10P - I was climbing the walls, which is no mean feat with the wallpaper I've got.
It should have been bedtime, but I was nowhere near sleep. I'd spent all day studying my experiments without making any useful discoveries, except for the fact that Cheez Toes really do dissolve in milk, just like the ad says. I was ashamed, lazy, and bloated. When I could take no more, I let my fingers do the walking over to Steve's.
The phone rang twice before he picked up.
"Hey, there," was my opener.
"Bart."
"Let's hang, Stevey-poo."
"You caught me at a bad time, Bart."
I sighed, distraught. I was afraid this would happen. "Look Steve I'm sorry I haven't been hanging out lately but I've been working real hard and I haven't even been in town long and things've been hard with the little woman and I've really gotta get out Steve I'm going stir crazy."
"Stir crazy?"
"I've been back in town two weeks and I haven't left my apartment for anything but a bodega run. I've done nothing but work on this damn machine (well, I did sleep for a couple hours yesterday but it was fitful. Fitful!)"
Steve let the line be quiet. I was afraid I was going to have to go into another round of apologies and run-ons before he'd give me something better to do. Finally, he did speak, but not with what I expected.
"You want to road trip for maybe 15 hours?"
Relief. Steve didn't hate me. Unless he wanted to kill me on the highway. But his driving had improved over the years. I'd take the chance.
"Sounds like a good break," I said, "You wanna pick me up?"
"Can't. Meet me at the Depot."
"What about the Mustango?"
Steve had the greatest car in the world, a miniconvertible.
"I'll tell you at the Depot."
12A - "I'm sorry about you and JJ," I said, putting down the article in Luhv & Stufs, "but what's up with the car?"
Scenery sped by us at an astounding rate. I don't think our curly-haired bus-driver had ever heard the words speed and limit said together.
Steve picked up Luhv & Stufs and put it in his overflowing shoulderbag. "Impounded after too much fun down South."
"So we're heading after it?"
Steve took out another magazine, one that didn't look self-published. This one was called Fiction and Crap. "Page hundred and fourteen," he said.
I flipped pages through the mag. I'd never heard of it before, but that didn't stop it from being high-profile. Sure enough, on the page in question, under Steve's moniker, was a story.
"Destination DC?" I asked.
"It's fiction," he shrugged.
I read.
For the next twenty minutes, Steve, from the aisle, looked out my window seat while I looked into his heart and soul through the words he'd published in this magazine -- when?
"This is dated for next month," I told Steve, who probably already knew that.
"This issue of FaC will be on the stands in nine days," Steve said proudly, "That's an advance copy."
"And this one's a real magazine?"
"Well, it's kinda underground," Steve acquiesced, "But still, it's a real magazine."
"And did all this really happen?" I gestured at the magazine.
"Well, if you read between the lines..."
"So a gang of amazon women invaded your house, took you to the nation's capital to destroy the spirit of a competitive two party system, only to be thwarted by their own selfish idiosyncrisies?"
Steve grumbled a response. "Baltimore. Got arrested in some trumped-up gang bombing business. But the real story' about a love affair gone dreadfully wrong, and how the protagonists realize it and maturely decide to move on."
"Oh," I said, "I'm impressed."
And I was. Steve, after years of struggling and working, was still writing, and better than ever. His accomplishments were vast. Sure, back when I first met him, he was interested in journalism and telling the truth, and now he was into fiction and stretching it beyond belief, but he still had a muse. And his muse was one that he was following quite effectively. I was impressed with him, and suddenly quite disturbed with me.
What had I done for me lately? After a few months spent with my sweetie, I was so out of touch with my research that every working day was a struggle to make sense of my previously stellar thoughts. And the girl who I'd given it all up for? She was far-off in Rome, Alaska, on some top-secret thing she refused to tell me about.
"I'll be faithful," she promised with a wink as she left, and I'd done the same.
I was left in the City without her, without my work, and, until tonight, without my friends. If I hadn't called Steve, I'd probably have unproductively tinkered with my work for a few hours more before swilling cola until bedtime. It had been that kind of a slothful month.
I begrudgingly shuffled the magazine in front of me. "And all this writing started after you and JJ broke up?"
Steve and JJ had been an item for well over a year.
He nodded. "It bothered me for a couple of days, but thebreak-in helped put it all in perspective. Life's too short. I've been writing ever since."
I'd been with my girlfriend Circe a lot longer than Steve'd been with JJ. We'd double dated a couple of times, back when Circe wasn't off on assignment so much. It was nice having a good friend with a long time girlfriend. Of course, it would be nice if I could see my long time girlfriend, every now and then. I hadn't heard from her since she left.
