warning: reference to suicide
Soda Curtis has a tooth ache. But that's not why he's slouching in a green chair Sports Illustrated in hands—address barcode removed and opened to an article on Wayne Gretzky and a sport he knows nothing about. Except that hockey screws your teeth more than poverty, sugar and heroin.
Next to him the yellowed light pales toothless compared to the blinding florescence from the ceiling fixture. There are two T.V. Guides in a room with no T.V. The rest of the magazines are on the coffee table or in two wooden racks hooked to the wall. There's a Dixie cup, he takes a sip—a slow one, using his scarred tongue as a funnel, avoiding the left side all together. Otherwise, his tooth hurts like a mother.
The door opens and May is an attempted strangulation compared to the murderous suffocation that August will bring. Still the air conditioner is on full blast and Soda's skin pricks in response. A man in slacks and a faded button down and a woman in a skirt, baggy blouse and large silver belt enter. Soda doesn't look up and tries not to think about his tooth.
The receptionist turns the radio down, greets the couple with a form, a friendly 'good morning' and a white smile promise of better things to come (insurance claim pending).
"You're not Maggie," and the receptionist explains that she's one of the dental assistants and that Maggie is off for the week. Her husband scans the room, perhaps for a T.V., perhaps for Maggie, and finding neither returns to the desk. There are butterscotches. Hard candy, a better alternative to the chewy kind that gets stuck in teeth and keeps this place afloat.
"Oh," the woman says.
The receptionist, who isn't Maggie, who isn't even a receptionist, confirms their name, hands them each a clipboard and informs them that Drs. Johnson and Modi will be with them shortly. They make their way pass the water cooler, pass the kiddie corner, pens in hands.
There's a computer and talks about putting patient files on cd rom—eventually, but for now there are cabinets of cream colored files coded in colored tabs and inside are the charts, insurance papers and marked diagrams –treasure maps of cavities, bridges and dentures.
But Soda isn't watching this, doesn't see the fluid movement of the dental assistant in lavender scrubs as she turns up the radio up.
Hit me baby one more time. Ms. Spears demands.
He is alone in the waiting room when the inner door swings and Anna Nguyen crosses the threshold in grey pants, grey blouse, yawning from the sedative.
Sliding his hands down his thighs and standing up, casually crushing the empty cup in his palm, tossing it in the trash and doesn't bother to watch it bounce off the rim before landing on top of a muffin wrapper.
"You good? Ready to roll?" He's trying to shove his impatience down, but his nerves are screaming. After Anna says yes, folding the instructions into fours before putting it in her purse, he wiggles his toes, half asleep inside thick boots, holds the door open, adjusts his eyes to natural light and checks his watch. It's not even 9:00 yet.
She's the mother of his first born and knows him in ways that he wishes weren't his to claim, but this isn't his apartment or his life and their son is grown, so he stands on the outside doormat while she stands inside and asks her if she wants him to pick up anything from the store, maybe Jell-O. She didn't even want him to take her to the dentist, but Patrick is at work and they told her no public transportation and she's too proud ask anyone else. Soda was able to get the day off from his new job. Now he works with cars, again. So Soda it is.
Her nose scrunches up and he gives the quickest smile, which thanks to his tooth is already a wince.
She looks at him, "would you care to come in?" Knowing the answer she turns her back to him, carefully slides her purse off her shoulder and he shuts the door.
War stalked Soda Curtis home, spoke with a flat American accent and screamed into the phone: "T.P. ate his gun!"
On hearing the news of Tate Parker's (U.S. Army, Vietnam Vet, Acknowledged Asshole) death he squeezed the receiver, mouth dropped open, heels lifted one-half inch off his linoleum floor and his body followed.
"I'm sorry for calling at this hour…I didn't know…who…" as if her hours still held weight.
She's got nothing to apologize for. And he understood that with a grief so overwhelming there sometimes needed to be a distraction, a valve of release, in her case: phone etiquette. Like Two-Bit and his knife after Dallas.
"I'm so sorry." It contained all the devastation but neither felt any comfort. He asked about a funeral, 'service' is how he phrased it, and told her to call him for anything, anytime. She said goodbye or thank you and hung up. Her dial tone faded but her echo couldn't.
His wife and his daughter looked at him, dark eyebrows knitted in worry. He may have mouthed 'T.P' to Mary. Lifted his neck up over the horizon of Hazer's bedhead and silently over-enunciated the name to the point that after the 'P' his mouth fossilized into an exaggerated grin.
They were in their pajamas and blurry.
Hazer woke up because of the telephone, because she had the best ears in the house even in the middle of the night.
