Killing Her

It’s killing him to think about her all the time. He can’t eat, and he can’t sleep. He is drawn to her like a magnet, like she is some energy force that he needs. Yet he wonders is she of one of those women who dangles intimacy and then withdraws it? Is she one of those women who enjoys the flirtation, but when the chance for something physical can be explored she runs from it? He didn’t think so, he didn’t want to think so, because last night she had indicated something more, a possible opening for something more to be explored.
Jake pops open another can of beer, his fifth for the evening. He knows he self-medicates, knows he wasted his youth by drinking too much. And deep down in his core where the demons play havoc with his soul, he knows his drinking caused him to lose the company of his wife and daughter. The drink in him made them not trust him, made his ex-wife hate him. But, he pats the front of his jean pocket where the four hundred dollars, which he had earned from a gig across town awaits to be handed over to his ex-wife.
Harmonies clash as Jake turns up his stereo, his eyes squint to the dissonance, music and sex and chemicals spin in his head. He’s good at that, good at getting drunk, good at sex, good at playing his horns, but he’s not good at playing the sweetheart movie hero. He’s more suited for the reluctant knight or the film noir character who is found in one of those seedy neighborhood bars where he soaks into Billie Holiday that’s playing while he smokes his cigarettes and contemplates his forbidden silent lust for the girl he can’t have.
But Kate was the one to reach over and give him a hug, and then a kiss on the cheek as she pulled up to the front of his apartment building, and for a second she lingered within the embrace, and for a second, he felt her energy, her heat. But he’d been the one to pull away from her. Why hadn’t he just kissed her? Because he was afraid that maybe this unspoken connection they had was misdirected, and he misunderstood her intention with the peck on the cheek, but it wasn’t a quick peck on the cheek. It was a lingering softness of her lips on his cheek.
. “That’s fucking hot,” she whispered through her cigarette smoke, when he confessed to her that he thinks of her when he is fucking Jill. Then she says to him— “I should just kiss you, to get it over with. If you are a bad kisser, then this feeling I am having for you will go away, and that will be the end of me feeling kind of crazy over you.” And now, as he sips at his beer, revisiting last night, and the night before, all he can think about is kissing her. Not so much wanting to put her in every which way position that could humanly be possible, but just to kiss her, because he doesn’t want this feeling of giddiness that only comes over him whenever he is near her or whenever he hears her voice, or when someone mentions her name, or when he sneaks a quick peek at her when she is talking to one of the customers. He doesn’t want this feeling to ever go away. Her whole energy pulls at him, tugs at him, but mostly the connection he feels with her is like a good jam session when all players are all in sync, finding the beat is instantaneous, if it is going to be right, it’s got to be right from the start. Yet, he is a solitary soul, likes to keeps his thoughts to himself, likes to drink away his blues, likes to take out his sax and get lost to the music, to where he is no longer conscious of what’s being played, lost to the rhythms, lost to the notes, lost in his own head of things he believes could have been played out better.
***
Musicians, it’s something about their hands—something about the way they use their hands to create something out of nothing, to put it all together, and to make it sound good. When Kate was twenty she fell for a long blonde haired southern blues bass player—his sweet tone voice and his sexy, well defined hands captured her heart with one glance. When he walked into the room and slid his body next to hers and said in a hushed tone—“Baby, you are all something to see sitting there all by your lonesome self, I’d love to make you warm.” Oh, he made her warm all right, but he started to drink by ten in the morning, and when they got to fucking, all he could do was slap her ass and pass out. Yet his voice, the way his fingers slide up and down the strings of his get-tar, made her wet, made her want to touch herself, made her feel like a cat in heat, all purring and meowing —and that’s how Jake makes her feel. He makes her wet, by the sound of his voice, by the way he moves, by the way he talks, but mostly by his heat that radiates from him when ever she is anywhere near him. She feels it, and she wants it. But, he’s a bad combination for her, a musician and a drinker, but when he plays his saxophone, all she wants to do is slide her body up and down his, and let him do whatever he wants to her body. She wants to feel his pulse under her. She wants to feel that something again—that something which she thought was long dead.
Tonight, the full moon is shining down on her, casting a spell. It’s making her think things she never thought she should be thinking, making her start to smoke, to drink whiskey, to want to rub her body up and down his lithe body. And his look, his smooth talkin jazzy look with his fedora hat, and beat-up looking leather jacket, so sexy, so cool to her. It was no wonder that she couldn’t help herself to touch him the other night. And now, when he looks at her, it makes her want to feel his hands all over her until he feels her purr, convulsing under his finger tips.
