Gary Moshimer
This last fight went until every surface of the kitchen was covered in post-its. Hers and mine. Her carefully printed notes alternating with my angry scrawl. Horizontal and vertical. Little bumper stickers from our rocky road of marriage.
Jerkoff. Asshole. Needledick. Fuckwad. Die! Eat shit. Moron. With hate, me. Dreamer. Be that way. I will. Fine. You suck! Your mouth sucks. You wish! Get lost. I am lost. By the way, your shit does stink. All the better for you to eat.
And so on. A far cry from the folded secrets we’d passed in junior college: Your hair I love. Your eyes I can’t look away. That mouth is for me kissing.
Amy’s friend said it was so adolescent, so corny. Love secrets?
Now we had no secrets. After eighteen years we saw each other with X-ray vision, everything black and white and glowing nerve endings. Amy had already left for her mother’s, but I just had to write it. I was out of post-its, so I grabbed an envelope from the junk mail on the floor and wrote, Fine, go to Mommy. I tried to sail the envelope, but it came back to me, landing face up on the table.
How about that? It was for my twentieth high school reunion. I opened it. I’d blown the RSVP; the event was tonight, and that just made it more appealing. I’d crash it, blast right up there in the Camaro, show them I still had it, the nerd optometrist laying rubber in the parking lot and making his entrance. Maybe Sun would be there, ready to walk out on Klein the Koksuk. On another envelope, unpaid credit card, I wrote, KOKSUK.
***
The black Camaro was my first car, and I’d kept it mint. The loves of my life came in this order: Camaro, Sun (pronounced Soon), and Amy. I uncovered the car, freshly waxed her, took a shower, and threw a gray suit with lemon tie in the back. With radar detector on, I took my baby to 90 on stretches of the thruway. The hours seemed like seconds, like time travel.
The motel was still there, wedged into the hill over the lake, looking more Norman Bates-ish than ever, complete with looming old house. Now it was run by Indians, and I was astonished by the out-of- place beauty of the woman at the desk, the jewel in her forehead pricking my eyes with light, the colors she wore turning the surroundings to black and white. I watched my hand fill out the little card, its skin a shade of gray.
I asked for room five, where I’d had taken Sun once, and studied the furniture carefully, convinced it hadn’t changed in twenty years. It was too bad I wasn’t the kind to carve his initials into things.
With some time to kill before the party, I drove around town to see what had changed. There were two extremes, nothing in between. Run down houses that had been here for generations, then the new mansions built on overlooking hills, where the people who worked in the city lived on weekends. These places had big stone gates off the town roads, to make the common people feel bad, and my face burned to see every gate accompanied by a sign reading: KLEIN CUSTOM HOMES.
Klein’s parents had named him Kosak, which wouldn’t have been an issue if he hadn’t turned into such a dick. By middle school he’d earned his other name. Once a nice English teacher called him Koksuk by mistake, and of course the gym teachers didn’t even try to hold back.
Because Klein didn’t care what anyone thought of him, he became a ruthless business man, invading Pittsfield to fix up failing row-homes to sell as luxury condos. I called him ‘Mr. Potter’ once, but he was too stupid to know what that meant. Then he came back over the mountain, buying up land just when the rich city people were looking. They came with the plans and he built their expensive houses, glass houses, and a wonderland for himself and Sun, after he stole her away when I went to college in Boston.
I couldn’t really blame Sun. We hadn’t promised to wait for one another. When I asked her to visit me in Boston, her parents disapproved. Apparently they didn’t disapprove of the new rich man in town, the meaty, overbearing and confident one to whom she could be subservient. On the few occasions they had heard the name KOKSUK thrown at him, they felt it sounded like the name of an oriental dish, most pleasing to the ear, and they ran around him in little circles saying, “Oh, Koksook. So funny.” But he wasn’t funny at all. He was mean.
I returned to the motel, put the suit on, and examined my hair, which was still thick. It looked a little ridiculous, because two weeks ago I’d tried on my own to dye the gray out, but ended up with jet black, so it looked like a wig. Amy suspected I had some young thing somewhere. Why else would I want to look younger? I didn’t know why myself, but she was just plain crazy, always believing I hypnotized my women patients by gazing into their eyes. “Believe me,” I’d told her, “I’m fed up with eyes.” We’d stopped gazing into one another’s, for sure. She asked me if I could read the writing on the wall, and I covered one eye and then the other and said, “Nope.” This pissed her off so bad we had sex, which turned violent. She asked me to strangle her and I almost didn’t let up in time.