"Go back to bed, Hazer. It's okay." He tells her and works to keep his voice even. He can't shield her from all the bad and kids understand so much more than adults, including their own parents want to acknowledge, but he wants her to have a childhood and not to have her nights stolen by other peoples nightmares.
Mary awakened by her husband's body rising from their bed, the back of his hand off her chest. She had the worst hearing in the house.
The last time he saw T.P face to face… How did he not know?
He wiped his eyes. And wiped his knuckles on the jeans he wears as pajamas, they are soft and worn, frayed at the ankles and comfier than real pajama bottoms or sweats. He embraces his wife, holding her close, and when he sees her tears he loves her even more and his thumb rubs against her cheek.
"How…" But looks at her husband, his eyes bleak, his lips parted and starts the sign of the cross and he follows.
At sixteen, grief cried and threw up the beer he hardly drank when his girlfriend's new perfume smelled a little bit too close to his mom's. At seventeen it whipped Darry's truck down the ribbon and saw bodies under the street lights, crumpled and on fire. At nineteen and years afterwards it shot heroin.
He looks at his boots. At eighteen it went to war.
He's wearing olive Dockers and a white undershirt and removes his boots, takes a few extra seconds to make sure that they're on the inner doormat and don't touch the carpet. And beyond that Mary is his life it's why he and Anna wouldn't work. Life is lived in the banalities and for Soda the thought of needing to make sure his boots are in their proper place day after day is exhausting. But thinks that if they were really meant to be together they would have compromised. Least he would have tried and sometimes he'll let his imagination take over. He doesn't exactly know what that compromise would look like: half the week his boots sprawled all over, the other half of the week standing like soldiers at attention?
"Mind if I lie down?" And when she doesn't he makes his way to the couch to stretch his legs, it feels good, after sitting in the waiting room, after sitting in his truck. The sound of the faucet reminds him he hasn't taken a leak since he woke up and despite the water his throat is parched.
"How's your mouth?" He tosses trying to find a comfortable position, he had helped move her into this apartment, hurt his back after he carried the couch in with Steve's help, the couch too cumbersome and the men too impatient for the elevator.
"Numb," and from the incredulity in her tone he might have asked if water is wet or if she wants Jell-O again. His eyes roll slightly. Doors and drawers open and close. He's never seen the interior of this bedroom.
When she reemerges she has a pillow, a blanket and a book. Surprises him and puts the pillow under his head and the blanket up to his waist; he's not really cold, but it's a nice gesture and Soda wonders if he looks worse off than he feels. He has a high threshold for pain.
"The last time I coddled a man like this, he just died in my bed." Her voice is an ocean of cool, but her eyes spark.
Threat or promise? His tooth shuts him up, except for a groan.
"Ah, the death throes."
And maybe he shouldn't laugh. Then he feels a need to say something to her, to make something right for her. But maybe he doesn't need to, maybe when you survive war and depression your unwanted husband dying two decades ago while having sex with you, maybe it's the best it will be. Maybe that's your happy ending. Maybe you can tell yourself that.
And lying on her couch watching her walk away, her bare feet light into the carpet, he wonders again what that would be like to experience that. Must feel like dying yourself.
"Anna…" He doesn't know what he needs to say and even if he did his tooth drowns out all thoughts.
"I'm gonna take something for my tooth, that alright?" And this time doesn't wait for permission before exiting the kitchen with water and picking up her newly prescribed bottle of pain killers off the dining room table, swallowing. "Thanks."
But that same part of his brain that causes recklessness is hot wired to the part that drives all night on gas station coffee and BBQ chips that stained his fingers and crumbled down his shirt before he stopped at a pay phone, eyeing the slit of dawn.
"Do you need someone to um, help take care of...? Yeah, I figured the county already came for…" Stops himself, how quick did T.P. go from being a 'him' to 'the body' or worse 'the remains.' "Naw. I'm in the area. What time should I be there? Sorry for callin' at this hour.
...I know, didn't think you'd be gettin' much sleep," and scratches the back of his neck orange.
It took a long time to clean the blood, the tissue and the brain matter like Jell-O. He blanches and is no longer used to gore and bleaches and drills out a few tiles while she goes to hardware store to pick up the replacements. She calls out from the living room, "nobody else would have thought about cleaning..."
And all he allowed himself to think is T.P. c'mon man, you couldn't have just hung yourself?
It smelled like 1968 and now it smells, but this time of bleach. He inhales the fumes, pulls his shirt up so he won't inhale the rest.
His knees hurt.
For thirty minutes he sleeps on her couch and wakes to the clock on his phone. He readjust to the room and he looks at her, at her table that doesn't have a table cloth and is dust free and spotless and probably smells like lemon or pine, reading her book. His heart squeezes.
