Forward: This is dedicated to my best friend and fellow fanfic Author, Lord Malachite, who just had his birthday for this year. Happy Birthday dude! I apologize in advance if any of this seems out of character. The idea for this story hit my mind and wouldn't go away. This is loosely based upon the short story, "The Most Beautiful Woman in Town," by the late Charles Bukowski.

X X X

"Cass was the youngest and most beautiful of 5 sisters. Cass was the most beautiful girl in town. Half Indian with a supple and strange body, a snake-like and fiery body with eyes to go with it. Cass was fluid moving fire. She was like a spirit stuck into a form that would not hold her. Her hair was black and long and silken and moved and whirled about as did her body. Her spirit was either very high or very low. There was no in between for Cass. Some said she was crazy. The dull ones said that. The dull ones would never understand Cass. To the men she simply seemed a sex machine and they didn't care whether she was crazy or not. And Cass danced and flirted, kissed the men, but except for an instance or two, when it came time to make it with Cass, Cass had somehow slipped away, eluded the men."

"The Most Beautiful Woman in Town" – Charles Bukowski

X X X

She entered my life again when I was twenty-three. The most beautiful girl in school.

It was summer, the noonday sky in Hillwood was hot and sticky, enough to oppress anyone who dared venture out for more than a few measly minutes. I decided to take refuge at the local arcade, with a pocketful of quarters and a high score screen just waiting for my name at the top position. Even with the air conditioning running nonstop it was warm in there. I remember it well. There was sweat on the ball of the joystick from my hand furiously manipulating the controls; myself a madman attempting to dominate the leaderboard on the oldest machine in the room.

This was a refuge from more than just the heat. It was in between college semesters and I was home from state college. My parents weren't home; both had jobs. So it was just me, Thaddeus Gamelthorpe, playing a dilapidated old packman machine at this old rundown arcade that I remembered from my youth. Overkill by Men at Work played softly over the radio behind the counter, testifying the age of this arcade, and the decade that the man who owned it sorely missed. This was me exorcising my nostalgia for a simpler time. Back when I was crazy, before the treatments. Back when questionable children's movies wrecked our lives and video games rotted our brains.

It was at that moment when I got second place on the leaderboard, that she walked in. I saw her reflection in plastic covering the screen of the Pac Man machine, and to this day I don't know what possessed her to walk in there. All I cared about was that Caprini cherry red and flesh toned reflection, and the halo of long jet black raven hair. The nostalgia jumped through the portal in my memories, my heart leapt, and I turned around in shock.

Before me, heralded by the unmistakable percussion hits on the radio, stood the only girl I ever really cared about. The most beautiful girl in school. Well, not in school anymore. But what did I care? The high score screen behind me long forgotten, I took the plunge, I walked forward, her eyes met mine, there was something akin to a spark behind those deep brown eyes of hers, and she smiled. "Curly? Curly Gamelthorpe?"

I took in her appearance without having to look down. Age had made her even more beautiful. With exotic East Asian features from somewhere on her mother's side of the family complimenting European curves from her father's. There was Native America in her unblemished skin that set itself on fire in the presence of her long silk hair. Her face held matured youth, and her lips were just as divine as ever underneath her eternally playful nose. I had never lost that spot in my heart for Rhonda Wellington Lloyd. She radiated softness, she radiated sex, she reminded me of the hopeless chase and the promises in my imagination as she approached me, and gave me hug.

Our reunion lasted for minute upon blissful minute in that old arcade. They say that graduating from high school does something to the old cliques. It wears them away. Sworn enemies can become friends. The nerd can befriend the jock, the cheerleader the wallflower, and somehow the most popular girl in school can be civil to the "creepy kid."

This was the beginning.

The conversation turned to dinner at her parent's restaurant, "Lloyd's." Then a movie. As the night wore on we became closer. The warm blanket of night led us to Rhonda's flat near downtown Hillwood. It was an old renovated newspaper warehouse and she had the third floor. It was there that I discovered that the Rhonda I always knew existed had never gone away, from that day long ago, from the blurred part of my memory when at a ballet my parents had taken me to, I saw her dancing in the aisle during a showing of Carmina Burana.

