The Lost Voice

I am on my way to meet my wannabe lover north of Seattle. I am a businessman and it has been a hard, successful day. The night rain is cold and ugly on the interstate and my need to piss pulls the car into the northbound roadside rest. There is a small dark form sitting upright against the wet restroom wall that somehow makes me feel safe, sitting here in my heated car. A tiny, tiny ragged form in a ragged old sleeping bag. I cannot see a face, there are shadows everywhere and, honestly, I don’t really care anyway. A ghost hand lifts a beggar’s cup in my direction. I drop some change in it and turn away. I don’t normally do that, drop change.

Looking in the metal mirror bolted to the restroom wall I pause considering the man looking back. “Damn” I think. Outside the wind has picked up and the rain is frighteningly horizontal. Almost loud enough to drown out a hauntingly beautiful song coming from the beggar. The shaking coins in the tin cup are a big band rhythm section. An amazing, wondrous, Billy Holiday voice, overwhelming my senses. It is everywhere in my head.

The hard rain is smashing into the beggar, making the sleeping bag heavy with cold. This voice does not belong here in this wasteland. I become afraid and run back to the safety of my heated, car.

Driving north again the rhythm of the wipers sound like my coins in the beggar’s tin cup, louder with every swipe. The injustice of the beggar makes me lash out at the radio, what I know to be the truth. I want to blame Trump’s social fruit but that is just a cop-out. I am headed crazy to my wannabe lover and that is a cop-out too. I feel weak. I do not want to cry but I cannot help myself. I cannot get that voice out of my head. I know what I have to do as the car turns south, almost frantically, the wind blowing me sideways, now desperate for an off-ramp to McDonalds. My god, the salvation of McDonalds! There. Over there. Minutes later I am back; the beggar has become smaller—like the storm has been blowing beggar parts away. I grab my umbrella, open it and walk. I see the little vertical pools of water forming where the sleeping bag touches the wall, then down onto the sidewalk. Propping the umbrella as best I can against the rain I carefully set the box of hot food and hot coffee in front of the beggar. Like offerings in front of an altar. But why?

Then—BAM!! A single bolt of lightning hits the pavement, causing the asphalt to burst into flames, right in front of me, in front of my car, cleaning the air. But why? I go deaf for a moment. I panic, thinking that I will not hear that voice again. I cannot live without it.

Then… There it is again. Singing in the cold rain. I cannot look at this beggar. I dare not but I can… not help myself. The bright overhead light casts a face back at me—a beautiful scarecrow smile of broken teeth and whip-etched skin. She is singing to me, singing for her dinner and I am taken away somewhere far south of here. South of the Mason-Dixon line. It is long ago and I am peaceful. The falling rain is now warm, turning into springtime orange blossoms, dripping from my sleeves. The big, graceful old plantation has a giant old porch filled with happy people eating watermelon and homemade ice cream. A grand piano is there, rolled out of the house for the occasion. Teddy Roosevelt is presenting a Belle to the Ball. Living Blackamores open Duisenberg and Marmon coach doors, offering gloved hands to the Masters of a passing age.

Then, that voice! Beautiful like God enraptured with creation fills the early evening magnolia trees.

****************

A truck light illuminated the old woman. I saw she was reading a book by Faulkner. As she turned the cold wet page it tore in half. I ran.

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Standing at the Edge.

Soon I would arrive at the palace of my wannabe lover. A smaller palace to be sure, but quite expensive and built in a hurry—located at the very end of an insanely beautiful, manicured spit of land jutting out into Fidalgo Bay with its own drawbridge and moat. It was 2 a.m. dark outside as I pulled up. I waited in the cold rain, at the foot of the condo stairs. I wanted to be critical of the wealth surrounding me, of the yachts, the fine motorcars, the perfection. But I could not. I was weak with age and gravity. I felt trapped by the beauty and complexity of the bizarre feeling coming from my wannabe lover as she eased dramatically past the door, standing radiant and lonely in the driving rain. “Image is everything” I thought to myself as I stepped out of the car and into her arms. I could feel the money demon’s eyes upon me, inviting me to plug into any outlet. I did.

It is hard now to recall those first impressions—the private elevator, the perfectly groomed and psychotic dog. Grandma County Kitchen décor in every room with Captain Nemo floor-to-ceiling bay views— screaming at me—run away! Run away quick before I did something crazy. “It’s ok” I said inside my head, “I mean, the whole idea of this meeting is to fall in love, or at least to seal the deal.” I was too tired to surrender to my morals so I fell into the bed of a very inappropriate stranger. There was a delicious glass of never-ending fine red wine in my hand as I fell victim to my senses. “Fuck it.” I said under my breath. “Just fucking own it.”

