Storymania - Fate by E Birdsong

Fate
E Birdsong

1

“I love you too,” he said, waiting with the phone to his ear for the handset to find its way onto the prongs. He never hung up first.

After three months of marathon long distance calls and nightly internet chats which had a tendency to stretch well into the morning, they had decided it was finally time to meet. He’d fallen behind at work, running on two or three hours of sleep and his head wasn’t really in it even when he was working. But, none of it required much thought in the first place. The boxes would come rolling down the conveyer belt, he’d stamp with one hand and tape with the other, then send them sliding down one of three chutes. Atlanta, San Diego or Chicago. Those were the three places that Books Unlimited shipped from. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if you sent Chicago an extra box of DeVito Codes. They’d sell them eventually, but it wasn’t like him to lose sight of his priorities. This was different. She was different. He’d never met anyone with so much to say or who seemed to enjoy so genuinely what he had to say. She was fascinated by him and that wasn't something he was accustomed to. At the warehouse, he was just another shift leader. His boss was a guy who spent the majority of his time playing golf with “clients” and leaving early every day to pick up groceries and get home to his wife and kids before the traffic got too bad. Underneath him, were a team of eight packers who technically worked for his boss, but that he was supposed to be in charge of. If one of them screwed up, it was his ass, yet he really didn’t have the authority to do anything about it if they did, which is why he put himself at the end of the packing line most of the time. If you wanted shit done right, you had to do it yourself.

On the weekends, Kevin would get together with a few friends and share songs that they had written on acoustic guitars. None of them were great singers and they weren‘t going to make millions doing it, but the songs themselves were better than what most artists were putting out those days. He really didn’t care to perform his songs, but wanted to find a way to make money doing it and so sharing them just became a necessary evil. Another guy he knew who played in a pretty well-known Tejano band heard a few of his demos one night and offered to produce a record for him. They’d spent a few weeks out at his studio laying down vocal tracks and guitar tracks and bass tracks and more vocal tracks and pedal steel tracks and piano tracks and then even more vocal tracks. When he finally spliced them all together, Kevin was pretty impressed with what he heard and decided to shop the stuff around a little. As fast as he could mail the discs out, he’d get them back along with a little postcard or some other form of rejection that basically said, “Sorry, but due to the overwhelming amount of submissions that we receive, we don’t have the time to personally respond to each one.” In other words, fuck off, cause your shit stinks. His friends weren’t much help, either. They’d all encouraged him to record the CD, but when presented with the finished product, responded with little more than a few “thank you’s” and “pretty goods.”

Francine, or Frankie for short, was working graveyard at the 7-11 off Broadway in Galveston. She’d heard one of his demos online and shot him an e-mail about how much she enjoyed it and that no one else was making real music at the time. Nothing authentic like what he was writing. Her husband was a musician, too, but she didn’t really care for his songs. They were too heavy and not as moving or poetic as his stuff. He responded back to her e-mail in a matter of hours and they began a month long exchange of daily messages back and forth. She knew that if her husband found out, he’d be jealous, but she wasn’t doing anything wrong. They were just e-mails. It’s not like they were fucking or anything. He had pictures of himself up on his web site and thought it only fair that she send him a few so he could put a face to the name. No big deal, she thought. She sent pictures to her friends and family all the time. This guy was just a friend, nothing more. He’d recently been divorced and just needed someone to talk to every now and then. Someone to provide encouragement and reassurance that what he was doing was worthwhile. At least that’s how she’d justified it to herself at first, but before long, one thing had led to another.

2

“I need tomorrow off,” Kevin told his boss. “I’m going out of town.”

“Where to?” his boss asked.

“What difference does it make? I’m going to see a friend.”

“A friend, huh?” his boss chuckled. “Would this friend also happen to be female?” The sound of someone bragging about the distance of their last drive could be heard in the background.

“Just so happens, yes,” he explained. “And she’s pretty hot, too.”

“Well, normally I’d say no, but if she’s as hot as you say she is, I’m sure she’ll be done with your sorry ass pretty quick and be looking to upgrade. That’s where I come in.”

“If I decide she’s too much for me to handle, you’ll be the first to know.”