She takes a long drag from her cigarette, thinking about the first time she saw him. Three years to the day, she muses as she slowly exhales, letting the smoke linger on her lips, closing her eyes to the feel of the smoke passing through her pursued lips. Like a butterfly kiss, so light, so effortlessly, and then it’s gone, taken over by molecules of nothingness. She likes the taste of tobacco, always has, and likes the harshness of the smoke hitting the back of her throat while it seeps down into her lungs. She knows it is killing her, but so is everything else around her. But, the taste of the tobacco lingers on her lips, the smell on fingertips, and for a second it dulls the ache, dulls the sense of craving for something that she feels will never be sated.
She finds herself lost again. A failure of sorts for having to take on a second job because her husband is unwilling to front her bills any longer. She is going through the motions of her daily life, pretending she knows what she is doing, but in reality she is drifting. Feelings of bewilderment flood over her, possessing her like when she had her first miscarriage, and she lay in bed holding herself, not wanting to be touched by anyone. The thought of being touched repulsed her. She was untouchable. She had failed in the basic role of womanhood, to reproduce, to bring forth life, to seal the bond with her husband by producing an antidote to the space that was growing larger each day. She winced at her husband’s touch afterwards, and his tender need to want to try again. She should have told him then that she had no desire to ever be a mother. In fact, if she could then she would have run, but instead, she adhered to her vows, and adapted once again to her role.
And when she walked into the bookstore with a new plan, a new outlook with a painted face, Jake was behind the counter, and she had felt his eyes on her back, and when she turned to get a better look at him, he didn’t turn away. He held her glance, and she had fingered her wedding ring, and realized the fantasy needed to stay in her head. Tucked away never to be let out because that would cause for a whole lot of trouble that Kate was unwilling, she thought to ever explore.
Something kept tugging at her, and when she started working full time at the store, and she and Jake began working the night shift together those feelings began to unravel, causing an ache she thought she had left at the altar, an ache she didn’t want to have for anyone, not even her husband because that ache only caused her to feel anguish and frustration, and made her do crazy things, made her feel off track, weak and vulnerable to the emotions that she wanted to keep bottled inside. But, Jake was like an adder to her. His bite was not venomous; his bite soothed the uncertainties in her head. Yet at the same time, it made her question everything she knew to be true, to be safe; like her husband’s love for her, insular as it was, it was safe.
She couldn’t help watching Jake. She couldn’t help wanting to be near him, to reach out and touch him, to find some excuse to talk to him. But, her feelings for him she assured herself stopped when she left the store and went home, and began again to play the role of wife that had blanketed her for fifteen years.
Yet, when Jake started dating Jill that’s when Kate couldn’t pretend anymore that’s when everything began to unravel. Life, which she thought she had a handle on, suddenly became blurred and disjoined. Again, she no longer knew what she wanted, everything with just one glance, changed her perspective in an instant— her new outlook with her painted face, and new hair-cut, always walking with her shoulders back, telling herself that her front was impregnable, she was never going to feel so failed as she did when she expelled that white milky glob that had been the union between her and her husband. She could never tell him that when she sat on the toilet and felt the first contraction and the fetus pulling away from her womb, she felt relieved. Only later when she lay curled on her bed did the guilt set in, and the remorse for what had been lost years ago was suddenly made apparent with the flushing of the toilet.
And when she looks at Jill at work, and watches her putter around shelving books in her frumpy jeans and mismatched shirts, talking about her new-born baby, and how as a single mom, it’s tough, but she just had to have a baby. The baby makes her complete, makes her have a sense of purpose. All Kate wants to do is pull Jill’s ponytail out, and let her hair fall around her face. She wants to tell Jill to put your shoulders back, and walk with a sense of purpose. Put a little make up on, and let yourself feel your own heat. But, Jill doesn’t have the heat, doesn’t cast a spell on Jake. And Jake is the type that needs that spell. All musicians need that spell, need that fix, need that drink, especially the ones who play the blues. Kate’s own mother had warned her about blues players, “they’ll break your heart, and you won’t even know it until it’s too late.” Kate’s heart was breaking, but what could she to do? She felt his heat, and it was consuming her, but it made her feel so good, so good like when she was listening to Nina Simone belt out “it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me—and I’m feelin good.” Now, as Kate sits out on her front porch looking up at the full moon staring down at her, a whiskey in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. She hasn’t felt this crazy since that blonde haired, blue eyed bass player strutted into her life twenty years ago, and then crept right out of it, with his get-tar slung over his back, and a six pack in his hand. But he had told her, on his way out, “honey, there’s something about you that makes me crazy, something about you that seizes at my heart strings—but it’s better this way,” in his southern drawl. Two hours before his farewell exit, she was straddling him on her living room couch. He confessed to her that he slept with her best-friend while she was out of town. But it didn’t matter because for once, he was hard, and for once, he wasn’t just slapping her ass, he was saying his good-bye in a proper southern way.
