Spillt Ink

We walked. The dog and I. Who knew alleys were so busy so early in the morning? Not me. Cool sights. A street sign on someone's garage. A car parked in the front yard. Half a dozen dogs racing their yard's fence line. Barking. Abandoned houses with abandoned pools. A huge, greedy blue jay. That coach house with empty windows, broken windows, curtains in tatters.

"He sent me this picture of a cock with hearts tattooed around it.  Who wants to see this crap."  His voice was loud and his tone was disgusted. He began punching buttons on his cell phone.

"Damn," she said from across the room, "You should have sent it to me."

"Too bad, Kay," he said, "I've already erased it.  Besides, I don't have your number."

Kay laughed, a single laugh, and, then, cited a six digit number.   All the men in the room brought out their cell phones and began pressing buttons.

"Look at her," he says.  And, he stands there with his friend and they are looking at the tall, brunette across the room, "She is so hot."  He says the word as if it has two tts.  "But the hotter the girl, the more attitude they've got."   It goes unspoken that this woman isn't worth that trouble.

She is nervous as she speaks, she gives little jumps and her hands move, starting and stopping with a jerk.  "Don't ever think, if you're a woman," she says, "that you're stronger than a man.  Don't ever think that you can beat him up.  Because if you keep pushing him, BAM, he'll treat you just as if you were a man."

"Is that what happened to you?"

She gives the man talking to her a quick glare, as if he is slow, as if he hasn't been listening.  "I was up in his face," she said, "then, BAM, he hit me in the nose.  Smashed my nose in.  Blood was everywhere.  Taught me.  Even men who say they don't hit women.  Even men who don't hit women.  Don't think they can't treat you as if you were a man.  Don't think they can't hurt you.  They can."

"Sometimes, it used to be, guys went into bars to meet girls," his companion said.  This was an older guy, one who obviously had been to a few bars in his time.

"You don't want to met the girls in bars," he said. 

His friend looked at him strangely so he tried to explain, "They aren't the kind of girls you want to meet.  They're only interested in drinking.  And, partying.  Come the next weekend, that is the only thing what they want to do.  Go out and get drunk."

"I wanted," she said, "when I was a young woman, to be like Dolly Parton.  I wanted the dresses, the high heels, the makeup.  I wanted to look beautiful even if I worked all day long, almost every day, in a factory.

"Someone ought to tell her to stop trying to tan by using a sunbed.   It's not a good look for her."

"Only don't look for me," he said, "I'll be gallivanting."  Then, not a minute later, "It's sad," he said, "I find that I don't want to do that anymore.  Once, that is all I wanted to do; now, the thought of it wears me out.  I still want to roam, but not so far away.  More like, roaming closer to home."

"I want to see the Pyramids," someone said.

Then, "I want to visit Rome," someone else added.

He asked anyone in the room for a cigarette, a tall, healthy looking man in his forties, he ended the conversation with "and I was so upset that I walked out of the house without my cigarettes."  He smoked that cigarette as if he was still upset.

Another man was talking to a man attached to a IV, a man who looked concerned and serious. He was gently nodding as the first man spoke, "I told that doctor that he didn't know what he was doing, that he was just using me as a guinea pig, trying out one medicine and then another on me and I was the one suffering from it.  I told him I was tired of it and I just wanted it fixed."

He wore a workman's uniform, dark blue slacks and dark blue, long-sleeved shirt.  His hair was long, a straight cut that fell just inches above his shoulders.  He is a big man and his features are bold; he has a strong forehead, high cheekbones, a strong nose and mouth.  He has an aurora about him of bluntness and separation.  He doesn't want to be messed with and everyone leaves him alone.  He entered the room and immediately went to the back of it and smoked a single cigarette.  After the cigarette, he left, but maybe ten minutes later he was back.  A young woman had entered the room and sat at the edge of a bench smoking, her lunch in a paper bag beside her.  She held a thin professional journal on her lap which she was reading while she smoked.  She was dressed well; she wore dress, black shoes with a three inch heels, black slacks, a black tank top with a silky dark purple, button-down shirt over it.  The shirt is unbuttoned.  The man entered and went to the young woman and began talking.  He spoke softly, gently, and smiled often as he spoke.  The smile, itself, was soft and gentle.  She looked up at him as he spoke, not necessarily smiling, but listening.  After several sentences, she says that she can do whatever he is asking and she says it as if it is an administrative request.  He nods, smiles and slips to the back of the room to smoke one more cigarette.  After a moment, the woman turns around and tells him she hasn't shown him what a third man had just completed for her.  She lowers her shirt to her shoulders and there on her back are a number of tattoos.  There is a colorful one just below her neck.  It consisted of bright flowers and bright leaves and stems in an inverted triangular shape.  There is the edge of another tattoo peeking beneath the black tank top on her left shoulder.  Another one on her right shoulder.  In the center of her back, below the flowers is the tip of two feathered wings with some geometric shape between the wings.  She tells the man that the tattoo was completed a few days ago.  He rejoins her again and speaks of what he thinks he wants tattooed on his chest.  She nods and, shortly afterwards, he leaves.  She hadn't pulled her shirt back over her back, and continued to keep  it partially draped over her shoulders.  Even when she leaves the room and walks to the elevator the tattoos are revealed, or partially revealed, visible to all.

