Sweet Adaline

Chapter Three

I woke up bloody to the flavor of zinc. It's the angst of a Sunday. I linger like this, never feeling grounded on this hollowed day. I can no longer remember what chews me on Sundays, but I've given into the notion it's the type of thing worthy to forget.
I choked up thick black tar-like vomit, gagging on my own swollen epiglottis. I'd been swallowing blood all night long. I realize by the sting of bile, I've chewed holes in my cheeks. I shuddered from the pulsing ache, and the thought of the pain that will follow for days to come. Then I laughed and took harder to the Vodka. Then Everclear, straight from the bottle. I attribute my escape of infection to this hard regiment. Kill everything. You think a thing long enough, it is.
I couldn't continue this, so I dressed and gathered together the spray of garments that littered the place and left.
As I dropped off the key, I was given the message Angela left several days before, for me. I hadn't seen the front desk for a week. I paid up in advance and left an open tab. It was a simple message.
"Ashley, stop by the house. I've got something for you."
She's always referred to wherever we've lived as 'the house'. It was a universal term no matter where we'd ended up and for however long. It's always carried with it a certain degree of revulsion. As a boy, I yearned for a home. Nothing magnificent, just something sufficient. Sufficient and reliable. What we had was something else. 'The house': the ever temporary.
I worked hard to make a home. That was over now, however.
"She still calls it 'the house'." I muttered, signed the bill, and headed across town to this place of hers.
Droves of somber clouds shadowed each other like an undulating ocean of pewter and lead. The air was wild as it thrust against the windshield and through palms of trees that lined the road. They danced to the narcotic tones of Roads. I had slipped into the margin of the beat. Nothing seemed in anyone's control. We merely passed in currents; Weightless drafts. Even the wind that rocked me went silent to her song.
This is the temperament of baleful promise. A promise of change. Glorious fucking change. The gusts misted me with their infused precipitation as I walked toward that lofty entry. The house hummed and bumped. I rang the bell twice with no answer. I wasn't about to make twice, the mistake of letting myself in. I waited for a minute longer and rang again. Abruptly the door swung open.
I ran the bell. Nothing. Several seconds passed which became moments. Long irritating moments where I shuffled and struggled with my body to find the right pose to be discovered in. This foreign body like some antiquated machine I the man operated, inhabited, rusted by complacency and vacancy and a sheer corrosion of will. A wretched machine of loose fitting iron parts wrapped in heavy wet towel or dried latex that revealed faults as each part moved in every tired gesture, threatening to tear and never stop. A once fiery dynamo with purpose and temper, to this, a century of weather in a year. Had yet been a year? No, no it hadn't. God how it had been so long. God! Ha. That beast wasn't listening, I swore with hateful breath. It had it's fun.
My thumbs were plugged into my back pockets, slumped shoulders as always, staring out into skyline. That's how I stood when the brush of the door caught my attention. I turned slowly. She stood half hidden behind the door, one hand grasping it as the other still clung to the knob. Adaline in blacks and grey stood in the doorway. Not a light in the house glowed, save one at the top of the stairs. From it poured the razor sharp vexations of distorted guitars, down and flooding the house with rock.
Before a black backdrop of shadowed silhouettes, colorless furniture and a far greyer sea of the storm that revealed itself through large windows with it's curtains pulled wide and free, she scanned my with her discerning stare. She wasn't smiling, though her mouth lent to the notion that she might be willing.
"I'm, uh-"
"Yeah... Ash, right?" She said, affirming what seemed apparent. Her voice was complicate, harsh but pleasant, like a firm bristled hairbrush. The type Penny used to brush out my hair when I'd grown it out and toyed with the idea of myself as an artist, comfortable with carelessness, or at least the impression of it. Her dark eyes, half concealed, seemed to lose interest.
"Yeah." I stalled out dead on the porch, having prepared nothing to say in such an event. He hadn't expected to me met by such a girl as her. It was evident the house was empty, besides her. "I... She's not here is she?" I resigned, seemingly already backing away, though not yet moving.