Kate downs her whiskey and snuffs out her cigarette. She’s in a mood. The kind of mood that wonders what Jake’s hands would feel like all over her body, despite the fact he fucked almost every new cashier that walked through the door at the bookstore, and dumped them within three weeks. Yet still that didn’t bother her so much. All guys need to fuck, let them fuck whomever they want. But the thing was, she didn’t want to be just a fuck, because she never wanted this feeling of being be-spelled by his presence, by his look, by his boyish charm, and of course his hands, to ever go away. And yet, maybe it really didn’t matter, maybe feeling this out of control wasn’t so bad for awhile. But the ache, the ache for him was killing her, nothing made it go away.
**
If she could right now, again, Jill would get herself pregnant, if it made Jake stay in her life. She needed him, and she didn’t care that he wasn’t as into her as she was into him. Jill suspected he was seeing someone else, she felt it, had a gut feeling. All women know when their man is up to no good, but the thing was he wasn’t her man. He was a guy that she had asked out, and then let him fuck her on the first date, because it had been over a year since she had been with a man. And she needed it, and it had felt so good—and then afterwards they had hung out, he had cooked for her, and then her little girl awoke from her nap, and he was so good with her little girl, so tender and sweet that that’s when—that’s when she knew she had to have him at any cost because it wasn’t for her so much, it was for her baby—her baby needed him.
Then he didn’t call the next day or the next, she knew he was off for two days, and he spent those days with his own little girl. But still he could have at least sent her a text; he could have at least called. At work she couldn’t focus, she kept hoping he would walk through the door, to pop in, to say hello, to tell her how amazing she was. He did call the store, but had spoken to Kate. Jill watched as Kate’s face got a little flushed. How her tone became a little huskier, and how she played with her hair. Jill heard Kate make some off hand joke. Kate was always joking with Jake, and it was as if they had their own language, always teasing each other, making fun of each other. Jill had eased up to the information counter; Kate had her back to her. Jill stood a few feet back to hear just enough of the conversation, to hear the pause in Kate’s voice, and then hear her say, “I told you from the beginning, but you never listen to me,” and her laugh, her cheerful laugh. What the hell did she have to be so happy about? No one is always so peppy, but Kate always seemed to be happy—it was too good to be true—like a front, because Jill believed everyone is broken in some way, some more than others, but everyone is need of repair. Jill’s own psychiatrist had said so. And when she told her shrink that she had slept with Jake, and he hadn’t called her the next day, her own shrink had said she was being used. And that’s when Jill had sent the two page text to Jake that night. She was not going to be used by any man, not this one, not anyone.
**
He suspected long before she told him, but he never wanted to be the addle, never wanted to be the one to come out and ask her if she had fallen in love with someone else. He needed no proof, it was in her body language, the way she started dressing in tighter jeans, more form fitting shirts, and how she liked to put her hair up. And then the late nights, the cigarette smoke. She hadn’t smoked for fifteen years, and now, he could smell it in her hair, and the drinking. She’d come home from work, and sit in the living room drinking, not talking to him, and not letting him in. But, then again, had she ever let him in. That had always been his complaint about her. Fifteen years of marriage, and he still didn’t know her. She held tight to her secrets, and the only way to really know her was to read her journals, and that is when all of his suspicions were correct. At first, he blamed himself. What had he done to cause her to have feelings for another man? Had he not given her everything she wanted? The house, the animals, her having no real income, he never complained. But, then it wasn’t anything he had done, but hadn’t done. That’s what she had said when he confronted her. She had been red eyed mad. How dare he read her personal thoughts? “How dare you,” she spat at him. But then when he broke down in tears asking why—why had she thrown kindling into the flame. Why couldn’t she have walked away from the attraction, the need to be with someone else? And then she had said it, the words that he knew were more than she wanted to reveal—more than she wanted to believe herself. ‘I’ve fallen in love with him.” He did not hate her, at that moment, but felt very sorry for her; it was going to be hard for her to love two men. He knew then, if he didn’t walk away from everything they had created together, it would kill him to watch her love someone else. She was on her own, and that worried him because he had always taken care of Kate, always wanted to take care of her, but he sensed for a long time that she would jeopardize her safety for something else—an else that he could not really fathom had taken hold of her, and again only confirmed his own self-doubt that he really never knew her.
