Latter days
By milkdrunk
The last time I saw Jesus I was drinking bloody mary's in the South
In a barroom in New Orleans, rinsin' out the bad taste in my mouth
Amber liquid sloshes messily around her finger and onto the counter. Staring hard, she observes a maelstrom of emotion that would find expression no place outside the glass tumbler. The stirring motion of her left index finger is steady, the blue of the ice swirling alongside the amber constant. Only the tight countenance betrays its wearer's tension; she lounges artfully on the barstool, body liquid ivory encased in gold. An unlit cigarette perches idly from two fingers of her right hand.
There is a man out there, somewhere, who worries for her. She doesn't know what to call him. Friend? She has not seen or thought of him in too long. Comrade? They worked together, once. Stranger? They know too much of each other. She does not like to worry him.
Taking a sip from her glass, she wearily considers the ancient jukebox. Was she the sort of child who spent all her lunch money on quarters for the jukebox? What songs might she have childishly agonized over and delightedly chosen? Surely not the Christ-haunted heartache presently tipsily, weakly straining amidst the din of the bar. Sin and want of redemption have been too long etched into being for her to believe she was ever a little girl, or for her to enjoy the melody of the song. Every sun- or rain-drenched afternoon, someone else makes a getaway. She is always here. Two steps forward, three steps back. She is drowning in debt and regrets, the heavy weight unrelenting.
She is fucked. What she ought to do is put a bullet through someone's head, she muses. The sleaze in the corner booth, predatorily eyeing her. Or her own.
A determined, hesitant footfall approaches. The cadence of his presence, she absently notes, is familiar. She exhales air through her mouth, begins to worry her lower lip—and lipstick—with her teeth. Should she swivel her stool and meet him head-on?
She can only clasp both hands—cigarette still attached to the right—around her glass, wishing its contents were warmer. She longs to run her hands up and down her arms and expel a shiver, but immediately suppresses the urge. Stubbornly, she stares straight ahead.
Smoothly, he slides his considerable bulk atop the empty stool to her right. Daintily, she crosses her legs and resolutely switches her gaze from the multi-coloured poisons on the wall back to the amber hue of her own drink.
He breathes her name. Propping her left hand on the counter to construct a makeshift pillow for her head, she turns her body slightly in his direction. Stop this. You owe him, she reminds herself. Her lips pucker churlishly.
After an interminable silence, he offers genially, "You're looking well." She doesn't want to feel obligated to accept his offer and respond in kind. Once before, she accepted. And lost everything she thought she'd gained. She should politely decline anything he should have to give her. But she doesn't like to worry him.
"You let us go," she abruptly blurts. Cringes at her clumsiness. He draws a sharp breath, forces a quirked brow.
His response bothers her, fuels her bitter fury. She cannot feel melancholy if she is furious, her mind reasons. She refuses to let any tears advertise her vulnerability.
"You let us, all of us, go. What was that all about?" she sneers, borrowing contempt from remembered injustices to wield against this man before her. She remembers another man and the barbed words between them, icy utterances wrapped in silver paper. The urge to vomit arises.
Distractedly, she traces the rim of her glass with a finger.
He doesn't pretend not to understand this time. "And how was I to hold on to a child, a ghost—"
Here, she flinches. He watches her with keen eyes, continues softly.
"—and a gypsy spirit?"
Then, "I only chase bounties, Faye."
Her swallowed sob forces a hiccough.
"If I can help it."
He navigates the bruised and treacherous waters of intimacy with as gentle a hand as his metal limb and the memory of betrayal will allow. For her, it is enough. It is the truth. She snorts inelegantly.
He looks as if he wants to smile, but has forgotten how. She smiles for him.
"Come away with me," she wants to say, but doesn't. Can't.
He accepts her silence, only stares reprovingly at her drink and cigarette. He'd forgive her anything, she thinks.
The music pauses momentarily as a body slams against it. No one pays any notice to the lull.
"It's apple juice," she haughtily concedes, signaling her drink.
He wonders…
"And chocolate." Sheepishly, she waves her cigarette-laden hand in the vicinity of his amused gaze. He worries for her, after all, and she doesn't like to worry him.
The mid-tempo rhythm of the song begins again where it left off before.
Her white boots tussle with the scaffolding of the barstool as she moves to stand; catching herself before falling, she huffs, discards her cigarette into her glass, and slinks onto the dancefloor.
Wordlessly, he follows.
Awkwardly, gingerly, they grasp the other. She remembers another dance, another partner. Their breath mingles with the smoke permeating the room, the curve of his left hand with the swell of her hip.
Suddenly, she is freezing and burning and suffocating and the need to make his kindness and concern for her something filthy and obscene is overwhelming. Twist and choke and belittle it until it is dead.
Ain't it crazy how we put to death the ones we need the most?
Lifting her head from his shoulder, she links her left hand with his right, and delicately kisses the inside of his palm. Blood pounding in her ears, she trails her tongue along sundry indentations. He can only watch their hands, then her eyes, which are riveted to his. It is only when she takes and places his left hand on her breast that he wrenches his gaze away. He cannot feel her flesh beneath the cool metal of his palm, but the gooseflesh blossoming along her arm betrays the rosebud straining under her halter. Still she scalds his human flesh with fire trials. Their harsh, ragged breathing veils the sound of her breaking. His eyes are drawn again to hers.
Speak. Speak. Say something, anything, dammit!, he commands himself. He says nothing. She is the first to break eye contact.
She is reluctant to relinquish control of the kite string, lest he let go and she lose herself.
"There's a place," and her voice is a hot monsoon in his ear. She nods towards the corner bathroom.
He disentangles their bodies and allows space to separate them. His own voice is a thirsty desert wind battling the isolation of a thousand years of involuntary solitude. "I don't want you in the bathroom, Faye." I want you on the Bebop.
Her mouth births a slow, sexy smile. Understanding: she will be the one to let go the string. He'd forgive her anything, even the treason, the sacrilege she has just committed. (She would never be free again.) She hates herself for having done it, but she's mostly overwhelmed and nervous and relieved.
She is the loveliest kind of sad, he thinks.
"I know just the place for a celebratory dinner," she crows, shoulders hunched and hands furiously rubbing the other. "It's only appropriate to woo me back to that dump, and I deserve a classy welcome."
Jet collects her to himself and holds her loosely, as a friend, angry and relieved and ashamed and staunchly refusing to explore just why he is so pleased she didn't press—force—her lips to his.
She suffered a strange and piercing wound once, but it is healing. Slowly, slowly, she is unwrapping the bandages and letting go.
Thanks for reading.
This was written after reading "What Jazz is All About" and "Autumn Leaves," by minty fresh socks and there's no time, respectively. The former is more platonically romantic, the latter more enticingly realistic.
The title and summary are taken from Linford Detweiler. The snatches of song herein, "Jesus in New Orleans," also belong to Detweiler. We admirers gather at the trough in his orchard to hear homespun tales about murder and blueberry pies.