Haunt You Like Music

by CHRIS TOLIAN
All Photography ©2004 FRED ELLIS

There is a music to love and life.  A sacred passion.  A dangerous, raging thing that can tear through heaven and on into transcendence where it is all quiet and beautiful.  But only sometimes.  This mad wild dance comes screaming through the divine poetics of the body.  Hushed now into a lover’s whisper that speaks in truths and beatitude.  Rushing headlong into a chaos that swirls all crazy round a bright and shiny star til everything pales in the absence.

* * * * *                                         

“I’m gonna haunt you, you know.”  Voice a low murmur.  Clove and vanilla.  A cinnamon sage kiss.

Lights are rusted embers.  She looks up at me through those long long lashes, smoke curling between us.  Faded jazz ghosts seep through the hot, close air.  I laugh.  Her smile fades, copper streaked hair falling to half hide her face.  Laughter dies a quick little death as the music ends.  Silence stretches.

“I’m gonna haunt you like music.”  Soft accent creeps in, adding a mellow twang.  Like whiskey and coke.  Like a warm breath against my wrist.  Like a sepia picture of someone already gone.

My fingers brush her neck, pulling the heat across her skin.  She tilts her head, shrugging my hand off.  Arms cross her chest.  I can’t touch her.  I can’t let her go.  I can feel her already somewhere else.

“No.”  Quiet, simple. 

“Why?”  A tremble in my voice.  I hate myself for already feeling loss.  Dammit, she’s still here.  Right here.

“I can’t.”  Her eyes liquid crystal. “I don’t want to.”

“You already haunt me.  Like a first heartbreak.  Or the ghost of a dog.”

“I am.”

I grin.  “You’re not a dog.”

She laughs, rueful.  “No.  But I feel like a ghost.”  She glances away.  Then she catches me with those eyes.  All big and blue and full of tears.  “And I’m going to break your heart.”

“You don’t have to.”  You just did.

She just looks at me.  A palette of sea and I feel like drowning just to try it.  To become a part of it.  The air is nervous, shivering around her.  Eyes soften, question.  Indecisive.  Then something in her hardens.  My pulse knocks in my head.  No no no. 

She says she’s leaving.

* * * * *

The light is older.  Chiascuro, deeper and more varied.  Missouri night close and humid.  This bar just east of Kansas.  Halfway between two lives.

She’s all beautiful and grown up.

“I moved to Chicago when you were getting married the first time.”  She laughs.  “Probably just down the street actually.”  She watches me light a cigarette.  Eyebrow cocks up in slight disapproval, just like old times.  “I was getting married when you got divorced.”

I exhale, blowing the smoke across the amber surface of my whiskey.  A tiny cauldron.  Divining the future.  Trying to see the past.  Not yet sure what happened in between.  “And now what?”

She is quiet.  Those blue eyes look at me with an expression I can’t read.  “I’m not sure.”

I laugh.  Lean forward, daring her to flinch.  “You keep popping into my life like a ghost.  I mean, jesus.  It’s been what?  Twelve years since we were together?  Seven since I saw you last?”

She goes all indignant.  “I stopped by last summer.”

I laugh, almost hysterical.  “Yeah.  For five minutes.  Just long enough to make me remember.”  Those damn eyes.  “And then what?  A couple calls from godknowswhere?  Hell, you don’t even reply to my emails.”  I take a harsh drag from my cigarette, the cherry crackling.  “And what the fuck is your phone number?  Why can’t I call you?”

She bursts out laughing.  Doubles over, spilling her beer. “You sound like a woman.  Jesus.”  She wheezes, sucking in air.  “We’re both married.  We have families, for christ’s sake.”

I feel my face go flush hot.  Light another cigarette.

“Besides.”  She quiets.  Serious.  “I warned you.  I told you it’d be like this.”

Damn.  Yes, yes she did.

“I get so pissed at you sometimes.”  A fucking rage that tears at everything I believe in because it shouldn’t be there.  There is no rationale for it.  I say it now to hurt her, make her feel just a tiny bit of what I go through every time.  But I can’t make it stick.  I can’t.

She looks away and it breaks my heart.  That giveaway physical ache.  I sigh.

“Can’t blame you.”  She says it all quiet and pitiful and I hate myself for it.  Damn.  I can’t carry the anger through.  I let it die silent.  “I’m sorry.”  She sips her beer.  Fingers snake out, snag one of my cigarettes.  

“Why do you do it?”  The question surprises me.  She looks up as I light the Winston.

She won’t answer.  I know this.  Why should she?  She does it because… just because.

She takes a drag from the cigarette.  “Do you even know me anymore?”

I look at her.  Just look at her without thinking.  Blue eyes, dark hair.  The smile.  “Have you changed that much?”

“How would you know?”  She sits back, suddenly angry.  Like it’s my fault.  “Would it matter?”

I turn away to kill the anger rising up again.  A blond girl plays piano.  Angry, plaintive.  Fucking soundtrack to this little reunion.  Her voice like crushed velvet, but so soft I can’t hear the words.  Inadvertent scat chant.  The rest of the band sneaks in.

“So.” I look across the table.  She’s distant, like she isn’t quite here.  I light a cigarette and watch her.  Something is simmering in her that she won’t let out.  A scream that is stuck in her chest, taking little bites of her insides, all the time wearing at her, but she… I’m not sure what she wants.  Neither is she. 

I try again.  “So what’s new in your life?  What are you up to these days?”

Eyes slide past mine to focus on the table.  Tears?  Now she’s here.  But she doesn’t really want to be.

“This music.”  Skips right on past the past and into the now.  No confessions, no history.  No story.

I let it go.  “Odd, huh?”

She tilts her head. A shadowed smile.  A heavy cyclic blues riff.  Piano morphed into waves of distorted organ bass rolling over and over not going anywhere but pulling like the river.  Stumbles through the chromatics, it finds balance, teetering, only to fall back into compulsive repetition.

“Still…”

“Something beautiful about it.”  The soft, indistinct vocals.  The whirling swirls of notes.

She nods.

“Do you remember driving around looking at Christmas lights, radio playing country music way down low?”  I turn back to her.  Let the distance, the time fade and blur the lines just a little bit more.  Let the other voices die down.  The protests of conscience stop.  It all kind of slips my mind and just keeps on going.

“Yeah, I do.”  Those are the things I missed most.  I thought they would last forever.  I thought you’d be with me forever.  Damn.  I haven’t thought about these things for years.  I mean, I still remember the songs that played.  How she smelled.  How her lips tasted for christ’s sake.  The way she fit all tight and warm snuggled up against me as the tires crunched over old snow and I prayed and prayed that the throttle wouldn’t freeze open or a tire pop.

“We were kids.  What?  Like seventeen?”

“Yeah.”  I look up at her.  “But we were never really kids I don’t think.”

She smiles.  “What about now?”  A little laugh.  Neither of us has the answer.  “I feel like I still know you.  Like I can still tell you anything.”  The brightest blue eyes question.  “Why is that?”

I shrug.   But you can’t tell me why you left.  Lines blur past distinction.  Til it doesn’t matter anymore and it gets all messed up.  The way you don’t want it to be.  But then you do.

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