After years of wondering, I found her again, as she walked amongst the free standing easels, the the clay sculptures on tables, the racks of designer clothing in a corner, and the old photographs hanging on the exposed metal gray supports with sticky tack. All this made up her inner sanctum that sat on top of exposed concrete. I felt at home amongst the chaos, the expressions of a creative mind. That warm summer night, I had found the little girl I had fallen in love with long ago.

She was the one who combined finger paints with Play-Doh in preschool, only to close off herself for the world of high fashion and the popularity ladder, where you had to climb the broken wooden rungs on the bottom to get to the shiny golden top, only to be swept off as the real world came rushing in.

It was obvious by the space around me, that she had been swept off, and had collected herself somewhere along the line. Cherry red fashion clashed with blue acrylic, and somewhere in between was Rhonda Lloyd. The real Rhonda Lloyd.

"You never left. I knew it." I remember blurting out.

And somehow she knew exactly what it was I was referring to. She lowered her head for a second, and then looked at me. Beyond those beautiful perfect eyelashes I saw the movement in her eyelids that betrayed the struggle inside. I knew that something in her life had gone catastrophically wrong in those last few years. "These are just hobbies."

The air got thick all of the sudden with unspoken words. Ghosts of questions that I could only guess at, but for her were all too real. She turned away and walked towards the kitchen. "Do you drink?" She called from around the corner.

"What do you have?" I asked. I scoped out the large green couch in the middle of the room, and sat there, staring at the skyline of Hillwood beyond the industrial windows.

There was the sound of a cabinet closing. Rhonda returned to the main space, holding a green bottle in one hand, and there were two red wine glasses clanking between the fingers of the other. "I don't know what this is, just that it's red and has a lot of alcohol in it. I could never read French really well. But I know it came from France."

I took a look at the bottle as she poured it, then sighed inwardly as I realized I too couldn't read French, nor did I care that the bottle had already been opened. I didn't care about the year of its vintage. I just watched the red liquid flow into the glasses, and then Rhonda's delicate fingers as she offered me a glass. I remember wondering if this could be real or just a vivid dream.

Thoughts of confusion and failures in our lives took a back seat that summer night, when the red wine met Rhonda's luscious lips, and it was the sexiest thing I had ever seen by far. We talked about our youth. We talked about memories. We talked about those times I tried to cut off locks of Rhonda's hair and actually succeeded, and the time I blackmailed her into being my girlfriend. Rhonda remembered her cool party and how we all learned an important lesson that night. She also remembered when she had to live at Sunset arms. We remembered all those times afterwards, about our graduation and my attending state college. My trials and tribulations, and how most of all I missed her presence, no matter how invisible I was.

We avoided her life after graduation. We didn't talk about her ex-boyfriends or her troubles. I didn't press. I didn't prod. I was too eager to remember the times we shared; too eager to remember the nostalgia and revel in it, and drag Rhonda along with me.

We consumed the entire bottle of red French wine, and I could feel its heat in my veins. I closed one eye, and I watched Rhonda through the red liquid in my glass when she got up to turn her stereo on. Surprisingly it wasn't Ronnie Matthews or N'Sync or anything else like that. It was Eric Clapton singing Layla.

"Can I ask you something?" Rhonda asked from the middle of the room as she stood there, staring at me.

I lowered the wine glass and watched her curiously. "Anything"

"Why aren't you crazy anymore?"

"I grew up." I smiled. "The animals can stay in the zoo. They're safer there."

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

I frowned. "Excuse me?" Had I heard her right?

"Do you think I'm pretty?" Rhonda asked again with more fire in her voice.

"I… Think you're the most beautiful woman in the world." A pause, I gulped under her gaze. "You were certainly the most beautiful girl in school, my swan."

She laughed. "Men always say that to me. But only you say I'm your swan."

