Historical Fiction
She showed up on my doorstep, late one Thursday night. It'd been months since I'd seen her last, and I was finally getting to the point where I didn't think about her every day. I guess maybe she knew that on some level, and that's what took her to my front porch that chilly October night. She stood in the doorway, and I watched her eyes fill with reluctant tears, tears like disgruntled stock brokers on office building window ledges, not jumping yet, but seriously considering it. The streetlight across the parking lot was directly behind her, and the backlit effect made her golden curls look almost like a halo. I reflected on the notion of her angelic beauty for a moment before I invited her in. Something in my brain went off, some alarm, saying that letting her come in was a bad idea, that I should have turned her out on the street, that nothing good could come of this. The silly part of my brain that believes in ghosts and true love shushed the alarms, or at least squelched them enough that I could hear her speaking in that voice of one who has been crying and will likely be crying again soon. I automatically put my arms around her. I'll say it was merely out of habit, but I can't deny that any excuse to be close to her was a good one. I took in her familiar scent, jasmine perfume and clove cigarettes, with just a hint of gin. I'm sure I probably said those inane comforting things that one says to someone who shows up nearly in tears in the middle of the night. I thought about getting up and making some drinks. The alarms went off again, but I effectively ignored them. We went into the kitchen, where she slumped with graceful inelegance into a chair at my scratched and chipped table. I made her a Seagram's sour and started to get myself a beer, but decided a good stiff rum sunrise would do a better job of... something. I wasn't entirely sure what I expected to accomplish. I wasn't sure about anything. I took a minute to think about the situation. Twenty minutes before, I had been sitting on the couch passively watching Oregon struggling to keep a two point lead over California in the fourth quarter, trying to remember when the cable bill was due, listening to my cat batting at a bit of paper he'd probably fished out of the trash can. Twenty minutes before, the only thing troubling me (besides Oregon's questionable decision to run the option in such a close game) was my inability to remember if I'd locked the doors in my car. Twenty minutes before, I was thinking of nothing, anything, everything, but I wasn't thinking of the girl who'd stood me up for some middle-aged balding welder with a bad southern accent and worse teeth, the very same girl who'd come back a few weeks later bawling, begging for forgiveness, telling me how much she loved me, only to take off to San Francisco with a hippie and his dog a month after that. Now she was sitting across from me at my kitchen table, scrutinizing me with those blue eyes of hers. For a minute I got lost swimming in their clear blue depths, like a diver in the kind of tropical lagoons they put on postcards and travel brochures. She'd calmed down and composed herself a little. We spent a while catching up, talking about this movie or that, remarking on the triumphs and follies of mutual friends, making the idle chat of two people who aren't yet drunk enough to be anything but polite. I watched her talking, barely listening to what she was actually saying, just watching her lips as they formed her words. It was too easy to believe any lie off of those lips. Even when she smiled she still managed to seem pouty, and when she was truly distraught her lips drew up into a pucker that was simply begging to be kissed. I still think fondly of the not unpleasant pain of those kisses, the way her labret always managed to cut my lip, the taste of blood and gin and clove smoke. By the third or fourth drink the conversation shifted. No, I wasn't seeing anyone, yes, I'd gone on a few dates with that "skinny little whore" from work, no, that one hadn't worked out, yes, I had the apartment to myself while Sara (my roommate) was doing her internship up in New York, no, Sara and I weren't romantically involved, don't be absurd. I didn't bother to ask her the same questions. I was keeping up a good facade of being aloof and uncaring. That, plus I knew she would either lie or tell the truth, and I couldn't decide which one would bother me more. Months before, when things had been better between us, I was always grateful that she at least took the trouble to lie to me, but that night I wasn't in the mood for it. Our glasses were both getting close to empty, and watching her was starting to get the better of me, so I got up and started mixing drinks. When I turned around she was out of her chair, walking towards me. No, walking isn't quite the right word. What she did was more of a slinking glide, her stride timed perfectly to accentuate every curve. Her gait seemed almost feline, like a tigress stalking her prey. She'd caught me off guard, and for a moment I stood transfixed, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to react, unable to even form a complete coherent thought. She leaned in close, and for a moment I let myself savor her unique gin and clove smoke and jasmine perfume...