It happened on a stormy night somewhere between yesterday and tomorrow. An hour teetering on impaired decision making and slumber. The television projected onto the room the classic glow of a black and white film. It was one that not many could name but most could reference back to through parodic television scenes. The shadows of the couple painted the wall behind them; their darkness surrounded by a light made of electromagnetic particles. Their hands locked as their legs entangled at the base of the couch. Their eyes grew misty as an orchestra that accompanied the climax of the film began to swell. This was their Friday night.
They laid under a quilt that Marigold had acquired from some obscure thrift shop during their last visit to the city. She didn’t have many hobbies but the ones she did adopt during her time in New York became more so passions than anything. Marigold never shopped without purpose. When it came to groceries she brought exactly what she knew she needed and rarely ever did she purchase snacks she wasn’t hankering for at that moment. This was often to Justin’s detriment as he avidly partook in the smoking of marijuana.
For clothes, she only got what she knew would match with something she already owned and wouldn’t hurt her pockets too much. But to speak a more unique and baseless reasoning, when she shopped at thrift stores she only purchased items that looked or felt like they meant something to someone at one time or another.
She’d found the quilt they were under in the back of a revitalized thrift store somewhere in DUMBO. It hung on the wall like an exotic piece of tapestry from a time when Iranians would have called themselves Persians and gold was an acceptable form of currency. It was littered with animals indigenous to Africa and other dry lands. The artist or grandparent that made the quilt was complex enough in their design that it could be called a piece of fine art but also not too intricate that a child would not have been able to guess the animal by shape alone. She reasoned that it was probably made for a child that had grown and left things like this behind. Maybe the grown child in question didn’t plan on passing it down to their children; or maybe they didn’t even want children. Whatever the story, there was one, and so she had to have it.
She was proud of this find and made sure to let Justin know she was by laying it across their laps every time they spent a rainy night indoors, huddled on a couch made for two, with the smell of take out and the sound of rain tap-dancing on the window behind them.
"This part always gets me," Marigold said as she moved even closer to Justin. Which, until she did, had seemed almost impossible. The scene they were watching had the lead actor and actress staring at each other in an airport with tension steaming between them. She was about to board a plane. This was one of those scenes that people would later go on to copy and yet leave the soul out of. Most knew it, some could loosely quote it, and those people’s parents knew it word for word.
"I don't know what it is," Justin said in his lead actor voice of the 1950s as he recited the lines of the film word for word. "I've met a hundred women in the last twenty years. Kissed, made love to, and walked out on a hundred more. But for some reason, the day you stepped into that diner on that hot summer’s afternoon— it's just been you. Just you, you hear me?"
"Is that how you get all the girls," Marigold had switched to her silver screen voice as well, with just as much knowledge of the lines. "You tell them that you've slept with a thousand women and they fall into your arms?"
"A hundred. And not all. Some."
"You're a right fool, you know that? A right fool. Why wouldn't I get on this plane and start a new life? Find someone who loves me, knows what they want," At this point she was talking directly to Justin. "Have kids that remind me constantly that I made the right choice. That I was enough!"
"I don't know." Justin looked right into Marigold's eyes.
"You don't know?"
"I don't. But there is one thing I am certain of though."
"Oh yeah," Marigold said, channeling the energies of the noir vixen and mixing them with her own dramatic flare. "What's that?"
"That if you get on that there airplane, well dammit I'm getting on too."
The actors got closer to one another. The space between their lips microscopic. Justin and Marigold acted accordingly.
"You're a fool." Marigold said.
Admittedly, it wasn’t the best way to stop a woman from leaving you. But the standards of the fifties as it came to dating and marital bondage was low. Regardless, Justin kissed her perfectly in sync with the film. It was deep and passionate. Their lips fought to see who'd overlap the other’s but their tongues caressed each other while ignoring the fight above; understanding this was the way it should be. A union.
