- -
I.
She's pushing 40, though she
doesn't look it. In fact, at times, she doesn't look a day over 25.
But there's something in her eyes on this night as she enters
Christopher's place, crossing her arms protectively over her breasts.
There is age beneath her eyelids; pain, wisdom, and the evidence of a
scarred soul. There are no bruises on the outside, but somehow he knows
that figurative blood has been spilled.
She needs to not be alone right
now. She needs someone to witness her breakdown. He obliges as he lets
her step inside the doorway. And he is lost to her then, a part of her
again. After all this time, he sees that look in her eyes, and he is
willing, he is eager, he is ready to be hers again, for however long
she'll have him. Sherry is gone, and a large pile of money can only
give so much comfort when loneliness creeps up again. It's a woman's
touch that is needed in these times. And what better woman to touch
than this one?
He begins by reaching out for
her elbow, innocently enough. It is not his intent to seduce her, but
he'll have her if she's willing.
"Lor?" he prods gently.
Her head is shaking from side to
side. "I-don't-want-to-talk-about-anything."
Something has reached in and
grabbed a hold of her heart; that something is now squeezing the
ever-beating life out of it, extinguishing it from existence. He can
see it in the way her eyes are sinking into her skull, becoming larger
as the rims become blackened, the color of bruises. Maybe it's not that
she doesn't want to talk; maybe it's that she can't.
Silence is so deafening when
you're standing next to a Gilmore girl. He thinks this to himself, and
not for the first time. He can recall a time roughly 20 years ago when
a sixteen year-old Lorelai stood before him with a pregnancy strip in
her hand. Read it, was all she would say, and then she was quiet
for so long while things sunk into his brain, making his skull much like
hers was this day.
"Christopher..." she squeaks out
just now. She's calling him by his full name. Something's definitely
up.
He perks up from his reverie.
"I'll sleep on the couch tonight. It's pretty comfy, once you get past
the needing to be comfortable phase. You can take the bed."
She purses her lips and nods
strangely, her eyes on the ground. He wants to see Lorelai's eyes,
wants to look into them the way he hasn't been able to for the longest
time.
"Lor?" he prompts again when it
seems she won't be speaking anytime soon.
"The couch. You. Right."
Monosyllabic Lorelai is a sight to behold. You'd think they'd show it
at carnivals and charge money for the phenomenon. Lord knows Taylor
would.
It's as if Chris can actually
see a knife coming between them to cut the tension like a block of
cheese. He looks at her as she looks at the ground, at her shoes, at
the scuff marks on the ground from her shoes. The knife's blade cuts
further until the tension separates and falls like sheets amidst them.
"Screw it," Lorelai finally
mumbles before launching herself at Chris, wrapping her arms around his
body and crushing it tightly to hers. She looks at his face in a
scrutinizing way, close enough to examine every wrinkle that isn't
there. Even when they are there, they'll look distinguished on him.
After all, he is Christopher. She knows this, as she stares, seeming to
contemplate her next move.
"I think," Chris whispers, as if
by talking too loudly he could scare her away, "that you're too afraid
to make the next move."
Challenged and already defeated
enough, Lorelai feels a lone tear escape from her left eye. She can
literally feel the mascara smear as she leans in to capture Chris'
bottom lip between her own. Her lips tremble against his as she
continues the kiss, pulling at his lips with the gentle ease of one who
has been a lover of him many a time. She knows him. She knows how he
likes to be kissed. She knows how to read the way he kisses her back.
II.
If she had known that the year
1982 would bring her last summer free of the tummy and the baby that
would morph into a new life, she may have searched harder for the
answers that still linger two decades since. Lorelai's priorities
went from "Is it fabulous?" to "Is it necessary?", then were downgraded
further to "Can I live without it?" Survival, rather than enjoyment,
became the key when her body was transformed into a locket which would
open to reveal another human being.
Lorelai picked at the food on
her plate with its expensive new design. She tried not to absolutely
zero in on the perks of being a part of a family whose only time spent
together just had to be for dinner, even on Friday nights. Drag. She
sighed, and purposefully slouched in her chair, contemplating doing the
"Wow, I'm stifled -- I mean, stuffed" excuse thing again and running out
before purchasing guard dogs became a topic of interest again. Dogs
that would keep nothing out, but would rather only serve to keep Lorelai
in at all times.
She wasn't so much nervous as
annoyed at the thought of how many Scooby Snacks it would take to buy
the guards' cooperation.
"Sit up straight, Lorelai."
Hence Emily was given the patented stare that she had received from her
daughter since the very first time she placed her in one of those
dresses that are meant to be seen but not touched; worn but not worn
out. Their skirts were the best ones for spinning, and yet they were to
belong only to a mannequin version of a child behind glass.
Tiny carrots lined up for a
parade around Lorelai's plate as her father brought up a new topic.
Something about his new co-worker's business travels taking him on
travels where he was able to learn in a more first-hand way about the
depths of the holocaust.
Emily perked up at this. "Ah, I
remember when Melissa Loman's father used to recall his time spent in
Germany during Hitler's reign. After being near so many blasts, it's no
wonder the man's hearing was never the same."
"God, you're old."
"What was that you muttered
under your breath?" Emily snapped.
"You're old enough to remember
people remembering things like that!"
"Your room. Now." Emily even
pointed in case Lorelai had sudden amnesia and needed directions.
"Old!" Lorelai spat out.
"Straight upstairs, young lady.
There will be no dinner for you."
"But then there will be no urge
to regurgitate."
"What are you saying? Are you
bulimic? You do look thin."
"No, Mom. I just hate the
'food' we eat here."
"Perhaps some time without it
will make you a little more grateful," Richard put in gruffly.
"Don't call me ungrateful."
Lorelai stabbed an accusatory finger at the air. "I'm leaving the room,
aren't I? There's something we can all be grateful for! ...Enjoy your
Cornish hen's barf."
"I heard that," Emily said
dryly, beyond irritated with these teenage antics.
Voiced Lorelai, while walking
away: "That's because I said it out loud."
III.
Summer midnights were the best.
Tasteless dress discarded, Lorelai would climb down the drain pipe in
jeans that hugged her hips deliciously, the big bangs hair sprayed on so
that not even a windshield wiper could disturb their shape. She made
jabs at '80's fashion while being a part of it, tying the left side of
her pink polka-dotted shirt into a knot to off-set any sense of
centering in her outfit. She loved that she looked atrocious. She took
pictures, especially when wearing that "confused unicorn" ponytail on
the side of her head.
Upon reaching the ground, off
she'd sprint to Chris' awaiting vehicle, and away they'd venture to
cause some sort of damage to somebody's brain. Most likely each
other's.
She stopped before him this day,
hands on her hips, except for the left hand, which grasped the knot that
hid her hip underneath it. "Uh, Chris? I think your car went through
some sort of identity crisis."
Christopher beamed at her,
revving the engine of his new motorcycle. "You like it? I'm gonna call
her Moneybags."
"Hmm. Well, I think Moneybags
is going to ruin my hair wherever we go."
"Please. A hurricane couldn't
bring damage to your hair. I've tried smashing those bangs, Lor, and
they just pop back relentlessly, like a slinky."
"First of all, major cool points
for comparing my hair to the God of all toys without batteries.
Secondly, if we crash and burn -- "
"We won't -- "
" -- and skid along the road
until only one side of my face is recognizable anymore, you must make my
skinned off side look presentable again using Moneybags' shiny parts
before anyone in society can see me again."
"Cool, my own robochick," Chris
said thoughtfully. "But you'll have to pay me back for the parts you
stole, once you're blinking and eating solid foods again."
