We are at the mall. . I keep telling Hale that I can’t stop thinking about her. I
keep telling Hale that she is smart and intelligent and she is everything I
have ever wanted in a human being.
We are next to the avocado blue-jello mold fountain.
"You said she was suppose to meet you here?"
I nod. I tell Hale yes.
"She was hanging out with her speech friend tonight but she said she would meet me at the fountain at 6:30."
Hale looks at his watch even though he isn't wearing a watch.
"Looks like she's late."
"You said she was suppose to meet you here?"
I nod. I tell Hale yes.
"She was hanging out with her speech friend tonight but she said she would meet me at the fountain at 6:30."
Hale looks at his watch even though he isn't wearing a watch.
"Looks like she's late."
We walk up to the payphone.
I alight the receiver to the phone punching in the numerical squares constituting Dawn’s digits. She picks up after the second ring. I have not seen her since subway and Patrick almost ten days ago. It has been three weeks since somehow we kissed. I haven't spoken with her since the night I ran home from Tina's in my underwear.
School starts in less than a week.
One of Dawn's twin brother's picks up the phone. I try to be witty. When I ask if his sister is home or if she is in Heaven he doesn't respond. When I ask if I can speak with Dawn he yells out her name.
Tentatively we made plans for this week. Tentatively she said she would meet me here after hanging out with Quinn.
Her voice seems tired. She doesn't seem enthused.
"I thought we were meeting tonight. I've been waiting for you."
I try to act solicitous. I try to be concerned. Dawn doesn't apologize for forgetting. She said she was taking a nap.
"I'm just right over at the mall It's only five minutes away. I really want to see you. It's been too long."
There is a pause.
"Okay Dave. I'll be over in about fifteen minutes."
I hang up the phone and smile.
***
Dawn arrives. She is wearing a a jerga. We hug only it is awkward. When I tell her that I have missed her she looks at me as if to say why. I want to pull her aside. Somehow I thought we were dating. Somehow I thought when we kissed on my front porch it meant something.
She asks me if I am here by myself. I tell her I am here with Hale but he wandered off probably to go play video games. Dawn says that one of her brothers is here but he's probably in the music store.
"I'm looking for to meeting him. It will be an honor to meet another member of your family."
Dawn just sort of looks back and me and offers a listless shrug.
We do a loop. The mall is having some sort of raffle
to give away diminutive racing yachts.
The boats are stationed in the jello-mold water fountains. The last time we were in the mall we were intermittently
holding hands. The last time we were in the mall our hips seem to inadvertently
brush into the other every third and a half step.
I didn’t cheat on Dawn. I think to myself. I was
only seminally naked with a trashy blond-haired who wreathed the lower
hemisphere of her body around my diploma- scrolled stiff torso.
I didn’t cheat on Dawn
Dawn asks me so, did your friend Patrick get
psychiatric help yet or is he still intellectually torchering the female race
as we know it. I pretend not to hear
her. We walk into the neon den of JR music.
“So, you listening to any cool bands these days?’
Dawn says that she’s still listening to a lot of Concrete Blonde and Velvet Femmes and the Feelies. She tells me that she still
blasts the Jesus Christ Superstar original Broadway recording every time she
showers.
When she says the word shower I think of Tina in her
underwear all wet. Her hair slicked back, sleeked down the back of her neck.
When I ask Dawn about the Freddie Mercury CD she tells me that she let a friend
borrow it. Somehow I know the friend is her purported mentor whose name starts
with a cue.
“Oh, and I’m listening to a lot of skate board
music.”
“Skateboard music?”
“Yeah, a lot of these bands are from Seattle.
Mudhoney and Temple of the Dog and Mother Love Bone and Pearl Jam. A lot of
people define their music as Grunge but I call it Skate board music because
that’s what it sounds like—thrashing around in an empty concrete pool with a
skateboard and then screaming.”
I want to ask Dawn about the status of our
relationship. I want to ask her if she thinks we are really a bona fide couple
or is she is just some sort of senior buddy.
Dawn looks down and blushes.
"Actually I'm dehydrated. We went to Detweiller park and I got drunk last night."
"Drunk?" I say, as if someone has taken a dump in the Keatsian urn where the image of my unvarnished bride of my dream girl awaits."
