January 2012
8 posts
Long Term Parking - Part 4
She laid her bike in the tall grass next to his hoe and cracked glass jar, and he led her several rows into the hip-high soybeans and she noticed that they were a deep, deep green and that the soil was a rich coffee, and as they lay between the plants on the damp and musty soil, and she watched his blue eyes as he smiled up at her, she realized this wasn’t making love, of which she had read so...
Long Term Parking - Part 5
Before she left for college, he smiled as she opened the gift he had so inexpertly wrapped. It was a tote and it smelled like a new pair of very expensive shoes from Neiman-Marcus, made of a shiny, deep brown leather and purple paisley-patterned canvas. He loved paisley, particularly purple paisley, and said it would compliment the yellow she was so fond of wearing. She surprised him the following...
Long Term Parking - Part 6
She sat on a high stool in a boisterous bar of clinking glass and the hum of conversation, and of a bad local band butchering cover songs. The place smelled of stale beer and sweat and vomit and urine, which wafted from the bathrooms that never were cleaned. It was a small and dimly lit college dive bar, five blocks from her apartment. She watched a boy she hadn’t seen before, who reminded her of...
Long Term Parking - Part 7
Her apartment was dark and cold, it was winter, and her bed was piled with quilts, and the faint light from the street cast her bedroom in a sickly orange glow, which made them appear as zombies, as walking corpses. She didn’t mind. It was better than the honesty of a well-lighted place. He pulled his clothes off with more rapidity than if he had been on fire, then proceeded with hers, but his...
Long Term Parking - Part 8
She had been in college for nearly a month when his mother had called. She had been in a hot shower and the small apartment was full of steam and it smelled of scented soap and shampoo, and as she raced to phone she was eager to hear his voice. They hadn’t spoken in seventeen days. He had been busy. But it was his mother’s voice she heard, and she could tell immediately that something was wrong.
...
Long Term Parking - Part 9
In spring, under the warm amber light of a late afternoon sun, farm boys would cruise slowly down the narrow roads in an old, beat-up pickup with a giant “CHEVROLET” stamped into the sheet metal tailgate, laughing and drinking beer with their rabbit guns hanging out the windows. Some would ride in the back of the truck, and with all the rifles it looked like an angry and hairy mole on an old and...
Long Term Parking - Part 10
She helped his mother clean the living room the next day, and she noticed that the spiral blood stains on the walls reminded her of paisley, and she thought that he would like that. They scrubbed and scrubbed and emptied buckets of dirty pink water, but were not able to completely rid the room of its stains of guilt. In the end the carpet was replaced and the walls repainted, and the living room...
Long Term Parking - Part 11
The woman studied herself in the dark wall of glass, and stood and walked down the long hallway toward the automatic doors, and walked into the night beyond. She looked regal in her yellow dress and pearls, with her old but well cared for tote, made of a deep brown leather and purple paisley-patterned canvas. She crossed to a dark and cavernous doorway, which led into a solid concrete building...