here?
The forest has an undeniable charm, the crunch of leaves, the foreign, yet unmistakably earthy sounds that emits from the woods like the faint echo of lapping waves in a conch.
“There are a lot of couples it seems.” She says, reaching back to grab my hand. I was going to reach in my pocket for a Marlboro but the warm grip of her hand a this time seems more appealing than sweet stench of a doom stick. She tells me that she wants our own private land, where no one can see or hear us, so we hike east. I make a comment about visiting the Catskills winery that she waves off. I look at the brown bag she has tucked under her arm. I’m sure amongst the food there is some sort of alcoholic beverage. A bottle of Merlot, or a sixer of high life. Something to whet my pallet, to get the old talk-muscle going, something to help me get over the silence that I struggle with sometimes. Especially on this trip, especially when I’m certain this is our last chance to fix what we have.
What’s broken you ask? Well the short answer is trust, but short answers would be unfair in a story this long. I met Hilary at NYU, where I teach creative writing and poetry and must recently a copy writing class because the administration didn't like the “flow of my work load” so they gave me three bullshit copy writing classes. At any rate, I met Hilary her sophomore year. NYU is host to a slew of beautiful undergrads, from all around the known world, and while I’ve been enticed by a uncovered thigh here or a giggle there, I’ve never been moved to act until I met Hilary.
Her writing was layered and often sad and the class really respected her work. During my mid-semester one on one workshops with the students (A thing us creative writing teachers do in lieu of a midterm.) I was a tad drunk from a lunch meeting I had with a few other professors in the department (Another thing we creative writing teachers do in lieu of responsibility and professionalism.) we talked for 15 minutes about a poem she’d written about climbing a mountain to say good bye to someone, then the rest of the meeting was me talking rather pompously about my writing and her telling me about restaurants she orders from. She made me feel young, she made new shit feel possible, she was only 20 and I was 27 but I was suffering from something like the bends do to me mother’s passing and she reminded me of my mother but in ways I don’t want to talk about. But I will say that they both reminded me of houses on prairies, like dreams of people who slept in a pre-television age.
We began to date and eventually yet rather rapidly fell in love. And there are a multitude of happy stories in the years with occupied each other lives. But this is a story of Hillary and I and our camping trip to get over our fight that was caused by me cheating. With a student. In our apartment.
The girl, the student I mean, was young and white and wide hipped and represented something all self-respecting men of color try to avoid. The death trap of the white girl, with her eyes and charm and skin the color of a glass of milk after a slice of cake. I get sick and need a drink just thinking about it.
She’s a student, which has been a fucking foible in my past. The people in my department look at me differently. The women on staff subject me to cruel jokes and the men have a note of jealous-bitterness when Hilary is brought up. The chairman of my department brought it up once at a Christmas party, pulling me aside, with a firm grip on my arm, and a glare that was, if I’m being honest and why shouldn't I be by this point, scary. He told me that the only reason I hadn't been terminated was because he liked my story I had published in the New Yorker and that it made the creative writing department look good in the eyes of the rest of the school, it made asking for funding for a new computer lab a bit easier.
But that was many years ago and Hilary is now out of college and working at a high school in Queens as a guidance counselor. She tells me stories about kids going hungry, for both food and love. Horror stories, shes strong, her job is considerably harder than mine. That’s because she lives a harder life than me, but its high time I stop saying that, as if its any sort of constellation for living a shitty life and not considering the feelings of people I love or even mildly know.
She’s just about as pro as one can be when it comes to hiking. She attributes all of her wilderness know how to girl scouts but her brief stint in Girl Scout Troop 63061 occurred nearly two decades ago so I doubt it was that influential. She’s good, she can identify birds and turds and poison ivy by the smell in the wind, not just the cheap leaf counting method. She trudges on and we make conversation and things are pleasant, the bugs aren't unbearable, the weather is temperate and after awhile the weight of the pack gets melded with your natural body weight so you don’t even notice the flapping it does or the way it passively, yet most defiantly pulls against your shoulder.