"Yeah, I normally don't drink but Quinn was able to procure a bottle of Vodka and we kept doing shots and mixing it with Cranberry juice. Soon we were falling down."
Dawn tells me that she threw up after six shots and she never throws up.
She walks ahead in the music store looking for her brother.
I want implode every time she says the word Quinn.
"He's not here. He must be at the music store upstairs."
***
***
I
try to refrain from entering the bookstore where Patrick stole the Playboy and
Montgomery Wards where he jacked a pair of sunglasses.
“Hey, I was wondering, since summer is dwindling and
everything and school is coming up maybe next week we can pick up Betsy and
take her out to Chuck E. Cheese or something.”
“Betsy?”
“Yeah, lil’ Betsy, your friend Dawn’s sister. She’s
adorable. I really miss hanging out with her. I was thinking that maybe next
week before school gets underway we could take her out. Just the three of us.
Kind of a farewell to summer. What do you say?”
Dawn looks at me and says the word uh.
“It’s okay, I know her sister doesn’t like me. You could offer to babysit Betsy cause I know
you used to back in the day. It’ll be
fun.”
Dawn is still looking at me like she is constipated.
I ask her what’s wrong. She tells me oh you haven’t heard.
“The Dawns and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms.”
I say what, She says Betsy’s older sister Dawn and
her other friend Dawn, the three Dawn's, the alternative 80's girl troika to Heathers intellectually pontificating their glory throughout the hallowed halls of Richwoods high school are no more."
“Yeah, we’re not talking.”
“Ever?” I inquire.
“Yeah, I don’t think either of them want to talk
with me ever again.”
I try to be solicitous. I try to be comforting. I
ask her if she is oaky. I ask her is she wants to talk about it. Dawn sounds almost like a
jean-jacket jelly shoes denim girl when she says both Dawns are royally
bitches.
I think about Patrick’s RSUB but refrain from
stating or elucidating the acronym.
“What happen?”
“We were all at Lums on Knoxville the other night which
is like our late-night hangouts and I ask Dawn if its okay if I invite Quinn,
and she says it all good so Quinn and I show up and Quinn is a Republican.”
“Quinn’s a Republican?” I say, almost in shock,
knowing Dawn plans on casting her vote for Clinton.
“I mean, he’s a really cool Republican.”
Dawn states that both Quinn and herself harbor
different political beliefs but that they both respect each others opinion and
individual perspective. I nod.
I am beginning to wonder if Quinn has testicles.
“Anyway we start talking about current invents and
about Abortion and Dawn says that she feels her existence is more than some
random incubator and Quinn just explodes and even though IO don’t agree what
Quinn is conveying I admire his perspicacity.”
“Yes,” I tell Dawn, “Always admire perspicacity. Perspicacity is important.”
“Yes,” I tell Dawn, “Always admire perspicacity. Perspicacity is important.”
“And Dawn just explodes and she ends up throwing one
of those taupe colored bowls that the severs always bring out for the
individual packets of cream that the severs bring out when they bring out the
carafes of coffee and then when she grabbed Dawn’s hand and was like, ‘Come on,
we are out of here. Fuck this bigot’ and we haven’t talked since.”
I feel like
asking dawn who she thinks is more important, her friendship with the Dawns is
more significant than her friendship with Quinn.
“ I get into tiffs all the time with my guy-friends
only we rectify them in a couple of days.”
“Who Hale? “
Dawn adds that Hale is one of the coolest human
beings she has ever met.
“No, Hale and I never fight. But like with Pat and
Tim. And sometimes Best. We’re at each others throats all the time.”
“You rectify things with Patrick?”
“Yes. No. I mean, we may have different views of
things but there’s a stratosphere of friendship and dare I say it love that
somehow endures.”
I tell Dawn he’s my brother.
Dawn says hell no. She tells me that she loves Betsy
too but that her sister is a bitch.
“Hey,” I say, trying to assuage her anger.
“Maybe you can think about it. You know. Just call Dawn
up and say that the you want to hang our with her third-grade sister and maybe
dawn sill see that you are sincere and everything will work out.”
“I never want to see that bitch again.”
Dawn says referring to her best friend.
I nod. We walk towards the music store. Dawn points at her brother.