When they unlatched from each other Marigold looked to Justin and held his face in both of her tender hands. Justin never knew what she’d say when she held him like this. Good or bad news, he’d heard both in this position but it didn’t matter. He felt safe when locked in the cradle of her velvet-like skin and subjugated to her hazel gaze. He kissed one of her hands without releasing himself from her hold.
"If this movie didn't exist I wonder if you'd know to kiss me like that." She said.
"What do you think?" he asked not seeming to care too much about the questioning of his kissing integrity.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, the movie does exist and I do kiss you like that.”
She rolled her eyes and smiled. She knew what he meant and liked how he spoke – like he was older but still of this time. He was quiet and reserved for the most part. He would often say that speaking, not just talking but having those words mean something required thought, passion, and proper delivery. And those things required energy, which he would say he had none of to offer except to the people he loved. When he spoke to the people he loved, or at least liked, it was a minimalist style of speech that encompassed a riddle of dialogue, an endless amount of questions, and nuances of understanding. For those reasons, among other specifications of his character, Marigold found him charming and witty. He was like a restaurant that only served the upper echelon of an already high societal group – and Marigold was the most famous of them all. She had never felt more important than she did when she was with him.
Marigold turned her back to him and laid on his chest. Her head landing perfectly within the crook of his neck.
"Do you know what would be great right now?" She asked.
Justin replied with a hmm.
"Mint chocolate ice cream. Wait, no, cookies n' cream. No. Yes, cookies n' cream. Does it annoy that I change my mind so much?"
"No,” he said looking at the time on his watch, “You never do that for important things so it isn’t a bother. I'm guessing we don't have any ice cream in the fridge?”
“Freezer.” Marigold stated plainly.
“I’m sorry?”
“Yes, the whole object is a refrigerator but ice cream goes in the freezer.”
Justin looked down at her. This was a game she played that only she thought was funny and that he had learned to ignore. He sighed and put as much of his head as he could onto hers.
“So there’s no ice cream?”
Marigold shook her head and shrugged. She reached for the open take-out container on the small glass table in front of them. She looked deep inside the paper box and scooped out the remains of noodles and baby shrimps into her mouth.
"I don't mind getting you some," Justin said as he wiped the sauce from the corner of her lips. "I could use a little air."
"It's raining though," Marigold said as she pointed to the window. The rain began to hit harder against the glass. Her acknowledgement seemed to cause it to put on a show. "I'll get it in the morning or something."
Justin tapped her shoulder and began to sit up without a word. He walked from the living room into the darkness of the kitchen. Marigold adjusted herself to see into the darkness but to no avail. There was a shuffling and then the sound of metals clanging against each other. She rolled her eyes and smiled as she sunk into the couch.
Justin emerged from the darkness with a jacket and his car keys.
"Cookies n Cream, right?"
She nodded her head, "You don't have to."
But I do, he thought to himself.
——————————————————————————————————————————————-
You either love the rain or you hate it. It pours on a picnic or on a day where you had already planned to stay inside anyway. Something so inconvenient to most people but such a necessity to something as delicate as a flower with hopes to bloom. But to Justin, to call it an inconvenience at this moment would shape the rain as more of a foe than it was in his mission to retrieve ice cream for his Marigold. His flower.
The rain was picking up and even in the darkness he could tell that the storm clouds above were getting thicker and the rain was becoming more free to do as it did. The roads were long and slick. They lived just outside of the five boroughs of New York seeing that it was cheaper and they both drove. They both had grown up in New York – her in Queens and him in Brooklyn – and so they were both used to walking a minute or two to their local bodega. But in this town where people who’d grown up here often said I basically live in the city, there were no supermarkets within walking distance and definitely no bodegas. You either had a car or you starved to death. That was something his mother told him before he moved in with Marigold.
