AN: This fiction is the baby of a few questioning Tumblr posts on where Carla was during Stan's timeline and a lot of Lana Del Rey music (yes, reference abound in this writing). Stan is coming to be one of my favorite characters in just about anything ever, and so I love writing about him...and I hope to do more in the future.
I think we're like fire and water
I think we're like the wind and sea
You're burning up, I'm cooling down
You're up, I'm down
You're blind, I see
But I'm free
I'm free
-"Brooklyn Baby", by Lana Del Rey
Carla McCorkle never did what was expected of her, Stan supposed, which is why he shouldn't have been so surprised that he could never have kept her. He swirled his whiskey glass over the scratched barroom table and slumped his shoulders farther, letting out a heavy sigh of stale breath as he gulped down the glass.
"He says he'll take me to India," she had said, her new hippie clothes reeking of weed, "imagine the spiritual awakening I'll experience! I can walk the streets of Delhi! Drink from the Ganges!" Her eyes danced, though whether that was from wonderment or acid is anyone's guess.
"I took you to Mexico, Carla," Stan offered, wishing he sounded less desperate than he did, "remember the beach?" His voice didn't break there. His hands weren't clenching.
"Oh I do, Lee, I do." She ran a hand down his shaven cheek. "Our adventures gave me such joy. But the universe is calling me to another, and I must keep moving. I must grow, and so should you. There so much more of the world to see."
He wanted to tell her that he'd already run from Puerto Rican and Canadian police, thank you very much, and that was plenty.
She kissed him, and that was that. The last he saw was her bell-bottom-covered (formally hot pants adorned) legs walk away as the back view of her iron straight (formally Ferrah-Fawcett luxurious) hair swayed back and forth.
Stan slid away his glass. Who was he kidding? He was always on borrowed time with her.
Even in the beginning, she had no real reason to agree to date his early highschool self–that pimply twerp in his past made him cringe even in his thirties. She was Carla McCorkle: sweet, charming, always with a wink in her eye. Petite and pretty, she had a demure allure to her that so many had their eye on. And, therefore, so many could only stare in shock and horror when she said "Hey, why not?" with a stunning grin to a stuttering, shaking Stanley Pines.
"I don't get it!" he heard as he walked away in a daze. "He's not even the smart twin! At least he'll end up rich!"
Stanley was too high to be mad.
The thing was about Carla, though: she had a knack for getting things that work out in her favor.
Carla had just finished telling him about why she was in an old fashioned poodle skirt ("Found it in a thrift store! It's so cute, I just had to wear it!") when he got the chance to put those years of boxing to a use other than punching in boarded up caves. And suddenly, she was absolutely taken with him. Just in time for puberty to serve him rather well, and she could proudly walk him down school hallways with envious looks shot at both of them. He was not the smart twin, but the handsome twin was a pretty good label too.
She burst into tears when he presented his sorry ass to her front door at midnight, just to tell her he'd been kicked out and needed to leave town. Stan had no words for her, but he hung his head as she pounded on his chest. "You can live with us!" she said, "Fuck your dad! I need you!"
He knew she was being dramatic. She was Carla McCorkle, she had no need for him at all. She could get by just fine. She just wanted the thrill of the tragedy.
"You'll be better off without me," he said, "I don't have any money, anyway. Go find yourself a guy who can feed himself." Hell, he thought bitterly, go to the smart twin. At least he'll end up rich.
"No. I love you."
He wanted to tell it to her back. He'd done it before. He didn't.
Turning away from those pleading bambi eyes was the hardest thing he'd ever done.
Fuck his dad, indeed. And fuck Stanford. He almost turned off the radio when he heard the sweet beat of the song they had danced to at prom, but stopped just short of the dial. Instead, he drummed on the dashboard and hummed along solemnly. He hummed that tune for three more years.
It was a morning in seventies' Brooklyn when he got his second chance.
"Black coffee," he grumbled, running a hand over his stubble. New York was not a bad city for him, honestly. Big, loud, and anonymous, with so many worthless cons like him that no one was too surprised when he ripped them off. He didn't mean to come this close back to New Jersey, but he was running out of options.