**
Jake knows he drinks too much. On his first date with Jill, he made it clear to her that he drank. He never used the word alcoholic, never admitted he had a problem. He said it more like a statement than a confession. And he wasn’t there to confess anything—not his anger that he still holds about his ex-wife, or that the only thing that helps him sleep at night is drinking and fucking, preferably both at the same time. Jill hadn’t minded, she fucked him, and then let him get drunk, and then the next morning, he fucked her again. It had been fun, but when he got to work, he didn’t feel so hot, didn’t feel as good, because when he caught a glance of Kate walking in, he sensed she was upset with him, even a little disappointed. But he shook the thought out of his head, he was projecting, there was no reason for her to care, why would she care who he slept with, and how much he drank?
When he finally cornered Kate while she was shelving books in the kids section, he asked her “are you upset with me about something?” Her hair was pulled up with a clip, she was wearing those tight fitting black pants that showed off her ass so well—he liked her ass, sometimes he could not stop looking at her ass, but right now he wasn’t looking at her ass, he was looking at the half lipped smile she was giving him, and all he wanted to do was lean over and kiss her, but instead he took some of the books she had in her hands and began shelving with her.
“Should I be, Jake?” she said as she leaned above him putting away a book, Jake catching a whiff of her scent. How he wanted at that moment to grab her and tell her how he really felt about her.
‘No,” he whispered, “I hope you aren’t upset with me,” he said turning to her inches from her face, he could see her fine lines around her eyes, and all he wanted to do was touch her.
Stepping away from him, she smiled, no wisecrack joke, no teasing —nothing, only her smile as she walked away leaving Jake with an ache that he never thought he would feel, never wanted to feel, never wanted to be that sort of man that hurt all over for a woman he can’t really have. That was not what he wanted to feel, at the moment, he wanted to run and hide, and smoke some weed, and forget about it all. Forget about that he had never fallen this hard for a woman, and still he could not pin point what it really was about Kate. Was it because she was married and he could never have her, and yet, all the signs were there, as if she really did want him. The glances, the smirks, the easing up to closely when they both were standing at the information counter. How she lightly touched his back when ever she was near him. No wonder he has been drinking so much lately, she was killing him, awaking feelings in him that he’d rather drink away then let manifest.
***
If she could, Kate would wrap her body around Jake’s, and give him her energy. Take it, she would say, take it and make yourself warm with it. How many times has she had her heart broken? Did it matter that the Irish chef with his piercing blue eyes told her that he couldn’t marry her because she didn’t believe in God, and she wasn’t a Catholic? Did it matter that he left her after a drunken rage telling to her she was the devil, and had cursed her to hell for all the unspeakable acts she made him do to her?
She corrected him. She was not the devil, but a succubus, and as she sucked his dick, and swallowed his seed, she had also sucked out his soul. His response was to curse her, telling her that she was going to burn in hell as he rubbed his crucifix, a permanent fixture around his neck. Like that was going to save him from all of his sins. Yet, she didn’t mind, she wanted to let herself burn and let her heat radiate to all.
And then she met her husband, her savior, the man who was supposed to make it all feel better. And he did for awhile, until the ache returned, an ache that she has no real control over, it takes hold of her, makes her think things she no longer wanted to think about, she believes it has a mind of it own taking over her, to find a way to burn. The ache that wakes her up in the middle of the night, and all she can think about is running—running somewhere, running away from the ache because she knows the only one who can make it all go away is a man that she can’t ever have unless she is willing to step away from her comfort zone, to step away from the familiar, and venture to something that she never thought she would feel again. Never at all did she think the ache would sneak back up on her. Never did she think she could let go of her husband, and all that went along with having a husband. And then he read her journal, and she confessed everything to him, something she thought she never would do, hurt him so, see him cry, betray him.