Lorelai's throat made a
disgusted sound that was something close to a forced cough. "I make no
promises. And even when I do, I cross my fingers behind my back."
"You're such a child. And, by
the way, you haven't even bothered to ask exactly what she is."
"A safety hazard record in the
making?"
Chris ignored her comment and
ran his fingers along its smooth handlebars. "It's a Honda Shadow 750,
babe. Wait till you hear her purr."
"She'd better not take my place
there. My cat impersonations are uncanny, even to cats."
Chris patted the limited space
on the seat behind him. "So you coming for a ride or not? Time's
a-ticking. You know how your mother starts randomly popping in to your
bedroom to make sure you're there around three. All your jabbering's
made it half past twelve."
Lorelai approached the vehicle,
a kind that she had never ridden before, and placed a leg over it so
that she was straddling it completely. "Christopher, you're the child.
If I didn't 'jabber', we'd have no conversation at all. All that would
come out of your mouth would be, 'Hey. What's happening? Oh. I don't
do the conversation thing.'" She began adjusting herself on the seat.
"Okay, have to say, before take-off -- this? Is the most uncomfortable
seat I've ever sat in."
"You're such a child," Chris
teased again. "Wrap your arms around my waist. But don't get frisky, I
need to concentrate."
Sighing, Lorelai did as she was
told. "You really take the fun out of everything." Barely had she
clasped her hands together, hooking her arms securely, than Chris
stepped on the gas, and they were off.
Lorelai screamed, wordlessly,
and then she screamed his name. She couldn't decide if it was out of
fright or outrage or because of the thrill that chased the warmth from
her veins and left adrenaline in its wake. So much speed was gathered
so quickly, and it was nothing like being in a car, or on a bike. A
motorcycle was death and danger, like a noose with her name on it at
dawn. It was speed that pulled the skin on her face taut, and brought
tears to her eyes that escaped from the outer corners of her lids to be
whisked away into the air they so briefly encountered and then left
behind.
It was the kind of thrill that
was slamming doors in her parents' faces, tearing itchy party dresses to
smithereens, escaping down the drain pipe every midnight that summer
without fail. To vocalize the word motorcycle was to give
desired rebellion a name. She knew that now. Clasping her fingers more
intricately around Chris' waist, she held on tighter.
IV.
It doesn't take long to find
Christopher's bed. History shows that it never did take them long to
find a suitable place to copulate: cramped cars, school bathrooms, the
janitor's closet, her parents' balcony. Whether they were putting on a
show for people across the street with buckets of popcorn between their
knees was no concern. Always the concerns of life were tossed away with
his tie and her bra. They became so lost in one another, having known
each other a lifetime. Having watched the candle's flame grow and
flicker.
It was a trick candle, Lorelai
now realizes. One that could be blown out, lingering only in tendrils
of smoke. And yet once her back was turned, the flame could reignite.
It did reignite. Time after endless time. Maybe that was why she was
here of all places, throwing things away along with her clothes and
those nonchalant concerns. Throwing away what she and Luke had, an
engagement that was stuck in time, as if held by static cling wrap,
never moving anywhere. She was too afraid to watch it move backward,
and so she had to leave before that could happen, knowing that the
forward steps would never come.
They'd never come.
Lorelai stands, naked, watching
Chris remove his boxers and socks. She flexes and unflexes her hands at
her sides, straining to recall a time before when she has been this
uncomfortable. She purses her lips, knowing that never before has she
known an action was so blatantly wrong, and gone through with it,
anyway. She releases the suction of her lips on each other, and feels
for her hair as if it is a foreign thing. She realizes that she is
standing on train tracks. She isn't moving away; she isn't trying to
budge. She is begging that train to crash into her and smash her to
pieces.
Pieces that would litter the
carpet of Christopher's elegant bedroom, scattering as they decayed with
time. Maybe if she was only pieces, she wouldn't be the hollow shell
standing here right now, missing unfashionable baseball caps and the
soreness of rubbing delicate skin against eternal stubble. Maybe the
sting of the ultimatum would disappear as if it weren't this gigantic
thing, like a black hole set against all four walls of every room,
pulling, wanting to suck her into being less than Luke's main priority.
So far less that the place she holds with him is worth nothing.
Nothing, if she can't have it all.
He wants more time; now he can
have all the time in the world.
"Lor?" Chris' voice comes to
her as if from far away. She realizes that she's touching her hair
again, looping strands of it around her fingers absent-mindedly as
though she's developing a habit of it, like people who chew their
nails. She drops her hand immediately, picturing the stubby fingers of
those kinds of people, and the way they can't even scratch; she doesn't
want to go bald. She clears her throat and meets Chris' eyes from where
he stands across the room, giving him her attention.
He takes timid steps toward her,
insecurities alive in his eyes, his mouth set in no shape in
particular. It's as if he can't choose what kind of expression his face
is supposed to be wearing.
She wonders when he became so
afraid of displeasing her. When he reaches the halfway point between
them, something within her snaps and she rushes forward, wrapping her
arms around his neck and capturing his lips, kissing him hungrily. As
he kisses her back, his arms encircling her, she searches within his
mouth for the answers she's seeking to questions she hasn't vocalized.
She stabs her tongue in through his teeth, digging deeper, an
archaeologist with the desperation of a deadline.
Chris does nothing to tame her
intensity, his fire ablaze, so hot that it's turning from orange to
blue. Awkwardly as they kiss, he steers them to the bed, and he trips
over the side of the bed frame, sending them both flying down to the
mattress. When Lorelai lands on top of him with a thud, her lips are
torn away, and her eyes pop open.
He groans at the way the spell's
broken when an object digs into his back. He reaches behind his body to
reveal the stereo remote from the living room. Gigi loves to hide the
things, loves to make Daddy "mad".
As he tosses it aside, Lorelai
stares at him, wide-eyed. After a beat, she crawls over him to take her
place in the bed. She usually sleeps on the right side of the bed, but
tonight, she chooses the left side on purpose. Getting situated, she
cups Chris' chin in her hand and draws it towards her, as his body
follows suit. Ending up in a push-up position above her, he is very
aware of the way that her eyes have not left the depths of his since
opening. Each time he blinks, he expects to see her gaze shift, but
it's riveted, and now she is swallowing something that he hopes is not
her pride.
He lowers himself to her, chest
upon chest, his nipples hardening as one of them brushes directly
against one of hers. He sighs with happiness, thankful that Gigi has
gone to bed on time this evening, and then begins kissing Lorelai again.
Lorelai absorbs Chris' sigh, and
relaxes her body, her chest deflating towards the mattress. As their
lips meet, she closes her eyes and thinks of anything but what is worth
thinking about.
V.
"You never could stand still
when you were a child, I don't know what sort of amnesia overcame me to
cause me to think you'd be able to do so now," Emily whined, acting as
if the seamstress wasn't in the room. It never failed to be interesting
how easily she labeled certain people with insignificance.
"It's okay, Mom," said Lorelai,
moving on purpose this time. "You're probably just going senile."
Emily sighed with impatience.
"Lorelai, someday you're going to grow up to understand what things are
important, and you're going to have a child who turns out to be just
like you."
"God, that would be cool." Lorelai stared dreamily at the ceiling,
imagining it. A mini version of her. "It would be like playing Barbies,
only the Barbies would be us."
"You might as well give up,"
Emily told the seamstress not five minutes later. "Your efforts were
good ones, but there is no hemming a skirt evenly if it is continually
pulled up and down."
"Does that mean I can take this
thing off?" Lorelai asked, her voice pleading and hopeful.
