Poor, Poor, Placida

Placida missed the sky.  She missed her gaze being held by someone who spoke with her.  In the same language.  He missed her in return.  Their days slid by each other like oil and water.  He did not sleep.  She slept like the dead.  By nightfall, she left with the moon.  He dozed and dreamt of her return in the cool of dawn.  She would slip back into their rhythm unobtrusively.  Today, the composer of their little orchestra missed a beat somewhere, and they stood at opposing ends of the kitchen table.  He sat and gestured for her to follow, but of course she didn’t.  She put the kettle on.  She started chopping vegetables.

“Placida.”  He breathed it like a prayer.  The last rays of warm light filtered through the blinds and washed her straw hair gold.  They sparked on her diamond ring as she peeled a carrot.  He watched it dance through her work.  She began to sing softly, under her breath.  It was as if it was a performance for no one but herself.  He pushed away from the table with a creaking protest from the chair.  If she heard, she pretended she hadn’t.  He thought about buying her roses.  He didn’t.

Placida watched her feet move across the pavement.  Up to the sidewalk, under the streetlight, and into the shadowed bar.  She let her eyes sweep up across the room as she dropped her bag, pressed her thumb into the sensor, and clocked in.  Apron.  Hair up.  Smile.  She let herself be guided through the shift.  Hours ticked by calmly.  

“Do you like this job, sweetheart?”  A man asked over his mint julep, leaning his chin on one hand.  She flashed her ring at the endearment, wiggling her fingers and supplying a laugh,

“I do.”  She was fiddling with the soda nozzle.  It just wouldn’t open up, “It’s a relaxing gig.  Same thing every day.”  He picked a drooping mint leaf from the ice,

“Sounds boring.”

The latch gave suddenly under her boney fingers.  ‘Worked to the bone' He used to say.  Sudsy soda water gushed onto her crowded work counter and cascaded to the floor.  She wrestled the latch closed again.  The bar was dry.  The man had not moved.  She grabbed a fresh rag and shrugged,

“That’s life.”

Placida cleaned the mess.  The man left her a kind tip for her trouble.  She left her coworker to tend bar while she powdered her nose, and in the silent, grimy yellow of the bathroom, she felt the click of the latch in her teeth.  The soap spotted mirror loomed behind her.  She rested her forehead on the not-quite-metal door.  In, one, two, three, four.  Out, one, two, three, four.  She measured her breaths until everything could be ok again, and she let herself run her finger over the names carved in front of her.

“Placida!”  He was angry today.  She was on her way out the door.  She didn’t slow down.  He reached to grab at her shoulder but caught the door instead, holding it open to plead at her with his eyes.  She froze.  Turning slowly, she shook at the edges.  She met his gaze, but her eyes were staring past him.  He noticed how beautiful they were even with red rims and a mask of fatigue.  Tears suddenly streaked her rosy-red cheeks.  When she pulled at the handle, her arm trembled.  He let go and the door gently clicked closed.  The scene replayed in his mind as the night took hold.  He paced the hall.  He watched some old cartoon and tapped his foot so hard that his knee bounced.  He got his coat.

Placida felt off that night.  She could feel eyes on her back.  And her front, for that matter.  Her mind swept her round to the man from the night before, and she felt paranoia pluck at her nerves.  ‘Sweetheart,’ the man had said, mint dripping from his breath.  The shadow of that man slithered around her thoughts that night, and with each strike of the clock, his horns grew longer.  He was every friendly chime of the bell at the door.  He was every hunched figure at the corner booth.  She hid in the bathroom longer, but this time she watched the tears change her face.  She told herself all the easy truths.  Her name.  Where she worked.  Reminded herself that the man from last night had not been in that night.  Reminded herself that she was safe.  She used a wet paper towel to wipe off the soap spots.  She told herself she felt better, but behind the bar, her mind was free to drift as she dusted the too-red false flowers.  It ran away from her as she wiped down the counter.  She realized the man had picked up car keys on his way out.  She wanted to wring her thoughts out like the damp towel in her hands.  It hadn’t been his first julep.  He might’ve driven.  He might’ve gotten into an accident and taken someone’s whole world away.  She scrubbed at the bar where the man had been sitting.