Now, sitting out on her back porch, she hears the coyotes howling over Nina Simone whispering her haunting tune,” I put a spell on you.” She thinks all life is indeed tragic, but still there is a romance about it, which is beautiful—to feed one’s own heat, to let go, and to nurture the flame, because regardless of what her Irish Chef thought about her being the devil, and her husband being her savior, Kate believes that to truly love it has to be body and soul with a passion that consumes. She had not calculated on falling in love. Was that the reason for the ache, the feeling of love? Did love hurt so much, and then feel so good at the same time? “Passion,” her mother, had said to her, “is not always good, makes you unable to think about anything else, makes you hurt.” But, Kate thinks she can control it, take it in slowly, in small doses, and then she can proportion her feelings. It doesn’t have to be such a whirlwind, but since she touched him, briefly, she can’t think of anything else. She needed,- for the hurt-, she needed to kiss him, and if after she felt more of the ache, well then, she would have to live with it. It will be a part of her, impregnating her, a constant reminder of him, a clamoring plea for resolution, never dampening, only becoming more acute in memory.
***
Last night, as they were all leaving the bookstore together, Jill saw Jake talking to Kate, he lightly touching her hand, both laughing at something shared between them. And as Jill watched from a distance, in her car, letting it warm up for a second, she thought if he really wanted her, he would not hesitate to come over. He would call her to soothe her broken feelings. He would kiss her tenderly and tell her it was alright. And that’s another thing, he doesn’t really lavish her with tender kisses even while they are having sex. A quick kiss, and then nothing. And now as she watches the interaction between Jake and Kate in the empty parking lot with the flood lights bearing down on them as they each get into their cars, laughing and smiling, she thinks here in the open space covered only by the bright lights, they have made love to each other without even touching each other—it was in the shared look, the pause before each got into their cars. It was in the air between the molecules of each other’s moist breath causing them at the same time to inhale and then exhale, slowly. And then the quick little wave each gave the other as they drove off in separate direction, and Jake not even looking over at Jill.
***
Sometimes he wonders if he was born with the void in his heart or if it manifested after his divorce. He knows he drinks to fill the void, and seeks out women who he knows will want him, but he does not necessarily want them. Sure, if they are pretty enough, rightly proportioned, he has no problem going through the motions, but the release is always temporary. He drinks and fucks to try and still his mind. The only constant in his life is the fact that he needs to drink. Fucking, well fucking is o.k. but if he had a choice, to fuck or to drink he would chose the latter. It is less work for him, plus with fucking, especially if he likes the person he is fucking, well then he starts to feel, and with the drinking that’s the beauty of getting drunk for him, he feels nothing. That’s why Jill and the rest of them all have the same complaint about him, he’s not there, he is off where the liquor will take him, and recently it has been taking him to some bad places, making him revisit some stuff he did in his past that he is not too proud of committing. But, he let Kate read his stuff, let her see that side of him, the drunk stupid stuff, and the things he did when he was in that state of oblivion. She had laughed and said she pictured him with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth; his fedora hat pushed back, some jazz playing in the background as he wildly typed out his stories on his 1942 black typewriter that was a gift from him ex-wife. They had both laughed. And that’s what he likes about her, she makes him laugh, makes for the few hours that he works with her bearable. And yet, he knows she is safe. She’s married, and if she did decide to step out, and have something with him, well he was still safe, he did not have to play the romantic hero with her, he could fuck her, and then that would be the end of it, she would go back to her husband, all was safe.
But the gnawing feeling at the vestibule of his brain was saying something differently. There was no way he could just fuck her—he could not step away, and that is what the scary part is for him. It is so easy for him to step away. He did with his ex-wife when she asked for a divorce, he didn’t even argue with her. He gave in to her demands. But then after she moved back to Alaska, and he had lost both her and his daughter. That’s when he got a little crazy. He doesn’t want to tell Kate about that time, when he sat in his apartment with $400.00 dollars to his name and all he wanted was to call some girl to come over and give him a blow-job, and then he could fuck her, hoping that all his drunken pain could go away. But, he had stopped himself from calling because he knew that he needed to still pay child support, and that was all the money he had. His daughter will love him no matter what secrets he holds. She is a piece of him, and no matter his anger, his regrets towards his ex-wife, and his stupid juvenile behavior towards the way he treated woman in his past, nothing else matters when she places her small hands on his face and with such assurance-she announces for all to hear—“Daddy I love you.” Nothing else matters, but then he met Kate.

.