"Yes, take it off. Walk all
over the skirt until you trip yourself at my dear friend Lacy's wedding
this weekend. Just don't be surprised if I turn away as if I don't know
you."
"If only..." Lorelai had that
dreamy tone again. She yanked the dress off right in front of her
mother, just to embarrass the woman with the exposed skin of her belly
between bra and panties. "So I can go now?" She pulled on the sexiest
top her mother would allow. "We're done with the 'fitting' thing?"
"Go," Emily said, defeated, with
a flick of her wrist and a hand to her forehead. "Really," she
remarked, her voice given new strength as Lorelai bounded toward the
large dressing room's door, "I marvel at how you get in and out of jeans
that tight. You'd think they were painted on."
"Is that your way of saying I'm
allowed to decorate my jeans with paint?"
"Good lord. Go, Lorelai. Go
now."
Giddy, Lorelai showed little
manners as she raced through the formal dress shop, looking for the
entrance.
"Did you find what you were
looking for, miss?" asked a salesman with a tasteful tie and a gentle
voice.
"Not even, I found my mother,"
she said, and that was all she explained before pushing her way through
the main door and out into the sunshine. She immediately headed toward
the seediest bar in Hartford, which was where she and Chris always went
when one was looking for the other. It was a great place to hang out,
in front of the doors with the sleazy figures of nude females painted
onto the small pieces of glass that allowed one to see into the bar just
enough to realize they weren't seeing anything. She loved that it was
forbidden, so forbidden that even when she was of age, she'd probably
never enter it. Lorelai loved this place during the daytime, when it
was closed due to the appearance of the sun, for what it would do to her
parents' reputation, precious as it was, if she were to be seen there by
anyone deemed important.
The way she scoffed at the
uptight restrictions of privileged society was no hidden thing.
Lorelai reached the bar,
expecting to find it lonely without a companion lounging by its doors.
Instead, she found Megan Reily sitting, knees pulled up to her chest.
Lorelai narrowed her eyes, for the girl's back was touching her
territory. Making with the happy voice as she approached, she said,
"Megan."
The girl looked up. "Hey,
Lorelai."
Lorelai looked around a bit as
if someone were watching. "What are you doing here?"
"Getting baked by this sun."
"Yeah, it's scorching, all
right. Hey, you know, Megan..." Lorelai bent her knees and sat
cautiously beside Megan on the cement. "Not to be like a total bitch,
but you are so sitting on my part of the sidewalk."
"Ohhh." Megan blinked. "And
see, I just didn't know that because I didn't see your name where I
placed my butt."
"It's written in invisible ink.
Though it glows in the dark. It's sort of nocturnal that way."
Megan ran a hand over her bangs
that had a wispy quality that Lorelai had always envied and couldn't
achieve, seeming to contemplate those words. Megan fingered her long
strands which were so white Lorelai wondered often if she had milked a
few albinos or been scared shitless so many times that all of the color
ran screaming out.
"I'm pretty comfortable here,"
Megan finally said. "And even if your name really is there, I don't
mind sitting on it."
Lorelai huffed and folded her
arms across her breasts. "Come on, Megan. Remember the time I paid the
old homeless guy to buy you cigarettes when you chain-smoked your weekly
ration? Tell me you didn't love me for that. You missed out on so many
lecture type words from the parental units."
Sincerity did not touch the
smile on Megan's face. "They found out."
"Ugh. Well. Megan." Lorelai's
voice was taking on a whining note. "This space is mine. I called it
like a year ago. Called it like claimed it and even called it Bon Jovi."
"You're telling me I'm sitting
on Bon Jovi as incentive for me to move?"
"Don't get attached. He likes
being sat on by my butt better than other butts."
"How do you know?" Megan shot.
"He told me," Lorelai backfired.
"How could he tell you if you
were sitting on him?"
"I... gweh..."
Lorelai was about to call a time
out on an argument, perhaps for the first time in her whole life
history, when strong arms snaked around her waist from behind. "Hmm,"
she sighed contentedly into the smell of Christopher as he nuzzled the
back of her ear with his nose. "You're good at that..."
"You looked like you needed a
little calming down," he soothed, rocking her upper body with his arms.
He glanced up. "Hey, Megan. How's it hanging?"
"We were talking about butts,"
she so delicately informed him.
Chris gave a manly chuckle,
inhaling the scent of Lorelai's shampoo in the stray tendrils that fell
from her ponytail to frame her face. "I hope you left mine out of it."
"You scared it couldn't survive
the scrutiny?" Lorelai prodded.
"When the scrutiny's coming from
you two? It's definitely good to be afraid."
Megan slowly stood from where
she was sitting on the invisible marked territory. "I think we were
just about to decide who has the better butt between Lorelai and me."
She was so informative, all of the time. She was someone who Lorelai
didn't miss when they failed to get together in the summertime.
Lorelai could feel something
growing in size from where Chris was pressed against her from behind.
Unconsciously, his grip on her waist tightened a little, squeezing to
claim. Lorelai's eyes went wild with excitement and bewilderment, her
mouth forming an ecstatic wow as Chris' reaction sunk in.
Chris was picturing the way
Lorelai's behind had looked in those favorite jeans of hers as he had
walked up to the two girls just moments before. He closed his eyes at
the thought, picturing its toned shape, and the way the fabric hugged
her below the waist, from hips to cheeks, making him want to touch her
there, now. Always. A quiet groan escaped him that he couldn't
withhold as he pressed himself into that tiny butt of hers.
Lorelai giggled self
consciously, and whirled around until she was facing her beau. Though
she was looking at him, her words were directed at Megan: "Let's not
pull him into this." The blush in her cheeks was deliciously pink as
she took Chris' hand and started leading him down the street.
Megan quickly followed. "So now
that I stopped suffocating your Bon Jovi, can we be friends again?"
"Mmm..." Lorelai tilted her
head this way and that as Chris put his arm around her shoulders. "What
will I get out of it?" she teased.
"You get to hang with the
coolest chick this side of town."
"Really? My clone's around?
Where?"
When Chris finished forcing his
laughter to subdue itself, he asked, "So how's it going with you and
Mickey, Megan? Lorelai here like so misses asking about M&M." He
raised his voice to an unnatural pitch to make extra fun.
"Mock me, will you. You'll pay
for that," Lorelai told him darkly, conjuring storms in her eyes.
"Actually, Mike and I are giving
it another shot," Megan said, the excitement in her voice hiding behind
caution.
"Oh my God, yay!" piped in
Lorelai. "He's your boyfriend again. Your boyfriend for the second
time. Your boyfriend squared." She gave Chris a pointed look. "See?
I can already apply math to my everyday life. I think I've stuffed
enough of that crap into my brain."
"Hey, at least math always has
the same answer. You and your 'More English! More! There must be more
words!' kick is the ridiculous thing. I speak the language as fluently
as I'll ever care to, okay?"
"Wow," remarked Megan, "you both
actually do have one interest in our school. That's enough to blow all
our minds."
"Whose minds?" asked Chris.
"Everyone at Chilton, college
counselors, society..."
"It is so nice to know we're on
so many peoples' minds." Lorelai added a smile to her sarcasm and
turned her face in toward Chris' t-shirt covered chest, inhaling his new
manly aftershave.
The three continued to walk
aimlessly for a few steps leaving the air unpolluted with the abuse of
the English language. Certainly, though, it couldn't last.
"So, how long have you two been
a couple?" Megan pried, having noticed the touching and the smelling.
The arms, hands, interlocking everywhere.
