Nadir

The bar closes.

The crest of a bone-shaped moon lay cocked in the sky. The city holds monochrome boxes spackled in a sea of sleek gray windows.

Jennifer sees a stock of streetlights and park signs pasted on the courthouse's perimeter. The horizon beyond is a frosted, barren, and pestilential locust wood.  

She lunges to regain balance in a pair of Jimmy Choo flats.

Trashed papers and newsprints are buried in drifts like varied birds, ill-shaped and restless in the wind.  

Jennifer nods in passive agreement to a gawking bushel of law school first-year students.

As the alcohol warms her belly, she sees an enormous shape laboring over a high-rise. The red-eye jetliner cuts through the sky like a laboring god.

Jennifer pulls a crumpled pack from a crisp leather Christian Loubitin clutch.

A soft amber light folds and swells beyond.

She pulls at her knee-length pencil skirt.  

Her cigarette dangles from a chapped pair of lips.

She stuffs her panties in the bottom of her clutch. 

She staggers in the moonlight and smirks as she thinks of the word… vulva…

Inhale.

Exhale.

"Vulva!" she says again.

She laughs before growing solemn.

How? she thinks. How did it all get so complicated?

Jakob’s truck sputters and leaks.

In the back, smooth angles shadow an infant car seat.

Jennifer trips to the backside window and views a snapshot in her mind.  

It's dark and empty.

A hollow void.

It does not look like her child but something she continually snatches randomly from a Walmart parking lot.

Jennifer gets in the passenger seat.

She does not say a word as they approach the hotel.

She slams the car door and stumbles toward the lobby. She continues smoking and leaves Jakob to collect the infant.

Jakob walks through a pair of French doors and into the living room.  

He winks at Jennifer.

He delicately makes a bed for the boy on the couch and tucks the blanket around him. 

"Do you want a drink?" 

"No," he says.

Jakob steps towards her and lays a hand on her shoulder. She stops breathing for a moment as she cradles hand his.

She holds him tightly.

He feels so thin, but his arms seem to nearly crush her.

"Goddamn," he says, softly kissing her cheek.  

"God."

He lowers his mouth to hers, and she draws him tighter and opens her mouth under his. 

Jennifer washes her face in the bathroom, but she can't look at herself in the mirror. She cannot be seen by anyone.

"You've been out drinking all night again."

"But I've never had a Louis Jadot Grand Bergund. Doubtful that a half glass will play a part in making matters worse."

Jennifer chuckles and drops the face towel to the floor. She takes another sip.  

She concurs.

She embraces the aromas of red berries and plums mingled with the sweet spice of orange zest and rose petal.

Jennifer returns to his embrace. 

"It's my time to indulge."

"You just indulge yourself," Jacob says.  

"Indulge. Quite a word."  

"Oh, my love…What is worth living for if we cannot indulge?"

Jakob's grip releases and his tan flesh mingles with the taupe-down comforter until he disappears altogether beneath the covers.

He stares at her.

"An angel," he says. "Pure as milk, or at least, for right now…"

Jakob turns the nighstand's lamp off.

Jennifer advances towards him, delicately moves to the bed, and takes her place beside him.

Jakob makes no move toward her. He does not even look at her. 

He lies.  

He stares at the ceiling.

"What are we going to do?" He asks.

"I don't know," she says, sipping her wine. 

Jakob smokes in the dark, and Jennifer sees the orange pulse of his cigarette.  

He draws it in.

"What we ought to do is just flee," Jakob says. "Just get the hell out of Dodge."

"Like last time?"

"I should have left the whiskey alone that night."

Now, the wine is strawberry red. Hot green leaves, berries, warmth, and sun are in it. 

Jennifer sips.

She thinks about how little time it took to change things and arrive here.  

Now.  

She'll never get back the mental picture she has had of herself all these years. 

She wonders how much of Jakob is real and how much she cobbled him up out of lines from songs, words from books, wisdom fallen between the pond stones and dust of abandoned buildings, and the dry tongues of dead martyrs, the whispers of weary philosophers.  

She ponders that Jakob is the only one she does not have to hide her drinking from.

"I've got to go," Jennifer says.

She stands naked and sets the wine glass on the nightstand after guzzling the remainder. 

She begins to search for her clothes. They are everywhere.  

She dresses.

"What are we going to do?" Jacob asks.

"I don't know! We'll sort it out over time, I guess, but… We can't do this now!"

Jakob smokes.

Jennifer buttons her blouse. 

"You can't put a lien on my life! You can't just place some attachment on me…on, on…. on my child! On my son, dammit! You hear me, Jakob, that's what's real to me! I need what is real!"

Jakob's neck beads sweat.

His lips tense.

"Don't start drinking heavy on that," he says. "Just don't you start... Not if you're taking off with him in one of your tyrades!"

Jennifer sees in his wild eyes that he had started earlier.

She doesn't think he uses drugs anymore, but she doesn't really care either. She knows he has his stash.

She interrupts.