I drove the ten minutes to my old high school. It was dusk now, and I laid some rubber in the deserted parking lot before heading to Perretti’s. There I found the lot full of cars parked at weird angles, like everyone had arrived already blitzed. There was no room for me to burn out or do donuts. I’d just have to enter quietly. Well, fuck that.
I tossed the lemon tie over my shoulder and fluffed my hair like I’d arrived by chopper. I strode through the bar to banquet room ‘A’ and kicked the door open with my slippery shoe. I stood with legs apart and arms folded across my chest and shouted, “HEY!” over the hum of 80’s music and conversation.
A few heads turned. I thought maybe this was the wrong room, because no one looked familiar, but then I saw they were all vague caricatures of themselves. I spotted Klein at the punchbowl, poking his bulbous blue nose into it. He wore a string tie and cowboy boots like some fucking Texas tycoon.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Koksuk!”
There was a hush then, like a saloon before the showdown.
“Who’s there?” Klein squinted, red punch dripping from his nose, eyes set deep in his fleshy face. He looked fake, as if fitted with prosthetic fat for a movie. Just for a split second I felt sorry for him, like I did for the fat Lamotta at the end of Raging Bull. Before saying anything more, I looked around for Sun, but didn’t see her.
“It’s Glen Bishop. Long time no see.”
“You say you’re the Bishop?” Klein swayed and slurred, in the bag already. Two guys had to hold him up. He wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Where’s your big hat?”
“Sun’s first love,” I proclaimed.
“You son-of-a-bitch, I’ll give you ten seconds…”
He dove for me. The men couldn’t hold him, and he went face first into the hardwood. He started bawling, a heaving pile of baby-blue leisure suit. I thought I might kick him a few times, or go stand on his back to signal victory, but then a soft hand touched my shoulder. It felt like Sun’s. I imagined her leaving with me, going back to the motel. But it was just Mary Anne Grube, reunion organizer.
Her hand turned rough, pulling me to a corner table and sitting me down.
“What are you doing here? You didn’t answer the invitation.”
I shrugged. “I have the right to just show up, don’t I?”
“You look crazy.”
“My life’s not going well.”
“You shouldn’t have said that to him. Are you aware of what happened?”
“He’s still a jerk, right?”
“There was an accident.”
“Don’t tell me something happened to Sun.” I grabbed her arm too hard and she winced and eased it away.
“Sun lives at Valley View.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they had a car accident, her and Klein. He walked away, but she was in a coma. She came out of it but wasn’t the same. She’s at Valley View, sitting and looking out a window all day.”
“Waiting for me?”
She shook her head in disgust.
Some guys picked Klein up and led him out the door.
“Was he driving drunk?” I asked.
“Probably.”
“I should kill the fucker.”
“Glen, what happened to you?” She looked me in the face. She angrily straightened my tie. “Why didn’t you come back and save her from that jerk?”
I had no answer. I was a coward who couldn’t meet her eyes. All I could say was that I was back now, and she told me the obvious, that I was twenty years too late.
***
I hung at the bar for some gin and tonics, lectured a few people about Amy and how we never had kids and how we wanted to hurt each other and how I’d never hurt Sun if I were her husband, until the listeners backed away from me. “I still have the Camaro,” I kept saying, until even I heard how pitiful it was.
When I left, Koksuk was lying on a bench outside, smoking a cigarette. He turned his head towards me but didn’t speak or make a move. I thought if I took my tie and cranked it around his neck I might be able to see those sunken eyes. I was just going to keep walking, but then there was this stone bird statue sitting on a column. I picked it up, feeling its weight, and wound up like a pitcher, facing him. He didn’t lift his hands. I aimed for his head, sure that it would fall short, because I was always a lousy pitcher. I turned and walked away without seeing where it hit.
I peeled out and headed for Valley View, a nursing home where I’d worked the summer after high school. My tires knew the curves by heart. It was past visiting hours, but Sun’s sister still worked there, and seemed not at all surprised to see me. She hadn’t changed a bit. She was soft-spoken and gracious, like all the sisters.
She led me to Sun’s room. Sun was in bed on her back and she turned her head towards me. She too looked the same, pale and slight, except her long black hair was gone, and I realized they probably shaved it to operate. “She might remember you, Glen. Write your name down for her.” She handed me a pad and pencil.
As she walked away, a man sidled next to me. She called over her shoulder, “Dan, pills in twenty minutes.” The man dismissed her with a backhand wave.
I looked up at him, an imposing figure for a geezer. He wore a big white cowboy hat and a furry white vest with a gold star on the pocket. His pajama bottoms were held up by a white belt, and on the belt hung a white holster, in which the pearly handle of his toy Colt .45 shone dully. “Howdy, young man,” he said, his voice booming. “May I inquire about your business here?”