I had a student once who hiked the entirety of the Adirondacks in a month. He wrote about it constantly, his adventures with other hikers, apparitions of the past, addiction, he wrote very vehemently about it week in a week out. I would read his assignments and sometimes quote them for Hilary and watch her face light up and feel a pang of jealously but it dissolved because I would not tell her that the quote was from a handsome, square jawed, outdoorsy student of mine but that the quotes came from me, that I camped as a young man and I still had a connection to the commodity that was nature. The truth was I am a city man, tried and true, I prefer subways over streams, the waling of addicts and derelicts over birds, and the smell of exhaust and street food over morning dew and honey suckle. But I could never confess this to Hilary, this was one of the many things I felt improper for in our relationship. I loved her and she loved me but some of the things we individually loved the other hated and its hard to encounter someone (a square jawed, woodman.) who shares similar interests with a loved one and not fabricate a reality in which those two parties hit it off and leave you to waste away.
As we walk through the rather dense foliage we feel a change in the air, something like the feeling when you walk into a house and you you know a TV is on, even if its on mute. The air felt busy, it felt young, completely strange but also familiar. After awhile Hillary stops me by putting her hand on my stomach, then she turns around, her eyebrows raised. She pinches the front of my shirt to pull me down to her level, then she whispers; "They're fucking."
I give her a confused look, then she points down a small hill to a blue tint. Poking out of the tents entrance flap are two sets of legs, one on top of the other, one toned and hairy, the other shorter and dainty. The hairy set of legs pulsates, slowly and rhythmically, implying long deep thurts, and the feet on the bottom set of legs sway as if leaves in a mild breeze. The scene is hot and made all the hotter by th fact that the couples faces are obstructed, they could be anyone. We crotch down and listen as the moans echo lightly, we do this for awhile. I put my hand on the nape of Hilary'd neck, and she reaches her hand back and places it on the inside of my thigh. We sit like this, until it is time to move on. For awhile I think about that young couple fucking in half way out of their tent, I think about it and these mesh shorts don;t do well enough to conceal the growth I'm getting from watching Hilary's ass in her shorts. We haven't fucked in weeks. Sometimes its easy to lay in bed, knowing the wrong that I've done can;t possibly arouse her. But some nights, I'll catch a glimpse of her bare thighs or, if she showers, the way her hair lays on the back of her neck, and I can't help but want a piece of her.
Eventually we find a spot, Hilary doesn't think it’s ideal, but it will do. We set up the tent, which is surprisingly easy and start a small fire. Now it’s time for the grub. She finally opens up the paper bag to reveal some Tupperware full of the Shepard’s Pie her mother taught her to make, it’s a little cold but also in the bag is a special outdoor skillet so that we can warm it the perfection on the fire. Also in the bag is 4 ham and salami sandwich, my absolute favorite. Some crackers, cheddar cheese, and pepperoni. Also in the bag are paper plates, napkins, and a bottle of Suntory, expensive Japanese whisky that we drank on my birthday three years ago on what we both consider to be the best night of our relationship.
I grab her hands and thank her, and we smile and I feel warm.
She hands me the bottle and then goes back to gazing into the fire. Her face is glowing like it should all the time. I drink the beer, I let in the chemical change, any reason to let loose, any reason to be an asshole.
“What do you want from me?” I know the answer. Every idiot does. She wants honesty and love and trust and compassion and truth and clean towels and effort and cock and food and a kiss on the head in the morning.
“I don’t want to do this.” She says, her eyes lost in the orange blaze.
“Well I do.” I’m rearing up to go, there is no stopping me, I’m a machine hell-bent on tears and tragedy.
“Otis just stop, lets get along. Do you want to lay down?” She says looking up at me.
“I don’t want to fucking lay down.” I breathe hot and take a pull from the bottle.