"Your mom? No, sorry. They went out for the weekend." Was it the weekend already? "Yeah," she hesitated before continuing. I was no authority. That was apparent in my shifty glance away each time her dark eyes caught mine. "They went to Vegas, I think."
"Yeah. That sounds like Samantha."
"Must be 'cause it sure as hell isn't Jack." I found it curious that she called him that. Jack. I grew up referring to my mother as Samantha. It gave me a safe feeling of distance from her discretions and indiscretions. I didn't feel so subject to her whims, for survival or satisfaction. In that light, as well, it removed me from her husbands. Also, each time I called to her, 'Samantha, can I use your car tonight? Hey Samantha, there's this incredible band playing at the Crystal Ballroom. I really need you to front me some cash for the tickets. Come on Samantha, don't be a spaz,' I caught the most sour grimaces, poorly shrouded in uneasiness or trivial confusion. It felt good to control those bastards, if only by tugging some miniscule thread, it was one that never grew old, and it never muted out. But more so, they rarely rose to address it. How could this Jack be any more, any less or anything less than another milestone? Even his daughter calls him Jack.
"So. I guess, just tell her I came by."
"Wait. She left you a letter or something." She turned and vanishing into the darkness. "Well, come in. I don't remember exactly where it is. I think she left it in the kitchen." I followed inside, gently closing the door, unsure whether I was to stay long enough to warrant closing the door. Or maybe it was a rash presumption. Once I felt the bolt click through the loose handle, and I pursued her, along her soundless drift that descended into ambiguity. My shoes squeaked their smooth rubber chirp against the ceramic floor. Lilted by vexations of guitars and shaded distortions, I slipped into a kind of illusion. I was welcomed into something so altogether foreign as it was forgiving, like the cold breast of absolution. It was absurd, but I was excited again, in this daytime dream of darkness, not alone.
I passed through a simple arch, into a grand room of counters, an island firm and fitting as that which gave purpose to the sea of peppered gravel outside. A chandelier of stainless steel, hung over a great gas oven, surrounded by dark marble. She stood there, discovering it, an envelope for me, plain, white and nondescript. She looks up because she knew I was there, a shadow in shadows, soundless. I was standing in the entry. That's why I mention it. Even I could have wondered if I even was there. I'd been dreaming a lot. But she was new one.
She has a kind of energy in her glance, confidence, a million-dollar swagger of the eyes. Careless, she'd have it seem, but invested, in something I'd resigned to never know. The soft glow from outside washed over her smooth, alabaster skin and youthful German nose, the best of types.  Almond vesicles under long canopies of impenetrably dense satin maroon.
Night. It was, all night and shadow. It seemed the world had become some dark reflection of itself, shrouded in it's own interminable mystery, and she. Was she my guide? My ghost of things to come? Her lips moved, curvaceous.
"This is it." She said. I continued following her, around the dark island in white ceramic ocean, reserved. "She said you'd probably come by, so, you know..."
She swiftly offered it and I took it lightly and worked my finger beneath the leaf, through the slightly glued seal. Inside, a brief letter folded loose in thirds and a key. A brass instrument, wide and heavy. The letter was brief.
"Ashley,
" We haven't spoken much. I blame myself for that. I wanted for you to meet Jack and get to know him before the wedding. I can image you're telling yourself what a horrible judge of character I am and that this wedding was a mistake, but if only you'd meet him, you'll see that he really is the one. Well, the last one. Oh come one babe, you know that was funny!
"If you're reading this, then you have the same knack for strategic timing as ever. You've also met Adaline. She reminds me a lot of you at that age. I hope the two of you can become friends. You're a brilliant and incredible man, Ashley! I couldn't be prouder of you!
"As for the key, it belongs to the apartment I've secured for you. It's modest, to say the very least. You can still turn it down. I just want it to be easy for you to return, and not financially crippling.
"Also, I went back to the house to gather a few things I felt would be important to you. They're locked safe in storage. Here's the combination. 13-24-42. Unit 308. I don't have the address on hand and I'm sorry but we're running out the door. Have Adaline take you there or call me on Tuesday. I love you, sweetheart!
