souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 95: take this longing

"your body like a searchlight,
my poverty revealed.
i would like to try your charity
until you cry, 'now you must try my greed'.
and everything depends upon
how near you sleep to me."
-"take this longing", leonard cohen

The sun had dipped behind the Los Angeles skyline and in turn, the entire area was bathed in a blanket of bluish violet darkness. It was moments like that there in the northeastern side of the city that Sam realized she had missed it all. She peered out the windshield at the winding dim lit freeway before them: all the jacaranda and oleander trees tucked behind the brick walls that lined the road around them. Somewhere near there was the old neighborhood in Alhambra where her parents used to live at before she was born.
Chuck took the next exit to one of the side streets down below, past a small row of low palm trees off to the right. Beyond the trees stood a mural painted upon a wall of pale bricks. Sam couldn't exactly tell what the mural bore but she made out the sight of a series of bright colors there in passing.
"Did you see that?" Greg asked her.
"I did, yeah," she said.
They rolled up to a stoplight and Sam glanced about the intersection before them. The darkening freeway to the left, the stretch of road right in front of them and all the mission style houses up that way as well, and to the right, the four lane parkway that took them into the heart of town and closer to that old neighborhood. The faintest of memories in mind and yet a memory nonetheless.
"Oh, god, the memories that are coming back right now," she admitted.
"That's right, this is your neck of the woods, isn't it?" Chuck said as he raised his attention to the rear view mirror; even in the dim light, Sam made out the sight of the little glimmer in his eye.
"All of Elsinore and this side of L.A. in particular," she said. "My parents lived around here when they first got married. They also lived closer to the beach, too—down by San Pedro."
"Love San Pedro," Tiffany declared.
"Oh, yeah, it's all cool down that way. San Pedro, Long Beach, Rancho Palos Verdes—it's all the real nice part of L.A."
Sam thought about a walk on the beach at some point. So much she wanted to do while she was back there in California, that is if she could do it. Bill wasn't willing to let her out for any reason whatsoever.
Hell of a time getting back to New York if she so wished to do so.
In the meantime, she thought of her parents. Or at least she thought about Esmé and what she planned on doing following the divorce. The fact that her parents were splitting up left her wondering where it all went wrong when she wasn't looking. Her mother became an author and her father had his own things to deal with and yet she had no idea about either one of them.
Much like with her secret about living with Bill had to be kept away from Joey at all costs, she knew that she need not tell a soul about the divorce as well. As far as she knew, Bill had no idea about it, and he didn't need to know about it, either.
Within time, they reached the center piece of Alhambra, the vast stretch of dark grass nestled in between a series of scraggly but still fully shrouded oak trees. The grass made a little hillside near the middle of it all. And right near the sidewalk stood the dark brown wooden city sign: Sam peered out Alex's window to the stone sidewalk out there as Chuck searched for a place to park.
"We're just gonna be seeing them in a little restaurant," he announced to them. "It's another little baby thrash band, too, so it's a humble restaurant rather than the sunset strip."
"They're not Poison or Ratt, anyway," Alex noted in a low voice.
"Don't really wanna walk too far, though," Chuck continued, "you know?"
"Right, right," Tiffany said.
"Especially after all of the running we just did," Sam pointed out. "And the fact I fell on top of Greg."
Alex laughed out loud at that and Greg bowed his head at that.
"I saw that!" Chuck declared. "That was actually pretty funny—no offense, Greg."
"Greggy," Sam said in recollection of Zelda's nickname of him.
"Greggy!" Tiffany chimed in.
Chuck then swerved towards the curb and they took the spot closest to the corner, right across the street from a small bar in a brick building with a pink and blue neon sign in the window.
"We're seeing them in there?" Sam wondered aloud.
"Nah, next door," Chuck told her as he unbuckled his seat belt. "Mr. Skolnick here isn't twenty one yet—neither are they."
"Really?" Sam muttered but Chuck never replied as he climbed out first, followed by Tiffany, and they leaned the seats forward so she, Alex, and Greg could climb out into the impending darkness.