I’m an alcoholic, I’m abusive with words and in the past I've been a monster worthy of fathers or mothers brandishing shotguns. I've tried to change and I've made head way. But sometimes I get so angry I see red and I’m like a bull and there is no reasoning, no compassion, I’m a small creature who will destroy anything to make itself feel large, to feel like anything other than a speck whose feeling don’t exist.
“Stop yelling.”
“I’m not yelling. Why do you think every time I raise my voice beyond a whisper its yelling. Grow up Hilary, really.”
“Please, okay, just stop.” She says through sighs. She won’t cry, she only cries when there is silence.
“It’s just ridiculous; I told you I made a mistake. I told you that I fucked up but fuck look at everything I've done for you. I pay the fucking rent, I bought that car, I don so much.”
“So you’re saying that your respect comes to price? You're saying that you can fucking cheat on me with a teenager cause you pay for things?” She’s revving up herself. She’s often right in arguments, but I can’t let her ever know.
“No but I am saying that I’m allowed to make mistakes.”
“Are those mistakes fucking one of your teenage students in our bed, in out apartment you fucking pig.”
“Where was I supposed to go, her dorm.”
“Yeah you should have gone to her dorm so all those little fucking freshman could see you for the old, creepy pathetic bastard you are.” Her jab goes straight to the heart. She means nothing by it but the word ‘bastard’ means someone from a broken home, someone lacking parents. My mom died before I got to ask her so many things; her favorite color, her goals as a child, if she really liked my book. I felt parent less because my dad was entering a state where he wasn't going to be the strong man I knew. I felt like a bastard and she said it not knowing and it was at that moment I felt ripped open, like an envelope and letter ripped do to excitement.
“You're such a bitch.”
“Oh now I’m a bitch.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“Whatever, Otis, look at yourself.” The words I rue the most. ‘Look at myself.’ Who’d want to look at themselves if they were in my position. Fat, aging, in the woods, cheating, arguing, ruining love, ruining life, about to make a gigantic mistake.
“Look at your fucking self.” I say, wondering if Hillary ever loved my writing, ever loved the man I was on the page, ever loved my art. Not sure why any of that
“This trip is a waste of time, We are leaving in the morning.” She tells me. I hate that she called that, not because I want to be in power like she thinks, but because I want to be with her. But what a shitty job of showing it I’m doing.
We sit in silence and watch the fire. Well she watches the fire and I watch her with careful glances, careful not to get caught staring at her illuminated face, carefully so that she didn't know I cared, carefully as to imitate hate. I’m such a asshole, I’m not that great a person. After a while the weight of the situation hits me, the silence (That I’m causing.) dissects, so I stand up.
“I’m leaving.”
“Where are you going Otis?”
"Away from you." When we were young, or I should say 'younger' because we are quite young, we used to call each other 'dude' in arguments. It was a sign that we had devolved as Hilary and Otis and become faceless, nameless, dudes, inhuman, mannequins. We no longer call one anther 'dude' but the intent, the desire to see outside the person still exist in both of us.
I charge forward, through the woods, away from the fire we started and into something less populated, into something darker. My ears are burning, that what happens when I get like this. My ears become warm enough to fry eggs on, and its almost like the baking warmth from my ears bakes the section of me brain that regulates common sense, because in a situation like this common sense would decree I turn around and make nice with the woman I love cause the sun’s descending like the volume on porn when your wife/mother/father/boss enters the room.
But my ears are hot and I’m marching into the deep, dark, haunted regions of the Catskills. And to think I took off work for this.
An in detriment amount of time later and the moon is up painting the forest in a ghastly grey, as if under a spectral veil. The temperature dropped as well and these shorts aren't enough to stave off whats becoming a bitterly cold night. I don’t know where Hilary or our fire or our tent is. In my tizzy I forgot some essentials like a flash light and a poncho, and although the trees tower over me and their leaves umbrella me, cold droplets still make their way down on me.
