New Short Story!

Apart
By James Bezerra

And they lived happily ever after.

Because she decided not to get on that flight to Chicago, where everything that she owned was waiting for her in boxes in an empty apartment that still smelled like fresh white paint.

She decided not to get on the flight to Chicago because of the way that he kissed her, right there in the airport, just on the public side of the security checkpoint. Everyone waiting in line, standing there in their comfortable shoes, turned to look at them kiss.

They all turned to look because just before the kiss, he had hollered to her, “CLAAAAAAARRRRRAAAAA!” as he came dashing through the terminal. Holding her ticket in one hand and her black, heeled slingbacks in the other, she turned to look at Roosevelt and she saw him running to her and she knew then, she knew that if he tried to kiss her, that she would let him and she knew that if he kissed her, she would decide not get on the plane. Because she had always been powerless against the kissing. Not just his, but nearly everybody’s. She was powerless against all of the kissing. Good kissing, Clara felt, was next to godliness in the progression upward toward perfection. Way better than cleanliness.

So it was that he didn’t say another thing to her after he ran to her. His heavy black boots had thundered on the flat expanse of cheap airport tile, his mouth gaped a little, sucking air. His scalp shimmered a little with a shiny sheen of sweat. He hadn’t stopped to look at her or assess her or wonder if his arrival would be welcomed. He hadn’t thought about what he would say or what he would say if she said no. It had never occurred to him that she might say no, but it had never occurred to him that she would say, I’m taking the job in Chicago. But she had just said it: I’m taking the job in Chicago. I’m in a cab, I’m going to the airport, on the voicemail that she had left him, which he had just listened to before jumping on his motorcycle, flipping the key over, kicking it to life, feeling the engine throb between his thighs and twisting his right hand all the way forward. He had flown, fast and illegal, all freeway physics, leaning into long turns, zipping up the narrow asphalt shoulders, blasting between slowed cars. His olive drab army surplus jacket billowing out behind him like a cape, skull and crossbones bandana across his face, heavy black goggles pressed down into his face by the speed, the shriek of wind and the growl of internal combustion filling his ears and the smell of hot dirty metal burning his nostrils. He’d left fear, vexation and anger in his exhaust-y wake and he’d kind of liked it. He rode like he’d always desired to. And so he was filled with the hot hot heat of adrenaline and the cold pierce of love when he ditched his bike in the garage and dashed across traffic, the wrong way up ramps, around cars and into the terminal and started bellowing CLAAAAARRRRAAA! And so when he saw her - slim, elegant, in her speckled white and red fifties-chic dress, with her thick black glasses, her golden hair up in a tight bun, her spike-heeled shoes dangling from her fingers – he didn’t think or stop; he engulfed her.

And they lived happily ever after.

Which is not entirely true, because it never is, because eventually, they had to stop kissing and while Clara understood that his sudden, dramatic, cinematic and nearly miraculous appearance at the airport to mean that he was sorry and begging for her forgiveness, Roosevelt had only intended it to mean, I don’t want you to go. For him it had been about overcoming the near impossibility of getting there so fast. For Roosevelt, it was the vast romance of his death-defying gesture that would save them. For Roosevelt, it was about his action in response to hers; his answer to her threat against their love. And for Clara it was kind of about that too. Had she purposefully given him just enough time to get there? Had she called from the cab instead of the airport so that he would have the chance? She’d known that he‘d be in a meeting that afternoon at the theater, he had the same meeting every Friday afternoon. She’d known that he would be unable to answer right away. Had she dawdled in the gift shop, trying on dark sunglasses? Perhaps she had taken too long in the bathroom, reapplying her dark red lipstick. Maybe she did linger near the end of the line at the security checkpoint for longer than she needed to. Had it all been a kind of provocation? Possibly it had all been a bit of a ruse. Maybe it had it all been a question: How much do you want me?

But maybe their happily-ever-after did start to decay before the kiss was even done. Like some unstable atom, sizzling and dangerously capable of consuming itself just to burn. Like some tiny, misshapen sun. Did Clara smile to herself because he made it in time? Yes. Did she also smile because she was so cunning? Also, yes.

Maybe all of it had crossed her mind when she accepted the Chicago job. They had offered it to her a week ago. Artist-in-residence at the Chicago City Dance Company, an avant-garde little collective in the Fulton Market District. Her dream come true, no restrictions, her own shows, teaching. They even set her up with a live/work space, a little apartment with hard wood floors and a floor-to-ceiling mirror. They had emailed her pictures and Clara had packed her life into boxes. It had not been hard for her. She hadn’t spoken to Roosevelt in nearly two weeks, she had only seen him when he’d come into their apartment – usually early in the morning – to get clothes and stuff them into his duffle bag. Clara hadn’t know where he was sleeping, but suspected it was at the theater, on one of the sofas in one of the basement dressing rooms. That had caused mixed emotions in her. She’d liked the idea of him down there in the dark, curled uncomfortably onto one of the worn sofas, staring up at the ceiling and pining for her, just pining endlessly away into the dark. Clara had spent her own nights lying in their bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about him pining for her.

But her emotions were mixed because she had memories of fucking him on those same sofas. She remembered the first time that she unzipped his tight pants and reached inside and held him, warm and wide in her palm. She had memories of him working loose all of the buttons on her checkered pencil skirt. She had memories of pushing him down onto one of those sofas – the green one – and climbing on top of him, the lower half of her body completely bare. She had memories of slipping him slowly inside of her own body.