He waited for the line to go dead and set down the receiver. It’d be about an eight to ten hour drive if he could get packed and on the road by ten o’clock and he’d be pulling into Galveston around seven that next morning. All nighters were nothing new to him being that he’d spent the last five years before this driving a truck. There was a guy driving for them now who could hook him up with some pills to take the edge off, or put it back on, however you want to look at it. He’d swing by there on the way out and pick them up.

3

“What time you guys leaving in the morning?” she asked her husband.

“I dunno,” he muttered. “Guessin‘ round five. Maybe earlier.” He squeezed his empty beer can and tossed it over to the side, typing away feverishly at his next masterpiece. One of his buddy’s had sold a story to Hustler for a few hundred bucks and he was doing his best to get a few of his own published. He wasn’t what you’d call an accomplished writer, but the dirty stories seemed to come naturally to him. Ever since he was a kid, he’d sit in his room at night and draw naked pictures of girls he liked at school and then come up with these complex and elaborate plot lines that always ended up with the two of them in the same bed. His stepmother had caught him a few times and even the maid had run across one under his mattress when she was changing his sheets. It’d been a pretty heavy one, too. There were razor blades and lit cigarettes and bathtubs filled with scalding hot water. Some really deviant shit. That story in particular had been about one of the more popular girls at school whose mother was friends with his and used the same housekeeper. He hoped like hell that she wouldn’t find out and never must have, because it wasn’t brought up again. She’d just laid it there, face up, on top of his bed to let him know she’d seen it.

“You’re staying until Sunday, right?” She put on a pot of coffee and threw an apple pastry in the oven as her usual bedtime snack.

“Damnit, Frankie!!” he stopped typing and made eye contact this time. “What in the hell diff’rence does it make? I already told you all this last weekend.”

“I was just making sure. I need to plan the meals and wanted to make sure there was enough for you if you were going to be here.”

“We’ll be back Sunday night. Don’t wait up.” He laughed as if it were a waste of time to even mention that last part. They hadn’t slept together in months. That was another reason he was writing all those stories. Had to have something to get off on.

“Will you hand me that can?” he asked, pointing to some Skoal he’d left on the kitchen counter. She walked over and set it down next to the monitor and then heard the buzzer go off in the kitchen. “D’you make me one?”

“You can have this one,” she sighed. “I’ll make another.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll make my own later.”

3

He’d taken three of them, but was still nodding off every now and then, so he popped a few more and decided to stop for a Mountain Dew. There was a little Czechoslovakian truck stop up the road a few miles that sold damn good homemade kolaches so he decided to pull in there to take a piss, pick up a Dew and maybe grab a few of their sausage rolls with cheese.

There were signed photographs of bands and musicians all along the back wall above the drink cooler and he wondered what it would take to get his own photo up there. Probably just be a matter of having some printed and bringing them one. He hadn’t heard of most of them, so he doubted that there were any requirements as far as who went on the wall and who didn’t. He heard something outside and glanced up at the pitch black row of windows, but all he could see was himself. Standing there, bathed in row upon row of fluorescent light and holding a Mountain Dew in his left hand.

“Something I can hep’ you find,” called a voice from off to the side. He turned his head and saw a heavy set woman in her mid to late fifties, a pair of thick glasses resting low on her nose with a silver chain draped below both ears to keep them from falling off every time she leaned over.

“Nah,” he answered. “Just trying to figure out what that noise was.”

“It wasn’t nothing’,” she replied. “Just somebody runnin’ over the trash can again. My husband sets it out there the night before the garbage picks up, but he puts it right there on the corner where the light isn’t real good. ‘Bout twice a month somebody runs over it and twists it all to shit. Go out there and find a bunch of trash strewn everywhere. I ain’t picking it up this time. I can tell you that much.”

Kevin approached the counter and pushed his ball cap up on his head as he bent down under the heat lamp to get a better look. He could see his face through the orange glow that reflected off the glass and looked himself over a few times, trying to imagine what he’d think of himself if he were Frankie.

“What kind’r you wanting?” the lady asked.

“I like the ones with sausage and cheese.”

“That’s just about all of them,” she pointed. “Right there’re some spicy ones I just took out of the oven.”

