9:05 p.m.
I found her in the back of the crowded bar, sitting with a man I’d
never met. The music was a gasoline lake—stagnant and dull like
muskrat piss. Customers stood three rows deep at the bar, passing
beers over their heads to cover orders made from behind them.
7:04 p.m.
The moon shone over the walnut trees and the stars popped like
bubble wrap. I sat outside listening to the hawks chasing rabbits. I
drank coffee and smoked a Tatuaji. The smoke drifted off in swirls,
swishing into nothing, seeking the vulnerable defect of lunar incandescence.
I hoped we were the same, she and I, separated just like
stars—or perhaps because of the stars—inside, ready to dance the
dance of indignation and embrace the incalculable options it offered.
9:09 p.m.
“Who’s this?” I asked, motioning to the man at the table. There
are people in the world who aren’t afraid to get in a cage with a wild
animal. They go in and they don’t take whips or chairs or any protection,
they just go in. I tried to act like one of them.
“Whatever happened to hello?” said Claudia.
“Hello,” I said, “who’s this?”
The man sitting at our table stared away at the crowd of people,
oblivious and uninterested. He had the words “High Times” tattooed
on his left forearm and each “I” was indicated by a drawing of a joint,
but they looked more like tampons.
“It’s a busy place, people have to sit somewhere.”
“I thought we were going to talk.”
“So talk,” she said. “I’m right here.”
“How are you?”
“The night is young. It’s too early to tell,” she said.
7:10 p.m.
A smell like vomited scotch led me to an area under the deck
where overgrown bushes, accumulated leaves and sticks provided
plenty of shelter and a good place for a dog to hide. I removed a
vertical slat in the deck and looked through the opening. I could
see him five or six feet away, still and peaceful, his eyes open and his
mouth pulled back as if in a smile.
9:11 p.m.
“I’m glad you called,” I said.
“I’m glad you came, I didn’t think you would.”
“I almost didn’t. I was thinking we could—”
“Slow down,” she said, “we haven’t even ordered yet.”
“Of course,” I said. She had on the dress I liked, the one she wore
to church last Easter Sunday. Her earrings were new, though, and I
wondered if she’d been shopping, “what do you want to drink?”
“Just a Coke for now.”
“Two Cokes, then?”
“Two Cokes, if that’s what you want, too. Otherwise, it’s just one.”
“You order,” I said, “I want what you want.”
7:12 p.m.
I removed several more slats from the deck and used a rake to
pull the dog’s body to the edge. I put down the rake when I could
reach the dog with my hands. I lifted it through the small opening of
the deck, first the rear end then the mid-section.
9:13 p.m.
Claudia motioned for the waitress. “Two Cokes,” she said.
The waitress rolled her eyes in a way that was meant for us to see
but not to see at the same time.
“Is that all?” she said.
“For now, yeah.”
The waitress walked off quickly, maneuvering the crowd like a
pinball dodging drunken bumpers.
7:13 p.m.
As the dog’s head passed through the opening, its ear stuck on
a nail. I jerked the legs, and the thin flesh of the ear tore. I pushed
the head forward and reached underneath to find the hole. Working
with my fingernails, I wiggled the flesh down the nail shaft and
stretched it, the ear hole forming tightly around my finger.
9:16 p.m.
“That waitress does not like me,” said Claudia.
“She doesn’t like what we ordered,” I argued.
“Same thing,” she said.
“Not really,” I replied, “She makes her money on tips, and tips get
higher in proportion to the amount of beer a person consumes.”
“Or whiskey,” she said.
“Or wine,”I said.
“Not wine.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because people who drink wine are snobs, and snobs don’t tip
well. It’s a proven fact,” said Claudia.
“You drink wine, don’t you?” I asked.
She fingered a napkin on the table. “Yeah,” she said after a pause,
“but I’m also a snob and I don’t tip well. That’s how I know.”
7:15 p.m.
I stuck my finger further into the dog’s ear, caressing the dry
flesh inside. I felt bumps and jagged ruts and thought of Claudia. I
watched the indention and movement of my finger on the inside of
the ear, moving in circles like a fool licking the inside of his cheek
with his tongue. I tried to push my finger all the way through the ear,
but the skin wouldn’t break.
9:22 p.m.
The waitress returned and placed our drinks on the table. The
tattooed guy looked at our Cokes and squinted. “I hope you have a
designated driver,” he said mockingly, pointing at our drinks with his
beer bottle. As he pointed, beer splashed from the bottle and on to
the table. It formed rivers that ran in three directions, two twisting
toward the edge and dripping on the floor beside me, and one, the
largest, an arrow that landed on Claudia’s dress.