I missed her. But I missed her less on this trip down south. I'd been lost, but now, with Steve, I sensed I could begin to find myself. Steve, who had so recently found himself.
"You seem so content," I ventured to Steve, "How do you do that?"
"I think of life as one big adventure after another," Steve replied.
"Oh," I said.
Bozo.
1AM - "Backwater Depot Coffee House," Steve read the sign above the establishment, "Original name."
The bus pulled away, allegedly to return in twenty minutes with fuel and perhaps a slightly quieter driver. One could hope. The snow freckled the concrete between us, as Steve turned to me and I to he.
"Shall we?" asked Steve.
"Surely."
I held the door for him, and closed it behind me, to keep weather out.
The scene inside wasn't overly dismal, as Diner's go. It was late, so it was understandable that no one was in the place, other than the typical assorted lowlifes who hang out in bus stations late at night. If I were a crueler man, I would say that bums and scum were assorted about the small space. But I'm not, so I won't. The populace was old, though, smelly, and exclusively women.
"Why would anyone name their town Backwater?" Steve muttered my way.
I shrugged, and moved toward the many available stools.
"Population 3,200, I'm guessing," Steve added.
"It's an adventure," I said, "Isn't it?"
"Well, that driver better come back; I want my car."
I nodded, and hunched over the counter, checked out what was behind it.
Grease. Vats. Metal. Coffee. Diner stuff. I didn't see much to describe. It was a diner. I wish I had the keen eye for detail that a writer like Steve must have. I turned to my buddy, to try to get into his head through his way with words.
"What do you see, Stevey, when you look around here?"
Steve, back to the counter, replied. "A really cute waitress bending over to pick up some dishes."
I wheeled my stool around. Two tables away, a waitron -- the only one in the place -- was desperately trying to collect the debris before her. We both had an excellent view of her shapely bottom. We both took full advantage of it, along with the full scum male contingent of the restaurant. Well, that was us.
She turned to face us, hands full of dishes. The black outfit she wore, an impressive denim and thermal combination, was all impressively tight, presumably planned to augment her figure and tips. Her longish black hair was dyed, tied in a pony tail, with a small black scrunchy-thing I hadn't noticed from behind. She was tall, beautiful in a familiar sort of way -- and very different from the type I usually go for. I usually go for Circe.
Her grey eyes did more than glance over me, as mine did her.
She took her crunched dishes past us to the sink, or the garbage, or something else inimitably out of sight.
When she was gone, I breathed out.
"Wow," I mouthed, as I imagine every other living het male would. I turned back to Steve. He was jotting something down on his omnipresent pad.
"What?" I said, nudging him.
"Just got an inspiration."
"You just got an erection."
"Six of one, Bartleby," Steve finished a paragraph and looked up to me. "Why you figure this place is so crowded?"
"Where else you gonna hang out on a Monday night in Backwater Delaware?" I quipped, "Besides, they're all women."
Steve nodded as the raven-haired beauty approached us. She checked us out, both clearly strangers in town, very carefully.
"What can I get you guys?" she asked. The girl was about our age, give or take a week. Her lips were colored a strange light purple. Her skin was pale, and just about perfect. I could imagine her wearing fetish leather in a small lonely room, listening to Poi Division or Detente Mob, one of the old Black Asian groups. I could also imagine her imagining me somewhere. I swear that the lovely waitress was checking me out.
"...berry rhubarb pie," Steve finished, "Whatta you want, Bart?"
I exited reverie and ordered "A hot cocoa, please."
She nodded, not taking a word down, and removed herself to the back.
"Pretty hot," Steve said, "I think she wants me."
Somewhere, a bum burped.
"That she was looking only at me doesn't dissuade your belief?" I asked.
"Get real, Isreal," he said to me, "I'm ready for some adventure, and your inane ramblings will get you nowhere. Clearly, she was just playing hard to get."
Maybe he was right. What do I know about the makings of such things? I'd been out of circulation so long, living only for the heart of Circe, that I wouldn't know a come-on approach if it jumped into my lap, wearing nothing but a banner blaring: "Come-on Approach Queen of the Decade!" If Steve said she wanted him, with his observant eye and his quick wit, probably he was dead on.
Pity, too, because this woman of Steve's adventure was one I would have loved to have known better.
"Excuse me," the waitress said, leaning across the counter, almost on top of me, "But don't I know you?"
