Twice, I’d struck out with her. The trip to cool down was strike one. My wasting gas driving irritated her, things were tight and gas was money. Her annoyance with me didn’t stop her from getting in the car to escape our apartment. With the air conditioner broken, our place doubled for Hell’s sauna. Her pissy mood went into full effect when we passed Lynn Rd.
“I wonder if a lot of porn stars live on Lynn Road.” An unfunny joke made for myself.
“Why?”
"You know how many sluts take the last name ‘Lynn' when going into porn." We watched porn together, she should know. "There's Amber Lynn, Ginger Lynn, Krissy Lynn, Jamie Lynn, Rebel Lynn, it's like the go-to name if you want to be a whore."
“Lynn was my mother’s name.” Her mother moved in when she did. The first box Alex unpacked was the one with her urn in it. Since then, mom resided on a shelf in the living room.
“You told me your mother’s name was Linda.”
“But everyone called her Lynn.”
“So? You didn’t tell me that.”
“You’re saying my mom has a whore’s name?”
“No, and you’ve always referred to your mom as Linda, how would I know?” I made a note to myself to check the self-help books she’d been reading. If it existed, “Argument Starters for the Busy Girlfriend,” had to be in the pile next to the Deepak Chopra and other bullshit she fed her mind.
Alex slipped out her shoes and reclined in the couch-like front seat with her feet out the window. Her toes pointed into the oncoming air. The wind rushed over her streamlined legs. Their shape guiding the currents along her flesh, pushing the hem of her retro grunge summer dress over her tummy, exposing her white cotton panties. She didn't care. Over the last year working as a nude art model brought in her bucks. At home, she’d always be naked. We’d walk in the door and she’d strip down to her panties. Soon they’d come off. Sometimes she’d throw on one of my T-shirts. She wasn’t an exhibitionist, she didn’t care. If UPS had a delivery, as long as she had on a bra and panties she’d answer the door. When I said something, she pointed out “it’s more or less a bikini, so what is the big deal,” she was right. For the Jehovah's Witnesses, she'd answer the door naked. She assured me it was the best way to keep them from returning. Again, she was right.
She picked at the cracked plastic on the dash, her idea of an act of aggression. Alex was five years younger than my 1989 powder blue Cadillac Eldorado. Which didn’t mean much, if I wasn’t five years older than the car, putting ten years between us. My relationships had taken on a Dorian Grey quality. As I aged, my girlfriends stayed between 21 and 23 years old.
She was starting to see I’d been true about my bill of sale when we started dating. Writers work day jobs, we write, we submit, it never goes anywhere. Earlier today, she threw a fit after I went looking for sympathy and told her I’d been written up at my desk jockey day job. A customer service gig answering phones and helping dildos with their internet billing. I made the mistake of telling her, I wasn’t taking enough calls fast enough. She went off on a tirade about what would happen if I got fired. She didn't like my answer.
“Finding another job of the same shit quality won’t be hard.”
“In this economy?”
A biker rode alongside the car. Alex's white panties got his attention and he smiled. He spread his index and middle fingers over his lips and stuck his tongue out. I reciprocated with a gesture of my own. It was similar to his, less my tongue and index finger. His engine farted a noise that hurt my ears. The bike accelerated and he disappeared down the road.
"Why'd you do that?" She said.
"I might be the sensitive artist type but that don’t make me a pussy."
"That guy could beat the crap out of you."
"Probably, I don't give a shit. I'll never see that Bluto looking asshole again."
"You're such a fucking child. Do you ever think about the things you do, like before you do them?"
Through the windshield, trees bordered the road up ahead. I enjoyed the scenery. The dead grass, and cows, and farmland. They don’t make postcards of this Florida, the backwoods highways, with ripped up fetuses on anti-abortion billboards and a scattering of standalone stores, a bait shop, a place selling sex toys, a diner. A mile or two down there was a stretch of high fence bordering the road. Behind it, a nudist camp Alex frequented with her ex. A year or so ago, when we first started going out, she told me about the place. Back then, we'd go on late night car rides after fucking. We'd be sticky from sweat. Windows open. The night air a cooling pallet cleanser for the body.
I knew turning around would change her mood. If I kept going and she did speak to me it would be, "We've been driving for hours, and gas is money..." She grew up here. She enjoyed the summer, I felt like it was natures punishment and it made me loath going outside. I spent so much time inside I put on weight. I'd gotten heat stroke twice. Both times, I caught it before having to go to the hospital. But the internet said, once you get it, it becomes easier to get it again.
Slowing the car, I pulled into an unpaved parking lot outside an antique store. The exterior façade made from wood cabin logs had a sign nailed into them. In red and white paint on plywood, "Antiques," followed by the place’s address and phone number, letting us know where we were.