"But it's the truth." I countered. "You are. Deep down, all of you. You're pretty even under your skin, you're…"

I saw Rhonda reach into the pocket of her designer jeans and pull out a glistening metal corkscrew; a mean looking corkscrew with a sharpened tip. She held out her arm, and without any second thought she traced the sharpened tip of the corkscrew along her upper arm and under her shirt.

I jumped up immediately. "What the hell are you doing?"

I reached for the corkscrew and pulled it along with her hand away from the skin of her arm. She narrowed her eyes and smiled as little droplets of blood appeared along the deep scratch. "Still think I'm pretty?"

My heart pounded in my chest. I was suddenly breathing hard at the onrush of adrenaline. The fire in her eyes didn't subside at all, nor did the odd upward curve of her lips. I pulled the corkscrew out of her hand and stood there, staring at her. I held the corkscrew behind my back. "Yes. I still think you're pretty. But, don't do that again, please." I shook my head and closed my eyes.

"Why not?"

"It hurts me."

"It hurts you?"

"Because I love you." I wondered right then if I had just made the biggest mistake in the world. I had used that word with Rhonda so many times in my youth that I feared it'd have no meaning to her when I said it. Even though she had just run a corkscrew up her arm, it worried me that she'd think I was the crazy one for spouting love. How could I be truly in love with this woman? This fiery siren? This creature who's entire being was beautiful to me. The haunting chaos behind her eyes and under her skin just made her more beautiful.

"Kiss me." Rhonda said.

That night, I kissed Rhonda Wellington Lloyd, in the middle of her apartment. I kissed her lips and her eyelids, the tip of her nose and her neck. I kissed her shoulders, my favorite part about her. I kissed her collarbone and her arms, and I kissed her breasts and her stomach. I kissed her legs and the top of her feet, and her hips. I kissed her thighs, and then her womanhood, until she cried out around the crescendo of Here Comes the Rain Again by the Eurythmics.

After that, we consummated our love affair under the silk sheets of her bed. Rhonda was all that I ever imagined and then some. I felt unworthy of being inside her, of coming within her, and then afterwards laying to rest beside her in her own bed. We laid there, under the covers, legs wrapped around each other with the sheets tight around us, and our feet sticking out from underneath. Our sweat mingled under the invasive summer warmth, and Rhonda's scent permeated the air. I got lost in the blush on her skin, and the afterglow that I helped create, and I watched in awe and worship as she fell asleep in my arms, her soft body against mine.

The next morning I woke to Rhonda's absence beside me, and the smell of eggs, bacon, and French toast wafting through the air. I stood, dressed, and walked to the kitchen where I found her standing over the small stove tending to a skillet of sizzling bacon. Rhonda looked up at me and smiled a smile that I had never seen before, but I fell in love with it. I smiled back at her. She was letting me into her world in huge steps.

"Good morning." She said. I walked up behind her, wrapped my arms around her abdomen and gently held her against me. I could hear her let out a little sigh, and I kissed her cheek.

"Is this a dream?" I asked as I kissed her ear.

"No. Why?"

"The most beautiful woman in the world is making me breakfast. I think I've died and gone to heaven."

"Didn't you do that last night?"

"Perhaps." I laughed and kissed her cheek again and reluctantly let her go, so I could pour myself some orange juice.

We sat at her little kitchen table, and ate in the silence of each other's company, broken only once by a low flying helicopter outside the window, reminding us that reality was only a cracked pane of glass removed. It was the most delicious breakfast I had ever had.

After that we took a shower together, and as we washed, I noticed how her arm had a red trail up to her shoulder from the corkscrew the night before. I kissed it and hoped it wouldn't scar. It hurt me to see it on her skin. The temperature of the water changed abruptly whenever someone in the apartment building flushed a toilet, and the sudden onrush of slightly cooler water made a realization enter my mind. She had done that to herself. What was she trying to prove? What was she trying to do?

I stopped washing Rhonda's neck and held her there, under the shower spray. She stood still, and I sighed. "You're beautiful."

"You keep saying that like it's going out of style."