“Uh, I’m visiting Sun. I knew her a long time ago. My name is Glen Bishop.”
He held out his big spotted hand and squeezed the hell out of mine. “Dan. Sheriff Dan. You see, Glen, I guard Sun, and I have to be careful who I let in here. These China girls wander in off the frontier with all sorts of bad characters after them.” He nodded in Sun’s direction. “She was scalped, as you can see.”
“Actually…Sheriff, I think she had an operation on her head. After her car accident with Koksuk.”
He tilted his hat, taking in this information. “Cossacks?”
“No, her husband. He hurt her and walked away.”
“What kind of man does that?”
“A bad one, Dan. An outlaw. You ever seen him here – big guy, kind of red and obnoxious?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“So he really did abandon her.”
“Cossack!” Dan pulled out his pistol and tried to twirl it, but his big finger got stuck in the hole.
I pulled a chair up to Sun’s bed. Her face was smooth and ageless. She batted her eyes at me without recognition.
“Are you a doctor?” Dan asked.
“Just a fucking optometrist.”
“You don’t say? The time travelers?” He was nodding, his face serious.
“Kind of. Vonnegut, right?”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind.”
Dan waved his finger with the gun stuck on it. “Do you think we can bring her back, Doc?”
“I don’t know.”
I wrote my name on the pad and showed it to her. She smiled blankly, politely.
“I don’t call her like everyone else,” said Dan. “I call her Sun like the star. I say, ‘The Sun will rise today.’ She don’t, of course, but I believe she’s in there.”
“I dated her twenty years ago. We drove all around these roads together.”
“Yeah? What happened?”
“I left her in danger, and you weren’t around, I guess.”
“Sorry, Doc. I wouldn’t have let anything happen.”
“Then I married someone else. You ever married, Dan?”
“Hell no. My life’s too dangerous to drag someone in.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Write her some stuff, Doc. She likes to read. Sometimes she reacts to words. She likes my Louis L’Amour.”
I wrote on the pad, ‘Pretty mouth and green my eyes…’ Sun studied it and looked at my face. Still nothing.
Dan was looking over my shoulder. “That poetry, Doc?”
“It’s a story we read together once. She liked those words, but her mother was upset that I was messing up her English. Sun was walking around saying, “Pretty my mouth and brown my eyes, brown my eyes.”
“Write that, Doc.”
I wrote it and Sun took the pad and read it. She was trying to move her lips. She looked at me and nodded, then handed the pad back and closed her eyes, like it was all too much. She folded her hands on her chest.
“Maybe we should take her for a ride. I still have the same car I had back then.”
Dan winked. “I can get you out of here. I have a little secret with the side door.”
“I’m just kidding, Dan. I’m out of control.”
“You follow your heart, Doc. Ask her. Write it.”
I wrote the question and tapped Sun on the shoulder for her to read it. She tilted her head, puzzled, but then sat herself up and put her feet on the floor. She stood up and shuffled her tiny slippers to the door and waited.
What the hell was I doing, following a senile old cowboy? Kidnapping not one but two residents? Dan was in the hall holding the door open. “Psst. Come on, I got her rigged.” No alarm sounded; none that I could hear, anyway. Sun was shuffling faster, holding my hand and tugging me along, like a dog hearing the “ride” word.
Outside, I vowed that when or if I brought them back, I would complain about the poor security. I would apologize to her sister.
When Dan saw the Camaro he exclaimed, “Batmobile!” He dove into the backseat, hat flying, his boots with the plastic spurs swaying in the air. Then he did a lot of grunting and hard breathing to right himself. He straightened his badge. I opened the passenger door for Sun and she got in delicately. She looked straight ahead, unblinking.
“Sometimes at night,” I said, after we got on the road, “I’d turn off the headlights while driving. Sun would squeal and dig her nails into my arm. And nothing would happen to us. Then Koksuk goes and crashes with my girl.”
Just then my cell phone buzzed. I glanced at the number and closed it. Dan leaned in and saw the glow. “Holy hell, Doc. Will that thing take us to the past, or the future?”
“We’ll find out.”
I stepped on the gas. At sixty I cut the lights, and Dan let out a “Yee-haah!”
I felt Sun’s hand on my arm, holding tight.
–
Gary Moshimer has published stories in Eclectica, Word Riot, Versap, Storyglossia, LitnImage, Fiction at Work, Keyhole 7, Wigleaf, and other places. He works in a hospital.