~Mom"
Rarely the warm maternal voice of encouragement, summoned itself in thin metallic echoes. I didn't want anything from her. I'd come here expecting confrontation, disappointment. What I got was a key and a question. What the hell could she have possibly thought I would want from that place. Of course there were things there I missed, but everything reminds me of her. It bore into me, maddening the ache in my chest, where my heart used to be. My heart for her, it shivered. Damn it, the thing quaked! And she's telling me what? The she found me an apartment! She saved some things for me! Well she didn't save my daughter! And neither did I.
It was my body that quaked, while my head hung from my shoulders, in my hand, falling apart. The quieter I needed to be, the harder I shook. This wasn't right. Not here. Not here. Nothing mattered. Nothing transparent or real. Only the sand I was buried in, to the waist, and the waste inside my gut.
"Where's your bathroom?" I asked. My voice smacked the silence of the kitchen like lingering drops from a faucet. From the cupboards at the other end of the kitchen where she busied herself, she turned away with sympathy for this shivering mutt. Or maybe she was not involved. It didn't matter.
"Down the hall, it's the first door to the right." Her voice was rougher than I thought from the door. Full bodied. Maybe it was just the quieter, haunting way she spoke, I thought. As gently as I could, I closed the door on everything. The lights came on bold and yellow from large clear globes that lined the top of the mirror. Everything was cream and blue, from the Plush monogrammed towels that hung, one perfect, one not, and only by comparison. The striped border that split the room, a horAngieon line between the clear blue sky and the sand of this petty earth. And the light across my face that filled in, for the moment, the deep grooves of premature decay, reflected cheek bones bold and harsh, as though they'd been struck by my own heart, and eyes. Marquis of shattered glass, canals overflowing with the lonesome, loathsome evidence. She was alive. She was here, and now, she is gone. Just as simply. Just as quick. I can still feel her kiss. Her warm breath on my cheek, but not her lips. Her body. Her eyes on me. Only my cold face and her kiss, missing. Just gone. Just gone.
I washed my face of it, and I chose the imperfect towel, and it was soft and plush, and I was carefree. I was calm I mean. The pull of earth was gentle, grounding, and allowed me to walk out of the bathroom with a soft underbelly. French doors were open to the cool spring air, brush strokes of silver and lead traced the sky, drifting. But I knew it was myself adrift. Soft spots of light warmed the island. At the edge of the counter sat a tumbler of ice water. A rocks glass, not water. It was still frosted, not yet begun to sweat. She was outside.
"I like your mom." She heard me take the glass or must have sensed me, and glanced back. Her face seemed long, drooped into a frown. It was a disappointed blankness, eyes searching. "She's not like the kind of chick I expected to see my dad with." She was looking away now. "She's kinda cool, I guess."
"Yeah. That's her. Cool." I spread the dew from my rocks glass in circles on the charcoal marble countertop until it seeped into the stone, tensing a little at the thought of water staining. I heard it enough times from Samantha to feel it while it was happening, like it was staining my bones. "Tell her. She'll love you for life. That or stop trying." I mumbled. As the water dissipated, I evened the edges to a perfect sphere, meticulous until it was gone. The drink was almost gone already, like it was leaking out of the glass. "Where'd they go?"
"Colorado I think." I thought about Darby, her second husband. She wanted him to be my father pretty badly. He didn't have a chance. The odds were not in his favor, and just for the record, I never the feeling she wanted it to work. He was just a guy, a do-it-yourselfer from Denver. He smoked a lot of weed, fixed cars and diggers and trailers that weren't meant to be fixed, and made 'em last long past their life should have ended. He had this '63 Ford pickup that didn't a have an original part in it, this chopped machine, over half the body salvaged. He drove that thing every day she was with him. And when he wasn't in the cab, he was under the hood. Anyway, It didn't surprise me.
"Her idea?"
"Yeah! If it weren't for her, he'd never let me stay here alone. I think he's afraid I'd burn it down out of spite or something."
"Samantha started working for Cisco my sophomore year, which meant she would leave in the middle of the night, doing surveys, product displays in stores, etc. She's worked her way up, but back when I was in High school, that was how it was. That's pretty much how she killed her last marriage."