A twenty-something woman says to a little girl of about seven years, "Oh, I like your outfit."

 She is wearing a tee shirt with pink and purple on it.  She wears  pink pants.  The little girl thanks her.

The twenty-something woman says to her friend, "She has good manners!  You don't see many little kids with good manners."

The older woman accompanying the little girl says to her, "You know why you have good manners?   Because you are a Christian.  Christians always practice good manners."

He recently got his hair cut.  Before, he'd worn it long, either loose or as a ponytail.  "Thirty years," he said, "I'd had the long hair for thirty years."  He doesn't say why now, after thirty years, he'd cut it.  He does say that he loves the way he can shower and head out the door.  Before he'd have to let it dry.  Or dry it.  "Mirror time," he called it.  And, when he was caught in a rain shower last week, when he was out on his Harley, it made him smile for all he had to do was give his head a shake and lose the rain drops.  "How cool," he said, "is that."

She had been talking about not having a handgun.  She'd had one at one time.  It was back in the time of a friend or a lover or an ex-husband; she didn't say which.  He'd taken the handgun and ended his life.  Her family had tried to get it back; they had called the police department once or twice.  It was evidence, they couldn't return it yet.  He'd written her two letters that day.  Two letters she had never read.  They, too, were evidence--his suicide notes.  She'd been curious about the letters.  What had her friend/lover/ex-husband felt the need to tell her that day?  She'd called the police department about them.  They couldn't be released.  It'd been twelve years ago that this had happened.  "I'm sure those letters have been lost or destroyed" she said, "I'll never know what was in them."

He had been going to see his girlfriend, but she had been grounded.

"Why was she grounded?"

He shrugs.  "They get grounded for the strangest things. 'You just walked funny and, then, you said something!  You're grounded for two weeks!'"

The men were sitting at their table during breaktime.   No women were at the table, although sometimes there is. I was at a separate table, close enough to hear them, far enough they could believe I couldn't be listening.  They were discussing killing cats.   "Cats are disgusting," one man said, "they walk all over your car and leave footprints all over it.  I hate them."  He had a neighbor who had maybe seventeen cats.  One day, she had seventeen cats, a few days later she had two.  Another man spoke about how he had a neighbor with a cat he despised.  One day, something happened to that cat.  It might have not been an accident.  His neighbor came over a day or two later and asked if he had seen the cat.  No, he hadn't.  Posters went up in the neighborhood, Lost Cat.  Two hundred and fifty dollar reward.  His neighbor came over and talked to him again.  His neighbor got snarky.  "Mmrrrow," he said to the neighbor's retreating back.  "Mmrrow," he say under his breath every time he saw his neighbor after that.  

"Every day as you're out the door, headed for the parking lot, you're thanking God for getting you through all the bullshit.  And, on Fridays, you're saying, 'Oh, Lord, Lord, thank you, thank you; it's Friday.'"

She comes in at noon, bringing a carry-out lunch for the two of them.  She is a small, late middle-aged woman with her hair dyed a shade or two too dark.   They sit at the corner of the table; she has her chair pulled in close to him.  She laughs at what he says.  He can be amusing.  He has a satirical wit.  On occasion, he uses it against himself.  But he makes her laugh and her laugh is a tinkle of bells, a sudden wind chime of glass, although, it is, also, edgy and nervous. 

She says to him, "You're so funny." 