Chuck and Tiffany led the way to the warmly lit restaurant next door: on the far side of the room stood a doorway into a separate floor for a band to play. Behind them stood a long table with Death Angel shirts.
"Here just in time," Greg remarked right as the lights turned low. The five of them were only a select few in a small crowd but it didn't seem to bother either of them up on stage. All five of them had that smooth Pacific Islander skin that seemed to glow with a halo under the dingy lights. All five of them were slender and svelte and their instruments seemed far too big for them.
"Band of cousins," Chuck told Sam. "Each and every one of them."
"I was just gonna say," she started, "they all look related to one another. Like they're brothers."
"All literal kids when they started out a few years back," he continued. "About around the same time as us, but kids, though. Literally kids—you think Alex is still just a baby when you first saw him and also right now. I think Andy, the drummer, was fourteen when they dropped their first album. That was like a month after we officially changed our name to Testament."
"Wow!"
"Hello, Alhambra!" the bassist declared into the microphone with a bit of a high pitch squeak of a voice. "We are Death Angel." Indeed, they struck Sam as a five piece band out of a high school up there on the stage. But she knew they carried with them a bit of prowess from her secondhand experience with Mark. He then ran up to the stage with a portable microphone in one hand, and those long black dreads streamed behind his head. His slender little body was wrapped up in a big black Slayer shirt and baggy black jeans that appeared to be falling off of his hips.
To think Aurora had an encounter with him right before her wedding. The more Sam thought about it, the more she wished for Aurora to have gone with him rather than that harebrained Emile. But as far as she knew, Aurora never touched him once and she only did it to rile her up, especially after her behavior in recent months. He gave those dreads a little toss back with a flick of his head and he showed a big beaming smile out to the audience.
"This is from our brand new album—it's the kind of album you listen to in the City of Angels, too," Mark said into the microphone head. "It's called Frolic in the Park."
"What a name," Sam joked, to which Greg and Alex burst out laughing at that.
"Exactly!" Chuck declared.
"Hit it—"
For a band of kids, they reminded Sam of the Cherry Suicides, just by their relentless nature, their tightness, and the high scratchy shriek that Mark sang in. They weren't nearly as akin to punk rock and they lacked that gory aspect as well, but they were definitely up there; his thick black dreads reminded her of Joey. She needed to call him at some point.
"Man, they just pull, don't they!" Sam shouted.
"They do!" Greg shouted back.
Mark lashed his tongue and threw his dread locks back so that he resembled to a sea monster up there. Andy kicked his drum so hard in order to get the crowd clapping: given it wasn't a very big room, Sam could feel the thumping right through the floor. Chuck and Greg also stomped along with them.
"Let me hear you guys!" Mark bellowed into the microphone. "I wanna hear this room come alive! Make the Philippines proud, Alhambra!"
He raised his hands up over his head as they plunged into a good long guitar solo. Sam thought of the Cherry Suicides in Boston, when they became a thrash band themselves for a few moments. The whole series of claps lasted about five minutes before they returned to the original flow of the song.
Death Angel played one more before they parted the stage, and Sam, Alex, and Greg treated them to applause.
"Hey, kids, you want a shirt?" Tiffany offered the three of them.
"Can get a whole bunch of shirts, actually, Tiff," Chuck told her from behind them, "they're all like a buck-fifty."
Sam couldn't help but laugh at Bill's complaint about a bag of crackers. Cheese crackers that were the same price as a handful of T-shirts she could sleep in that night and the one afterwards. But at the same time, she still shook her head at the very notion. And he was about to lose what income he had left; but Marla had the right idea to pressure him into finding a better solution for himself. Sam thought back to what her mother had said about things growing treacherous and sticky when kids were involved.
Greg bowed into the men's room in the restaurant while Chuck and Tiffany strode outside into the night. Sam turned to Alex.
"You want something to eat?" she volunteered as she tucked her small bag of shirts under her arm while she put her change away.
"Nah, I'm not very hungry believe it or not," he said, "Chuck also told me that he and Tiffany are going next door to bar for a drink." To which he then eyed her juggling her things only to put her wallet away. "Here, let me help you—"
He took the shirts so she could put the change inside her wallet, and then her wallet back into her purse. Once she had it back against her body, he handed the shirts back to her.