"It's the truth."

"You're standing here in my shower, naked, with me, Curly, of course you'd say that."

"But-"

"All the men say I'm pretty. All of them want the same thing. They just want to shove their dick inside me."

I let go of Rhonda and she turned around to stare at me.

"Do you think I'm pretty, inside and out?" She asked again like she did the night before.

I looked at her. It was then that I saw them. There was a scar above her left breast, light pink flesh against her otherwise darker skin tone. Under her left arm where a series of odd scratches, pink like the scar above her breast.

"Goddamnit Rhonda." I blurted as I traced the scar on her chest. "What did you do?"

"A broken wine glass." Rhonda stated, her voice oddly devoid of emotion. "Now that you've seen it. Do you still like me? Do you still think I'm the most beautiful woman in town?"

I said nothing as I stared at her beautiful breast, only marred by that little pink scar.

"Do you?" She pressed. There seemed to be disdain for herself in her voice.

I closed my eyes and nodded my head. I knew the answer with all my heart. "Yes."

Rhonda reached for the knob and stopped the shower. We then got out and she handed me a dry towel. I watched as she dried herself off, and I myself, but I turned away as she stared at me, not because I thought she was ugly, for she wasn't, but because I didn't want her to think I was staring in disgust.

"Some men pay me two hundred and they don't want me when they see these. I keep the money. It's kind of funny, actually."

I stopped drying myself off and looked up at Rhonda, who stared at me in return.

"You get it now." Rhonda stared at me cold and hard. "Don't you." That wasn't a question. "What I've been up to all these years after high school ended and life began."

Rhonda finished drying herself and hung her fluffy blue towel up to dry. "They're just business transactions." She walked out of the bathroom and called from the hallway. "The men get what they want, and I get what I need to survive."

I hung my towel and followed her out into the hall and into the large expansive space again. She stood amongst the easels. This time, facing the art itself I could see Rhonda's hobby. There was impressionist art, and modern art, and dozens of different art styles about the easels, and lying against tables.

There was something haunting about that art, and the clay sculptures. It was if their artist was trying to ascertain true beauty; to understand its very nature. The photographs were no different. There were Kodachromes of families from the fifty's alongside fading silver prints of women in their Sunday best. A picture of John F. Kennedy sat next to a printed out picture of Marilyn Monroe.

In the middle of the scene before me, stood Rhonda, naked, facing me, her stare unwavering. She wasn't covering herself at all; her arms were at her sides.

I approached, and she asked once more. "Do you still think I'm pretty?"

"I'll say it again if you want me to."

Rhonda's expression hardened. "Say it. Please."

"You're the prettiest, most beautiful woman in the whole wide world, my angel."

We kissed, naked, standing there amongst Rhonda's odd hobby. Eventually she turned around in my arms and ran the palm of her hand into my hair, and I buried my face in her own, to lose myself in the darkness of her being.

After that night and day, we visited her apartment rarely. We ate picnics in the park. We went to movies and we ate dinners at cheap restaurants, and some expensive ones too. We got drunk at bars and even threw rocks at dumpsters, once. We even visited the zoo. It had been years since my probation had ended yet some of the zoo keepers still remembered me, and shook their heads at me like they knew I was up to something. But I didn't care. My hand was intertwined with the prettiest girl I ever knew. All those times, we held hands, but I never brought up Rhonda's past.

Finally the days had wound down to my departure for state college, which was a couple hundred miles away. That last moment with Rhonda Wellington Lloyd before I left ended where it began that summer. In the arcade.

The summer wasn't nearly as hot as it had started, and I was in the arcade again, with another pocket full of quarters. This time I had finally mastered the art of Pac Man, and was diligently putting my name on the top position of the leaderboard whenever I saw her reflection in plastic covering the screen of the Pac Man machine, and to this day I know what possessed her to walk in there this time around. It was because I was there and she knew it. A blur of Caprini cherry red and flesh toned reflection came at me, and I turned around "Hey." I said. Rhonda smiled, and the halo of long jet black raven hair set her smile on fire.