When she leaves, she walks quickly and silently to her car.  She isn't smiling, her head is lowered and her body huddled into itself.  It isn't that cold.  She knows she is the stranger in a strange place, but she has sacrificed her comfort zone to be with him.

She doesn't know him. Not really.  She hasn't heard his discussions upon the women he has dated.  He confesses to waiting someone to share his life with, but he has no tolerance.  He will pack and leave at the least bit of drama.  Her drama.  He has no empathy although he is a master at its appearance.  He said, once, without excuse or concern, "A woman's tears mean nothing to me.  She can turn on the waterworks and it does nothing, means nothing, to me."   Often, he blames the women for the failed relationship.  "She was psycho," he said, "Why do I keep meeting all these psycho women?" 

This woman doesn't appear to be psychotic.  She appears to be lonely and hopeful at the same time.  Her heart is probably easily broken, but she is strong enough to keep trying.  She'll make sacrifices and she'll be generous.  She'll be forgiving if a sarcastic comment or two comes her way.  She's laugh with a tingle of bells, edgy and nervous.  But if she cries, if tears come to her eyes, sudden and unbidden, she cannot expect any sympathy or affection.  His shoulder and his wit will be cold.

She's talking about a man who was living in his car.  He'd lost everything, his job, his wife, his home.  So, he was living and sleeping in his car.  He still had his dog, the dog was living with him.  Someone called animal control.  They came to check on the pet which seemed to be doing fine.  He told them his story.  They told him they'd be back in a few days to check on the dog again.  "You don't understand," she said, "it's okay for him to be living in a car, but not the dog."  Then, "People have to get their priorities right.  It's a dog.  A dog.  Whoever called animal control had more compassion for the dog than the person."

They were sitting at two different tables.  They seemed to know one another, although not very well.  They'd been talking about his daughter, twenty-six years old and working in Indianapolis.  The woman is teasing him; she says how his daughter didn't turn out too badly for having him for a dad.  He smiles but it isn't a big smile.  It is small and tight.  I glance away.  He is smoking a cigarette, a pack of Marlboro reds sit in front of him.  His face is tan, lined, still handsome in the way that a cowboy's face is tan and lined and handsome.   He wears a ponytail; blondish hair pulled back at base of his neck.  He is lean, maybe too thin, but his clothes are loose.  I look down at the newspaper spread on the table in front of me.  I pretend disinterest or no interest.  I read through the obituaries.  First, I look at the age of the deceased .  How close in age are they to me?  How close in age are they to the people talking? 

"You never had any problems with the girls, did you?"  she asks.

He didn't hear the question, so she asks it again.  Before he can answer, other people have joined him at his table. Men.  Maybe he had been waiting on them.  Before they give their order,  the woman has stopped talking.  She pulls her phone out of her bag.  It is a huge bag, larger than the ones I carry.  It is so huge that nothing in it is visible.  There could be magazines, books, knitting within it.  The woman begins text messaging or maybe she is playing a game; her fingers fly over the surface of the phone.

I fold the newspaper and leave it on the seat next to me.  Preparing to leave, I stamp out my cigarette and take one last sip of soda.

No one my age had died.  The youngest death listed had been of a woman sixty-six years old.  She was survived by three daughters.

"They make me mad," he said, "I asked them to help me put up a gate.  Fifteen dollars an hour they wanted.  They charge for their time, but when it comes to my time, they don't want to give anything.  I'll take them back, and I'll think it will be brief, maybe a half hour and, then, they'll ask to stop at the credit union, then, it's somewhere else, and somewhere else after that.  After all the stops, three hours will have gone by." 

Then, later, he was talking about another man, "He wanted one of those Scottish dogs.  They didn't have them."

Little note:  Several miles north of us, not far from where I was having a late lunch, a community of Amish live.  The person I overheard was talking about them.  I'm guessing that he sometimes gives them a ride to or from whoever has hired them for construction work.

She has the usual assortment of pictures on her cell phone, but she, also, has several pictures of her feet.  "I have pretty feet," she said.  There is a picture of her feet in fancy sandals and there is one of a single foot held up for the camera.  It is a rounded, soft foot with straight toes, the nails painted a dark maroon shade.  "I sent this picture to my ex-husband's girl-friend."

"Why?" a woman at the table asked.

"My husband has a thing for feet," she said, "He loved my feet.  He was crazy for my feet."  She smiled and shrugged.  "This was just to remind him, through her, of what he no longer has."