Chapter 10
With my hands unrestrained I trace the names scratched in the black leather upholstery by former passenger’s fingernails.
The cop opens the door for me to get out.
He rolls down his window, I can’t see it, but I can hear it. My back to him, I hear him say, “Hey, kid—ub-uh— Mr. Defoe. You, uh. You sure you’re okay?”
VGV was empty save a few patrons. The light projected differently. Life presented itself differently.
I don’t know why but I was expecting mom and dad to be sitting in the café with mugs of coffee ready to explain how by chance they weren’t in the house when it self-immolated.
But they weren’t.
They were gone.
They are gone.
Jesus. They are gone. Gone, gone.
The sudden death of a loved one is to be force-fed enlightenment. The muscles in my face have atrophied. Or I’ve short-circuited my emotional motherboard. I truly want to fake a sunny disposition but it’s like pressing a dead doorbell.
I felt safer with Everhet. I was wondering recently how to explain how much his friendship means to me. The best way I can describe it: Everhet is the kind of guy, you would go over to his house and watch him play video games. You’d just sit and be quiet together. If someone wanted to talk they could talk. If not, all the better. Just hanging with a friend.
Everhet is leaning against the low boy with arms folded.
Rocks forward, then thrust his hips to stand up straight without unfolding his arms.
Eyebrows dipped and kinked like furry caterpillars, he asks, “What’s wrong?”
I feel the back of my tongue press against my teeth. Almost gagging from the sheer absurdity, I say, “My house blew up last night.”
Everhet pulls a mug to his lips, blows off some steam, then says, “Holy shit.” lifts it back to his mouth and takes a sip, “I guess you got lucky then?”
Surreal does not describe it.
The absurdity became reality like a dry swallow that would never go away.
“Well. My parents’ house.” I say, “It was my parents’ house.”
“Oh. Your roommates are your parents?” Everhet says.
My voice is too soft to audibly project the word. I just kept mouthing, “Were…were…were…were.”
My vocal chords are atrophying. Tears flood uncontrollably inside and outside my nose (due to my hyper functional lacrimal gland). I’m fully discharging right now. I wish I had a hanky.
“Ope- ope- ope- come on c’mere.” Everhet picks my bicep up and walks me to the walk-in fridge and I sit on tomorrow’s six-gallon jug of cold brew.
If an inner compass resides in my soul it is surely spinning out of control. Spiritually, I’ve lost my true North.
The chill in my body made the fridge seem warm.
“Wait here.” Everhet says. And closes the fridge.
My grandma told me the trees live differently because they live in “long time”. A year is a century for some. And right now I feel immobile and stiff as a tree. Sometimes when things are too good, or too awful we humans can live in long time, that’s what heaven and hell are; they feel like an eternity.
### ### ###
How much time passed in the fridge I do not know. I was in there for what felt like days. As if rolling the rock away from the tomb, Everhet opens the door to the fridge with an empty café behind him. The sign on the entrance door was flipped to CLOSED.
Everhet says I can stay with him.
He leads me to his car. Then to a parking lot. Then he unlocks the door to his place.
His one bedroom apartment felt like a mansion, in a bad way.
The weight of the amount of things he owned, even in this small apartment, oppressed my body on a physical level. I went from riches to rags and I’m getting some sort of emotional bends jumping up to riches again so suddenly. I felt nitrogen bubbles in my bloodstream and muscle tissue.
I needed to sleep. Anywhere that had a roof is what I was willing to take. And the roof was just if I got lucky; not required.
All the world’s a bed.
James Jacob Hatfield is a displaced engineer, a painter, and many other contradictions. His work has appeared in X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Barely South Review, Chaleur Magazine, Havik, and others. His ekphrasis poem “torrents of lahar, No. 36” was anthologized by the North Carolina Museum of Art. He is a Sterling Fellow and a Weymouth Fellow. He is the creator and curator of the Gemini Sessions Substack. He lives in Durham, NC.
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