"We're a couple?" Lorelai
looked at Chris, feigning shock. "Honey, you really have to tell me
these things."
Chris shrugged. "I assumed you
knew."
"You also assumed Megadeth was
gonna kick Metallica's ass."
"Says the girl who wants to
stalk The Bangers."
Lorelai's eyes closed in mild
impatience. "The Bangles. As my apparent other half, I think
you should know me better."
"Looks like we're real bad at
this 'couple' thing," Chris "admitted", loving the games he played with
Lorelai, for she was the only person he knew above the age of seven who
still would play such games so unabashedly.
"I guess we'd better stop it,
then, before things get out of hand."
Megan looked on, perplexed. She
knew them, but nobody really knew Lorelai Gilmore until they got
close enough to see these types of insane intricacies.
"All right," Chris said.
"Megan, Lorelai and I are no longer a couple." He gave himself a
visible tremor as though a fat giant snake were moving down through his
body. "Glad we got that out in the open."
"Okay, so we're just friends,"
Lorelai "established", having let go of Chris' hand and setting it
free. Noticing the absence of the weight of his arm on her shoulders,
she continued, "But I still want the benefits: sex, drugs, and rock 'n
roll."
Chris' schmoopy smile then was
the only genuine piece of conversation they'd shared all day. "You got
it, baby."
VI.
Chris' body is heavier over hers
than it used to be. She remembers these things. Has always
remembered. Where she is hollow, he is whole, his muscle pressing in to
the vacant spots left by the skin stretched taut over her bones. It's
all she feels like in this moment: a bag of bones, once so milky white,
and now fading into the grey of oblivion. The oblivion that claims lost
souls and forgotten memories. Those who are lost and never find the
right path.
She can feel the bones in her
mouth, lined up together as her teeth. She clenches them as Chris
massages the knots in her body. He has an idea of how they got there;
what he doesn't know is that they're not going away.
VII.
Some nights when the clock
struck twelve, Chris would climb up the drain pipe, rather than call
Lorelai down. They'd lay side-by-side on her bed with its frilly
unstained comforter that had to be upgraded to a new one every time she
did make a stain. She didn't even pretend to care about choosing the
new patterns anymore. The way she saw it, a couple more grueling years
of high school, and then she was home free. She was just biding her
time until she could leave. When she could celebrate, Emily could
celebrate, and Richard could remain as detached about the entire thing
as ever he seemed.
When debating which of Snow
White's elves had the most sex appeal weirded Chris out to the point of
getting on his nerves, he rolled onto his side, supporting his head with
his bent arm. "Please tell me there are other things you've thought of
today."
Lorelai shrugged and then
duplicated his position, so that they could look one another in the eye
as they spoke of things that were oh-so-important. "I was walking by
the electronics store on 15th the other day and the TV in the window was
playing an episode of 'Cheers'. I was thinking like... the values of
shows like that are so lost on people like us. People who find sitting
down as a family and watching TV together uncomfortable, and more like a
waste of time."
Her eyes found other areas of
her room to explore as she formulated the rest of what she was going to
say. "I don't think I've ever watched anything other than the news with
my parents. That 'Cheers' song, Where everybody knows your name...
It's true, you know."
"Oh, very," Chris immediately
agreed. "People always know my name."
"As long as they've had enough
time to rehearse it before the obligatory birthday party."
Chris smiled. "'Let's see, I
give the envelope of money to the tall girl standing next to Jack's
latest divorcee...'"
"The system never fails," was
Lorelai's conclusion. "Except when it does."
What she loved about Chris was
that he nodded, and he understood. She made sense to him in ways that
sometimes she couldn't even make sense of.
"You ever actually watched an
episode of 'Cheers'?" Chris asked her.
"Ha. No. Way too boring for
me."
"That's right. I should have
known. You're more into the crap they'll be selling reruns of on
videotapes for $1.99 in six months flat. But you just have to watch it,
because a title like 'That's Incredible!' just screams 'dear God watch
me'. I think they must use a title like that hoping for some kind of
validation. Those poor suckers are going to be waiting a long time."
Lorelai lunged at the chance to
defend her show. "People died to entertain, okay?"
"No, I think they died because
they were so stupid they decided to sit in a box for six hours with no
air."
"You're just jealous that your
death won't be as fondly remembered."
"By the fifteen people who
watched the box thing?"
Lorelai furrowed her brows.
"...Yes."
"Well, I may need five minutes,
but I think I can come up with something just as 'memorable'."
"Like walking a tight-rope on
stilts?"
Chris paused. "How about you
walk a tight-rope in high heels, and then we'll talk?"
"Sorry, bucko. My fantabulously
glorious death is already in the scripting process. It's going to blow
your mind. And don't you dare try to take a peek."
Chris reached over in a flash to
grab a hold of Lorelai in her off-the-shoulders pink top, and pull her
to him. "Not even a little peek?" he pried, touching his lips to hers
that eagerly waited. He lost his focus for a moment in the kiss that
served to drown him and all of his senses, but upon rising for air, he
remembered his mission. Project Tickle began, as he found the spots on
her body that she knowingly tried to keep hidden from him. But there
were only so many bases she could cover, and still things were left
vulnerable somewhere. His fingers tapped and hooked in a frenzied way
on the soles of her feet. Then he grabbed a hold of her side when
kicked away and his ticklish fingers wouldn't let go, not even when the
giggles and her cries of, "Stop it! Stop it!" rose from his ears to the
ceiling. "Not even a little wibble peek?" he pleaded.
"No! Stooooooop! My parents
are just downstaaaaaaaairs!"
With that final warning, his
fingers relaxed, wrapping around her side tenderly, and holding her body
to him. He buried his nose in her severely messed up hair, inhaling the
scent of her that always helped him to relax and keep going when life
was too much. Within seconds, he was calm, and her breathing had slowed
down close to a normal rate again.
"How about we stop talking about
you and death in the same sentence?" he whispered.
They unfolded from one another
at the reality of that, and took their original positions, on separate
parts of the mattress, hands near but not touching, eyes to the ceiling,
contemplating the sky that was somewhere above.
Lorelai, as usual, was the one
to break the silence when it had stretched itself thin. And always her
ice breakers were monumental, the very thing that those who failed to be
scholars must have pondered from time to time.
"What happens during the second
you lose in a sneeze?"
VIII.
Chris is ready for full-on
sexual contact now, covering her again, whispering things in her ear,
like he used to. Lorelai realizes, not for the first time, how many
ways in which despite all recent changes he's stayed the same. When it
comes to her.
She doesn't hear what he
whispers; whether they're words or just vowels rounding out consonants.
They've have no meaning, as she is numb, and her senses are not
working. She is not feeling things like she should be, like she always
has. He is touching her breasts in the way he learned long ago she
favors, and it's as if she has floated out of her body, and is seeing
this happening to someone else with her face. Her face made of decaying
stone.
"If anything's unbreakable, it's
this," Lorelai said, as she slid into the passenger seat of Chris' red
hot sports car. "God, I love this car," she admitted as he changed
gears and they started rolling away from her sleeping house. "And I
love that I found the exact color nail polish so that my fingers and
toes can match the paint. Wicked Red, oh yeah."
She liked the name of it because
she felt the night would be a wicked one to remember whenever she
looked at that bottle of red nail polish to match his car.
The wind blew through her long
strands, accentuating the curls as they swarmed about her face in a
lovely way. "So where are we going?" she asked.
She has no idea where she's
headed. With this escapade, with tomorrow, with the rest of her life.