"If you want to meet my brother he is right over there."
"If you want to meet my brother he is right over there."
***
Dawn's brother has blonde hair the same color of Dawn that is kind of a mullet. He is flipping through a bunch of newly released metal CD.s
"That's him," Dawn says, alluding to him as the Little Terror. I tell him I'm gonna go inside and mess with him.
Dawn remains outside the store as I walk in. It seems like she is embarrassed to be seen with me.
I wonder why she has not answered my calls in the last week since we kissed.
I wonder if she knows about Tina showing me her cleavage.
I wonder if she knows that I got mad at Tina for saying the word Nigger.
When I find her brother he is holding up the latest Megadeath CD. I try to make small talk with him. I ask him what he is looking for. He ignores me.
When I find her brother he is holding up the latest Megadeath CD. I try to make small talk with him. I ask him what he is looking for. He ignores me.
He has no clue who I am. He is one of the purported twins
"Yeah, Dawn, your older sister. She's a really beautiful person."
There is a pause.
"Dude, are you that guy who got her drunk last night?"
He is thinking I am Quinn. I tell him no. I tell him my name is David and we met doing Community theater.
He still looks at me as if he has no clue.
"Wait, yer that dude who is always calling asking if his little mermaid or angel or whatever is there."
I tell him guilty.
"That's like really weird."
I nod. I look out the window. Dawn is nowhere to be seen.
I tell Dawn's brother that it is really nice meeting him.
I tell him again that Megadeath is a really cool band.
***
"By
the way,my brother thinks you are like really weird." Dawn Michelle will
tell me on a phone call a week later The way you just came up to him when
he was in the music store. The way you asked for an angel when he answered the
phone. Normal people don't do that. He thinks you are really weird."
***
We
leave the music store. Dawn asks me in a rather rhetoric fashion why I feel the
need to be effusive. When we arrive back to the fountains Hale is waiting. Dawn
seems more intent on talking with David Hale. Hale is saying that it is good to
see her again.
Somehow the topic on how much of a misogynists Patrick is
has come up and somehow the two of them are laughing. Dawn comments
aloud what is up with all these boats. I say I thought they used to dock only
on land. Hale starts re-enacting scenes from Gilligan's Island where
Skipper is hitting his hat over Gilligan's head while addressing him as little
buddy.
Dawn Michelle is in stitches.
Hale
looks at the boats, tilts his head, and ponders aloud what it would be like to
have sex on one of them before making little squeaky hi-pitched
e-he-e-heee-e-heee sounds
Dawn
is laughing hysterically.
“David
Hale is relaying more embarrassing stories about Patrick which is apparently
cracking Dawn up to no end.
When
I give her a little shoulder massage Dawn closes her eyes and looks up
and tells me that feels nice before eliciting a caveat about excessive PDA .
The
mall is closing. Dawn says that she is going to meet her brother at the car. I
tell her it was really good seeing her again.
She
smiles back at me without saying a word.
I
don’t know where thinks have gone wrong with Dawn
We
don’t even hug when we say goodbye.
***
After Dawn
leaves Hale and I adjourn to Aladdin's where we empty the remainder of our
spare change into a quick game of Street Fighter two.
Again
Hale just won’t shut up about how cool Dawn is.
“See,
she is a really nice lady. I really enjoy our intellectual discourses.”
“Hell
Dave, to tell you the truth,. If things to work out with Dawn I wouldn’t mind
asking her out. I feel that we have a lot of things in common.”
I
tell him good. I am on fire. I am pecking the keyboard as if waiting
for something to hatch. Blood is oozing off of Hale’s avatar. Hale
says calm down my friend.
I
jump kick. I perform a a half-twirl. Flecks of animated blood is spurted in
every direction.
The
machine turns off.
The
manager gives us a scowl. The arcade is closing.
***
As
we depart I can't stop looking at the random boat it the fountain. The
boat that is going nowhere. The boat that Dawn fell down laughing at as
soon as Hale made a witticism. It looks like a cast away in the avocado
green jello fountain amidst stale confetti of loose change.
I
have just said goodbye to the woman I thought was my girlfriend without giving
her a hug.
School
begins in less than a week.
I
wonder where I went wrong.
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