The red brick walls climbs to the tin pressed ceiling. The air is clean inside, and it is cool throughout the six months of Peyton heat. Modern drops of light fell to the tables. I couldn’t sit still. I heard the recordshop owner’s van pull around to his space across the street.
It always twin-backfires when Jim shuts it down. The Zebra was a Peyton landmark. Chipped, hand painted black stripes coverd the white painted adobe, with old 78′s covering the inside and ceiling.
My hands are shaking and with good reason. Coffee and cigarettes aside, I am waiting for Lulu. We didn’t have a date, but she was going to show up. Cliff told me to wait for her. I hadn’t ever really had a chance to chat her up in a one-on-one situation. She emitted pure fear to me. I hadn’t even really looked her in the eyes.
I heard the door open from behind me. My shoulders and back turned instinctively, and the chair’s uneven legs squeaked loudly. I felt ratted out by furniture.
My head dropped and shoulder’s slumped.
“Pitts?”
I briefly believed I was at my best. That this was the moment that I was meeting the woman I was really due. That all of the sweaty workouts, the long hours and therapy were finally going to pay off.
But then, suddenly, I remembered my membership to the gym (thankfully) expired five months ago. Work was something a bit foggy in the memory banks. And therapy? I would say I have an open relationship with my therapist.
“Pitts, where is Cliff?”, she asked blankly.
“Lulu,” shot from the back of my throat. My hand snapped down to the table flipping my fresh mug onto the floor.
Lulu stared at me and the newly created steaming brown puddle on the floor.
“So, looking good Pitts,” she pursed her lips together and sat down.
“Yeah, well, you’re doing great, no doubt,” I say heading off the Amazon of Ethiopian with a napkin. “Just running off to the lake today or somesuch?” My wit is not at its ripest.
“Nope. We are heading somewhere special,” she states maneuvering her red moon boots around my mess.
“Where to?” I ask, mopping up the last bit with coffee based paper-mache.
Her hands hold up her head. Bemused she says flatly, “He won’t tell me.”
“Full of surprises this week,” comes out of my mouth before my foot can stop it.
“Huh? Do you know something? Tell me Tell me Tell me,” she smiles and open-eyes me.
Here at this moment in time, I can tell you something. That the Arizona sky was a sapphire. That the deep desert thirst for rain, and I would break any law and fight any battle to be held by those eyes. She had turned them on me. And I felt forgiven.
“Pitts, what the fuck is up with you?” her tone rose and dropped.
I suppose that although I believe time can stop and start on the whims of some dead god, it does not.
“Nothing, I don’t know nothing about nothing,” I say feigning, more or less, ignorance.
It’s true. I don’t know anything.
“Cliff told me to meet you here,” I say grabbing the plastic pyramid menu on the table. “Here you go,” I mumble and hand her the menu.
She hesitates and lifts one side of her mouth.
What is that? Is that a smirk? A smile gone lazy?
“When did you become Cliff’s bitch?” she wonders out loud. Not really to me but at me.
“Screw this,” I think, my eyelids blink heavily.
“I dunno,” I mutter.
– dedicated to
Ethos-Pathos-Angst
Denton, TX
1992