"Probably," Steve said and winked, before realizing she was facing me.
I smiled winsomely. I had no idea how to handle the situation.
"Scientist's convention?" I suggested.
She shook her head and pondered. "You ever in Rhode Island?"
It was my turn to shake my head. Steve said, "I've passed through Rhode Island!"
I grumbled, "I live in the City."
Her eyes widened. "The City?" She said. "I went to high school there."
"Me, too." Steve offered brightly. She noticed not at all.
I looked at her carefully, searching for more than that itching familiarity. Believe me, I would have liked to have remembered her. I would have loved to have fond reminiscences of her and seaside walks, silhouettes hand in hand, or maybe taking an advanced social studies/math course.
I looked more carefully. "Angie? From Metaphysical Math?"
Her mouth widened into a huge O, and she gave me a quick hug, spilling over the sugar, the salt shaker, and a box of catsup.
"Bart!" She said, while Steve looked on hopelessly. He had his pad open before him, but no words were going onto the page. Evidently, my drama was better than anything he could concoct.
Our hug lasted a while. I enjoyed it, giving some extra squeeze to her back. It'd been a while since I'd had anyone to hold.
She disengaged. "Bart, it's been so long."
"Steve," I said, and he evicted the amazement from his face. "You remember Angie? She was a year under us, took some advanced classes --"
Steve grinned. "Worked in the library, right?"
She nodded, "I'm Angela, these days."
"I'm Steve," he said, arms held up near his sides.
"Hi," she said, and turned to me, "So what's up with you? I never saw you after you graduated."
"I was around."
"I wasn't. I left Minuit High after my junior year."
"What did you do?"
"Went to this prep school, Warner's."
"It's good to see you, Angie."
"Angela. Let me get your food, then we'll have time to talk."
She walked back to the kitchen, and my eyes followed. Steve's eyes followed mine.
"Well," he said, when she was out of sight, "It'll be no time before I bed her."
I gave him such a look.
1.20AM - "Bye," I said, with a limp wave.
Angela smiled so sweetly as the door closed behind me. She was left alone among the old homeless crones in the coffee house, and I was left alone with Steve.
"She wants me," he said.
"She wants me," I replied.
We walked like this round back of the coffee house.
"I gotta pee," Steve explained, as we hung out near the frosty garbage heap.
"Why couldn't you go in the diner?"
"And let her know I had bodily functions? A sign on the door said Out of Order."
"Coulda gone in the ladies room."
"Afraid of being molested."
We walked quietly back to the bus.
"Small world," I said, finally.
"Cute girl," Steve responded, "For a freshman."
She wasn't a freshman anymore, of course, though she was still fresh. I was beginning to see some strange kind of adventure developing for me.
"I wonder if she still gives good Chin."
I stopped short. "That was Angie?" I asked.
"Think so," Steve replied, "Lotta talk about her, senior year."
Our senior year. I remembered hearing tales, legends, really, of the promiscuous Chin, with her unheard of sexual promiscuities and prolificities. I'd already been ensconced in Circe, and was never one for gossip, so I never realized who the Chin was.
"You get with her, back in the days?" I asked.
"Come on. If she'd had me then, why would she want me now? No, I never got good Chin. I hear it was good, though."
Locker room talk in the snow of Backwater, Delaware.
I try not to believe talk about people unless I've got proof. I liked Angie in high school, and I liked Angela now. Whatever rumors there might have been about her wonton ways were irrelevant to me.
I liked her, a lot. I wanted to get to know her better. And I was going to. We reached the waiting steaming bus.
"Steve," I said, as we reached the bus door, "I think there might be a change of plans."
"Meaning?"
The doors burst open.
"All filled up!" The driver bellowed, "Try the next one."
"What do you mean?" Steve said, "You let us off for a 20 minute layover."
"Picked up some conventioneers!" Bellowed the busboy.
I checked the front sign. "Whores and Sluts Convention?" I read. "Express to Baltimore. No seats left."
"Honey, there's one over here!" Someone said from way back.
The busman capitulated.
Steve and I looked at one another.
"I have to go down to get the car," Steve said, a wicked gleam in his eye.
"You just want to take part in the sluts and whores," I grumbled. "I do, it's true, that too," Steve admitted, "It's an adventure, sure, but I have to head down. Go back into the Diner. I should be back Backwater way in the morning. I'll meet you there."
I nodded seriously. "Yeah, sure. It'll be an adventure, right?"
"Sure!" Steve said with a smile, and a pat on the cheek. "Buck up, boy. I'll be back, Bart."