Chris' kisses are full of that fire that burns and consumes her, and she
feels wrapped in its heat, unbearably so, as if the walls are closing in
and she's suddenly become claustrophobic. There is perspiration over
her numbness now, and the bed frame is creaking as Chris takes his mouth
on a journey from her breasts down to her core, where he lingers,
smoothing the course hair with his tongue, making it seem as though he's
bathing a cat.
"Geeze, it got wet so fast,"
Chris complained, rolling up his window against the pounding rain.
"This is the greatest view outside of Lookout Point, I swear. If only
you could see it past the zillion drops..."
"Lookout Point is so clichι,
anyway. Who wants to be someplace where everyone's going to be rivaling
for who's got the best lungs?"
Chris smiled at her optimism,
and handed her the bottle of vodka. Swig, and swig, and swig. He took
out his flask, savoring every gulp with the sour lemon face, trying to
fight it every time. He laughed at Lorelai's coughs. They were acting
as though they'd never done this kind of thing before.
She's never experienced this
sort of numbness. Sex has always been about the intensity of feeling,
the idea of it almost being too much to feel all at once. The best
times were the times when she feared she might split right in half. She
longs for that now, thinking that if she could give half of herself to
Luke, it would be equal to what he's been giving her. And she could be
happy because that would only be half of her life. The other half could
stay with Christopher, if she could ever find a way out of this
numbness. If the sensation of pins and needles ever returns to her
fingers and toes. She thinks about it. She thinks.
Chris had never seen such a
little woman put away so much vodka with no chaser. The whiskey in his
throat had become an eternal burn. He'd damn well coated himself in
it. And now all of the words he said and heard were slurred greatly.
Lorelai was making declarations, like she always did, especially when
she had no idea what she was talking about.
"Life... is a fantastic thing
when you're young. When you're really young." As if she knew anything
otherwise.
Someone is speaking and before
the sound is over, Chris realizes it is coming from him. "Yeah, before
your trust account goes bankrupt thanks to your drunken daddy and you're
losing grey hairs."
"They have pills for that, you
know." Lorelai swigged again from the enormous bottle in her hands.
Chris wondered if the delicate bones in her wrists might snap if she
kept relying on their strength that way. The pout of her lip looked so
saddeningly sober. "And it hurts that growing up... growing up means
growing away from who you used to be."
"Me?" asked Chris, confused.
"Who you used to be."
Lorelai stabbed his chest with her pointer finger, and then tapped that
same finger on her own forehead several times.
"Away from who we used to be."
Chris digested this as he swished some of Lorelai's vodka in his mouth.
"Away! There's no better place
to be than away. Awayawayaway." Lorelai looked around with a
frown, searching for what was giving her voice that echo effect. She
saw nothing but the inner confines of Chris' car.
Chris was staring at her when
she finally met his eyes again. "It scares me, you know. The way you
can tell me it's okay and then suddenly it is. You're amazing."
"God you're drunk," was her
diagnosis.
"Yes, that too."
Lorelai grabs a hold of Chris'
naked shoulders, her palms sliding around on the sweat already gathered
there from his intense petting of her. The petting in which she hardly
gave a response other than to stare at him, at the walls around them, at
the ceiling, at her bared breasts, confusion and nothing else conquering
the features on her face.
"I... can't feel you," she says,
her lips seeming chapped as she parts them, her mouth gone dry.
He moves up her body. "Just use
your hands," he whispers tenderly, kissing them one at a time, and
placing them near his buttocks. Her hands slide again with the sweat
already there.
She gives up, gives her body to
him. Lets him do what he's there to do.
"Don't give up yet, don't you
dare," Chris insisted, feeling like a coach. "Come on, a few more heavy
swigs, and that baby's empty. You can do it, just chug."
Lorelai blocked her eyes with
one hand as if she were staring into direct sunlight. "I don't wan'u,"
she said in a drunken whine. "It doesn't taste anymore."
"It could never taste, Lor. It
doesn't have a tongue."
"It doesn't taste good."
"All right. Gimme it." Chris
seized hold of the bottle, and snapped his head back so that it was
parallel with the floor and the ceiling. Bringing the bottle to his
lips, he chugged. Swig and swig and swig. And then it was done. The
alcohol was gone. Absorbed into two underage individuals who knew they
should know better, but couldn't possibly care less. Without the booze,
they were left alone, just the two of them, companionless but for each
other.
He looked at her. She was
looking for something else.
"I forgot music," he admitted
sheepishly.
"That's because we decided your
music sucks," Lorelai explained bluntly, coming back up to a sitting
position with a tape in her hands. "Well, not so much we decided as
I've told you repeatedly. So, my music it is."
She inserted U2's 'October' into
the car's cassette player. "Should be all cued up," she explained. "If
it's not, then the hell with it, I don't know how to work those damn
buttons right now. Chris, I can't see straight. You're kind of like
leaning right no matter what you do."
"You say I'm leaning the right
way?" he asked, pushing play and maneuvering himself into the
backseat. "Sounds like I'm not as lost as I feel."
I was
talking, I was talking to myself, somebody else.
Lorelai
somehow managed to stumble her way into the backseat as well, grumbling
about how roomy it was not until she tripped trying to get her last foot
through and fell on top of Chris. Then she laughed. And it was the
most beautiful sound.
At least
one of them is enjoying this. Lorelai knows this is so. She can tell
by the pitch of Chris' voice as he shouts out while he's in-and-out of
her body. She feels like a full service gas pump, being filled,
emptied, and refilled without payment or compensation of any kind. She
feels nothing but the uselessness of her presence being there at all.
His
hands over her body are like sprinkles of rain.
Rain
pelted the hood of the car as percussion to accompany the lyrics that
soothed in their beat, if not their language.
Talk,
talk, talking.
I couldn't hear a word,
A word you said.
The
farthest they'd gone is second base, and Chris was fully aware of this
after her top was pulled off, her bra unsnapped. This area he had
conquered, and conquered well. He hugged her warm breasts to his face,
loving their female quality, their perkiness, the softness of them
against his cheek.
The
alcohol in her belly started to make a ruckus, like there was a food
fight going on in there. Lorelai giggled at the sound of it, and her
laughter's volume was luminous in Chris' ears that rested against her
skin. He felt so close to her then, as if he was knowing her even on
the inside. All parts of her were open for him to claim.
His
tongue and lips claim her as his own, wet, hot, and sticky. All she
feels is the sweat, and nothing more. Her mind is screaming so many
things, obscenities, Luke's final words, the build-up to the ultimatum,
April, April, April.
I
said there was no other,
Way out of here.
I got to get out.
Her body
strains beneath the mental baggage that is weighing her down. As she
arches, Chris takes that as incentive to go harder and faster. She
falls to the mattress, heavy as a soaked blanket. And she wants, more
than to feel, to forget. To think of anything else. She bans all that
plagues her from entering her skull, expelling thoughts as if with a
baseball bat made of steel. There is no Luke. There is no ultimatum.
There is no wedding that never was.
Instead,
there is Paul Anka. The expensive shoes that became his chew toys. His
coat and its many shades of grey, proving that nothing in the world can
ever be straight black and white when Paul Anka's coat says otherwise.
Chris
crawled up Lorelai's body, mouthing Lor, Lor, Lor,
all the way to her mouth. He captured it with his lips that were
already pleading, his skin humming for a connection. He could taste the
alcohol on her breath, and could also taste beyond it, to the flavor
that was Lorelai, which he hoped would never change.
It was
as though the world around them slept as rain pounded and Lorelai slid
out of her clothes, Chris doing the same on his side of the backseat.