"Thank you," she told him.
"Wanna take a walk outside?" he offered her.
"Take a walk on the wild side?" she retorted, and Alex laughed, a big hearty bout of laughter. But he led her out to the front door of the restaurant, where the night had fallen upon Los Angeles: a hazy orange glow emerged from the downtown area, such that Sam could only see the stars in the sky if she turned her attention to the north, over the mountains.
Alex led her to the corner next to the bar, and they both peeked inside: Chuck and Tiffany were in fact in there and at the bar in anticipation of their drinks.
"Did Greg say anything about being in there?" Sam asked him.
"Nah, he just said he was using the bathroom and then he'd meet us outside." Alex took a glimpse over his shoulder right then.
"I'm not seeing him, though." He stood there at the corner of the sidewalk and she awaited right next to him there. Once they glanced about both ways first, he took a step off of the curb and she walked side by side with him to the opposite sidewalk, right near the car. But Alex himself kept on going into the darkness: the sole light came from the glow of the city, the neon lights behind them, and the sole street lamps on the corners up ahead.
"Would you believe that before I joined Testament," he started at one point, "I never really had been to the L.A. area?"
"Really?" She was stunned by that, to which he nodded his head, even in the darkness.
"Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area my whole life," he told her. "Never really felt the need to leave until I decided I wanted to be in a band. Sometimes I made visits to New York City or out to Vegas, but never the City of Angels. It was weird telling Chuck that, too, because he was born in L.A."
They reached the street corner and he ran his fingers through his hair once more. Even in the nondescript light, Sam made out the sight of his deep eyes as they glanced off to their right. She was once again alone with Alex, and what better place than an area she called home for such a long time.
"I will say this," he began again as he strolled along the sidewalk with her right next to him.
"What's that?"
"I'm glad that you're out this way," he admitted: whenever he looked over at her, the ambient glow of everything made him resemble to a little porcelain doll. "Ever since we got together on New Year's over in Ithaca, I went home thinking, 'I was really wrong about Samantha.'"
"I feel bad about you overhearing at that conversation I had had with Aurora, though," she confessed. Meanwhile, the sidewalk deviated away from the grass and gave way to pillars of pure concrete.
"Why?" he asked her as he stepped down in the barren storm drain.
"You saw a side to me that I didn't really want you to see." She followed his lead into the storm drain, away from the concrete and almost into the street.
"Why? She was your best friend and she pretty much left you behind at this point."
"And she made your day all about her," she added.
"And she made my birthday all about her, right," he echoed her.
They kept on walking around the concrete until they reached the next edge of the sidewalk. Beyond that something dark emerged from behind the pillars.
"Bit of grass here," he pointed out.
"Grass, the trees, and the hill," Sam added, and she turned to him. No moon out that night but there was in fact plenty of ambient light from the city near there and the very town of Alhambra; despite the dim light, however, she could make out the sight of that gradual hill side not too far from the concrete's edge.
"Remember during Kirk and Rebecca's wedding when you and Zelda rolled down that one hillside together?" he recalled.
"Oh yeah!" Sam snapped her fingers at that. "And you and Joey ran down it together with your shirts off like you were a couple of athletic boys."
"I dunno about him but my suit was getting a little heavy at that point," he pointed out with a shrug of his shoulders and a lopsided little grin. Through the darkness, she noticed his eyes pointed towards the other side of the grass. "Hey, there's the car."
"Where?"
"Due north of us from here. Right over there."
"Shall we frolic in the park?" she joked.
"At this time of night?" he pointed out.
"Yes."
"There's no light, though, Samantha. We can't see the creatures and things that crawl about the grass beneath us."
"Well, if we frolic about in the park, we gotta get closer at some point, though. So you can protect me from all the bad things that linger about down in the grass."
"Well—you're technically married now," he pointed out as they continued onward to the next corner. One more corner, and they were back at the restaurant and the bar, and of course the safety of the car.