“Alright, sounds good. Give me two of those.”

4

She could hear him typing away in the living room and had tried everything she could think of to drown it out. The radio hadn’t worked, nor had the fan or even that Zen fountain he’d given her for Christmas. After a little while, she realized that it probably wasn’t the sound that was keeping her up, but the excitement of knowing that Kevin was on his way to Galveston at that very moment. She’d spent the entire day cleaning and had the whole weekend planned out perfectly. As soon as he got there, she’d give him a big hug and maybe even a kiss on the cheek if it didn’t seem too awkward. She’d have his breakfast made and keeping warm in the oven. Scrambled eggs, bacon, blueberry pancakes and a can of those great big biscuits that you could pull apart, layer by layer. The extra buttery kind. She already knew a lot about what he liked to eat and knew that he preferred decaf in the mornings and regular in the evenings, for some reason. He promised that he’d play her some of the songs from his CD after breakfast and then she’d take him down to the beach to spend the rest of the afternoon. She could probably even talk him into renting one of those kayaks that her husband was so scared of riding in and they could take it out past the surf and into the open water. They could shower when they got back to the house that evening, maybe even take one together and then either make love for the first time right then, or wait until after a nice dinner at Red Lobster.

The sound of silence once the last key had been hit brought her from her daydream and she heard the toilet flush in the guest bathroom. She’d pretend to be asleep when came in and hoped that he didn’t try anything. He probably wouldn’t. It’d been so long now that she didn’t think he’d even bother anymore. That was probably what he was doing in there in the bathroom, anyway.

His tall, stick like frame cast a shadow on the wall in front of her, the street light on the corner peering in through small cracks in the blinds. She watched the shadow as it tossed its pants into the closet and felt the sheets pull as he crawled in next to her. Her heart pounded in anticipation of his next move, but there was nothing but the snoring, which was bound to keep her awake for a few more hours.

5

Despite the five pills and two bottles of Mountain Dew, Kevin could barely keep his eyes open long enough to read the sign. “Galveston 15.” A couple times, he’d actually begun to dream and shook himself awake just in time to make out the back end of an eighteen wheeler that he’d been bearing down on at a dangerously good pace. Horns honked every now and then to let him know that he was veering over a little too close, but it would only be another 10 minutes or so before he’d be sitting down at her kitchen table for that hot breakfast she’d promised. Surely, the smell of that bacon and those scrambled eggs would snap him out of it. That and the thrill of actually seeing her, smelling her and kissing her for the first time. He felt like he’d been locked away for years and finally given his freedom. He thought about the ocean and how the sun might look as it reflected off the surface at dusk. She’d mentioned that you could hear the waves from her patio and on a clear day, make out a few inches of infinite blue above the rooftops and steeples.

The sound of another horn sent him flying from high atop the breakers and hurled him into the passenger seat. As he came up the other side of grass, the momentum tossed him back into position just in time to see the oncoming headlights of a large pick-up truck carrying four men and a weekend’s worth of fishing gear. The pain lasted only a few minutes and then back to the ocean to pick up right where he left off.

6

She’d kept her eyes shut when the alarm sounded, but stayed awake as he shut the door to the bathroom, flipped on the light and turned on the water.

The red digital numbers showed 4:58 as she heard a horn blow twice out front, followed by the slamming of a truck door. She ran over to the window and watched them drive away, fishing poles and camping gear shooting out of the bed in every which direction.

As soon as the taillights had disappeared, she jumped in the shower herself, brushed her teeth and put on her favorite green sweater.

The breakfast was ready by seven on-the-dot and her entire body trembled with anticipation as she paced every room in the house, going every so often to the window to look as far down the street as she could for an oncoming car. Finally, she decided that he would never come if she kept looking out the window, so she went to the bathroom one more time and hoped that he didn’t show up while she was in there.

Closer to eight, she decided to go ahead and eat without him and just save him a plate in the fridge. He had her phone number and should’ve thought to call if he was going to be that late, but he didn’t have a cell and may not have been able to find a pay phone that worked.

Around eight-thirty, she felt a few tears roll down her cheek as she sat down on the couch, hoping some TV might help pass the time. It was around nine when she heard a knock at the door.