"I guess she's gone now, sometimes. I thought it was sorta weird at first."
"Who knows. Maybe it works for your dad. It worked for me. She's the Regional Manager now, right?"
"I guess. I don't know. I just know she's always driving to Phoenix." She replied disinterested. So was I.
"Anyway, she was always gone."
"Yeah? We'll I wish I had..." She paused, turned and headed in, trying to place a thought. "I wish she'd get... Jack, to back off." She'd become inorganic, and a little closed.
"Yeah," she responded, slowly turning back to me. "You wanna give me a ride somewhere? I can show you where it is." she said reservedly eager.
I had nowhere to go and no reason not to check out this place they had found for me. I wasn't much up to the conversation, however.
"Let's go." I said, ignoring my reservations.
She lit up. I could imagine her empty house was the last place she wanted to be, no matter how bad it was storming outside. Perhaps because it was storming. It would be too much for me.
"I'll be right back." She said as she darted from the kitchen and up the stairs for her bag and shoes.
I threw back the rest of my screwdriver and headed for the door, where I met her. Then, we were off. Little was said for the first several minutes, though the silence was quite organic and comforting. We were simply absorbed by the fluxes of gusts and leaves that heaved brief sporadic sheets of rain against the windows and windshield.
"I like this." She said as Portishead filled the vehicle with thoughts of the darkness preserved for wandering stars.
We talked briefly about music, superficially. The storm had us sedated, however.
As we rambled, the gusts subsided with as much immediacy as every other aspect of these monsoon floods.
"Where's this storage place?" I asked Adaline, taken by my curiosity for whatever could possibly be inside. On an even keel, however, nervous uncertainty puddled in my gut.
"You wanna go there?" She responded. "If you turn left up here at the light," she said pointing, "and it's right down there."
A quick wave of panic struck and dissipated. I was close enough now, I thought. Don't be a pussy.
I followed her directions
My feelings had become mixed about bringing Adaline with me as we approached the expansive lot. That familiar haunt resurfaced, raising every hair on end. I noticed just slightly I was rocking in my seat. My pale hands clutched the wheel.
"What do you think is in there?" she inquired curiously, as we made the turn in the lot for Storage America. It was stark like a prison tower alone in a sea of unused parking. A tall grey cinder block structure with it's logo painted high on the third floor in red, white and blue. How clever. An eagle over the name.
Everything beyond the domain virgin asphalt was desert brush and dust. Lightening skipped from one menacing pillow of charred cloud to the next, and throughout, deep within. Still the hairs on my arm remained on end.
"I really don't know." My words were empty and baleful, as my face was pale and old in this moment. If she had not felt before, my apprehension, then now it was apparent.
Adaline stared intently as I took a deep breath. I pulled into a space right in front of the entrance. Mine and two others were the only cars parked there.
My knotted gut swore to me that all I'd find here in this storage cell was better left that night almost two months ago. In silence we strode toward the door and once it was opened, a furious damp gust pushed inside as the door was thrust closed, and it chilled me. She took my hand and squeezed it, and then let go. It was warm and soothing. I must have looked terrified to the girl.
"Well, It could bear to be more inviting." She smiled and strolled down the corridor, stopping midway to read a letter she'd pulled from her purse as she leaned against the wall
The leasing attendant at the industrial office desk was stirred from a half-sleep. He was set in an office with thick, murky glass windows that spanned the length of the walls. Impatiently he sat behind his filthy IBM monitor, punching in data.
The halls were carpeted in the cheapest industrial grey. The green painted walls were worn and scuffed down the length of the passage. The elevator stood at the end of the hall, ominously shadowed by the broken light before it. 
Could my mother have found a more macabre place to send me? Could I have come in more grave weather. I fully expected for the electricity to go out as the door closed us into the deep utility transport elevator. It looked older than the whole neighborhood.
"What's that?" I idly inquired as she refolded and shoved the letter into her bag.
"It's nothing," she responded with automated dismissal.
She made no attempt to conceal the process she ran in her head. To what extent could I be trusted? What kind of a friend was I? And even though the boy's name, or even that she had a boy, was virtually irrelevant, why bother to open up to me at all?