"Yeah... but I don't have a ring, though," Sam pointed out. "Sure, Bill made me sign some things but we don't have the things that make a marriage a marriage. Or at least so I think."
"But you are technically married to Bill, though," Alex insisted. "That means we can't fool around or do anything like that or anything that involves any kind of frolicking. Or at least that's what the Jew in me tells me."
Sam giggled at that.
"Mr. Wandering Jew," she joked.
"The Wandering Jew!" he recalled with a chuckle. "I think we gotta put a name on that at some point."
"Who, you and me or you and Testament?"
"Testament! That could be a track for an album in the future. When I get back to my guitar, I'll throw around some licks and see what comes out of it at some point."
"You are just—you are fascinating, Alex," Sam remarked.
"You think so?"
"Yeah. There's so much more to you than meets the eye, and I feel like I've just scratched the surface with you."
"You really have, Samantha," he told her, "you like barely made an etching on the surface of the little Skol-man."
"By the way," she began and a part of her shuddered at the phrase given she knew Bill likes to employ that onto her, "I know you're a guitarist for a heavy metal band—but are there any other genres you play?"
"Not really," he answered with a shake of his head. "Most of my influences tend to be rock n' roll based. Most anyways. I saw Miles Davis in a concert on TV a while back, and ever since then, that's piqued my interest for the jazz world. I was raised by older parents compared to my peers. Where they grew up to things like Grateful Dead, I was exposed to like Sinatra and Dean Martin when I was growing up."
"Who do you tend to be influenced by?"
"Well, my favorite band ever is the Beatles. I think anyone who knows what they're talking about when it comes to music they mention the Beatles at some point. They have to mention them, too, otherwise they have no credibility. The thing that got me into heavy metal was Kiss—I remember being eleven years old and literally begging my parents to take me to see Kiss. I actually cried to convince them."
"Aw!"
"Yeah, my older brother Nate was like 'okay, Alex, if we can't get Mom and Dad to say yes, turn on the water works' and I did! So the Beatles got me into guitar, Kiss was what convinced me to go into metal—and then I found Van Halen and Eddie Van Halen, whom I think genuinely inspired me to be a lead guitarist. And then I started finding more and more guitar players like Randy Rhoads and Stevie Ray Vaughn. I also found a movie—you might find it the next time you go to a video store like near here or over in New York—that came out when I was nine years old, I think? I was nine going on ten. It's called 'American Hot Wax'—got people like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins playing themselves!"
"'American Hot Wax'," she repeated, "I'm writing that down."
"Please do! The last time I threw out that movie name to someone they forgot it in like three minutes and then I never saw them again."
Sam stopped right on the sidewalk in search of that one piece of paper, the one with Chuck's and management's phone number written on one side, and a pen down inside of her purse. Alex stopped right before her with his head bowed a little bit before her. The neon from the bar across the street from there provided enough light for her to find it but she had to squint her eyes in order for her to adjust to the sight of the ink on the paper.
"Can you see?"
"Sort of." She held the paper within the pink and blue glow of the neon and that proved to be enough for her.
"'American Hot Wax'," he repeated. "The story of Alan Freed, the disc jockey who introduced rock n' roll to the masses and even coined the term, too. It's a little obscure, though, I remember one of Nate's friends had a copy of it and I happened to watch along with them. So you might have to look around for it."
"A little late movie night the next time I see Marla and Bel," she said as she carefully wrote the words down.
"Do they still live in New York, by the way?" he asked her.
"Marla does—Belinda went up to Albany to work in a shop that specializes in stained glass."
"Oh, wow, that's badass."
"She tried to get me to take stained glass when we were in school but it went through twice."
"Damn, that would've been awesome."
"She showed me a few little tips and tricks on the whole world of glass. There's just... so much I want to do. You know?"
"Absolutely," he replied. "Absolutely."
Alex then turned his attention to the sidewalk before them, to the car still parked there. Chuck and Tiffany were in that bar there while Greg appeared to be still in the restaurant.
"What shall we do next?" he asked her. "We kinda walked around in a big circle just now."