Lorelai could feel no other presence as she tossed her skirt at the
window and watched it slide down the glass before dropping to the
floor. She picked the purple fuzz out from in between her toes after
removing her Care Bear socks. She was a girl who would always cling to
sock designs made for six year-olds.
She laid
back then, getting as comfortable as she could in the less than spacious
interior of Chris' fabulous car. "Chris?" she beckoned, her voice a
slushy slur, outstretched finger curling in continuously.
"Oh
yeah." His voice was husky and low, rich with lust as he lowered
Lorelai until she was spread across the seats, and straddled her body
from on top. As soon as he dipped down to take her lips, the world
around them was lost, far away, and gone.
I was
walking, I was walking into walls.
I'm back again, just keep walking.
Instead,
there is grass. A green richer than limes in a cocktail, the scent of
it dizzying, signifying when summer has come. There is snow, millions
of unique snowflakes, falling to be fused together once hitting ground.
Snow, in its slick form, creating ugly slush in which winter boots play
slip 'n slide. And in its compact form, crunchy beneath your feet when
you walk, elevated from the ground by the layers of whiteness that beg
for snowmen and angels carved into the mass. There is magic in the
snow, magic that now seems so far away.
Chris'
touch continues to sear flesh, and yet behind her closed eyes there is
nothing but green grass and white snow.
Lorelai
widened her legs until she swallowed his between them. She steadied
herself, gripping his shoulders, her arms snaking up behind his back.
She tasted his nipple for the first time, warm and salty like a hot
pretzel. "Tastes gooooood," she mumbled, as he rained kisses down her
jaw and neck.
When
first he inserted a finger into her wetness, she realized just how wet
she could be. As she suspected, Chris was as very much a virgin as
she. It could be found in the awe of his face as he teased her folds,
and searched for the special nub from sex ed. That tiny g-spot that
would make Lorelai buck into his groin until he had to have her, had to
be inside of her.
As he
searched and she drowned in the sensations of his fingers touching her
there and oh, there, Lorelai marveled at the way his organ
felt against her upper thighs as it unintentionally poked or slapped her
skin gently with his movements. Curiosity at its highest, she lowered a
sneaky hand down between their bodies, preparing to grasp his fullness
and feel its dimensions, curious about the quality of the skin.
Just as
her fingers barely brushed the tip of something male on him, Chris found
that nub and pinched it just so. "Oh!" Lorelai cried out, her hand
immediately drawn back to join her other one in tangling into her hair.
"Oh, oh!"
There is
mac and cheese; Kraft Dinner from a box or Sookie's macaroni made from
scratch. The eternal mystery of how real cheese could be melted on a
stove and then poured onto noodles that are then baked to perfection and
yet can taste no better or worse than the macaroni with the powdered
cheese from the box.
I
walk into a window to see myself, and my reflection.
When I thought about it,
My direction,
Going nowhere, going nowhere.
Dirty
locker room talk was now to be his knowledge put to the test as Chris
removed his fingers that were rubbing the swollen nub, and replaced them
with his tongue. Lorelai cooed and began touching herself to compensate
for feeling so much at one time but not knowing what to do with it. She
caressed her breasts as if they hadn't been a part of her for years now,
until Chris closed his lips around the nub and began to suck. Then she
lost all control, and gave a lungful scream to penetrate the raindrops
that just kept falling. The drops were falling and she was falling,
along with everything around her, like in an elevator. Those ticklesome
butterflies even found their way to her tummy to flutter about as she
bucked up her hips, begging for more.
That was
the signal Chris was waiting for, and at that, he could wait no longer.
He rose to devour her mouth once again, his inexperienced hands working
quite sloppily, trying to shove his enlarged member into the right hole
to give them both the release that all this building tension called
for. It was time to come together and explode.
I was
talking, I was talking in my sleep.
I can stop talking.
I'm talking to you.
She was
even more wet than before, her juices making the entrance to her core a
slippery thing. And his cock wasn't helping in the least, going wild
and frenzied without his optimal supervision.
Finally,
he tore his lips and attention away from Lorelai's face to focus on
putting the puzzle pieces together. Using both hands, he shoved his
cock in deep, and Lorelai gave a shocked gurgle at the invasion of her
body. As her face went white with pain, he crumbled into her arms.
"Lor?
Are you okay? Lorelai, I'm sorry..."
"You
can't..." She had no breath; he had taken it all away. "...stop
there."
"It's
okay if I keep going?"
"Please..." she said faintly.
There
are labels, she is aware of right now, that we go by as if they were our
name. But they're nothing like our name, most of the time hardly
complimentary. They describe one aspect of our entire selves, as if all
our other attributes don't make sense enough to matter.
Jocks...
losers...
Goths...
skaters...
Chris
pushed on, pumping Lorelai as if for loving information. He could
suddenly sense just how muscular her thighs were as she clenched them
around his waist, crossing her ankles behind his back because she said
she saw it in a movie once. His ear remained warm from the hot
breath she expelled into it with her whispered words, and he cocked his
head, hoping for more action near the lobe.
Lorelai
sighed loudly as a method of getting more air pumped back into her
brain. She figured that at least if the experiment failed, she got to
be loud. Always she was waiting for her next opportunity to make a
ruckus that could embarrass her mother the way being a part of the
sickeningly scripted Gilmore family embarrassed her.
No
one, no one is blinder.
Who will, who will not see?
No one, no one is blinder than me.
"Think
of how everything is here, right now!" she exclaimed in an explosion of
air, clenching her inner muscles around the slick moving cock.
"Anything could be ours, Chris. Anything..."
She doesn't want to think about
anything. Not the green grass or the white snow, Paul Anka's premature
grey hair, or the way Rory's bangs are an attribute she sometimes
expects to not be there. Society eats at her insides.
Nerds...
stoners...
Sluts...
Chris
couldn't believe that he was inside of her, and that he was about to
leave a part of himself within her body as he made his exit. Her face
was a lusty pale, a few fat hair sprayed curls and a cigarette away from
resembling a '60's actress' sex pout. He ground his hips into hers,
bringing forth her moan and her hands, which slapped his skin
accidentally when they sought to grab hold of something that was part of
him.
Slamming
into her, he relished the fact that the car's hinges were groaning and
complaining. Maybe they were breaking. It was a thought that at any
other time would send him into a wild panic, but he was inside of her,
and she was so wet and she tasted like the ocean. She was the vast
oblivion of looking out at the ocean, and a future so far away it was
blocked off by fog in the distance that didn't matter. Only moments
mattered, like this one, when Lorelai's voice was proving that the
hinges weren't the only things coming apart.
There
is another way out of here.
Chris is
above her numb body, and she thinks she is going colorblind. She
doesn't see blue
- in
Lorelai's eyes as he groaned, "Open them, baby. Look at me watching
you. It'll turn you on like shirtless body builders."
She
strains to see any shades of brown
- that
light up his eyebrows and that mat of hair beyond the litter of his hair
gel. Lorelai would stab him with another of her "only John Travolta
clones slosh on so much hair product when they own a penis", but her
quips are so lost, gone to some recessed part of her brain that must
sleep sometime when she eventually stops dreaming.
She is
lost
- "Have
I found it?" he asked, pumping two more times before she squeezed so
tightly that he exploded in body and sound, loving her mouth in which he
helped drown her moans as she squirmed beneath him in pleasure and
dizziness.
Lost
- found.
Numb
-
tingling in the aftershocks, Lorelai held Chris to her, and they laid
together, on that memorable sports car backseat.
