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“Oh, I don’t even know. Just something I kind of picked up along the way, I guess. I don’t really need them. Not like I need the noise. The lights just kind of add another dimension to it all. When you get really close to them like I do you can feel the heat and hear the filaments vibrating and the energy crackling. But they really are just an extra. I can go long periods of time without needing them—sometimes I have to because I’ll get too close to a flash or stare too long at a bulb and go blind for a few days. My eyes just haven’t adjusted the way my ears have.” With her fingers in the hair at the base of my neck and my mouth directly against the opening of her ear, I swear I can almost hear a buzzing sound. I try to quiet my voice to a whisper but it comes out a throaty mess. “So it doesn’t even hurt your ears anymore, all that noise? “Mmmmm, no.” She purrs and tightens her grip on my neckline. Like she’s getting off on my voice or something. “Every once in awhile I’ll really overdo it and wake up with an earful of blood, but really your ears can handle a lot of pressure if you work up to it.” “Man. Weird.” “Mmmmm, yeah.” She releases her grip on my neck and rolls over facing away from me on the blanket. I’m wondering if she’s replaying the sounds of trains and airplanes in her head right now, or if she’s just waiting for me to make some sort of move on her. Either way I’m just trying to wrap my head around the idea of her life. I’m hoping she doesn’t think she’s freaked me out, because she hasn’t. After all, I hang out with Bill the public urinator and I’m not embarrassed by him. Everyone’s got problems. Now that we are quiet and there is some space between us I realize how cold it is and how tired I am. I’m thinking about sleep and getting Robin back to wherever she calls home. I sit straight up and stretch my legs out. “We should probably get going pretty soon. It’s getting light and the morning patrol will be coming through soon.” I look over at her but she doesn’t move. She’s still turned away from me curled up in the fetal position, in her own chaotic solace. Or maybe she’s pissed off at me for something I said? Or maybe she had some sort of sound induced brain aneurysm? Shit. “Hey.” I lean over her but I’m afraid to touch her. I mean, what if she is dead—I sure as hell don’t want my prints all over her. “Hey, are you asleep?” Her hair is swept over across her face so I poke a stiff finger into her back. She rolls over and whips the hair out of her face in one motion, looking at me with one of those annoyed “WHAT?” looks. I can see the tangled wires running from a pair of headphones to the cassette player she’s clutching to her chest. She pulls the phones down off her ears and I can hear a little of what sounds like air raid sirens blaring from them. “Sorry,” she says kind of lowering her eyes, embarrassed. “You scared me. I was just starting to fall asleep.” I say it’s okay and as I’m nudging Bill with my foot and shaking the dead grass clippings out of the blanket, I feel the remnants of the train—hot steel pounding through my forehead. And my own internal voice, nearly buried behind the chaos of crashing cars, droning persistently— “This
one’s a keeper, doc.”
Revenge equals the first time Dr. Leznick uses the mental unrest line on me multiplied by me spending a week singing Bruce Springsteen songs into the recorder. The whole time imagining Leznick listening late into the night by the light of his desk lamp. Rubbing his temples, clutching at his unkempt, thinning hair, thinking, “There’s got to be a meaning in here somewhere.” Bullshit. That shit’s for psychological thrillers and crime drama t.v. The rest of us, with our gateways to mental unrest and our spirals into psychosis—we don’t mean anything. The saddest part of this whole story is that right now anyone listening is going to realize just how close to the beginning and end could have been. They’re going to realize that I could have easily fit the nuts and bolts of my story onto one stinking tape. But that would be no good because the internal vibration from my voice is about the closest thing left to sound that I’ve got. Eat your heart out, VanGogh—what I’ve done here, I’ve made a real statement. Maybe
you’ll hear it, maybe you won’t. |