Sam tucked the piece of paper and the pen both back into her purse, and she glanced up at the grass before them. They were close to the car and the sole light came from the neon across the street: he was too young to go inside there and she needn't drink lest Bill ask her about it by the time she came back. As far as she knew no one would see them out there.
"We can lie here, though," she suggested, and he giggled at that.
"Just lay on the grass?"
"Yeah, like star gaze. Just walking around here, I can tell that the sprinklers haven't come out yet, either. We're a ways out from the very center of L.A., so the light pollution isn't so bad out here in Alhambra."
"Yeah, guess we sure can," he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. "Just don't get too close to me, though."
"Why not?" Sam laughed.
"Because when you get too close to me," he started with a little gyration of his head, "it warrants a kiss from you."
"I won't kiss you," she assured him. Alex sighed through his nose and he ran his fingers through the piece of black hair on the right side of his head. That little glimmer of gray atop the crown of his head appeared even lighter against the soft neon glow near there.
Sam tucked her new Death Angel shirt underneath her arm, and then she led him onto the soft dry grass in the midst of the trees. It wasn't in fact entirely dry: a light dew already began to fall over their heads. She guided Alex towards a spot on the grass, the driest spot as far as she could tell there. He had rolled up that single bag of T-shirts into a tight bundle and, once Sam stopped right in place, he dropped down to the ground and he set the bundle down on the grass behind him.
"Oh, I see what you're doing," she declared as he lay down flat on the grass and his shirt lifted a little bit up his body. Even in the darkness, Sam made out the sight of that little sliver of pale skin between the bottom hem of his shirt and his jeans, about the width of her thumbnail, but a sweet little sliver of his tummy nonetheless. She bunched up the shirts in her bag as well, and she followed his suit and lay down next to him there on the grass. A couple of inches separated them from the other.
"I won't kiss you," she assured him for the third time in a row.
He shifted his weight there on the grass and folded his hands upon his stomach, which in turn made the sliver between his shirt and his jeans a little bit bigger. He swallowed and his neck appeared much more shapely than before. She thought of drawing that shapely neck at some point. It was a fleeting thought, but that thought in fact swam right through her mind at that point. The shape of his side profile and the soft appearance of his black hair as it sprawled over his shoulders even down there on the ground.
Sam then cleared her throat and he rolled his head over the makeshift pillow for a glance over at her.
"So if you write a song called 'The Wandering Jew'," she said, "will you credit me for inspiration?"
"Of course," he replied with a slight chuckle. "I mean it only makes sense to do just that." He showed her a sweet little smile and then he rolled his head back to where he lay flat on the bundle of the other shirts. "The Perseids are coming up here soon. At least I think they are."
"Perseid meteor shower?" she asked him.
"Yeah. They're right in the middle of August—at least I think they are. That's my memory of them from when I learned about them in school."
He fetched up a big yawn and then he stretched his arms up over his head. Sam rolled her head over her makeshift pillow for a look at the side of his face: the way in which his side profile had such a fineness to it. The prominent but gentle point of his nose. The full sensual shape of his lips. The smoothness of his skin and his chin.
She never thought of Alex as being so lovely, but laying there next to her, she recognized another side to him that she hadn't seen before there. She inched closer to the side of his face, much to his surprise. He gaped at her and raised his eyebrows at her.
His little body enticed her and she wanted him, and she wanted to kiss that little pearl of gray upon his head, now a little tuft the size of her index finger. She set a hand on the side of his face and she lunged in closer to his face.
"Samantha!" he gasped. "What're you doing?"
"I want to kiss you," she whispered into his face; she showed him her tongue.
"Don't," Alex begged her in a soft whisper and with a shake of his head.
"I want to kiss you," she insisted as she gazed into those deep eyes and at those sweet smooth lips, as smooth as butter.
"Samantha—Samantha, please—you're legally married and you have a boyfriend, too."
"So?"
Alex froze right in place at that.
"So?" she repeated, and he cracked her a smile and he laughed at that. He brought a hand to his mouth in order to stifle his laughter given they lay together there outside of the bar. She lifted herself up and then rolled over him: she suspended herself over him. He was right underneath her; Sam brought her face closer to his so she could smell the soft cologne on the side of his neck.