It's so
quiet, the bedroom so large, as Chris is spent, and Lorelai is without a
sense of self. He kisses her on the forehead, and she squints her eyes,
scrunching up her nose distastefully. She waits for him to crawl off of
her, and then she rolls away, choosing to face the wall, rather than
what she's just done.
There
is another way out of here
Gonna get out, gonna get out of here.
Chris
savored Lorelai's breasts afterward as she twirled a few strands of hair
around her finger. "If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?" she
wondered aloud.
The rain
had become much softer, merely drizzling over the top of the car,
showering the windows like a wet gentle breeze.
Alcohol
swarmed in his stomach as he nuzzled a soft pink nipple. "I love you,
baby."
Lorelai
laughed uproariously, upsetting the quiet calm, like a toddler at a
piano concert. "I love you, too."
"Yeah?"
Chris was hopeful.
"Always,
when you're drunk."
"No...
Lor." He was concerned, though she smiled. He cupped her face in his
hands, loving its youth and its unrivaled beauty that would not be tamed
at 40, nor 80, nor the day of her death. "Love me anyway. Love me all
the time."
She
continued to giggle softly, as if sharing a secret with the alcohol
within her. He wished she would share more of her secrets with him.
No
one, no one is blinder than me.
VIIII.
September brought Chilton architecture back into focus, along with
teachers whose strive was to snap brains out of their perma-baked
state. "Tenth grade this year," Lorelai said to Chris over the phone,
crossing her ankles together as she lay flat on her stomach with the
support of the mattress and the new pink comforter beneath her.
"They're lucky I can count that high, or the confusion would start even
earlier than usual."
She
hemmed her own skirts, their sex appeal causing Richard's eyelids to
clamp shut, and Emily's eyes to bulge out of her head. "You are not
going to school looking like that, young lady."
"Not
going to school? Ptuh, sounds fine to me!"
Lorelai
sat down on the living room couch, spreading her legs seductively out on
the length of the cushions, running slim fingers over the smoothness of
her shaved legs that reached perfection. She watched Emily's face, the
rage that turned her temples purple, as she contemplated whether she
would ever win when it came to controlling a daughter who would not
be controlled. It made Lorelai laugh, picturing her mother as a
stick of dynamite, the fuse long enough to be lit this entire time, and
yet destined to explode.
"Come
on, Mom," she said, lowering her legs, and doing her part to try. "I
don't live just to torture you. I just want to look good."
"Fully
buttoned collars and skirts that sweep past the knees encapsulate
academia, Lorelai. High school isn't a fashion show."
"Wow, we
are so totally from different generations." She pulled on a Cheshire
cat grin. "Come on, Mom. Love me for meee. I can just picture
you doing it. Smiling past that miniscule tug of your lips."
Emily
wandered off, then, muttering something about how she'll "never
understand". Whether the "she" was herself or Lorelai would be unclear
for a lifetime.
Even
treating the school hallways like fashion runways got old after a day or
so. Lorelai began passing Chris notes between classes. He opened one
during a particularly inane lecture in English class. Feeling
grumpy? Read this. Not feeling grumpy? Okay, read this. Heard you
got a B on your freestyle poem last week. This I must see. Meet me at
your car after school. Stand me up, and I might decide to learn how to
hotwire it on a whim. -- Lorelai the Luscious
His
smiles were goofy ones when he read her loopy handwriting that couldn't
ever stay within the lines. The girl wouldn't write straight to save
her life. This particular note started as a curve in the center and
branched out into circles that circled one another, forming a story like
the inside of a tree trunk. Making it as close to impossible as she
could for him to inconspicuously read "junk mail" while in an English
class. He loved the way she made things difficult and complicated, with
no apologies. He loved that she knew of her abilities, and was nothing
if not blatantly, sometimes annoyingly proud.
She was
the opposite of sane.
She was
playing with the short fabric of her Tuesday skirt, the one which gave
her the most flirtatious confidence, as he approached his car
after the final school bell that afternoon. Her tiny butt was planted
against the driver's side window as she smoothed out the pleats in the
skirt, the specially curled tendrils of her hair fighting for dibs to
brush against her cheeks as she looked down. Even parts of her own body
itched to touch her. Maybe they even tingled for it as they got closer,
like Chris' hands were doing now as he unclenched them from fists and
left them open and ready to pull her to him. He longed, as always, to
covet her softness that would contrast his solidity.
She was
humming one of those girl band songs that gave him the disgust face,
and thus he was able to approach her without her realizing by the sound
of his footsteps on the asphalt. He felt like an agent, like a part of
'Magnum, P.I.': sneaky, with obvious intent as he reached out to touch
a delicate bouncy curl.
Lorelai
looked up, the song in her head forgotten, and he could tell by the way
her mouth muscles were fighting against a smile that she was attempting
to play a role. "Christopher," she acknowledged coolly.
She'd
gained an inch over the summer, as well as half a cup size. These were
things he knew she was very proud of, for she told them to random
strangers, sometimes even when sober. Her presence was a bit more
commanding, but still he saw through her; she could hide behind no
facade. "Lor," he voiced like always, pulling her to him and breathing
in the scent of her hair. "Haven't seen you since lunch."
"Missed
me?"
He
pulled back. "You know it," he kidded.
"Yeah.
I'd miss me, too." She looked at the folded piece of paper he held in
his hands. "So, you brought the poem?"
"I did.
Though I'm not reading it."
"Uh!
You tease! I can make you read it."
"Only if
you read yours, too."
"I can
quote mine from memory. It's been formulating in my head for like
years, dude."
He liked
the way she played games with language, with props, with his heart.
Suddenly, Lorelai stole the paper from his hands, unfolded it, and
ruthlessly read it to herself. She burst out laughing before she could
have possibly made it halfway through.
"Chris,
I didn't know you were so..."
"Yeah,
yeah. Give it back."
"'I am
the clay,' she mocked. 'I mold it, as I mold myself. Clay.' You know
what comes next? 'I think I've gone gay.'"
Chris
couldn't help but to chuckle. "I think it's too deep for your scope,
babe. Metaphorical and whatnot."
"Don't
tell me I don't go deep. My poem was so deep, it redefined the word."
She thought a moment, her eyes rolling up into her head as she searched
for the memory of the better words. "'I dug the deepest grave,
in which to bury my slave. He was brave, but still it couldn't save...
him. My grave was so deep, I jumped in it and fell asleep. It's a
grave you'd like to keep, if only the price wasn't so steep. And you
weren't so damn cheap.'" She nodded. "Yeah. I can do the depth
thing."
"Morbid
much?" Chris hooked an arm around her shoulders. He loved to claim her
that way, using that action to profess to the world that she was with
him. To remind himself in a macho way that she was his.
"Do not
critique me without being ready for my critiques back. Your poem's
earned you new author names all over the place. All right, now...
PukeBrain, is it? Or was it NiftyNausea? Care to hear more of peoples'
inevitable reactions?"
Chris
laughed and kissed her forehead. "Retard," he said affectionately.
"Don't
talk to yourself."
"You're
retarded," he maintained.
"At
least I have voices to talk to other than the ones in my head."
"So you
say."
"Over
and over again." It was both a statement and a promise.
"You're
like an answering machine," Chris told her. "One that you can't always
understand."
"Oh,
please. All interesting women are that way. If you could understand
us, what would you do with all your free time?"
"I'd
find something to do."
"Or
someone."
Chris
coughed as something in the air got caught in his throat. "Excuse me?"
Lorelai
snickered. "...Retard."
Chris
sighed, hating the next words that had to come out of his mouth. "I've
got to go now. Parental obligations and whatnot." He put two fingers
beneath Lorelai's chin and tilted it upwards. "You going to be able to
let me go?"
