Moments of Chance
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| Broken Hearted
It was the heat from the morning sun that stirred him from his sleep. Still too early to open his eyes and feel the pain of the light. There was dryness in his mouth when he pressed his tongue to the roof of it. He placed his hands over his face and took a deep breath, then pulled them down and forced a yawn. Still his eyes were closed. There was warm water up to his mid torso and a concrete surface against the span of his shoulder blades. It was a hot tub. He placed his hands along the surface of the concrete and began a blind search outward unitll his right hand came across what he had been looking for, a bottle. He grabbed it and placed it to his lips, tilted it up and began to drink, then pulled the bottle from his lips and inhaled another deep breath and exhaled hard enough to whistle. Again the bottle was tilted up, but this time before swallowing he gargled. This left the kind of dirty charcoal flavor in his mouth that only cheap vodka could leave. He tried to open his left eye, but when the light hit his pupils it was like someone was tattooing “Stupid” directly onto his grey matter, so he closed them again and took a deep breath and sank his head into the water. Though the water was warm it still served the purpose of invigorating him enough to stand.
As he stood up he surveyed his surroundings. To his right was a concrete pool with a waterfall and a rock sitting area underneath it. On the left was a white stone house with a large sitting area under a permanent awning directly outside of two French doors that led inside. Scattered throughout the ground were bottle of beer and liquor that littered the area like stars in the night sky. As he looked down at himself he realized that he was as shameful as Adam after the enticement of Eve. Behind him lay a sleeping girl. She had golden hair, flawless dark tanned skin, and the curves of her body resembled what Da Vinci would have called the “Perfect canon”. In the small of her back was a tattoo of an angel. This irony was not lost on him as he began to remember the previous night. She was the Eve to his Adam, and right now she was wearing what he needed most, his boxers.
He climbed out of the hot tub, stumbled to her, and nudged her with his foot, “Hey, wake up.” She let out a sigh followed by a moan and then went back to laying limp. “Hey! Wake up!” Still nothing, “Hey! Wake the fuck up,” this time he said it with a deeper more forceful voice.
The girl rolled over and opened her eyes. Her green eyes reminded him of ten fingers and toes, tiny heartbeats and tears. “Leave me alone Chance, I’m tired.” Maybe there was no irony in her tattoo after all because even the white remnants of cocaine beneath her nostrils could not subtract from the reality that she would make Petrarch’s muse envious, though the relationship he shared with this woman lacked the intensity to deserve that praise.
Chance decided to leave her be for a moment and stumbled to the sitting area next to the French doors. As he sat down his hangover began to increase in its intensity. This was no unusual feeling to him. It had become a daily ritual to him over the past eight years. A book of matches and a pack of cigarettes sat on an end table to his right. As he began to cough to clear out the numerous rounds of nicotine from the night before he picked up the pack and pulled a smoke from it. Chance placed the cigarette between his lips, pulled a match from the book, and struck it against the rough surface of the matchbook until it ignited. The smell of sulphur filled the air as he raised the match to the cigarette and inhaled deeply. Chance held the smoke in his lungs for a minute and then exhaled allowing the smoke to fill the air. He stared at the smoke travel through the air, mesmerized at the way it seemed to dance thru the sky weightless and relaxed. It was beautiful and brief just like so many things that he had taken for granted.
The girl on the cement rolled over and flashed Chance a brief smile. He smiled back and thought about the disposable moments of happiness they shared. She rolled back onto her belly and drifted off to sleep. He threw his cigarette on the ground, stood up, raised his arms to the sky to stretch out his body, let out a groan, then turned to the French doors and decided to go inside the house where the air conditioning would help him cope with the hangover.
The cool air gave a welcome embrace to his skin, which helped to deaden some of the muscle fatigue from the hangover. He headed down a hallway that led into a bedroom passing pictures of love and moments of contentment along the way. This was a typical bedroom as far as typical bedrooms went. There was a closet, a desk, pictures of a child on the wall, a California King bed that he fell onto it, closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep.
Chance was awakened by the movement of someone else in his bed. It was his muse. Her body was cuddled up to him with her face tucked into his neck. He liked the way this felt because he shared so few intimate moments like this with women. He liked it so much that he thought about what it used to be like to wake up to another, before she found a new husband and new family to take away the pain and loneliness of being the one left touched by memories. He wanted to wake the muse up with a kiss. Not the kind of kiss that was sloppy and rough, but rather soft and gentle. He wanted to press his body against hers and feel her hands work their way through his hair, hair he desperately wish he had lost instead. Feel her hands slide down his back as he listened to her breathe slowly and then faster as his lips traveled from the bottom of her neck to lobe of her ear while he continued to press his body against hers. Whisper to her the words that only a muse could inspire. It was not sex he wanted, but a second chance to have the gift of a healing connection to another human being. In order to receive this gift however he would have to perform his part, but knew this was not possible without the help of cocaine, so he woke her up and told her it was time for her to leave.