Adaline was clearly under her own lock and key. In fact, so much so, she even found it difficult to wrestle from her self the truths that she believed in so vehemently. She joked about trust because trust was anomalous, something that had grown so foreign from her it seemed not only unnatural but dangerous. And so, to trust could easily become her utter ruin, as she viewed it in her mind.
But in that moment as we jostled and shook up the shaft, she saw something different. Something unnatural.
"This guy, Brian." She said, hesitantly. The elevator shook to a halt and opened its doors to a well lit floor. The level offered corridors in three directions. The guides on the wall pointed us down the hall to the left. The paint was fresher. Aluminum blue and a fat green stripe down the length of the walls. The carpet was newer, not nearly as worn. Every light fixture beamed brightly down the hall.
I lingered for a moment as Adaline headed down in search of unit 310. She was halfway down the hall before she stopped at the door.
Gusts of wind whirred outside the concrete walls. A Plexiglas window protected by a heavy green steel screen was set every twenty feet or so. The cinder blocked frame of each window brought the wind to whistles as it slipped in and fought for escape.
"How big is it?" I asked her as I crept towards her.
"Not big." she replied looking at it queerly. She was just as curious to see what was inside. Only, her hands weren't weak and shaky with damned irrational trepidation.
"She must not have recognAngieed much then," I mumbled as I reached it and stood. My whole chest was tight, wrestling the air from my lungs.
I fumbled through my pocket for my keys and unfolded the one with the unit number on it.
"Ready?" I said, pushed the key in the lock, turned it and popped it, and inhaled. My deepest breath was still shallow as I fought hesitation and pulled open the door. Inadvertently I closed my eyes. My heart fluttered irregular, remembering her, remembering the house and every piece of furniture I never wanted to see again. What the fuck did she take? What could she possibly think I would want to keep?
I took a truly deep breath before I opened my eyes. I held my lungs without notice while my wide eyes darted around the poorly lit cement closet.
Our solid oak dresser, the one she'd given us as a wedding present, stood against the wall. Opposite it sat three sealed boxes and both of my guitars, stacked in their cases against a practice amp. These things, my guitars predominantly, took the air from my lungs with an exuberant whimper. I was tempted to scream like a child. I'd forgotten, or rather just lost those guitars in the current of the year. All the aggravation of our difficult marriage, brought to its vicious end extinguished any desire to play. It was all rushing back to me as I stared at them neat in their cases.
I stood, my eyes fixated on the hard black rectangular case that sat beneath guitar shaped case that held my acoustic. The case beneath contained my Fender Classic '72 Telecaster Deluxe. A gift from Penny's father, passed down from a friend, from a friend. Not a scratch on it's walnut polyester finish. Not then and not now. I never played it. Never even plugged it in to listen to it hum. It was the most valuable thing I'd ever owned.
There in the doorway I realAngieed, it was the other thing I had returned to my old house for. The thing I had forgotten. That I knew I had forgotten in my drunken haze. As I stared at it in awe, I realAngieed how glad I was that I did forget it.
"You play, still?" She asked, taking account of my expression of awe.
"I haven't." I replied, distracted. "Not for a while." I stepped in and snatched up the acoustic case. The boxes behind my guitars suddenly became very familiar. I chose to take those as well.
Adaline obliged me and retrieved a cart from the lower level. Once was gone, on her way down, I knelt by my Telecaster, nocturnal in its case. Gingerly I released the clips and peaked inside. It was the most beautiful guitar I'd ever seen, just as I remembered it. I reached into the case and opened a pocket inside the top cover. There was letter, folded in thirds and badly worn along its creases. It was the letter from my nameless father. Angela had read it so repeatedly, it could barely be unfolded without threatening to fall apart at the seams. The sound of the elevator doors jerking open, followed by the metallic rustle of Adaline's veteran steel cart filled the passage. I closed the case and stood, picking up the acoustic again by the handle.
"Just the boxes," I instructed, "and this."
"You don't want the other one too?" She asked, perplexed. "You wanna leave your electric here?"
"It's too wet outside." I replied.
