There was a certain cue in the breath of La Café that instilled within everyone's mind a state of reverie. The dreaming which occupied everyone was not selfish but social, the environment acting as a lubricant for the interactions of all in attendance, heralding certain prognostications of what was to come that night. Conversation becoming muffled murmurs, a cherub took the stage and prepared to fill the room with a phantasmagoria unlike any experienced before. The signal was antithetical to the previous aura of the room... kerosene to honey...New York to Moscow...and then to the lone star-shining star of Texas - the voice of a young Buck filling the ears of one Dr. Savoir "Sav" Erlik, live music being the preferred ambiance of his own rêve.
Eyes scanning the street with a pattern similar to a polygraph, Dr. Erlik kept his attention on the path ahead making sure to mark any suspicious characters. He had learned long ago to remain cognizant of these kinds of things, the city being nothing like his hometown back in Tularosa- all drowsy fields and hills cascading in a vast elementary void, up and down quarks dancing their dance as protons and the usual physics drill. Everyone neither dreaming nor walking, in high entropy, the most probable microstates...evenly distributed...Nouveau Mexico. The night was a busy one. Lighted signs and lamps and cars becoming his only reality. Him between the streets and buildings...buildings in infinite buildings. Dallas between the brief state of Oklahoma and the ocean. Water...H2O...O between H... H-O-H...H.O.H...Hospital-Operation-Hospital...oh the days-oh the day it has been. He was lost to musique. Voices that occupied the background of this recording were as much figments of his consciousness as they were an American audience circa 1995.
Inebriated Sav walked past the crosswalk he usually took, but he was awakened first by his headphones falling loose, and second by a sight that was becoming all too familiar to him. He was looking at a crevice between two buildings: a two story accommodation newly sold, ready to be renovated, and a small apartment complex which he juxtaposed with a beloved grandfather as old as the street itself. Laid out among the garbage in the narrow alley, was the body of a young man who seemed to be approaching his mid-twenties. Not a man...a corpse.
"I'm Home," he said, pushing earlier's sight from his mind. He had checked for a pulse, leaving arterial ichor crusted under his index and middle finger nails. The blood had worked its way deep under his skin, staining his nerves-staining his mind...like a subungual melanoma.
"No, you're late," The police call and subsequent arrival had drained close to an hour from his life-close to an hour from his wife. Her voice invoked memories of cicadas, the soundtrack of these triple-digit Texas summers. Melancholy "Mel" Alamo was spawned nearly 32 years ago through an immaculate conception (or so her mother said) in a Buc-ee's rest stop bathroom. Some traveling nurse had been Able to deliver the baby relatively safely. Mel was anything but boring. Her personality had Wave-particle duality. She was a photon that had worked her way through his pupils, being distorted by his lenses which warped to absorb as much of her as possible. Cones and rods were activated...scones et escalade was the first date... Bones and rods, she had fallen or flew (it didn't matter) and broke her leg on the way through, bones soft like a flower.
She never stopped at his retinas, her flame becoming the sun with each passing moment. Her engine precise, large cams, high octane... suck-squeeze-bang-blow...drove his dopamine levels sky high. They had loved within-had married within a year and had lasted over two.
Sav glanced at the remnants of a dinner gone cold in his absence: two plates, crumbs and stains clinging to the white porcelain, a pan, bottom scratched from heavy use, and a couple utensils, the products of human modesty. He knew she had probably eaten both meals because she knew he never really ate his leftovers. This was a habit that took her quite some time to get used too, managing to make meals that he would gladly wolf down in an instant.
All waste (especially the waste of life) was Melancholy's nemesis, her own "Beast" being the driving force of her days. Savoir recalled the time when she stopped him from walking on the grass just outside of their apartment building.
"It's not like the foliage has nerves," he said, chuckling at her slightly discontented face.
"maybe not, but I just don't like the idea of crushing life so casually" spring was strong in the air and so were her allergies, nose crinkling up in order to keep her brains from going on a pilgrimage to Timbuctoo. "Than what do think of the gardeners?"
The question left her postulating for a second, brow furrowed, eyes up tilted. When her face showed some sort of resolution she just started walking again, never offering up an answer. Sav doubted she even had one; after all, he couldn't have given her roses that fateful day in the hospital if they hadn't been clipped and dethorned, fresh from their roots, pretty little corpses becoming a decoration by the bed he stood next too, asking for a second date.
Mel was lying on the couch, an oversized Coke shirt draped over her soft curves. Her black curls flowing over her shoulders forming a cacophony of loose ringlets accenting her almond skin...always hated those but there's exceptions.
Her arms opened, welcoming Sav into her bosom, becoming a sort of post-womb where instead of developing, he allowed his mind and body to relax, becoming amorphous...systems...organs...tissues...just a single stem cell... reverse reproduction.
"Tough day" she was warm like the lethargic summers which she embodied. "Tough week but I wouldn't have it any other way." His casual masochism didn't surprise her. He had a "work hard now, play later" kinda attitude and it showed even on the first date ..."If you're on time you're late."
His mouth was now a faucet that morphed into Niagara Falls, recounting the events of the day...a traumatic hemopneumothorax... some subarachnoid hemorrhage...code blues and all the colors of the rainbow. She followed attentively, even when she was lost in the medical lingo and offered him comfort when needed...everyone needs a Mel.
Just her listening-just her presence made him recall the times in his youth when on his way home from practice, he remembered that his sun visor was lowered and just how much it limited the view through the windshield. Melancholy was the reminder. Melancholy was his escape, more than any books or songs- more than any isolated mountains or lakes. She was his keepsake.
With this widened perspective, suddenly, he thought he may have glimpsed the realization Mel came to on that day last May. She must think that gardeners are the worst kind of murderers. Was it silly to believe such a thing? He had witnessed it today, a corpse left like a decorative table cloth over some trash, killed to satisfy some urge of the moment, meeting arbitrary criteria. Dr. Erlik could never escape that.
© 2019 Xavier Sartor All Rights Reserved
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