I hope you love that girl enough that it’s worth leaving the greatest city on Earth she once said. He thought it was. Although he missed the hustle of Manhattan and the culture of Brooklyn, he would never tell Marigold. After all, it was her idea to move out here. She reasoned that rent would be cheaper and the commute wasn’t that much of a hassle especially if they left early in the morning – she was an early riser. They could save enough money to get a real nice place in the city within just a few years and it would all be worth the having had no bodegas. He didn’t think it was worth it but she was and so he agreed.
He’d began to notice as he was driving down the road, which he was the only one on, that the rain had picked up even more. The pitter-patter against the windshield and the hood of his car had become deafening and ominous. He began to grip the steering wheel tighter and reduce his vehicle to a moderate speed. His levels of caution and the eerie feeling of the dark and rain was setting on him. He turned the radio on once he could bear it no longer.
The sound of the rain was now accompanied by the tunes of the 50s. It seemed fitting considering the film he’d watched with Marigold earlier. Oh yeah he thought to himself, that’s why I’m on the road right now. She wanted ice cream.
For a moment he’d forgotten why he was there, in the car, risking his life. He wondered if she really wanted the ice cream or if it had just been a whim of hers that she had decided to verbalize at that time. He thought back to the two or three times she told him that he didn’t have to. In his mind they became more disingenuous the more he thought about it. The idea of it being a test left his brain as fast as it entered. He told himself he had nothing to prove.
Frank Sinatra's silvery voice and the brass horns that came with it began to infringe upon his thoughts and soon enough it was the only thing there. The name of the song escaped him but not the tune as he hummed words of lyrics lost. The song made him imagine he was in a bar alone, watching the rain instead of driving in it. He’s the only one there of course and he even knows the bartender’s name. The eeriness of the road is little more than a twinge on the back of his neck now. His eyes begin to track the beams of his car and the yellow-brick-like road created for him to follow. What’s he drinking in this daydream? A bourbon. No ice but the glass is chilled.
The further down the road he went the more the radio began to lose itself to the poor connection of old signal towers and the oppressive storm above. The picture in his head had lost itself to the static of the radio and so had Sinatra’s voice. The pitter-patter returned and reality set in again. And the twinge on the back of his neck became a numbing feeling all over his body. A ring came from below the radio in the cup-holder. The glow from below shined beneath his chin and created a specter of himself in the rear-view mirror. Justin looked down to find a message from Marigold with a flower emoji next to her name. His eyes transitioned from the road to his phone. Back and forth. The message read: Rocky Road.
"Rocky Road." He said to himself as he looked back up.
As he did, his heart stopped momentarily. He broke into a sweat and his hands gripped the wheel tightly. His nails tearing into the leather. For a moment he once again believed in the monsters that lived under his bed. He once again thought they were real because without this acceptance of a new reality he would not be able to decipher the sight before him.
There in the center of the road, only a few feet ahead out of the reach of his headlamps, a pair of eyes stared ever so plainly in his direction. The eyes were absent of life and reflected the lights of the lamps it stared so deeply into. And maybe, just maybe, they also reflected the look of overwhelming terror that was Justin’s face.
In milliseconds his hands finally began to react on their own after what felt like an eternity. His body was screaming at him to survive.
Turn, damn you! Turn!
The wheel turned and turned, hand over hand. His foot slamming into the brake. The pitter-patter of the rain, which was once so prominent in sound, seemed to quiet as if to watch and see if he’d make it. It became muffled and gave way to the screeching of tires and his screaming. The concept of straight was lost on him and the slickness of the paved road forced him to succumb to chance. For an instance his eyes closed and he recited the world’s quickest and most meaningful prayer in his head – the only part of him quick enough to do so.
When he finally opened his eyes he’d noticed the car stopped moving. His breathing was heavy and scattered. His mind had processed what happened but his body was still playing catch-up. It was exhausted. For the most part he was intact besides the piece of his soul that had escaped his body from his mouth during his pleading – screaming – for anything but the final destination life had to offer.