Chance almost felt bad for the girl as she obediently did as she was told. To come to a man’s house and give her body to him, only to be tossed out like trash without even a good night’s sleep when he was done had to kill a woman a little inside, but he got over his moment of guilt quickly. Destruction of their self-esteem was nothing to his life. She was a means to an end. A tool to cope with the memory of being alive like alcohol, cocaine, and the other women that had given him brief moments of happiness before her. Chance realized that this also killed him a little inside each time, but chose not to care about dying a slow death. This was his chemotherapy and the girl with the angel tattoo was no match for the demons in his heart.
Once she was gone he climbed out of bed and headed to the bathroom in the hallway. He entered the bathroom, stepped into the shower, and turned it on. The water hit the crown of his head and worked its way down his face. It was frigid at first and shivered him into an alert state. He was alive and could feel everything in an instant like when the invention of Edison was introduced to the discovery of Franklin. “I fucking hate being alive,” he screamed. The sound echoed off the walls of the shower till it began to taunt him. “You’re alive, YOU’RE alive, YOU’RE ALIVE!” was its screaming reply. The water streaming down his face did its best to conceal his tears. As the water heated up and the shower along with the bathroom filled with steam, it did its best to hide the redness in his cheeks from his screams. It made its way into his nose and opened his breathing passage so that he could be free of the previous night’s inhalants and his convulsive breathing. The soap did its best to scrub away all of the previous day so that Chance could stand under the water until he was reborn. Chance turned off the water, stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel from underneath the sink, and began to dry himself off. The mirror was still covered with steam so he was able to remain invisible for the moment. He put his pants on and from his pants pocket pulled out a small bag of white powder. It was cocaine. Just what Chance needed to fully wake up and die, even if it did only last a short time it would be enough to get him by until he could get a Redbull and vodka. He opened the bag and placed it directly under his nose, but waited briefly to imagine how much better he would be in just a moment. Chance loved the feeling he had from being on coke. It was the only time he didn’t think about how his job, his life, a diagnosis, or the loneliness that plagued him through the sober parts of his day. He snorted and the powder was inside his nose. Chance closed the bag after giving it another strong snort. Within seconds the inside of his nose was numb and he could already feel the drip make its way down the back of his throat. This was the best part of it all for him. That moment of anticipation right in the middle of sober and high when there was nothing. No happy, no sad, no golden locks falling out, no vomiting, or poison in her little veins, and most importantly no lies of “Everything is going to be ok,” for him to utter. Nothing, but anticipation and emptiness until his medicine cured this illness.
Chance knew he was sick. He didn’t try to hide it; in fact he went out every night to bars to celebrate his illness. The bars were more pharmacies than bars. Cocaine and alcohol was his medicine of choice, but if the pharmacy was out of his prescription any other substance he could snort, swallow, or smoke would work. If he felt dehydrated the doctor would give him vodka, whiskey, or any medication with better than a three point two percent ratio. Most nights his symptoms were simple to treat. Every hour or so he would simply take a quick snort of coke, down a shot of Southern Comfort, and sip on his Redbull and vodka until he needed to refill his prescription. The frequency of his medicinal uses on most nights continued until he passed out sometime around sunrise. Tonight would be no different for this party God and he hated himself because of it. Heavy the shoulders of Dionysus had become, whose only wish was to die and only fear was death.
The moment of anticipation was over and he could feel the medicine begin to work. Steam that had accumulated on the mirror had begun to dissipate and Chance became visible once again. He looked at his face. His eyes had dark rings around them, his lips were pale and chapped, and his beard was three hours past five o’clock. Even though his eyes were dilated he was able to see clearly that this was more of a Romero creation staring back at him than a man. Seeing his reflection in the mirror reminded him of death. It was like watching a person die a little each day from a slow, agonizing, and debilitating memory of a year long journey, which ended eight years ago, on a day when Daddy couldn’t keep his promise to a little princess that “Everything would be ok.”
Picture Attribution
By Adhesive bandage drawing nevit.svg: Nevit Dilmen (talk) Love Heart symbol.svg: Nevit Dilmen (talk) derivative work: Nevit Dilmen [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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