"Oh my god," whispered the voice above him. He looked up to those same brown bambi eyes from so many years ago, this time crinkled up in joy. The woman around them had barely changed; she still had a swing in her walk and an air of sweetness all around her, even if her Betty Page bangs were now glamorously swept around her face. His jaw dropped, and he stood with a start. "Carla…"
"It's been way too long, Pines." Her smile could still light the city."What have you been up to all these years?"
"Driving all around. Making money here and there. I don't stay in one place for long." He should have said more, but his mind was reeling.
"So you've just been living free and travelling?" she gasped, looking at him in bubbling excitement. "living bohemian?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"I get off at ten."
They caught up while relaxing in the tangled sheets of a cheap motel bed, one of the ones without a lot of questions asked. She was expected to be a perfect wife in a perfect nuclear family…that's what her mother had wanted. So naturally, she could never do that, and she hopped on to the next train to New York. She had a boyfriend of sorts, she admitted. He was older. She wouldn't say how much.
"He's getting boring. I thought he was suave when we met but…it's stupid. My boyfriend's pretty cool, I guess, but he's not as cool as me." She winked at him with a cheeky smirk. "I wanted to be an actress," she admitted softly, "But doesn't everyone?"
"You never took to the housewife type, Carla baby. That's what I like about ya." Stan rubbed her back, kissing her messy hair.
"So what have you been doing since you rode off into the sunset?" she teased, running her fingers under his unshaven chin.
He frowned. He'd been up to running all over the country from angry mobs, selling crap to idiots to make a dime, diner dashing enough to call it a diner marathon, going to jail…more than once, and generally being a half-starving loser. But he couldn't tell her that.
"I drive, sell things, pick up and move, whatever. That sort of thing. I've been in 19 states and 3 countries, so far…"
Then, Carla said the most dangerous thing she could have said in that moment: "Take me with you."
He did. She sent a call to her (now ex)boyfriend and her mother and that was that. Her bags joined his in the backseat, and she laughed out her open window as New York faded behind them.
Almost two years. Two years they weaved in and out of traffic, belting along to Janis Joplin and the Rolling Stones. Two years they ate in roadside diners, paying when they could but often sneaking out before the bill came around and then hitting the road in a trail of dust. Two years she'd hop in his car at the gaspump with a purse filled with pilfered goods from the store, before handing him a cigarette and lighting it in his mouth with her own lighter as he drove onto the winding road. Two years that windblown hair danced in front of her eyes as she smiled at him from the passenger seat, throwing her legs on the dashboard because she knew how much he loved the way those hotpants showed them off.
He still didn't make much money. He still found himself gluing spare junk parts together to sell on local TV. But it meant something to know that if he was banned in Wisconsin for peddling mercury-poisoned cheese, well, so was she.
He took her to the forests of Kentucky. He took her to the Grand Canyon, where she almost cried over how "magical, incredible" it was. He took her to a Texas rodeo, where she hooted and hollered like she was an old regular. They'd had many names, had been business partners and a married couple, even a pair of Soviet spies. Once they slept under New Mexico stars, where she whispered "Thanks, darling, for this lovely bohemian life," before falling asleep on his arm. He laughed at the suckers in Vegas when he beat them of enough money to take her out on the town.
It was there he saw the chapel, just a cheap rickety thing with a bad white paint job. He should have known it wasn't a good idea to say them, but the words came out before he could stop.
"What if I took you into that church, Carla baby?"
He'd never seen her shake her head so fast. "Don't even joke, Stan." He pretended his heart didn't sink a bit. What was so awful, the idea of marrying him?
Sometimes, he forgot that this was all a game to her. Marriage would end that game. She lived like this for fun, not because she had no where else to go. He'd have to remember to never resent her for that. Besides, he expected she'd tire of it eventually. Everyone who didn't need to move around did. Eventually, she'd want him to try and make settling work, and he could decide if he was that sort of guy.
But Carla never did what was expected of her.
They had spent more time in that next California town than they had most places, as Stan had expected. She seemed to like it there. She was relaxed. He was peddling Stanwiches out of a cart, and no one had gotten food poisoning yet. She was waiting tables, making friends…getting unusually stagnant. He tried not to point it out, though, because she'd start packing their bags before he finished the sentence. He knew her.