"I need some blow."

Jakob ignores her.

"I have an important deposition tomorrow. I can’t afford a hangover. Jakob, please! Just a gram to get me through the day…"

Jennifer also knows he keeps an unopened fifth of Johnny Walker's black label sitting on the table where he can see it. A fixture. Where he can access the mere idea of it. 

"I'll do whatever you want! Jacob, I'll blow you! Even…. Even… as long as you want. You can cum in my mouth, and I'll swallow it! I need this!"

Jakob inhales, and the amber dot refracts and dilates rays of orange light that savagely cut through hollow and stagnant shadows.

Jakob inhales and blows smoke casually toward the cheap ceiling spackle.

"…any crutch you can hobble through the goddamn day on! When you get old enough, you look forward to dying! That's the drug you reach for when the other crap doesn't work anymore…."

Jacob transfixes on a morphed patch of spackle.

Jennifer holds her son.

"Jakob, I gotta go. The blow, now…? Now?

"I heard you the first time,' he says.

She starts to leave. Her son, bundled in a mix of clothing and hotel blankets.

"You can't leave like this… you can't keep doing this!"

"I'll leave however I want to leave!"

Jakob flicks an expelled cigarette into a nearby basin.

"I'm not doing it! Standing out there! Looking at you! That goddam yard! That…. Grass… that patch of wretched disease! Not doing it again! Jennifer! Not…. Again…. And…. do you ever think of your son?" 

When Jakob watches her, he can't think straight. Something about her impetuous need to constantly move against the grain of life. The way her delicate mannerisms always unhinge into something peculiar and unpredictable.  

Jennifer knows the power she has over him. The way it happens is never intentional.

It just is.

Jakob reaches for the keys.

"Dry out, Jennifer! Get some goddamn help!"

As he turns around, an overarching strike lands at the bridge of Jakob's nose. The force of the blunt object folds his nose and clefts in.

She is unable to stop.

Even as blood sprays over her son's bundled body.

Jakob's world fades through a storm of blood and gore. He squints and snorts before his cortex detaches, and his body curls and seizes.

Tremoring.

Shaking.

Convulsing.

Jennifer laughs.

Jennifer wipes the blood from her face.

She licks her lips.

Painted in crimson, she exhales and cries after swallowing the moist copper discharge.

"I'm so sorry, my love. I messed up. I'm so sorry…"

—-

"Dammit, Jenn! The phone! Get the goddamn phone!"

She answers it, leaning against the counter. She turns on the tap and fills a glass with cold water. It's someone from the sheriff's department.

She doesn't get the name.

Someone wants to know her name.

She tells them there seems to be too much noise. Water is running in the bathroom.

Water is running in the sink. 

Mario and Luigi are bouncing around the living room.

"Do you know a man named Jakob Clyde?" 

Pause.

Dead silence except for the running water.

"Uhm, Yes," Jennifer says, clearing her throat.

"Why is there no soap in here?" Steven yells from the bathroom. "Jennifer! Hell! How about bringing me a bar of soap?! For Christ's sake, woman!"

Jennifer leans her head against the wall and covers the opposite ear to gather the influx of muffled voice and panic.

"A hotel attendant found him. Quite the mess. Supposing it could be a drug-related homicide…."

The officer clears his voice, "Or, an accident, but it's under investigation. The thing about it is there was a sealed letter with your name on it in his pocket. I don't have to have your permission considering the awful circumstances, but I thought as a courtesy…."

An awful shriek of tinnitus begins squealing in her ear.

Cold water runs in the glass.

Third day sober.

Water runs out of the glass.

"No!" Jennifer says viciously into the phone. 

"If it's sealed and it has my name on it… it's mine! It's mine, you hear, and you leave it alone!"

Jennifer slams the phone down. 

Steven comes into the room and stares at her.

He seems to rise into the air, floating, growing as tall as she is, and she feels the cold linoleum against her calves, her legs….

Everything becomes cold.

The cabinet door handle juts against her back, and she realizes she is sitting on the floor. 

Again.

The phone rings. 

"Are you getting the goddamn soap or not!?"

Steven comes into the room.

Jennifer looks up.

Apathetic.

Numb.

Jennifer sees Steven is getting fat. 

"Jenn! I leave for a week, and this place just….." 

Steven's face alters between anger and rage.

Her son drops the azure blue crayon and looks towards his mama. His face shifts to uncertainty, confusion, and, finally, to consternation.

Jennifer lunges with desperation and folds her child into her arms so hard he cries out and tries to twist away. 

He can not. 

Jennifer squeezes and she thrusts her face against the hollow of his throat. She can smell and feel his hair.

She caresses the soft texture of his skin. 

"Damn you to hell, Steven! Soap? Soap?! I'm getting your goddamn soap."

She cries against the coarse fabric of her son's sweater. 

"I'm looking for it!"

She can't breathe.

Panic.

"I'm looking for it!" She manages to mutter. 

"I'm looking for it… I'll find your goddam soap..."