Sweet Adaline

Introduction

Dense sheets of rain shatter on the chilled asphalt. A white ringlet of smoke trickles out of my dying American Spirit. Last one. I say that. Last one. I used to say it all the time. Promised Penny I'd quit. Then she'd start up, get the way she'd get sometimes. More times than I can remember. Eventually I'd get another pack. Smoke one or two, but by the end of the pack I was making more empty promises. We both were.

She never quite put it out there, my breath I mean. She just wanted me to give it up. I finally did. Completely. For a few months anyway. Long enough to feel better, breathe better. It was nice not smelling like the asshole on the bus. Then she picked it up, after she had... soon as her pregnancy was over. I never mentioned it either. It wasn't out of obligation or respect or any noble reason. I just didn't, but she always knew. I guess she just wasn't close enough to notice anymore.

She didn't kiss me anymore. Well, first she got in this biting phase. Just about every time, she'd do it. Harder and harder. It got old, but love hurts, right? Right. I told her and that was that. It was over a while before, the sentimental stuff I mean. But that's that.

The smell's different. The nicotine on my fingers. I remember it laced with her scent, like patchouli, mountain soil and chocolate. It was rich. I got high off the way she smelled. So high.

Now they just repulse me, make me sick to my stomach. I take another hit and let the smoke spill out into the wet night. The Mt. Tabor marquis glows amber across the street. I recall something she said. I asked her how she knew what I was thinking. She said some shit like, "'Cause your eyes are a fucking Marquis."

"So who's playing?" I asked

She replied, in that voice like mesquite, "White Lies."

"Oh? They any good."

She just laughed and shook her head, "Nothing brilliant, but I like 'em."

I'm getting carried away. I'd rather talk about something else.

I put it out in a mason jar I set by my dead plant, on the balcony. It's a bitch for me, keeping anything alive in Portland. The jar's half full with the rain of the past few nights. The cherry sizzles in the jar for just a split second. Then it too was dead. Funny.
Adaline strums out an accompaniment to something I was picking earlier. I can't remember what, or if it was mine or something else, or if I was just fucking imagining it. Every sound and light around me unfolds in this surreal reverberation of something that's already past. But I remember it. It's an implosion in mid air, like a chandelier that only I see. If anyone else does too, fuck 'em.

She hums something. It's one of those melodies that fills up the air, just sort of unfurling like smoke, hitting me in resonant waves. Just bold notes, like stone, but inside, her heart's carving out her words.
There's a narrow partition between where she sits on my couch and where I stand in front of plastic sip cup and a quarter empty jar of bronze homemade whisky. Juice. A little of the rye trickles out over the edges of the cup because I pour too much, too fast. My hand's shaking. The kitchen is dank with a juniper sugar smell, so I throw it back and cover the jar. I've got our more in the cupboard, where I put it back. I have no idea how strong it is. Pretty strong though. It burns the whole way down, even where it sits in my gut. But the heat of it radiates, heating my blood, rushing beneath my chilled skin, folding me into the calm.

Everything goes silent for a moment. Eventually Adaline leaves. I drift away, give trespass to the night. Tomorrow, again.