“I’m really sorry,” said the tattoo guy. “I didn’t—”
7:26 p.m.
“Walk free from your wound,” I said. I heard that at a funeral or
a hospital once. I thought about death as an onion and that if God
loved us we got to break free from that one layer and into another.
9:25 p.m.
Claudia stood quickly, wiped the liquid from her lap with paper
napkins from the table. The liquid dripped from her dress in
tiny pools on the floor. I handed her the napkins near me and she
brushed herself with them, wadded them together in a tight ball and
threw them at the tattoo guy. They separated in the air and floated
back to the table, innocuous but beer-stained. “What the hell are you
doing?” she said, then sat back down and stared at him.
7:28 p.m.
I turned the ear sideways so that the nail came free. I folded it
backwards, exposing the pink flesh underneath. The skin around
the ear hung limp, and several bugs climbed out. Running away, I
thought, to find a better place.
9:29 p.m.
Claudia sucked her teeth when she was uncomfortable. She
sucked her teeth now. It made her lips push together and her cheeks
concave. I watched the angles of her mouth and wished she wouldn’t
do that. I loved her mouth when it wasn’t messed up. Her mouth
meant so much to me: her talking, sucking, chewing, spitting, galloping
mouth.
7:30 p.m.
Dirty green liquid rolled from the dog’s mouth onto my right
hand. It snaked up my arm and underneath my shirt. I wiped the
liquid with my sleeve, removed my shirt and wiped the dog’s face. Its
eyes stared at me as if apologizing for all the trouble. I spread out my
shirt by the deck and lifted the dog. His right front leg twitched as I
set down the body. I remembered hearing of a man who buried his
dog in a grave in his backyard and then heard it barking during the
night, having clawed itself free.
9:33 p.m.
“Well, that sucked,” I said, but they ignored me. She stared at him
and he looked back apologetically. I remembered when she used
to stare at me like that, like she was trying to push out my insides
with her will. I used to have fun trying to make her smile when she
hated the world. I remembered sitting on our couch reading Hegel.
“Listen to this,” I said, and read aloud: “‘Absolute activity is the one
with which the Ego posits its own being unlimited and unlessened
by anything objective.’ Isn’t that romantic?” She stared at me like she
stared at tattoo guy, told me I was stupid, then left the room to make
herself some tea.
7:32 p.m.
I wrapped my hands around the dog’s neck and squeezed until my
fingers laced. The dry dirty fur pushed through the spaces between
my fingers like tiny tentacles. His eyes bulged out from the half-closed
lids and more liquid spewed from his mouth. I squeezed tighter, just
to be sure. The sound of bones cracking in his neck reminded me of
Christmas, when we shake presents to see what’s inside.
9:34 p.m.
Claudia snapped her head from him to me. “You should have
stuck up for me,” she said.
“What?”
“He was going to hit me. You saw what he did.”
“He wasn’t going to hit you, it was an accident,” I said.
“He might have.”
“He wouldn’t,” I said. “You’re overreacting.”
“I wouldn’t have,” said tattoo dude.
“See,” I said.
“You stay out of it,” she said to him and then, “Good thing for you
he didn’t,” to me.
“Yeah, good thing, I guess.” I sipped my Coke. Quietly.
7:32 p.m.
The Earth ceased rotation and above me there was one star—one
black star that refused to shine. No twinkle, no glow. Life revolving
on a spit, dripping with fat, roasting, cursing, shrieking. A million
skins have shed or I have lost count—invisible stars lost forever behind
the horizon. If I had the chance to be God I would reject it.
9:38 p.m.
Claudia pushed her hair behind her ears and rubbed her temples.
When we lived with her brother in that little room over Church
Street, I rubbed her head every night, sitting on the couch watching
the traffic—something about the air or the atmosphere gave her
headaches. I missed the smooth skin of her temples: the bumps of
her skull, the tiny hairs of her brow, the sharp landing of her cheekbones,
the mindreading caress.
7:36 p.m.
I took the shovel from the shed and made the grave a foot away
from where I buried the cat, who was dug up by the dog and used as
a chew toy, guts and brains appetizers for the bones. I lifted the body
and set it in the dirt, wrapped in my shirt. Ashes to ashes and something
like that, I said to myself. I couldn’t remember the whole thing.
9:40 p.m.
Tattoo guy stared off into the crowd.
“Who are you looking for?” I asked, trying to follow his gaze.
“My wife,” he said.
“What does she look like?” I asked. “Maybe I can help you find
her.”
“Oh, I’m not married,” he said. The corners of his mouth turned
up slightly and his eyes narrowed. I laughed. Claudia didn’t.