Placida finished her shift.  The eyes followed her out the door and through each patch of warm orange under the street lights.  She dared to glance up from her feet each block to make sure there was really no one there.  Four blocks from the bar, and four blocks from home, there was a cemetery on the hill.  She felt the eyes leave her at the gate.  She let the heaviness in her bones melt with each step.  Her feet knew the way.  Here, it was just the open sky, and her, and a gift of a precious few minutes with what had been taken from her.  She ran her hand over the headstone delicately, so she could feel every bump on her fingertips.  She crouched by the grave and traced the name carved there,

“Hello, Amando.”

The cold breeze answered for him.

Amando Vitale had been a good man.  An attentive husband.  They’d met in a local bar on a beautifully velvet black night.  She’d had a mojito.  He’d had a vodka cranberry that she’d felt brave enough to tease him for.  They’d shared fries.  There were lots of dates like that.  They’d stared at the stars for hours.  He’d liked to dance.  If left with a pencil unsupervised, he’d been known to sketch a thing or two.  His eyes were always tired, and they crinkled just right when he smiled.  He’d carved their names on their bar’s bathroom door.

“Are you haunting me darling?  The door stayed open all on its own today.”  She picked up the chalk and marked another notch on the headstone.  Another day like this.

The driver hadn’t stuck around to see the consequences.  When it had been raw and angry, she’d wished the stranger had crashed during the escape and died.  Now, she just hoped they’d kept a copy of the obituary.  She fantasized about whoever it was pulling it from a drawer now and then and sobbing with guilt.

She’d dreamt about him every night at first, and she’d chased the feeling of being in his presence.  She’d slept and slept until her body ached to move and her sandpaper throat scratched pitifully.  Her savings, already purged for a lavish funeral and picturesque gravesite, dwindled away.  She stopped answering calls.  She took up work at their bar.  She told herself she could be happy.

One day, she’d dreamt of being given a choice.  Live or die.  My place or yours.  I’ll meet you there.

She had been scared to die.

Amando watched her crouched form from the gate.  There had been a moment of confused panic when he, hidden around a corner, had seen her stop there.  He felt strings at his heart tugging him across the empty street.  He leaned on the fence and memories clicked quietly into place, one by one like vertebrae.  They were incomprehensible and gut-wrenching and felt far too big to fit in his head, but in the face of then and there, they were unimportant.  They were history lessons.  He took the first step towards her.

“Placida.”  She half-heard it.  Half-felt the hand on her shoulder.  She was cross-legged then, leaning her head on her hands.  She’d been mindlessly mumbling about her night.  The feeling of him there wrapped up her heart like the edge of a cliff.

“I must be going crazy then.”  She mumbled into her right hand, but she brought the left one to her shoulder.  She let herself imagine.  The feeling was so nice and almost-real that she tried to let herself believe too.  She wondered how they would spend an hour together if he could just come back to visit.  Echoes of ‘Let’s take a look at those stars, dear.’ bounced around her head deafeningly.  

For the first time in a long time, Placida let herself look at the sky.  The moon was dark, and light pollution was minimal.  The beauty shot molten lead into her veins.  She gripped her own shoulder and let the tears well up from the singular ache in her chest.  The pain in her heart sloshed through her arms and squeezed her lungs.  The edge of the galaxy twinkled on merrily beyond her tears.

“You’re not allowed to still be beautiful.”  She spat the words at the cosmos, daring them to protest.

“Placida!  You’re out early.”  Her neighbor held a gushing hose over a very verdant looking rose bush.  The sun had just barely touched the hills, and it cast thick honey light over the street.

“Yes, off to start a project.”  She waved a little basket of acrylics and brushes.

“Oh, what’re you painting?”

“The milky way.  It’s a gift,”  She slowed her steps, “Would it be terrible of me to ask for a rose?  If you can spare one?”

“Of course dear, I’ve plenty.”  She pulled out a pocket knife and parted with a rose.  There was a hint of sympathy in her eyes.

“Thank you!”  The woman waved as her strangest neighbor strolled off towards the cemetery.  She went back to her watering.

“Poor, poor, Placida.”