His car had done a full 360. Maybe a 720. Regardless he was facing the direction he was going. Once he had the nerve he looked at himself in the rear-view expecting to see a ghost. He couldn’t recognize himself. He seemed older, not in age or appearance but in experience. It would not have surprised him if this incident somehow shaved a few years off his life. But it was a small price to pay for not having to pay the full price.
The rain was still coming down but it wasn’t as heavy. He could hear his heart, the engine and the calming of his breathing. He could hear movement coming from the forest next to the roadside. From the passenger window he could see where the forest and road met as well as the small figure sitting at the edge of both. He still couldn’t make out what it was and he wasn’t sure he’d like the answer if he could. He could barely make out its odd shape in the darkness but he could still see its reflective eyes. No longer did they reflect the headlamps of his car and indescribable fear on his face but instead the moon. For the first time tonight, the moon showed itself from behind the storm clouds and the creature was the first one it showed itself to. It caused the creature to look even more off-putting and eerie because even though the moon had set a stage for it, the thing was still dark and shy.
It began to notice Justin’s interest in it and that he hadn’t taken his gaze off it since he came too. The creature shut its eyes and kept them shut for a few seconds and then opened them again. This broke Justin’s concentration and he began to blink himself, his eyes watering to compensate for the lack of moisture.
The creature lowered its head. Its eyes still fixed to Justin as it took one smooth and even step after the other backwards into the forest. And even when it was completely gone Justin couldn’t help but feel it was still there, with x-ray vision, staring through the pines and the bark of the trees.
Justin closed his eyes and let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He looked back up and took notice of one of the trees where the woods and road met and that the creature had retreated behind. There was nothing particularly special about the tree other than the abnormally large hole in the center of it. This was the tree that Justin come to know as the halfway point between home and the market.
The radio signal had finally returned. The same song was playing but this time it was more familiar to him than it had been before. He could even remember the first time he heard the song and how bad it had been listening to it at that time. Then he remembered how it grew on him. At this moment, he didn’t know if he had ever heard a more beautiful song.
——————————————————————————————————————————————
Marigold liked the rain. She wasn’t sure what she liked more about it: the sound during or the smell of everything afterward. Justin had told her it was because flowers needed to be watered. No one else got to see or hear this side of Justin except for her and she liked this. She loved when things were just for her. Growing up she was the middle child of seven. She shared everything from clothes to privacy. Always too young or too old for something. Worst of all, she’d think, was that her parents had to split their love between seven kids and she’d argue that the slices were very uneven. It had developed something unhealthy in her and she knew it. But the relationships she had acquired, both platonic and romantic, never required her to face this. Her therapist told her she was lucky but it didn’t mean she shouldn’t work on it.
But why work on it when everything was fine, she thought. Justin wanted the same things she wanted. The only person she had to share his love with were people that she also loved…or at least like. Even so, she had a bigger piece of the pie than anyone else.
This didn’t make her a bad person. She was actually closer to most people than they thought. Everyone wants to be loved she thought, I’m just brave enough to say it. Even Justin wanted to be loved, though he wasn’t the type to show it. She knew his heart and saw his actions. That was love, wasn’t it? Seeing all of someone all the time? Even now he was out in the cold rain to get her ice cream that she didn’t really want or need. She didn’t even want him out there but she also wouldn’t deny him a chance to be himself, to show his love.
Marigold sat up on the couch looking at her newsfeed for anything to past the time but at this hour most people were asleep and the rain stopped anyone from doing any real partying. She put her phone down and looked over to Justin’s box of shrimp lo mein. He had left a few shrimps for her, she was a bigger lover of them than he was and would often give her the rest.
As she slurped up the noodles and shrimp she accidentally sat on the remote. The movie began to rewind, the credits reversing and then the airport coming back into frame from a zooming out shot. Then the coupled un-kissed each other and then the silver vixen was back at the plane door entrance. Pause. Marigold stopped the film while trying not to make the remote sticky. She grabbed the Chinese food containers and brought them to the kitchen to throw away.