“Good luck, man,” I said. “It could be a long night.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said confidently.
He stood up, slammed his palm on the table, leaving behind several
bills, nodded his head and walked away.
7:43 p.m.
I should have been a Russian poet so I could understand the intimate
relationship between a hole in the ground and a dead dog.
I rubbed my oily sticky dog-goo covered finger on my jeans and
thanked Christ, who may never come back, that I didn’t have to hear
the death rattle or the final gasp.
9:46 p.m.
I watched the tattoo guy fight through the crowd, disappearing
into the faceless void. “I thought you were with him at first,” I said.
“No way, not him. He just sat here. I don’t know him.”
“Well, he looks like someone you would hang out with.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing, I was just—”
“You’re still on about all that, aren’t you? When are you going to
forgive me?”
I remembered finding out about her, the memories landing in
little puddles in my mind: the car the rain the shock the betrayal the
screams the end. Then the empty feeling of loss and the urgency to
heal. I waited for them to separate and fall back harmlessly, but they
stayed connected. We were friends, he and I—we were friends back
then—before he and she were “he and she.”
“I told him,” I said to Claudia, “that he should do something every
day that scares him—but I didn’t mean you.”
7:44 p.m.
I saw the doors open to embrace him and Lazarus holding the
leash. He’s in Nod with Cain and Abel, I thought. He’ll just sleep
sleep sleep sleep with the father—assuming dogs go to heaven. They
have to, though, because before he died, this dog, he was wild and
open and bursting with life—which is as close to Godliness as any of
us can ever hope to get.
9:48 p.m.
She tipped her glass and finished her Coke. The ice cubes rested
on her mouth, and she let them stay there longer than I thought she
would. I could see the cold of the ice against the dryness of her lips.
She looked through the bottom of the glass, twirled it like a telescope
and looked at me.
“Did you just come here to fight?” she asked.
“I didn’t,” I protested.
“You did—you always do. You always make things more difficult.”
“So you are going to try to make this my fault now? Isn’t that the
way things work—”
7:46 p.m.
I need more words, I thought. I stood, shirtless in the moonlight,
and closed my eyes. I raised my arms in front of me, palms facing the
sky. My head fell back and I breathed—the night unclogged.
9:49 p.m.
She put down the glass, rested both elbows on the table, and
stared away from me. I studied the crowd scientifically—intertwined
by their hopelessness. They left behind a poison, a stench of
desperation—a vomit of sorrow. Once upon a time I thought they
were hypocrites, but I realized then that they weren’t—they were just
stupid. They shouldn’t be blamed. They were here without whips or
chairs—brave, but in the wrong cage.
7:47 p.m.
. . . undiluted, total, unconditional, unmodified, unequivocal,
definite, sure, confident, pure, complete, unrestrained, solid, sound,
infinite, living, harmonious, free, uncontaminated . . .
9:52 p.m.
“We used to be like them, didn’t we?” I asked, motioning to the
crowd.
“I’m glad we’re not,” she said.
Claudia turned to me, her eyes receptive and clear. She twisted
her hair and her face softened. “How is your Coke?”
“It’s cold,” I said.
“Things are different now, aren’t they?” she said.
“I guess they are.”
The waitress touched Claudia on the shoulder and asked if we
wanted anything else to drink.
“No, thank you,” said Claudia. “We’re about to leave.”
“We are?” I asked.
She glared at me transpiercingly and I understood that we were—
the knower and the known—together, awake and condemned to
rush to a pause.
7:50 p.m.
I tried to put them all together in my head. The dog looked up
blankly from the grave, the sky hung loose above—somewhere she
was getting ready to meet me.
9:53 p.m.
“What are we going to do now?” I asked.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want things to be the way they were.”
“Me too.”
“What about—?”
“I want things with you to be the way they were.”
“That would be nice,” I said. “I’ve missed you. I’m not the same
without you.”
“Can we forget and move on?” she asked. “Can we just pretend
everything is okay?”
7:51 p.m.
I covered the dog’s body with the loose dirt, patted it smooth
with the shovel, ready to walk free from my wounds. She was buried
in the tomb of my memory, and needed to be set free.
9:58 p.m.
“I’ll pretend whatever you want to pretend,” I said. I wanted to
climb into her and live. I wanted to kick at her insides and feed off
her. I wanted to smell her in the present tense. I wanted to ingest the
smell of her wet hair, the smell of her skin, the smell of her magical
sensibilities. I thought I could know her from the inside—until she
puked me out with a renewed understanding of her. I thought—at
that point—I thought we were ready.
by Jeremy Gulley
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