We filed the three boxes onto the cart, secured the storage unit and left. I carried the case as Adaline pushed the cart out to my car. They only barely fit. Two in the backseat, and the new and completely foreign box went in the trunk. Even when I bought the car, I was most impressed with the sAngiee of the trunk. Enough for a couple bodies, I'd joke.
Once we were driving, Adaline popped out my tape from the deck and threw in something of her own.
"Stabbing Westward," She informed. "This album kicks ass. The whole thing does. We need something to pick up the mood," she said. "Seriously!"
She directed me on, to the apartment I'd never seen. My new apartment, as I had no intention of rejecting a thing so generously provided.
We pulled into a gravel lot that ran along the row of single level brick apartment homes that faced the fence to the wash. Only other alleys stood across from it. Immediately I was drawn to it.
A shimmering white Chevy Silverado pickup was parked out front of the next door down from the apartment that was now mine. A ceramic Mexican sat under a colorful sombrero by the door with his head buried in his arms, sleeping off another night of terra cotta tequila. A silver wind chime hung outside, spinning in the cool breeze as it swung gently from side to side.
I pulled my guitar case from the back seat and we strode towards the door. A black rubber matt welcomed us at the door. A gift from my mother, left for it's functionality more so than the statement. She's always been neurotic about cleanliness, a kinder way to say, she's moderately obsessive compulsive.
My curiosity was teeming. I unlocked the heavy, old mustard door and opened it. The carped was hideous. Brown and matted, pulled upright like cheap Astor-turf from being recently cleaned. It still smelled of the carpet cleaning chemicals and lemon zest.
The walls were a cold white, with a smattering of large and small patch jobs that were left poorly finished. Nails and their holes from the last tenant were scattered through the apartment, in every wall.
A small area was designated by dingy yellow and brown marbled linoleum tiles, to be the kitchen, dining room. A brand new white pendant, overhead lamp hung too low, indicating the location for a dining table, though there was little more space than could fit a café table.
I drifted through the space, reflected by that uncertain degree of abuse it and I appeared to share. Adaline stood inside by the doorway, watching me I'm sure. In the room was a box spring and mattress on it's wheeled metal frame. It was brand new, another gift. A blue bed set, still in the package, sat on it. I smiled. A room and a bed. Anything else was accessory.
I propped the case upright against the mattress and returned to the living room.
"Let's go." I said as I headed for the door. Adaline, distant and contemplative, looked up, turned and wisped out the door.
"Where now?" She asked.
"Wherever you wanted me to take you," I replied, contented.
"Well," she said, uncertainly. "Can you take me to a friend's house?" She looked at me carefully, waiting for my expression of interest or my prying inquisition. Nothing.
"Which way?" I asked simply. My mind was on other things, such as the third box that sat in my trunk. But perhaps, more importantly, why she brought the other two. If she knew what was inside, there's no way she would have given to me. Certainly not in the state I was in. It was like handing Maxwell a silver hammer and a get out of jail free card. It was thoroughly baffling.
"It's up here on the left," she said after driving for a bit in the reemerging traffic.
The sun had cracked the clouds, but not broken free yet. I had opened my widow inhale the fresh, clean breeze.
"Into that housing development," she continued. "It's gonna be up in that neighborhood."
"The empty one?" I asked as she pointed to a residential street that began with a finished, tan stuccoed home to the right with a posted sign by the driveway indicating it as a model home. Across from it stood a single floor unfinished home, still bearing it's plywood in places. In other's, black tar paper concealed it, pinned against the wall with chicken wire.
We pulled into the residential, following it in past one empty lot after another until we came up on the house.
"Right there." She said, pointing and positively beaming. She worked hard to conceal her glowing smile as she we pulled up next to the house.
"Thanks Ash!" she said as she grabbed her bag and left the car in a flurry of excitement.
I took note of the way, in case I'd have t return to retrieve her. How, I couldn't say. I didn't yet have a phone. Something I realAngieed I'd have to promptly remedy.
I drove back to my new apartment. It was mine. Life in general had become so surreal, its obscure circumstance was disregarded.
I let myself in, took my guitar from its case and held it close. The cold weight of it anchored me in the moment.