She grabbed my arm. "I have to show you something. Outside. Now." Rhonda tugged at my arm and I relented. She took me around to the side of the building where we stood with Rhonda's back to the street. "Okay. Look." Rhonda stated, and then lifted up her shirt. I saw that she was wearing no bra, and accentuating the creamy flesh of her breasts were two piercings, one on each nipple, where silver rings hung. "What do you think?" She asked, and her tone changed. "Am I still pretty?"

I stood there for seconds. Something built up inside me then, I think rage. "What the hell did you do to yourself?" I demanded. It wasn't my place.

"The men like it." She countered, and lowered her shirt.

"Screw them!" I shouted

"I do! A lot, actually."

"You know what I mean."

"You didn't answer my question!" Rhonda raised her voice.

"Why do you keep on asking me?"

"Because." Rhonda's voice cracked. "Because, it's important to me! Okay! It, it means a lot to me."

I stared at Rhonda hard and persistent. I approached her, she didn't flinch. I brought my hands up to her face and ran my hands up around her ears and cupped her cheeks in my palms. "I love you. I always will. But please, stop destroying yourself."

She tried to shake her head no, and it was then that I could see the water in her eyes and upon her trembling lips. "Please tell me." She pleaded again.

I stared into her deep brown eyes. They always reminded me of fresh earth, underneath which something truly beautiful would grow, like grass and trees. Nurturing earth and promise for something better than us. But her tears made her eyes seem muddy and savage, like the earth could give way and cover up the very thing that was growing within it embrace, washing away so much promise in its wrath.

I could think of nothing else but to kiss her then, to take her pain away. I don't know if it was the best decision. I still felt unworthy around her. This woman whom was my all, the very one who danced in the aisles of that theater, had pushed herself into my young heart long ago. She fell into my kiss and her arms wrapped around me. The wind from the street whipped her hair up, and it snaked around my face to cradle me. I got lost in her, and all too soon, it ended.

That was the last I saw of her before school started again, and for months I tried in vain to contact Rhonda. She never answered her cell phone. Emails went unanswered. Her parents were always away, and I had never kept in touch with any of my other classmates so that was pointless. Every day I wondered, every night I tried to call.

I had weird fantasies of her showing up behind me when I was playing Galaga at the local mall. I wanted so much to kiss her, and hold her, and even tell her she was pretty, for her entire being was just that. I hoped she wasn't destroying herself, and I wondered why I was okay with her line of work. Perhaps it wasn't my place to judge since I'm only a man, and I'm imperfect.

The pain of not hearing Rhonda's voice, of not feeling her body, became unbearable.

I spent thanksgiving at the college catching up on my Zoologist studies, and then Christmas rolled around. I stood at the door to her apartment building, in the cold, with snowflakes all round, looking at the buzzers to the apartments. The third floor buzzer had the name "Rhonda L." printed in neat typewriter underneath protective plastic. It stared back at me in silence. My heart was beating like mad. There was a mystery I had to solve. Why did Rhonda not keep in touch after summer vacation?

I wanted to know. I had to know. I needed to know.

I reached out and pressed the buzzer, then waited. Nothing came over the tinny little speaker.

I looked around me, at the snowflakes outside, and my little Honda civic parked in the parking lot. It always seemed comical during the summer when Rhonda agreed to sit in that dinky little thing. She deserves so much better.

I sighed and pressed the buzzer once more. Still nothing.

"Excuse me young man." I whirled around to see an older lady with white hair and a smile on her face.

"Yes?"

"I couldn't help but notice you're buzzing the third floor apartment. Did you know Miss Lloyd?"

Did? My expression went blank. "Did she move?"

I then noticed the smile on the woman's face wasn't one of happiness. She was looking at me in sympathy. "I'm afraid that," The woman looked around uneasily, to assure our privacy. "Miss Lloyd died two months ago."

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again I was staring into the vacant apartment that had been Rhonda's. The moments between when the lady revealed that she was the apartment manager and offered to let me see the apartment had all been but a blur in my mind due to the pain I was feeling in my heart.