"I'm worried about Cash," he helped her being more open with her loves and fears which tend to get entwined.
Soda pulls himself into a semi-upright position, the pillow now resting against his shoulder blades.
"He won't have Curt at school next year. Who will look after him?" Anna said that Cash reminded her of Patrick and that made Soda remourn the time he missed with his son and love his son and his youngest grandson even more than that.
"Do you have an elevator and does it work?" Was her first, second and often last question she asked before this apartment. Cash loves pushing the buttons. When they visit Curt will take the stairs,taking them two, sometimes three at a time. Standing outside the elevator in his hoodie, arms crossed and a look of gleeful triumph when the door opens and his dad, stepmom and little brother appear.
"Beat ya," Curtis Nguyen crows. But he's the last person to enter the apartment and first to head for the door when it's time to go. Too stiff and formal, unlike Bobo's and Lola's. Anna does her best not to let it bother her. He's has no clue the life she's lived. Polite though, says yes and no ma'am.
Cassius Nguyen says goodbye in Vietnamese and Anna's heart swells.
Look who's soundin' like a grandma, Soda wants to say, part teasing, part tender, flirting almost. But doesn't have a death wish.
"Hawk." His voice is straight, no-nonsense, "he'll look out for our Cash." Thinks about those boys and from that smile erupts a soft laugh and his head shakes back and forth."I dunno Anna, you ever imagine we'd be sittin' here in the middle of Tulsa casually talking about our grandkids?"
It's so out of the realm of all former possibilities that she doesn't hesitate to join him and her laugh enters his ears smoothly.
Even her laughter, smooth and light as it is, is held in place by melancholy. So Soda isn't surprised when he looks at her, the ceiling fan above, the soft hum of the blades and wonders if she still feels displaced, a stranger in this country. The way he does sometimes.
Doesn't know what he expected. Maybe some fucking people to show up at Parker's and help? Is that too fucking hard?
He opens his mouth, her thumb holding his bearded chin in place, slowly, she makes her way inside, her finger moves along his gum line. Feels the slight give of her finger, her knees open up just enough to fit pages 3 through 50 inside. He breathes heavier the deeper she pushes. His tooth doesn't hurt like before, but anticipation is skirting off the edge of a cliff and his fingers find her waist.
She's the only one who will understand how much he craves the agony because there, there is the ecstasy. That the reverse is also true, that at the galloping edge of happiness is anguish waiting to pull you under.
Bliss and annihilation locked in the same breath.
And there, there would be the release so much deeper than ordinary sex. Soda didn't know that sex could be that. That he could be so aware of his body every heated drop of blood, every scratch of hair, every stretch and contraction of every muscle, and feel like he was transcending it. Transcending himself. They had the power, he had the power, to take a painful sensation and alchemize into ecstasy. In the army where so much of his life was under the control of others, he could control this. He's not spiritual, not the way Pony is, nor devout like Mary though he converted for her and crosses himself before dinners and after suicides.
Being with Anna felt like punishment and resurrection.
This is how he is remembering, mouth open, sitting on her couch, feeling her on the hunt for his wounded tooth; this is how 1968 reincarnates inside 1999.
Back then they'd bring each other to climax, their mouths and bodies became earthquakes. When she went down on him it felt like being engulfed. When he panted 'take it' to her it sounded more like an offering than an order.
And what he wouldn't give right now to be consumed.
"Fuck." He winces, his eyelids squeezing tighter.
She releases her finger off his tooth and he tastes it passively on his tongue while her other hand tightens around his thigh; inside in his mind she's wearing his boots pushing him hard into the ground. That's how they'd compromise, his body is her earth, dirty and pulsating.
His jaw aches but he won't show it, she reaches for her book that's lying spine side up. Two-Decades of Oklahoma dulled it's hypnotic edge, but her voice will still reach a place deep inside, when he slows down and lets it.
Pulls her out of his mouth, scrunches his nose and eyes. "What...?"
"Shh" She brings her damp finger to her lips, which move fast, "this reminds me of you," and her tone isn't cruel nor kind but just is; her lips move slow and slower still and his ears perk with curiosity.
"… I murder what I most adore,
Laughing: I am indeed of those
Condemned for ever without repose
To laugh — but who can smile no more."
These words are inside his brain, chewing.
"Hmm," he says, more to himself when she closes the book and looks at him. "That reminds you of me, huh?" Tries defiance through a smile but the curve of his mouth veers off. This loneliness of exposure is temporary. Anna can x-ray the darker realm of his psyche, helped him be unashamed. That her acceptance was not divorced from a degree of judgment made him feel, paradoxically, safer; she saw him for who he was and accepted him.
His blood turns electric with desires only part sexual.