"What are you doing?" She pulled her feet in the car and sat up.
"This is how I see it," I said, pulling the keys from the ignition. "We can go in there, enjoy some air conditioning, and then head back home. If we are going to do this, please be normal. You don’t need to be a cunt."
"Fuck you." She said. She opened her door and turned her body. She reached for her Converse on the floorboards and slipped them on. She tucked the laces into the shoes. Crossing in front of the car to the entrance, she mumbled, "I don't get why I go out with you."
Her saying it under her breath annoyed me. I didn't get up. I focused on calming myself. My father died when I was little and I grew up with just my mom. She pulled this kind of passive aggressive bullshit all the time till I left.
Then again, calling Alex a "cunt" was plain aggressive.
I couldn't give her the satisfaction of me sitting out here in the heat. I breathed in and exhaled a Zen sigh.
Calm, I got out of the car. I didn’t bother locking it. Alex hated it when I left the doors unlocked. I didn’t worry. No self-respecting thief would touch this piece of shit.
A sleigh bell dinged over the store’s door as I opened it. The inside of the place was larger than the exterior let on. The shelves were different heights and makes. It smelled of old books. Worn boxes of board games filled one shelf. They had to be missing pieces. The mugs on another shelf included a "vintage" Garfield mug, from the 80's. Porcelain angels pranced naked next to the mugs. Dust covering their small wings and heads. The crap on parade continued.
Moving through the place was a pain. The shelves were too close together. The aisles narrowed, creating a danger of knocking over the shelves and destroying the not precious un-valuables.
Alex had vanished within the heap, and I didn’t care. Without a counter up front, I headed to one of the walls and turned. In the back corner of the store, I walked up on it. A Victrola Talking Machine. Red and white feather boas strewn on a coat rack behind it, framed the shining original wood finish. Its needle and stylus poised in the air, an ambush predator waiting to find the groove in a record placed on its platter. I gripped the cold handle on the side of the machine to wind it up. No, bad idea, these things are delicate.
Leaving it, I found Alex by a clothing rack a few isles of trash-covered shelves down. She draped a red pantsuit with huge shoulder pads over herself and posed in a mirror.
"What do you think?" She locked eyes with the woman in the mirror. She could do this, switch her gears on a dime. If she were a car, they'd advertise her as being able to go from cunt to kitten and back again in under 1.36 seconds.
"It looks like something Nancy Reagan would wear to her gynecologist."
"I know, right, but do you think it would be, like ironic funny to wear?"
"No, it's just ugly. It's not even 80's coke dealer's girlfriend kitschy. Hey, they got a Victrola Talking Machine."
"Is that like a robot from back in your day?"
I digested her words. With her, I had to sort jokes and ignorance. We started dating right after she'd given up on getting her GED. She still went to the community college campus but headed for the art department. There, she'd get naked so students could learn to draw.
"It's an old record player, the kind you wind. It has an open horn that works like a speaker, but it uses the grooves cut into the record to create sound." I wasn't getting through. "Come on, I’ll show you."
She followed me back to the old wooden box, with the crank and flower shaped speaker.
"It looks like it's old." She said.
"No shit. I want this."
"Does it work?"
"I have no clue, but look at it."
"That makes no sense. You don't even own records. Can people even buy records?"
“You’re missing the point." I lowered my voice, "I'm gonna find the shop keep. If I'm lucky he doesn't know what he’s got here."
"I can’t imagine anyone wanting anything for it."
"I’ve seen them on E-bay go for about ten grand, working or not."
She blinked as her head twitched sideways. "We don't have the room for you to fix it up and sell it."
"No, I want to own it. Look at it. The horn, the woodwork, the engravings, they don’t build things like this anymore. Imagine if when they designed your phone they cared about what it looked like."
"Whatever, you get we can't afford it anyway?"
"Everything is money with you. Let me find someone and ask, okay?"
I headed through the maze of aisles of shit on shelves. At the other end of the store, a wood framed opening connected to another room. More of the same old shit. I don’t mean that as an expression. I mean it was old, redundant, and it was shit. Dirty pink flamingos, never to be released into the wild of a front lawn. Garden gnomes smiled, their guts out and hands behind their backs. Happy fat fucks who could pass for the people of Walmart. A mannequin with pin holes in it, I assumed, it was once used for dart practice...
I monologed, "Hello," and the assorted, "anyone here?" type stuff. In the back of this labyrinth, I found a counter with a register. The glass box illuminated fake jewelry. Gaudy things with big glass gems and flaking metal, some of the pieces had mold lines. Something a Trump wife would wear after a financial collapse. Leaning over the counter I hollered to Alex, "Shit dead body."
The old man sat up on a cot that was so low to the ground it took him rising with a grunt for me to see it.