The old woman's voice came out wary. It echoed in the empty space around me as I stood in the middle of the apartment, roughly where the couch was. The room itself seemed smaller than a true studio apartment. I guess I hadn't really seen it until now. It was dark and subdued. "I'm afraid there's nothing left."

I caught my breath in indecision about what to do next. The reality was evading me. Shock seemed to wrack my limbs. It made it hard for me to move. "What happened?" I asked quietly.

"All we know is that she slit her wrists. The police found her a few days later, in her bed."

I glanced over to where her bed once was, expecting to see a blood stain, something to make it real, but there was nothing. "Did she leave a note, or anything?"

"No. Nothing." The woman sighed. "It's all a big mystery."

Faintly, I could almost hear the snow hitting the glass on the outside wall, giving the room a ghostly whisper, as if they were echoes of what the room once held.

I turned to the woman. "Ma'am, if you don't mind, I'd like to stay here tonight, in this apartment."

The woman looked at me strangely, and arched her eyebrow.

"I, uh, I'm here visiting Hillwood and I'm staying with my parents, but, I'll show myself out before morning. I just need to do this. Please."

She studied my eyes, and I think she could see the pain they held. Pain that I tried to hold back. "Miss Lloyd must have meant a lot to you."

"More than you will ever know."

The apartment manager nodded and smiled. "Sure. Just tonight, though. Lock the door on your way out."

I nodded at the woman in thanks, then turned to look at the incredible view of downtown Hillwood, it's lights sharp though blurred against the huge snowstorm that was gearing up outside. "I'm sorry for your loss." I heard the woman say, and then the door closed behind her, shutting me in with the ghosts and the echoes.

I turned to where the bed once stood, and walked towards it, where I stopped roughly at what I thought to be the foot. I looked down at the cement and imagined Rhonda's red silk bed. "Yes you are." I whispered at her obvious question. Then I walked away.

After driving some distance I returned to Rhonda's apartment, sat down on the cool cement in the center of the room. Beside me I sat the battery powered radio I kept in my car for emergencies. Then from a brown plastic bag I removed a bottle of inexpensive red French wine with a name I couldn't pronounce, a plastic wine glass, and a cheap corkscrew.

I worked at the bottle until I had it uncorked, then poured the glass of red wine. I took a long sip to let the warmth spread through my veins quickly. I turned on the radio to the contemporary station, Rhonda's favorite, and then laid down against the cement. I stared up at the ceiling, with its rafters and its odd shadows. The sound of Pat Benetar as she sang "close your eyes and try to sleep now, close your eyes and try to dream" chorused through the cold darkness that bled in through the cracks in the windows.

And I fell asleep.

X X X

"The night kept coming on in and there was nothing I could do."

"The Most Beautiful Woman in Town" – Charles Bukowski

Author's Notes:

This is one of those spontaneous stories that happen every so often when I want to write something creative. I have just started reading The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories. I had read the titular story before from this same book but never had it really affected me like it did yesterday when I was at the Laundromat (Don't ask why, but Bukowski is best read at a Laundromat). Something that I didn't realize before reading the story was while the story itself is tragic, what really hits you is when you consider that the author himself was pointing out something that we all go through. We all have that one person, woman or man, who, try as we might, could not save. While this is a severe example, I think it was obvious at some point that Bukowski had a woman whom he really loved, that he couldn't save.

I couldn't help but explore the topic somewhat in a fanfic. Plus, I haven't written Rhonda and Curly in a while, so I was due. I did lift a few things from Bukowski's story. I will tell you that you can find it online if you're interested in reading it. Just ask me if you need help finding it. I know exactly where it is.

I'm not going to continue with this long winded authors note, because I still need to proofread the story. I also have a migraine. Pity me…

Track List:

Men at Work – "Overkill"
Eric Clapton – "Layla"
Eurythmics – "Here Comes the Rain Again"
Pat Benetar – "We Belong to the Night"