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Robin is gone two weeks later. She leaves pretty much the same way she came—in the darkness, with an Armageddon of sound assaulting the air all around her. Only this time it’s not Robin who is indulging in the noise—it’s me. Laying under the van (I can’t call it an ambulance anymore because I haven’t “saved” anyone in months) with the muffler and exhaust system in rusty twisted heaps around me. It’s me—with the engine running, the muffler disconnected, and my head wedged way up underneath where the exhaust manifold yawns open. Unbridled aggression from those pistons screams out through the block of the engine and right into my face, my greasy face crushed against the left frame rail, taking the pain just so my right ear can inch closer to the source. That’s about where I figure I am when she leaves but I’m not sure. What I do know is that the few things she’s been keeping at my place are gone when I come back inside—with my head wrapped in my shirt. Pushing too far I had mashed the side of my face up against the engine block and gotten a nice blistering burn from my temple down to my chin. I can feel the skin popping and bubbling, oozing into the greasy shirt pressed against my cheek. A small price to pay really, because I also have that great sense of total vibration about me. The one I only get when I hit a real good sound and hold it. The one that starts to wear off about the same time as I’m trying to peel the shirt off my scorched skin—first with my hands, then with the edge of a plastic spatula. By this point I really can’t feel that entire half of my face so it’s OK. It’s like operating on a dummy. I finally pry the shirt out and head to the bathroom to check the damage. Not pretty. The entire right side of my face is black—I can’t tell what’s grease and what’s torched skin though. I poke around in the mush but it all feels dead and a few shreds of charcoal-paper skin flake off onto the vanity top. Underneath it’s all bright red and pitted. I wonder how long I had my face up against the engine block, because for real, this looks serious. I grab a box of gauze and tape from under the sink—it had previously been sliding around the back of the van before I put the speaker boxes in. My patch job is pretty bad and the blood and pus starts seeping right through the bandage so I yell for Robin and head into my room. The bed is still unmade from the morning and I can see where she had wrapped the covers around her legs. On my side of the bed sits her walkman with the cord and headphones neatly wrapped tight around it. It’s
pretty obvious to me right away that she’s left. Sometimes
you can just walk into a room and see how things are set up and
know exactly what has happened there. Like I could see her, in
that bed for the past three nights alone. While I was asleep in
the van on top of the speakers with my face pressed tight up against
the bass cone, there she was, curled up or maybe stretched out
across my side of the bed, asleep with her headphones blaring.
But I imagine it was probably different recently for her. Maybe
they were wrapped around her wrist, lifeless. Or muffled under
the pillow—the same one that used to be stuffed with wind
up alarm clocks. Pathetic. I snap the flimsy plastic headphones in half. She doesn’t need them anymore, and this whole thing was her addiction to begin with. It’s like a curse that she wearied of and passed on to me. And what do I have to show for it? Well, I’m alone. With half my face melted off. My eye swollen shut. Bits of fabric fluttering like streamers from the edges of my wound. Grease and oil smeared across my face. And holding in my hands the snapped-in-half wishbones of her headphones. But for the first time in a long time the house is silent. Robin is gone with most of her stuff and all I’ve got is quiet and a basement full of busted up stereos and televisions. They’re all heaped in a pile at the bottom of the stairs—a growing junkyard of imperfection and failure. Still standing over the unmade bed, squeezing those headphone pieces between my fingers, it hits me that there’s got to be an end somewhere, a destination for whatever it is that I’m doing. I’m taking slow deliberate breaths at this point—measuring the solution that has come floating up to the surface of my mind. From deep icy depths, black and bloated, belly up like a dead fish… I wonder if the other senses really do become heightened to make up for the loss of one. And then I just do it. It’s not set up or planned out or anything. I just have those two busted arms from the headphones clenched tight in my fists. So I start first with the right one, stabbing it hard into my ear until it hits something solid. It sticks in and I feel the pop. The pop I’ve heard other people warn me about, saying, “Go ahead, keep blasting that shit into your ears. See what happens.” This is the answer. After
the first few tentative jabs I just start whaling away. There’s
no order or method to it, sometimes left then right and sometimes
both ears at the same time. My head feels cleared out after a
few upward swings and my grip starts slipping on the blood slicked
plastic arms. My aim gets worse as it soaks into the foam earpieces
and runs down my arms. I readjust my grip and keep working and
I guess that makes sense because that’s what this is all
about. Readjusting. Making changes so that you can continue on.
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