They had passed the Juke Joint while strolling one day, and like clockwork her hips started swinging. "Oh, I loved this song as a kid! We have to go in, Stanley!"
They went in every week. Stan had a few moves, of course. He could swing along with the best of 'em. Carla would have a few drinks on the house, and leave hanging on his arm, telling him that he was the sexiest man alive. A guy could always hear that a couple more times. He could hear her say "I-heheh-I love you, honey, I'm ready to go…" a few more times too. And yeah, the diner may have reminded him of a better time, when he was half of a different pair.
Which made it even worse when she yanked her bags out of the car that day in a deerskin vest and a tie-dye shirt, makeup scrubbed off and hair flattened with feathers stuck through it. He'd found the LSD tabs in her pants the other day. He held them up to her, face red in rage. He'd known who she was with. She slammed the door and wouldn't look him in the eye.
"It opened my mind," she said, staring dazed off into the sky, "I feel like I'm one with the Earth when I have it. He made me realize that I've become stagnant. Complacent. The world is so much greater than I realized, and I need more than this."
"So what? You're going off to join a hippie band? Drive around in a van and smoke pot and pretend to be profound when you're actually just more fried than a fucking hashbrown?" That friggin long haired freak had been hypnotizing her with that psychedelic music, he knew it. She was crazy but she wasn't this crazy.
She gasped, pulling the guitar her new boyfriend had given her from the backseat, "I should have known you'd be like this, Stan. You never seemed to truly want this beautiful bohemian life! I should have seen this coming with that chapel crap a few months back. Thistle can appreciate freedom."
"Maybe because I had no fucking choice! I was thrown out! I didn't just come along for a fun ride because I was bored with my job and my home and my family who loves me but that isn't enough for me for some goddamn reason!"
She looked at him like a deer in the headlights. "You–you just don't understand."
He didn't justify that statement with a rebuttal. He didn't understand? She didn't understand. Instead, he swerved. "So what is this creep offering you that I can't?"
It was then she told him about India. And then walked away.
He honestly didn't mean to drive the hippie creep's van into the ravine, he truly didn't. He just accidentally hit the parking break when going to simultaneously prove his his music was evil and punch him in the bearded face. To be fair, they did manage to jump out before it crashed.
For the second time in her life, Carla cried hot tears while pounding on his chest. Except this time, instead of begging him not to go, she was yelling "just GET OUT, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"
He made a run before they could call the police. Psh, fake hippies running to the Man when the goings got tough. Figures.
He used the LSD tab that night. She'd left it on the seat of the van, and it was a shame to let it go to waste. He saw some weird shit alright, but didn't feel any closer to the Earth. He decided he'd stick to alcohol. Which he did, for the rest of the week. And the next, until he was so drunk that he may or may not have wacked a policeman upside the head with a roadkill possum. And he truly meant may or may not have, because he had no memory of the incident. It sounded pretty made up, if you asked him. But nevertheless, a reason to leave.
He left the rest of her things on the side of the road to gather the dust kicked up from his spinning tires. Unfortunately, he couldn't throw out the smell of her, or the memories that flashed seemingly every moment of her smiles and laughs and fingers running through his hair as he drove. He lit his own cigarette.
Stanford, Dad, and now Carla. So far, Shermie was the only one who hadn't let him down, and he hadn't seen him in years. His son was just a baby when he left. Hope he's turning out well. Better then the rest of the idiots in the family. Most of all him.
He should have known. Carla was always looking for more, and he wasn't enough for anyone else. Like hell he was going to be enough for her.
For the first time since their break up, he pulled over to cry into the steering wheel.
Stan guessed that was the danger of loving a woman who loved you because you offered a better adventure than the last guy: you'd lose her the same way. Carla never did what was expected of her, not even for him. Every situation, no matter how crazy, was going to be blase eventually. Also, that hypnotic hippie music had more of an influence than she let on. Plus the drugs. Can't forget those.
Him? He was a simple man. He just wanted to survive. Make some bucks along the way.
He dried his eyes, pulling back into the interstate. He did better alone anyway. Back into the fray.
Come on baby, let's ride
We can escape to the great sunshine
We made it out to the other side
We made it out to the other side
-"Cola", by Lana Del Rey