Their kitchen was redone before they moved in and so it had a garbage disposal in the sink. The home of the floor they rented out was built in the 1800s and owned by the same people who built it – well their descendants. The great-grand daughter of the man who built the home had decided, funnily enough, to rent out the home because she had found a place and a new job in the city. The Great-granddaughter told Marigold and Justin this when they were first checking out the home in the early stages of finding a place. Marigold thought it was funny. It probably impacted her decision-making. That and the home meant something to the great-grand daughter and soon to be New Yorker. Maybe, when they were done with the home, she’d move back; like an infinite loop. Sold.
She walked over to the fridge to get something to drink. There were only beers and water. Water was too boring and it was Friday so she grabbed a cold one and twisted off the top. She hated twist-offs because they were too easy of a way to access something so good. There was also vodka on top of the fridge, something that Justin’s mother Mary had given them as a house warming gift. Mary didn’t even have to go out to buy the bottle because she had such a large selection in her home. During her late forties and after a retirement and a divorce, she had become a connoisseur of wines, whiskeys, vodkas and just about anything with over an 8% ALC/VOL. So she had no problem separating with this fine bottle she had acquired during her time in Russia for her 51st birthday.
Marigold then looked below the bottle at the fridge – the freezer she meant. It came to her attention that she had never actually checked to see if there was ice cream. There wasn’t though. She was positive there wasn’t so why even entertain the idea by opening it? She opened it. Slowly at first but then full swing.
She rolled her eyes in annoyance with the universe. She almost screamed. Yes, this was the universe’s fault, not hers. And not to mention, the tub of cookies n cream ice cream staring right at her. It had to share some of the blame.
She closed the door quickly with a slam and pulled out her phone.
Message to Justin: Rocky Road. She put her phone away and sighed.
Marigold stared at the bottle of vodka while she took a sip from her beer.
“You need to be drank. I just don’t know when.” She said to the bottle.
“Why not now?” A voice came from nowhere in particular.
Marigold jumped back into the island in the kitchen. Did she hear that right? The bottle was talking to her. It was seducing her into drinking it. It took her a few moments too long to realize that was idiotic. She looked around her for the source.
“Why not ever?” The voice was that of a woman and it was sad and familiar. “Does love elude me or do I unknowingly elude it. Or are the two one in the same?”
Marigold remembered now, she knew the voice. She shamed herself for not knowing it sooner. She turned off the light and walked back to the living room. She wrapped herself in the quilt and laid on the couch, watching the television intensively. The voice had been coming from the vixen, the movie had skipped and started playing. She would need to get that fixed.
“Oh but what even is love?” The vixen was doing her makeup in a large mirror. In this scene she was getting herself pretty for her first date with the man she’d later claim to be a fool, “If I’ve ever known love then I have surely forgotten the feeling but not the name. And if love be it a feeling, not that of a physical sensation but one that lives in the thinness of air and whispers of sweet nothings, could I avoid it like I would a man’s unwanted gaze or a bill collector’s call? The question of love in all aspects is truly confusing.”
Marigold followed it word for word. She knew the movie like the back of her hand. She was the one that had put Justin onto these films and this one had also become his favorite. He thought it was ahead of its time.
“Truly, truly confusing.” The vixen said unexpectedly. Marigold threw her head back a bit. Had she forgotten it by chance? Maybe this was an extended cut and she’d forgotten.
“I wonder. Do you have any answer?” The camera was positioned behind the vixen so as to see her applying makeup in her reflection as she gave the monologue. But she had stopped applying the makeup, and she had stop looking at herself. She was looking at something else, something further than the mirror and behind the camera. Something of flesh, blood, and stunning technicolor.
The vixen was looking at Marigold.
“What? Cat got your tongue?”
Marigold’s tongue was in fact somewhere other than her mouth. Her ass maybe. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing or hearing. She wondered if she had too much to drink as she looked at the half drunken beer in front of her. She considered that she may have fallen asleep and entered a cliché dream sequence like in those early 2000s sitcoms.