He wants her and loves her too much to act on it and knows that her is both Mary and Anna. This ain't who I need to be, and feels half relieved and other half frustrated when he listens.
It could be 1968 which began in 1965 when his parents died, when he lost his first love. The year his kid brother could have died and two of his friends did within the hell span of a single week.
It extended into 1966 the year he turned eighteen and joined the army and stretched its razor nails into 1967 and Vietnam.
Then it was 1968.
For a while it had stopped being 1968. In 1978 he was reunited with his son, in 1984 his daughter was born, in 1993 another son was born and surviving, growing older, finally felt like a back flip in the rain.
Stealth, 1968 crept. Maybe it was Halloween,1992. It was the happiest he felt in, well, ever. Or since he was sixteen, in January, back when 1965 still meant 1965. Then darkness, a bead of sweat from a dream he can't remember; tidal waves: a brother in arms dead, a job loss, this feeling looking at his beautiful family and wants to cry.
Except now the tears that came too easily at sixteen won't come. He feels it in his throat, thick, jammed in there. But his eyes stay dry.
He knew the night their love and bodies created Hawk that happiness couldn't, wouldn't last. The voice in his head screamed in octaves loud and soft: shouldn't. But he tried to hold on, as if he had earned it, as if he'd deserved it, as if 1968 never happened.
1968 tastes like gunmetal on a guy's tongue.
His hands are moths. Her wrists are flames. He feels her veins, her pulse, her bones and bites his lip.
His stare is almost as penetrating as hers, neither of them looks away from each other. They are in their clothes but he breathes a bit like he does after sex. Maybe like Phuc before he died.
His breath is hot on her throat. He won't know what will emerge any more than she will. What I want I can't take from you. What I want you can't give me. Relief and regret fills his chest.
"Bian, all I feel is empty."
Her birth name surrounds them and he wasn't intending to call her that, but now mixing with their breaths, feels like a purpose. As if it's the only way he can convey the seriousness, the break from the norm, of his current situation.
He doesn't think she's satisfied with his answer. He's right. She's not. He isn't either. Sighs and tries to by sheer force of will change the swirling mass buried inside his chest into words that make some sort of sense. To explain these feelings that are so heavy but feel like they belong to someone else.
Unlike Pony's her books, which includes books on psychology, are neatly organized and stacked.
When she had a breakdown Soda helped her. Still, shadows and shadings of her depression color around them, the way children do long after they leave.
Soda will ask their son how's she doing and sometimes call her up out of the blue.
"Do I need a reason? Just callin' to see how's everything."
The books are her way of starving, fighting, understanding her own mind Soda realized. To remaster what once betrayed her.
She's good at probing, at pushing, at listening. Her hands carefully fold on her lap and his mouth opens.
Yeah, it is, it is too fuckin' hard sometimes.
With noon and emptiness his stomach rumbles. He needs to get going, for a lot of reasons. "I'm assumin' you washed your hand before you jammed it in my mouth? Ah, never mind, mouth's dirty enough as it is." The way he teases her has him thinking about his wife, but that's not Anna's style and after an unscripted flash she reminds him, coolly, that he heard the faucet running.
"Shoot, that don't mean nothin'." His voice turns authentic. "I know you're clean, hon," shifts his hands against his zipper.
"Soda." Her voice sterilizes his rib cage and he braces for the incision, but he doesn't flinch and leans towards her. "Is that why you won't allow a dentist to treat your tooth? So you'll feel something even if it's painful?" Her eyes flicker like 1968.
"Naw. Can't afford it, don't got the insurance, never mind the money to pay for it outright." Shrugs and puts his boots on. " 'Sides, if that's case, wouldn't have taken your meds." Does a quick nod towards the table, thanks her again.
She concedes with a smile that hints at stitches and more age lines than he remembers; and so tenderness, thick and deep, overwhelms him. Are we old?
Asks for another pill, there's absolutely no way he can be distracted by his toothache, not tonight, the cap brands his palm. He speaks slowly, looks her in the eye, "Anna, when I talk about myself now, feels like I'm talkin' about a stranger."
But he really does need to leave.
"It was real good talkin' with you, think it helped some" hates the desperation, so tries swagger, then sincerity takes over, "Now you take care of yourself darlin' and if you need anything, ya know like Jell-O..." Smirks, which thanks to Tate Parker is already a grimace. "...holler." Adds, "thanks for the hospitality."
In the door frame they say goodbye and glance down at her hand on his rib cage, clawed and soft and still.
But look, his teeth bare down.
A/N: Thank you for reading the 1st chapter. The poem Anna recites is the George Dillon translation of L'héautontimorouménos by Charles Baudelaire. Hinton owns The Outsiders.