"Maybe tomorrow, not today. What can I do you for?" He said. His hand went to the back of his head to scratch it. Done, he rolled his shoulder forward popping it.
"I wanted to know about the Victrola Talking Machine."
"The what?"
I repeated myself. When he didn't get it a second time, he played with the dial on his hearing aide.
The third time was a charm.
"Oh the Victrola Scope, yeah, it's for sale."
Across the store, the sleigh bell dinged over the entrance.
A man's voice called, "Pop?"
The old man shook his head. "I'm back here."
"How much do you want for it?" I asked.
"What?"
"The Victrola."
"Let's take a look at it." He walked out from behind the counter. In the opening to the rest of the store, the old man's son stood.
"You asshole." The Son said to me.
"I'm the asshole?"
"You shot me the bird."
"You made a pussy eating gesture at my girlfriend."
As if she planned it, Alex entered.
"Oh shit." She laughed.
"We were about to take a look at the record player." The Old Man said.
"Dad, don't sell shit to this asshole."
"Fuck you pal."
"Think before you speak." The all new Alex, K to C in 1.36 seconds.
"Why not Alex?"
"Cause he's a biker."
"I don’t care if he’s the lead singer of The Village People, he’s still an asshole."
I didn't see the basic one-two combo coming. First my nose, then my stomach. I hit my knees, doubled over, but didn't go all the way down. Staying on my knees, with a sharp exhale, bloody snot covered my fingers. Not only did my nose hurt, but I had an instant headache. The blood, rolled out my nostrils, over my lips, got in my mouth, dripped off my chin, and fucked up my shirt.
"Oh, no, don't do that, he’s a customer." Said The Old Man.
Alex didn't say shit.
"Apologize to my dad for getting blood on his carpet."
Looking at the mess on my hands, I wondered if he'd broken my nose. From the darker days of my childhood, I remembered heads and noses bleed a lot.
"What's wrong with you, apologize?" Alex said, "Don't be an idiot, say sorry and let’s get out of here."
"Yeah, say you're sorry, faggot."
I got to my feet. I hadn't been hit like this in a long time. “Tell you what, your Dad's got a dick, why don't you suck it? This way your old man can die with a smile on his face. I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time you—”
His fist clipped me square in the eye. I went backward, arms windmilling, trying to catch something. I collided with a shelf. It toppled into another shelf taking it down. I heard things cracking into pieces all around me.
"Don't make me call the police..." The Old Man threatened his son. At least he was on my side.
"No Dad, you go ahead and you call them and you..."
Alex looked down at me with an opened mouth smirk. I got up. My head felt like it was bobbing on a spring. With each bounce, the center of agony inside my skull swirled. Something tickled my lips. I touched my hand to my mouth. My nose was still bleeding.
"You are such a fucking child, you know that?" She said.
"Yeah, I do.”
Getting to my feet, The Son hawked me, waiting to see what I would do next. It was all on me, “Hey, sorry for what I said about you sucking dick. And old guy, sorry about the rug."
The Old Man looked shook. His son gave me the fifty-yard stare and added an extra twenty-yards. I turned. I made it to the door, holding my index finger horizontally under my nose the way there to keep the blood out of my mouth. Alex followed behind me.
I opened the door. Fear hit me and I Looked back the old man was gone, but the son remained vigilant.
"Hey," I said, "sorry, about the stuff I knocked over."
On her way out the door, Alex brushed passed me, she looked as angry as I should feel.
Passing the motorcycle parked next to my car, I felt every step I took inside my head. Alex waited for me in the passenger seat. She sucked her lips and flexed her jaw muscles, a pre-nagging warm up.
I let myself in the car. Using my fingertips, I outlined the swelling around my eye. The worst will be having to hear the stupid remarks made by co-workers on Monday. I could hear the morons now, “Let me guess, the other guy looks worse," their wit peaking with, "The first rule is you don't talk about it."
Reaching into my pocket, I touched my keys, but removed my hand, leaving them where I found them. With my finger no longer under my nose, a cool spot pooled on my chest. Another stain, that didn’t matter. The shirt looked like a gag shark attack T-shirt sold at beachfront tourist traps.
"Shit," I said. I reached into the cup holder pretending to look for the keys, then the glove box.
"What now?" She asked.
“I can't find the car keys."
“For real?”
“Oh shit, oh shit." I punched the steering wheel with the side of my hand.
“What?”
"I left them on the counter when I was talking with the old man."
"You're joking."
"I can't go back in there."
She leaned into me and curled her lip, "Really?"
Getting out of the car, she did a runway models catwalk back to the shop.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my keys. I waited for the door to close behind her before starting the engine. I pulled out of the unpaved parking lot and headed for home. With the windows open and air drying and cooling the sweat on my bruised face, I weighed the odds of packing my shit and being gone before she could make it back.
© Josh Darling
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