You just crossed over into, The Twilight Zone came to mind.
She pinched herself expecting to wake up and say it was a dream after all. But it wasn’t. Now she was just crazy and had a red mark on her arm. When she looked back at the television the vixen was completely turned around. Her long porcelain leg crossed over the over, chest high and nose higher. She was looking right at the camera.
“You are a pretty girl. We didn’t have many colored women in these Hollywood type films but I always thought we should’ve. Ever thought about doing movies? You’d be a walking controversy, they’d love it.”
Marigold didn’t answer.
“I see, you’re shy. Yeah, you’d never make it in the industry like that. No one wants modesty. Especially when having you on the big screen is such a risk already. A girl like you needs promiscuity and ferocity - not whatever this is. So why don’t we keep it to the former topic. Love. I’ve seen you there with your lover boy. The quiet one, the brooding one. He’s cute. He loves you. Was love ever confusing for you? My directors and acting coaches told me I needed to really know love if I wanted this movie to be a hit. They were wrong of course! I faked it and I faked it good! Won me the Oscar. But I do wonder sometimes what would’ve happened if I took their advice and made a real effort to find someone. To open up. Maybe the movie would’ve been better. Maybe I would’ve been better. “
Marigold stared at the woman with a straight face and slow blinks. She was trying to understand what had made her go insane. She was trying to understand how someone or some thing could talk so much. She lived with Justin who talked so little that this added dialogue was only proving detrimental to the already precarious situation.
“Hello?” The vixen said playfully. “Speak to me. Please. It gets lonely in here you know? Saying the same thing over and over again. Never getting the opportunity to ask questions you don’t already know the answer to.”
“I…I…Um” Marigold couldn’t help but be hesitant. Was she actually going to entertain this shit?
The vixen stared at her for a moment in silence as Marigold tried to think of something to say. The vixen studied the mouse of a woman before her and after a few moments she walked off screen. Just like that she was gone, leaving behind the chair and make-up counter. Marigold couldn’t she her but could hear the tapping of vixen’s heels growing farther and farther away. She wondered for a moment where she could have possibly gone. She even looked behind her for a moment as a just-in-case precaution.
What kind of dimension was this? A world full of black and white movie stars? Did they have the memories of those people as they were in real life or did they have their own? Was people the right word?
The sound of heels stopped and then grew louder as the vixen returned in the same dress but in red and her breast were more pushed up. In one hand she had a bottle of something with an amber coloring and a glass tumbler in the other. She sat, not having yet acknowledged Marigold, and pour herself a large drink. She drank more than half the cup in a single gulp. She let out a heavy sigh and then a light giggle. Her lipstick didn’t smudge even slightly.
“What do I think love is, you ask?”
No one had asked.
“I suppose the question has come to mind.”she said in patronizing tone, “Let me see…oh…the back of a man’s hand! That’s a big one. Maybe it’s nights where you go to bed hungry because you’ve starved yourself after one too many people insinuated you were fat. Oink Oink. Oh, oh, how about getting your ass slapped by your producer every other day as he whispers into your ear you’re going to be a god damn staaarrr baby! Any of those sound right?”
Marigold shook her head slowly.
The vixen drank the rest of her glass. Poured another – this one even bigger, then drank half.
“It was rhetorical.”
She was getting drunk fast.
“Is that what happened to you?” Marigold asked carefully.
“Is that what happened to you,” The vixen mocked, “What do you think? Real women swallow that easy. Anyway, if none of those strike you as very loving then I’ve got nothing for you. So it’s your turn baby. What’s love to you?” She said love with a slur which made it it sound more like luuuhv.
“Well…love is..” The vixen heavy-handedly slammed her glass down as if to tell Marigold to speak up, “Love is,” she started over, “It’s companionship. It’s a partnership where you’re willing to do anything and everything for the other.”