"Stop it."
"All aboard that's going aboard!" Harrangued the bus fellow.
Steve jumped up the steps. "Ladies!" he called ahead, "Here I come."
The door swished behind him, and the bus careened off.
I walked back to the diner, entered it, and saw that it was now empty. Angela was wiping down a table, again bending over provocatively. She looked up at my entrance.
"I'm back," I said.
She grinned. "I thought you might be."
1.45 AM - I burst out laughing, and the walls echoed my jolity. "All those hags in here are the hookers going to Baltimore?"
"Forty year union reunion," Angela chuckled, wiping down a table, "Bea told me."
"Bea?"
"She's a regular around here. Just got on the bus with your friend."
Angela and I had been getting along famously. Joking and horsing around like old times that we'd never had together. This was great. This was friendly. This was an adventure. I wondered why I hadn't gotten along so well with her in school. Angie was always cute, but Angela was astounding! If I weren't virtually married...
"You know, I remember you around, hanging with us guys, but I don't remember any one-on-one time with you."
"Yeah, I know," Angie said, "I always wondered about that. I figured you didn't like me."
"No," I understated, "You were cool, but --"
"It was the rumors about me, right?"
"What rumors." I put my eyes down.
"That I slept around."
Hello! I gulped from my drink.
"Didn't know about any such lies," I offered, putting the empty glass down and the edges of my lips up.
"They were true. I slept around a lot at Minuit."
Hello again!
"I missed that entirely." I admitted.
"Yeah, you were with that girl, right? Hecate. Tabitha. Jeannie."
"Circe."
"Right. Whatever happened to her?"
"She's in Ithaca, I think."
She laughed. "High school's a long way off, isn't it?"
"So what've you been up to? Promiscuity aside."
Actually, that was a big part of her story.
I had, in fact, heard tales of Angie the Chin. "She gives good Chin." "Ooh, ask about her chin-ups." "Take her to the back of the bus, and you reach Chin heaven."
A lot of words about one poor girl. I was young. I didn't know what to do. I was never one to listen to gossip, other than to record every last word of it. But I would never act on it. Also, I was taken.
Turns out that most of the gossip about her had gotten to be too much. Her family, in shame and degradation, had transferered Angie to an expensive magnet school.
"A magnet school?" I asked.
"Emphasis on sciences. Physical, particularly."
"I would've liked it there."
"I remember you being more of a computer geek."
"Jack of all geeks," I said.
For her senior year, she went to this special school, and tried college for a while, before she ended up in the backwater coastal town of Backwater.
"And what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"
'Trying out being a nice girl like me."
I nodded, as if I understood.
"So, when does your friend think he'll be able to pick you up?"
"He said ten hours. That puts it around eleven in the AM, right?"
Angela looked at me. "Bart, that was the least bus of the night."
"Mm-hm.
"There's no more business. Even the cook left with that last bus. I have to clean up, then shut down. The Coffee house'll be locked up by 2.30."
Oh. "Well, no biggie. It's not so cold out. It'll be fun walking around in the snow."
"For seven hours?" She tapped my skull. "And it is cold out. It's beyond freezing."
"Oh."
"Well, look, I'm alone here. If you help me clean up, I'll let you crash at my place.
"You don't have to.'
"Yes I do. Semper Fi, or something."
"You didn't graduate from my school."
"Look, you want the place to stay or not?"
"Talked me into it."
3AM -We walked and talked back to her place. It wasn't too far a walk, and it really felt like no time at all. It had been so long since I met someone new. It had been so long since a beautiful girl made my heart jump. It had been so long since I'd had an adventure.
"What've you been up to these last few years?" she asked.
I explained.
"A lot of research programs at different schools in the City. I'm working independently on a theoretically impossible charisma device."
"What would it do?" she asked, kicking some snow ahead of us.
"Theoretically, it would increase someone's charisma by a multiple of twenty. This would make someone twenty times as popular as he-she could have been before."
Angela looked to her side. "Why would you need a device like that?" She asked, steely blue eyes going straight into me.
A flake dropped on my nose. I thought I saw her apartment just ahead of us. "It... would be good for civilization?"
"Oh." She shrugged, "I haven't done much science since school."
"It's a trip."
"I'll bet."
3.10AM - She unlocked her door, threw her mittens on a big purple chair, and shrugged off her long gray tweed. Freed from her cumbersome overgarments, Angela was a blurry vision.
I defogged my glasses, took off my coat, and put it on the chair. Still watching my hostess, I sat down on top of it. She walked into the nearby kitchen space.