"What,
you think that I'll just miss you and miss you forever and ever until
you come back again?" Lorelai asked, her voice accusing as her finger
stabbed him in the chest.
"Yes."
"You
know me well."
X.
Her
inner monologue invades, and she tries to keep the shouting in her head
from penetrating into the world around her. The wedding was too
perfect. Something had to marr it. Luckily for Lane, "something" was
me.
She
remembers her drunken night of false glory, when she made the night be
about the fact that she wouldn't be a bride, rather than the fact that
Lane was. "June thiiird, June thiiird; Red Bull gives you wiiings!
Okay, moving on." Caught in Sookie's arms, she failed to realize
that everyone was confused and far from entertained. She didn't see
their frowns, or at least she couldn't define them due to everything
spinning the way it was.
She is
alone with a man beside her in the same bed. Her eyes are dry; there
are no tears. There is nothing, because everything tangible is gone.
XI.
Her
voice had a husky quality to it, deeper than her vocal chords had ever
dug before. Like that grave she wrote about in September. "Remember
what it was like... before we knew?"
He
swallowed over lumps that kept reforming, never allowing his throat to
be clear enough to speak audibly. Struggling to be heard, he spoke
louder than usual. "You mean yesterday?"
"Yeah."
"I don't
remember what that was like."
She
shakes her head, eyelashes fluttering down to touch her cheeks. "I
don't, either."
"Don't
get too excited," he'd said the night before any of this came to light.
Before. "That's a boa constrictor in my pants."
"Heh.
Chris," said Lorelai. "That's what I was excited about. I need a
practice specimen before dissection starts in science class next month."
He
clasped her hand and pulled her behind the building, pinning her against
the brick wall, holding her wrists hostage above her head with one of
his strong hands. She didn't fight it, merely fixed him with an intense
gaze in the silence as their breath made lines of condensation in the
cold February air. Most of the students were long gone, and only a few
of the teachers' cars remained.
"Happy
Valentine's Day," Chris whispered right into her pink ear, warming it
for brief seconds. And then they kissed like lovers do, having been
together since the summer and beyond. The crisp air froze their noses
that they rubbed together, and Lorelai giggled at kissing like the
Eskimos do. Lorelai wanted to leave an imprint of their bodies on
the brick wall, a signature, a promise that they had been there
together, once, and maybe would be again.
They sat
together, their backs against that wall, their bottoms frozen against
the ground, looking at the thin layer of snow covering Chilton's grass.
They talked for hours into the evening, bragging to one another about
how many times they'd "done it", how many positions they'd attained.
How high they'd place in the Sex Olympics that Lorelai would one day
make a reality. And Chris almost believed her then. He did that
sometimes. Became convinced because she was just so convincing.
They
talked about Metallica and Megadeth, made comparisons, and invisible
lists of pros and cons. Lorelai so graciously "thanked" Chris for
dragging her to the premiere of 'Return of the Jedi', where Yoda's
diapers were the fashion statement to avoid of the year. Where she
learned "speak correctly how to". They made snow angels that were lame,
due to not enough snow on the ground. Still, Lorelai's was declared the
better one, which only made sense, considering she had more experience
than anyone in her part of the universe.
They
played rock, paper, scissors, and tic-tac-toe in the snow. Then Chris
proved his manliness in the thumb wrestling portion of the night as the
sun set behind his silhouette as any sun that remained was aimed
directly into Lorelai's eyes. She blamed this factor on her losing
streak with the thumb wars and any possible losses in the future. Her
reasoning made sense to her, and that was more than enough to tide her
over.
Bonding
in the cold, neither one considered bailing for the day until the moon
brought on new chills that tore into their expensive winter jackets.
Wrapping her sparkly lilac scarf around her neck with a sexy swoop,
Lorelai stood and walked with Chris to his car. Snow crunched like
potato chips beneath their boots, and the silence of the night closed in
on them, making them feel insignificant and small, except when it came
to each other.
Chris
was slow in unlocking his car door on purpose as he waited for Lorelai
to speak.
"So
there are those pesky benefits that you still owe me before the night's
over," she reminded him with a poke in the back.
"Yeah..." he said, hiding the relief that she wasn't ready to be rid of
his presence for the evening. "I'm kinda tired, though."
"Well I
don't need the drugs."
"God
knows you're naturally over-stimulated."
"And I
don't need the rock 'n roll. I get that every morning in my shower."
Chris
quirked a brow.
"But,
that leaves the sex thing," Lorelai pointed out.
"That I
can do."
Lorelai
was grinning. "Thought you were tired."
"Never
too tired for that. Not when you're wearing that skirt."
"Hmm.
Why do you think I wore it?" The innocence in her voice was no longer a
disarming thing.
"You've
always got a plan."
"I am
the master of inventing and plans, and when I decided to put the two
concepts together, whew, did they ever worship me that day."
Chris
leaned forward to whisper in her ear once more. "Let's find somewhere
quiet so I can worship you right now."
They sat
now, uncomfortable, a day later. Buried by the news splattered on a
test stick that came back blue. Lorelai didn't voice the fact that
suspicions had been in her mind for the last couple of weeks. Chris
knew not to ask her about it. They were so silent, sitting as children
on a swing set at the one empty park in Hartford.
The
glorious sun was setting before their eyes as they sagged in their
swinging seats, lifeless dolls, contemplating bringing another doll to
life to live in their not quite real world with the toy kitchen with the
easy bake oven and the food made of plastic.
Christopher shuffled his feet along the dirt on the ground, afraid of
the father he would be. Knowing his tendencies to bail even before
things got really hard.
Lorelai kicked her feet forward,
swaying slightly in the swing, gentle strokes back and forth, letting
her hair fan behind her, her brown locks wild past her vision, as
everything in the past seemed to be. Wild, uncontrolled. Locked with a
key thrown away. So many keys lost to the back of fate's junk closet.
She didn't say anything, even to herself, but there was something in her
gut telling her that she just knew, she was meant to be a mother
someday. The reason for no words, however, was because anyone could
gather that the day was not meant to be anywhere close to today.
Christopher finally broke the silence, when only the shuffle of feet and
the tangle of metal linked bars invaded the absence of sound. He was
afraid to say this, as he felt like a coward in many ways. His feet
already twitched every other minute, begging to start running to a place
far away from here and all that he had caused to happen.
"I was
looking at you last night..." he said, voice barely audible. But he
couldn't bear to speak louder while he said these words. "After we were
finished, in the backseat of my car. Your hair was a mess, and you were
laughing about it. Then you laughed because you said someday you were
going to get bed head as bad as me." She had stopped swinging
and her attention was focused on him so completely, he became self
conscious like the time he was forced to be in the spelling bee in the
auditorium in front of his entire elementary school. "And I thought to
myself, I'm going to marry that girl."
Lorelai
became instantly uncomfortable, and looked down at her shoes,
concentrating especially on the shoelace that was untied. She zeroed in
on it, not hearing those words echo in her brain like they were being
tossed back-and-forth by tennis rackets. She desired to be so Zen as
she squeezed her eyes shut like a five year-old hiding in a corner, and
all that she maintained was the urge to scream and then bawl as she beat
her fists at the world, because it was not supposed to be this way.
She didn't know what the right way was, but it was not this.
Christopher swallowed a bitter lump of sour rejection. He blinked back
tears of pain. He'd always strived to be a man, and now it was time for
him to become that man, ready or not. "You okay? You freaking out, Lor?"
"No, no
it's fine," she said, and it amazed her how well she could lie. It
amazed her, too, that he could believe her.
- -
end