“Is there a contract?” The vixen asked crudely.
“No there’s no-” The vixen raised her eyebrow and Marigold realized that this was another one of her rhetorical questions, “It’s supposed to be special. No one knows about you guys the way that you two know each other. It’s like sharing a dirty secret, an inside joke. It’s nice. That’s the best was to put it. Nice.”
“In this world ‘nice’ goes a long way, honey.” The vixen said as she threw back the rest of her drink. She stared at the amber liquid in the bottle. She looked like she was angry at it for what it did to her.
“Maybe that’s what the world is.”
“What?” Marigold asked.
“The world: a bunch of shit and then, ‘nice’.”
Marigold shrugged and the vixen sighed. Marigold picked up her beer and took a swing. It was strange situation to be in but she was beginning to accept the bizarreness of it all. She was making herself comfortable. The vixen raised her glass and the two drank together.
A lull drifted between them but it was an easy one. The silence had allowed for Marigold to hear the patter of the rain as it played its consistent tune. It reminded her that it had been raining in the first place and that Justin was still out there. The guilt of having forgotten was met with another swig and the averting of her gaze from the vixen to the floor.
“Do you think that’s what you have?” Something had switched in the vixen. She seemed distance, further than her television world.
“What do you mean?” Marigold replied.
“You got, ‘nice’?”
“Yeah,” Marigold said, a sweat coming to her brow, “It’s nice with Justin. We’re good together. It works.”
“Who does it work for?”
“Us.” Marigold said plainly.
“Oh, really? So you do all that stuff for him? You treat him real good like how he treats you? How would you even know?”
Marigold got quiet. Her annoyance growing at the line of questioning.
“All that stuff you said about love looks good on paper. It sounds…nice. But you’re missing something.”
“Missing something? Oh that’s rich coming from someone that’s missing everything like- I don’t know, her fucking color?”
“I’m…” the vixen pause and made herself another drink, “I’m going to let that slide because…because I don’t think you mean that. I don’t think you understand what you’re doing.”
Marigold sat in a quiet anger.
“I don’t think you’ve ever understood. What would you do for love I wonder? What would the child of seven do to get something like that? One might say she’d do anything to get it, anything to keep it. One would be right. A small unseen child trapped in the body of beautiful woman with agency. Give me this, I want that, more more more. I don’t expect her to know how to share. How to reciprocate.”
“I love Justin.” She muttered.
“Would you move for him?”
“What?”
“Would you leave your friends for him? Start a new life for him? Would you got out in a storm for him, leaving your life to slick roads and the roll of a die?”
Marigold stood up with the beer bottle in her hand. She was visibly upset. There were tears forming in corners of her eyes and she had no idea why. She didn’t make Justin do anything. She never asked him for anything that he didn’t want to give. She was sure of this, she was sure of everything.
“Would you fuck his boss so he could keep his job?” The vixen snickered. She was enjoying Marigold’s anger. This was what she wanted from the start.
“Shut up,” Marigold said, “Shut your dead whore mouth.”
“Whore? That I could handle. We’re all whores to something. If I could fuck this glass of bourbon I would. What I couldn’t handle is what you’re doing. You are a terrible person. Why? Bad childhood? Get over it. We all have terrible childhoods you wailing sheep but you swallow that shit.”
Marigold ran up to the television and kneeled in front of it, her arms stretched to grab both sides of it. The tears had started to fall.
“You came her asking me what love was. I told you. You’re welcome. Now get back to the show!”
The vixen seemed surprised but then she let out chuckle and picked up the bottle. She drank in within seconds. Her lips became the same color as the liquor and her skin became flushed with technicolor and high definition. Marigold’s eyes grew wide. The sadness had been replaced with fear and hints of curiosity. The vixen was getting closer and closer to the screen until Marigold could feel her breath. And then the velvety touch of her Hollywood hands. They were holding onto Marigold’s cheeks the same way she would hold James’. They pulled her in slowly. When she thought her nose would hit the glass of the television – it didn’t. When her forehead would’ve pressed against the screen and left a stain of sweat – it didn’t. Before she knew it her head was in TV land.