Decadent, like a little treat for her and all for her, all for being such a bad girl.
A bad girl with a good boy.
His chest heaved from her being right above him. The tips of her dark hair dangled down towards his chest and she ran her tongue around her lips to get him going as well.
"Samantha, I—" He could hardly talk. "—I—" She pressed a finger to those lips.
"You're just—you're so sweet and intelligent and funny and refined and just—everything totally different from what I'm used to."
Alex swallowed but he never moved a muscle.
"I want to come closer to you," she begged him as she touched his chest. With that free hand, she unfastened the bottom lip there at the top of his shirt. "I want to come closer to you, Alex Skolnick."
Or at least that was what she thought would happen had she inched even closer to him. Instead she fluttered her eyelashes to rid of the daydream, and she just lay there on her back next to him and every so often, she peered over at him and the soft and smooth side of his face.
"I should tell you," she began for real that time, "you have the cutest little lips."
He snickered at that.
"You do! They're really cute and shapely, and I like how they kind of peel back whenever you talk, too."
"I'm a mishmash," he confessed with a shrug of his shoulders.
"Like one of those rag dolls," she added.
"One of those rag dolls they piece together of all the scraps they scrape up from like the bottom of the barrel."
"Nonsense," she insisted.
"These lips under this schnoz and with these eyes and with the little tuft on my head? Yeah, it's bottom of the barrel, Samantha."
"You are not from the bottom of the barrel, Alex," she persisted. "I assure you."
"I'm like something that the world likes to keep a secret, and by the time it comes out, it's already been said and done."
He sighed through his nose and Sam frowned at that. And then it hit her, especially with Joey and Marla not around, and neither of her parents knowing about Alex himself.
"Speaking of secrets," she began, to which he rolled his head back over the roll of shirts on the ground. "Can you keep another one?"
"I'll lock secrets up in a vault and never let them out," he said in a single breath, "especially after Louie told Marla about your living situation. Can't believe he did that."
"My parents are getting divorced," she told him straight up.
"Aw, really?" He gaped at her.
"Yeah."
"Well, why am I sworn to secrecy about it?"
"My mom doesn't want me talking about it with anyone. But she doesn't know about you, though."
He raised his eyebrows at that.
"Really?" he said in a low voice.
"Yeah. So—could you?"
He ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth.
"I'll put them in the proverbial vault, Samantha. Don't you worry about a thing."
"Hey, kids!" Chuck called from across the street.
"I want you to be my secret, too," she blurted out to him.
"Me?" He raised his eyebrows at her.
"Yes. From my parents, from Joey, from everyone. I want you to be my best kept secret."
"Sam?" Tiffany called from across the street. "Alex?"
"I'll explain later," she vowed, and he nodded his head and they both clambered up to their feet. Alex fixed his black hair and Sam straightened her top.
"Oh there they are, babe," Tiffany pointed out from the shadow under the neon lights.
"Had a little fun on the grass?" Chuck joked as they headed closer to them.
"That's for us to know and for you to find out," Sam retorted, and Chuck erupted into laughter. She glanced over at Alex and the shadow cast over his face.
"Gonna be hell of a time getting you back home," he said in a low voice. "I just think about how that man treats you, too."
"That's an understatement. I don't even want to go back there."
"You wanna hang out with us!" he exclaimed with a chuckle. "Next time we're down this way, I'll make sure you get a spot with us in the hotel room. I'd hate for you to go back to him."
"Aw, Alex, that's so sweet of you," Sam said with a smile on her face.
"There's Mr. Christian," Chuck declared.
"Looks like he's got some food, too," Alex added. Indeed, Greg returned to the car with a brown cardboard box in one hand. The two of them awaited Chuck's unlocking the doors as well as the folding back of the seats.
"Still not hungry?" Sam asked him as she took a whiff of whatever was inside there as Greg walked past.
"That might change," Alex confessed to her before he climbed into the back seat behind Tiffany first.