She had mixed emotions because he knew that she was not the first girl he’d fucked on those sofas. And Roosevelt was good-looking, thin but with strong arms, arms that she could imagine wrapped around some other girl. She could see her dark red hair draped over the tattoos that spread across Roosevelt’s shoulders. She could see the metal stud in Roosevelt’s tongue slipping in and out of some other girl’s mouth. She could feel the stubble of Roosevelt’s cheeks rubbing against some other girl’s breasts.

So it was easy for Clara to pack because even though she had mixed emotions, she was absolutely pissed at him for fucking that red headed girl that she had imagined. Part of her brain began to excitedly imagine the new life in Chicago, being single, having her own place, meeting people who were genuine and artistic and who cared about stuff. She imagined the men she’d meet and what their eyes would feel like on her body. Or maybe she’d go back to women; find a supple dancer with a limber body like her own, but a little younger, someone she could love and tutor.

But the other part of her brain was waiting on Roosevelt. Waiting like an angry, simmering structure fire. Waiting for him to come back to her, to pour his guts out and gush about how he needed and wanted her. That part of her wanted him to turn himself inside out with longing and angst until his organs were on the outside and the thunder of his heart beating drowned out every thought in her head. That part of her brain was consumed with thinking about how devastated he would be when she would tell him, I’m taking the job in Chicago.

And that part of her brain ignited like when she saw him dashing across the terminal, sweat on his scalp, sucking in air, a wild flare in his eyes. That part of her brain went up like flash paper, like a roman candle, like a geyser of fire. It went off like cordite, smokeless and deadly serious.

And so when he engulfed her, she was already enflamed. Her lips were ready, her body taut, her every atom vibrating like a harp string.

And when he kissed her, she kissed him back hard. And their happily ever after started off on its half life.

When their lips parted, Roosevelt realized that that was the moment when he was supposed to say, Stay. But he didn’t.

Until just that second, he hadn’t been entirely sure what would happen after he got to her. It had not occurred to him that she might say no, but it also had not occurred to him that their kiss would end. His entire plan had been to get there, to rush to her, to be a man, a wrap her up in himself, to kiss her and devour all of her, but he had no idea what would happen next.

So yes, he had hopped on his bike the second that he got the message and, yes, he had merged himself with that throbbing black and chrome machine in order to get there and, yes, he wanted her to see how much he loved her and, yes, he wanted her fall back in love with him like a star falling out of the sky, but – for him – that was the goal. Finding her at the airport and just being there was the plan.

This is what I wanted, Roosevelt thought to himself as their lips mashed together and her body pressed into the shape of his. That moment was exactly what he had wanted; the merging of them, the transference of all the love and all the emotion and all the passion. It was all he had wanted for weeks, when he was hanging lights at the theater or fucking understudies on one of the sofas down in the basement, or sitting up alone at night staring into the darkness and pining for her, all he had wanted was for everything he felt inside his rib cage to collide head-on into her so that it destroyed her a little bit. It was the only way for him to purge both the fact that he loved her and the fact that he hated her for making him love her so much.

The emotional mixture was a lot like what he’d felt in his veins – part tar, part acid and part embittered sunshine – their last night together. When they’d argued, shouted, screamed, thrown things, threatened, cursed, cried and finally, grown quiet. The mix was like what he had felt right before he’d grabbed his army surplus jacket, all covered in the patches of bands, and walked out of the apartment. Only when he got to kiss her there in the airport did he realize that he felt almost exactly the same way that he had that night. Only now he wasn’t angry, he was excited and full of love and life and adrenaline and desire and so many giant emotions that they threatened to burst out of his body at the seams and explode in a wet gushing mess right there on all the cool airport tile.

But some part of him, as their lips started to slowly and wetly part, was already in decay. And he remembered what that girl had said to him – that girl Angela, the understudy for Helen in the theater’s Punk Rock Troilus and Cressida – she said to him – after he’d cum inside of her on the green sofa – she said – still fondling him absently with her fingers – she said, “The two of you are all big emotions and neither one of you wants to make room for the other’s bullshit because you have so much bullshit of your own.” Then Angela had wiggled back into her panties and her blue jeans and said, “But if you guys do get back together, don’t tell her about this, we get along and I like her a lot.” And then as Angela was starting up the stairs out of the basement, she turned back and said, “She is the hottest girl you’ll ever get.”

And, there in the airport, as their tongues and lips untangled and as Roosevelt looked into her dark eyes, all sparkling, Angela was flickering in his head. He pressed his lips together and he swallowed and he realized that that was it, their happily-ever-after had only been the width of a couple heartbeats and now it was over.

The cloud in Clara’s head cleared and the cool airport tile felt cold on her feet and made her think of the smooth bare boards of the apartment floor waiting for her in Chicago and even though she had decided - just tiny seconds ago - that she would stay and fuck him right there in the airport and get pregnant and marry him and raise a baby and be a mom and be happy forever and ever until they got old and withered and died asleep in each other ’s arms, she knew that their happily-ever-after was over.

“I’m taking the job in Chicago,” she said before getting in line, getting on the plane and flying to Chicago where she fell in love with her apartment, fell in love with her job, earned a favorable reputation, fell in love all the time and grew old single but seldom alone and always very happy.

“Good luck,” he replied before watching her get in line, walking back to his bike, riding back to their half-empty apartment, which he quickly moved out of in favor of a cheap studio which was rented to him by a woman with red hair whom he would eventually marry and whose withered arms he would die in while sleeping and smiling forty-three years later.

And they lived happily ever after. Apart.



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Sofa picture respectfully “borrowed” from xgray’s Flickr.