Her apartment was not big, but it was warm, in many ways. There were plants everywhere, and lush colors, and soft lights.
"I put on the tea," Angela said, turning on some more soft lights.
"I love tea," I responded, looking at her gratefully. It had been very cold out.
I felt warm all over.
3.45 AM - I yawned.
"You're not getting tired, are you?"
I smiled helplessly, "It's almost four."
I've been keeping some pretty strange hours at home lately, with all the work going all that badly. Still, this was later than I was used to.
"Let's get you to bed," Angela said, getting off her long couch for a minute to enter her bedroom.
I checked out the couch, wondering if it was a pullout. Either way, I'd sleep well enough. I only had a couple of hours to work with, before I had to meet Steve.
"Y'know," Angela called from her room, "It's kind of nice to have company. It's been so long since I've had someone here. Backwater's such a small town."
"I can imagine," I responded.
"It's good to see a familiar face. And such a cute one."
"Aw..." I mock blushed. Since she was a room away, the effort was totally wasted.
"All right," she said, coming out, "The room's together."
What she came out in...
She was dressed...
Angela was...
I don't know how to describe it.
Angela came out in a golden silk number, very short, very tight, very clearly worn with very short-term use in mind. Her garter belt and stockings were all similarly colored, and exotic to the extreme. Her hair, shiny, and long, flowed down her bare shoulders, and the smile she wore was nervous but full of a promise I hadn't heard in a long time.
She had yellow high heels. How she'd walked out of her bedroom was beyond me.
She leaned on the door, head tilted the side, covering up half of her head. "Ready for bed?" she asked.
I nodded. I looked her up and down. I tried not to lick my lips. I failed.
"I hope this isn't too sudden," Angela said, slowly walking up to me, "But I haven't seen you in so long, and, well..." She embarrassedly giggled, "This is something I've always wanted to do."
I cleared my throat. I tried to clear my throat.
"I know this won't mean anything. You live up there, and maybe I'll be goin back to the City sometime soon -- anywhere's better than Backwater! But I know there's no future. It's just that I had such a crush on you, and..."
"Me, too." I got out.
"You had a crush on you?" she laughed.
"No... you know."
She nodded, looking up as she put her arms around me. She bit her under lip, and I wondered what the purple lipstick tasted of.
"We don't have much time," she said, leaning softly, hard, into me.
She kissed me.
There was something I wanted to say. Something I needed to say. But, of course, my mouth was being used for something else, and I couldn't remember what it was.
Finally, it came to me. As she disengaged, and walked me back to her bedroom, her figure stumbling slightly in her outlandish uniform of seduction, I stopped. With my free hand, I held onto the doorknob, and said what was right.
"I have a girlfriend."
She turned back to me, her hand in mine. She jutted her chin up, and blew a seductive kiss. "You do tonight."
9AM - The snow was still coming down, but very lightly. It wasn't sticking at all. I paced in front of the Coffee House, wondering if my ride would come on time. I didn't mind the time out in the cold to think things over. The apartment had been very hot, and I needed time to cool out.
She was asleep when I got out. I did not leave a note, I wrote several. I just couldn't think of the right things to say.
There was no sign of life in Backwater, Delaware, this morning. All was barren.
I was alone.
9.40AM - "Not bad time, eh?" Steve said, pulling up in his ancient vehicle, "Those prostitutes were antiques!"
I sat in the passenger seat, closed the door behind me.
"How was your night?" My friend asked.
I cleared my throat, breathed out, not at all in the mood to talk. I didn't know what to say.
"You have purple lipstick on your ear," Steve noticed.
10AM - "Interesting," Steve said, eyes moving from the oncoming frost and ocassional car to me perhaps more than they should, "Sounds like a great story."
"Thanks," I replied, "Good to hear my life makes good copy."
"Oh, always, Bart, always. Did she mention me?"
I laughed grimly. I'd told Steve everything I could, trying to make an interesting tale out of it all. It was gratifying to hear his appreciation, but only so much. Now, in the driving silence, I hoped I'd feel better, but I didn't. Communicating about your problems isn't all that helpful for guys. I was still stuck. Had I made an awful mistake? Would this trip change my life? Would I lose everything I'd worked so hard for? Had I sacrificed my happiness for one night? Had I discovered an even greater happiness, and not realized it yet? Why such guilt?
I turned to Steve. "So what do you think?" I asked.
Steve shrugged. "Well," he said, concentrating totally on the growing traffic, "It's an adventure, right?"
The snow stopped.
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