Hilary is probably in the tent, infinitely more pissed off than I am, and with so much more cause. I feel choked. I feel like giving up and digging a hole in the moist soil to sleep in, using dirt as a pillow, blanket and bed, waking in the morning and screaming Hilary’s name for her to come help me, as self-fish as that sounds. But I don’t stop, I instead keep walking, through thorns bushes and poison oak and spider webs that cause mini-panic attacks every time I walk through one. The darkness grows and the only light I have is from my cellphone, and the battery is rapidly dying. Every now and then a beep goes off signaling that I have a voice mail, I am un-able to check it though because this forest is a nullifies satellite signals. This worries me; has Hilary tried to contact me, has my boss left a message, am I fired, did he to find out about me and the student? I’m in miasma of all feelings shitty.
Last time Hilary left a message on my phone it was to tell me that she had watched a baby bird fall from a tree die. She called during one of my classes and when I called a 15 minute bathroom break (Although at NYU bathroom breaks are essentially cigarettes breaks.) I checked the message, and her voice was soaked in disbelief. I knew exactly what face she was making. I had my students write her letter after they returned from their breaks. We read them that night and laughed, then she became upset at the thought I might have fucked one of the letter writers.
Eventually the woods become painting into a lumisncent grey light that is quite beautiful. I enter a clearing and for the first time feel the full impact of the rain. It’s not coming down hard, but it is fast and between its conception in the heavens to its magnificent flight to earth it freezes. It miserable but as I trudge through the soaked grass the slosh of my feet are akin to the sloth of the feet of knights trudge into a blood soaked battle field. In the distance to my left I see a large man-made structure that towers above the tree, I make my way to it over the sopping wet grass. The water leaks through my shoes and every step I make has the most uncomfortable slosh, my drunk is wearing off, morphing into a sluggish, morose tiredness. The rain pelts me, brutally, and I feel like a sort of death, I feel like a sort of soaked denizen of hell.
I approach the structure and I recognize it to be a Fire Tower. Fire Tower’s were built on the highest peaks of the region and they were manned 24 hours a day by park rangers. It’s said that from the top of a Fire Tower a ranger could see any telltale signs of a fire. There used to hundreds of these things, but since the 90s these things became obsolete due satellite monitoring and helicopter surveillance. A few conservation groups decided to save a handful, and here I am looking at one.
I climb the tower, hoping to see flashlights or camp fires or that couple fucking again, any sign of human life. But once I climb the metal steps, at the landing at the top, all I see is a shadow on the wet ground casted by myself. I look at the shadow and wave to it, it waves back mysteriously. I accept the shadow to be me, I far away me from another demision that is directly affected by this demision. I understand that I will always have this shadow, but it will always be in my control, it will always be at my beck and call, me and the height of the sun in the sky. Well in this case the moon.
Looking out at the arces of woods, I know Hilary is out there, I know somewhere in this dense collection of foliage is the woman I love, the woman I thought would be the last stop on the railroad that was my love life, but this shadow is still waving because I’m making it wave. This shadow is still here. I curse and spit on the shadow. Then I see two lights heading my way from the clearing. Finally some life, maybe they will have compasses or food or clothes, finally I can back to humanity, maybe its that couple we saw earlier, maybe they can walk me back to Hillary and she can thank them and we can live maybe trade partners and become swingers in the woods, maybe that is what will save our relationship. My shadow takes catches the spit right in the neck. I make my way down the wet stairs.
Hilary must be worried sick, she must be cold and scared. All I want to do is hold her. I make a misstep on the stairs. I slip and in trying to catch my grip, to stave my balance I twist me body and the gravity of my weight is too much and it makes my descent worse. I bounce down the stairs like a soceer ball kicked down a rocky hill. When I settle at the bottom of the tower my ears are ringing and I taste nickles, I cough hot liquid. I hear something faintly in the distance. Maybe its Hilary I think. Maybe I’ll have to go to hospital, maybe she will drive me and talk to me. Maybe we can make it up. But maybe what I hear is my mother or angels or ghosts or nothing. Maybe I hear my shadow.