Days passed. Extreme, possibly undeserved days of leisure fueled with half-truths and gritted teeth. I could see Naked Sirens just off the shore looking back at me through my wannabe lover’s bedroom windows. Magnificent, nubile creatures who came into the house—seducing me with their trident of perpetual world news, expensive takeout food and engaging sex toys of all types. A massive TV in every room, all on the same news channel, 24/7. I found that it was hard to sleep with the lights always on, but my wannabe lover could not sleep with them off.

It was not fair of me. My wannabe lover’s face was youthful for the most part and looked like almost the best that money can buy. There was a fear that if the lights went off then things would be different when they came back on. Like turning off the lights was like turning on the night gravity monster. “Touch Ups, love.” I started looking at my face with the power of money transforming it. Not dishonesty, in fact, honesty was a shield for cosmetic indulgence and I could not blame my wannabe lover for seeking the perpetual comfort of physical, mentally therapeutic pampering. After all, she could afford it. But, there was a ghost hole in the kitchen that set alarms off in my head. I was becoming comfortably numb after only 3 days (Or was it a month?) in this illusion. I did not want it to make sense to me. I did not know if I gave a shit or not. I went outside in the cold rain and saw old men and women with their wet dogs and I was beginning to look just like them.

Warm bed to warm car, go for a drive, warm restaurant, see the town. In the big Lexus I could not feel the gears change, I could not feel the outside world moving by, I could only feel like I was losing the feel of things, everything. The wide, crack-free street sterility of the town came blasting through the dark and insanely cold, ripping rain all around us…Still…It was a warm fantasy town filled with warm fantasy citizens living in the strange reality of expensive designer drugs. Twinkling eyes and absent faces. The warm smile of my wannabe lover assured me that everything was alright with permanent porcelain masks floating gracelessly upon hidden necklines. And from this perspective, she was right.

Even so, something was wrong and it was the wrong of no one under 30 years old living in this town. Not one young person to be seen. Not really because it is too fucking expensive—it is, and that is part of its comforting, disturbingly orderly appeal—but really because the youth of today have no interest in watching stiff walking ghosts become more translucent.

I wanted to run like a freezing animal. “Will I be rich?” I ask myself. “Damn right I will.” “Ask me what I would do with it…. Isn’t that really what I am doing up here?” I comforted myself with comforting platitudes—“I’m guilty and I hate myself for it, I loathe myself for it.” I feared becoming a comfortable little ceramic actor on my wannabe lover’s fireplace mantle. I was afraid that I would enjoy fucking myself.

When I arrived, my thoughts were about a mysterious broken-toothed beggar singing in the rain. I started freaking myself out when, on drunken day number four of this “indulgence,” I began to forget what the beautiful beggar looked like and how lovely her voice was. What it meant to me. It was becoming a lost voice and I did not want to lose it.

In the middle of the night, I fled. It was expected. It was not right and we both knew it was not right. It had to happen and we both knew it but it still hurt and it still does.

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The bitter salvation of reprise.

It is raining really hard on the freeway as I leave Seattle for Portland. It is late at night and I feel safe in my businessman’s car. Hell, it is a Pontiac and they don’t make them like that anymore. I want to hide as I drive by the beggar’s roadside rest. “It’ll be safe to stop here” I think, “after all, this stop is on the southbound side of the road.” I carefully look, there are no beggars in sight. Uneasy I drop the seat and drift off to sleep.

Then; then, I hear it again—that voice of warm, easy, honey-filled days. I desire that. Rolling down my window to hear it better the fierce rain and wind bring me back to coldness as the warmth of my car leaves. I want to stay here and wait until she comes back to rest next to me in her rags, in my dry warm car. I will wait here for her until I look like her—ancient and fragile. What is she reading? My very life depends upon knowing. I sit here watching pale figures get out of, and then after a few minutes, back into their warm cars. Some sleep, some drive away.

When I woke up, wake up it was and is still raining and I saw her—see her clearly, my beautiful, sensual beggar, there, standing in front of my car. Brilliant. She stood tall, standing elegant in a long, perfectly tailored white raincoat and gloves. A kind of druid hoodie that covered covers her golden brown plantation hair. She stood back, now standing in the street light as it caught her face, sorta catching it like clear water in your hands. The light was bright, shining now on her missing teeth and whip-scarred face—far more lovely than ever before. She smiled a smile at me and I died dying. I wanted to want her love, to give her my car, shelter her from the storm, anything, if only she would sing something for me.

The windshield fogged over and she was gone.