“You told me, yeah, you did. But I don’t a believe a word spouting from this flowers mouth. I rather pluck it.” The vixen smiled and gave her a deep kiss.
Marigold screamed and pulled herself out of the television frantically. The vixen was cackling manically and whooping like a mental asylum patient.
Did you see that? Do you see what she does with love? She shouted over Marigold’s screams.
The camera began to the zoom out revealing more of the cast. They all stood there transitioning from black and white into flush colors. They joined in on the laughter like children in a school yard. They pointed and yelled slurs at her. Some were angrier and more aggressive. A portly man with a cigar in his mouth wearing a suit too tight for a man a hundred pounds lighter, funnily ran towards the camera. Others joined him. Their hands grabbed the sides of the screen as they began to force themselves out into the real world. They clawed and flailed over one another as they each tried to be the first…
In the back background, still within frame, the vixen watched Marigold. No longer laughing, or crying, or drinking for that matter. In fact she wore a shade of melancholy on her face. She looked defeated.
Marigold composed herself as much as she could. The synapses firing in her brain. Her body rejecting as much fear as possible. And then in a one fluid motion she stood up, grabbed the bottle of warm IPA, and threw it into the screen shattering it whole. The television flickered a few times, hanging onto its own life and the image of the vixen before succumbing to the damage. Then everything was black. The room went dark.
Marigold could only hear her own breathing. She hated everything at that moment, she felt sick.
Then there was an audible crack outside. Lightning flew through the sky and punctured what was left of the storm clouds. The light from the window, in that split second, showed what was behind her outside of the window onto the broken television. She jumped and turned around.
The vixen was outside the window floating on a cloud of static. She was laid across it as if she was posing for a photo shoot in full color. Marigold felt envious of her beauty and for a moment forgot that she should have been terrified. Even more so because something had changed in the vixen again. Her eyes became reflective and so when she looked at Marigold and Marigold looked back – she saw only herself. She looked terrible. Unrecognizable.
The vixen, as she continue to wear a face of defeat, slowly but surely drifted into the night sky —never looking away.
Marigold turned on a light and sat on the floor. Then she laid on the floor and curled up into a ball. Silent.
——————————————————————————————————————————————-
Justin walked to the door from his car and unlocked it slowly. He walked through the door silently and into the living room where he found Marigold nursing a large cup of vodka, the one his mother had given them. He gave her a worried look. She hadn’t noticed him until he cleared his throat and rustled a grocery bag he had in his hand.
“Justin,” She said half-heartedly, “You’re back.”
“Yeah, I am. Are you drinking?”
“Drinking, drinking, drunk.”
“Any special occasion?” He pulled out the ice cream from the bag and put it in from of her with two spoons.
“Heh, Rocky Road.” She said. She held back the tears she so desperately wanted to shed.
He hadn’t noticed that there was a glass poured for him. He sat down next to her a drank nearly all of what was poured.
“Thirsty?” he asked.
“Very.”
She pour him more and the two leaned back on the couch just staring at the broken television. She’d forgotten that happened and he didn’t really care.
“Tough night?” Justin said as he took a sip and stared into the hole of the television he’d had since college.
“Yeah,” Marigold looked at Justin’s hand that was on her knee. It was shaking. “How about you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it was.”
It got quiet. Neither of them had much more to say anymore. Could either of them believe the other’s story? Maybe — if they both took the time to tell them but they didn’t and they most likely would never.
“Hey, Justin,” Marigold said as she began to open up the tub of ice cream, “You like it here, right? This place? This town?”
He stared at the hole in television. It was deep and dark. It remind him of the woods and for a second he could seem himself in the reflection of the empty hole.
He sighed, drank, and very plainly said, “I really fucking hate it.”