Jose Rodriguez - Snapshots of Modern Love

Billy reaches across the counter and grabs Debbie by her hair. “ You little shit, ” he says in a low but angry voice. “ Don’ t you talk to me like that, ever.”

Debbie answers by grabbing a bottle of Don Q rum by the neck from below the counter and swinging it against the side of his head. Billy sees it coming, releases Debbie’ s hair and jumps back just in time to see the bottom of the bottle whoosh pass his face. Debbie is standing with the bottle raised over her head.

“ Come on you mother fucker! Try to touch me again, you asshole.” Debbie’ s heart is beating so hard it’ s coming out of her mouth. Her hand and the bottle are shaking but she stands her ground and her eyes are set on Billy who stands on the other side of the counter, aware that the bar regulars are now around him, and they don’ t look like a friendly bunch. He surmises that Debbie must be a popular bar wench. A half crooked smile comes across his lips.

“ I want no trouble honey…”

“ No, you don’ t, ” retorts Debbie. “ You’ re on parole. A phone call and you are back in fucking jail.”

“ Don’ t you threaten me, you…”

“ What? Get your ass out of here before I call the cops.”

Billy looks around. The regulars are around him, some of them holding long neck beer bottles in their hands. Debbie has put her bottle down but now is holding a cell phone, her thumb on the keypad. Billy knows when it is time to fold them; this is not his hand. Maybe next time around.

“ I will be seeing you, ” he says a she leaves. There is scorn in his voice.

“ I sure hope not, ” says Debbie. “ I don’ t want to see your ugly mug ever again.” Her voice is full of bravado but her knees are shaking.

After Billy leaves, followed by a few patrons that want to make sure he is indeed gone and not just sitting in the parking lot, the rest of the patrons gather at the counter in front of Debbie and ask who the jerk was and Debbie says he is her ex just out of jail. Free advice dispensed over a bar counter can cross it either way and Debbie hears all kinds of solutions to her problem, from hiring a hit man to getting a restraining order and everything in between. But not a single of the drunks and down in their luck hard cases in front of her tells her to pack her things and run. Maybe she is not off the mark in her decision to stay where she is. Or maybe that is why they sit on the other side of the counter every night, because once upon a time they had decided to stay put and fight, and they had lost the fight.

A closing time she has a few of the regulars escort her to her car. She goes home using a convoluted path, constantly checking on her view mirror for suspicious headlights. She circles the police station parking lot and stops there for a few minutes but no car with Billy in it drives by. At her place she parks under a light and then runs with a limp to her apartment, closes and dead bolts the door behind her. Ernie and Munch greet her. She grabs them and sits on her worn out couch and she cries.

She has so little, why can’ t she live in peace?

Ken parks his truck on the new parking lot. The sun has just sunk behind the Rockies and the saffron sunset lights that had been filtering through the DTC buildings and trees had gone off as if somebody had pulled a switch. The shadows to follow infuse a gloom to the surroundings as he walks into the lobby of the just built concrete and glass structure, the home of a new dot com venture.

He’ s wearing a sport jacket and a shirt with no tie. Before entering the building he turns back and inspects the grounds and the landscape that his crew and he have created. A smile of satisfaction lights his face; a job well done. Grass, shrubs, trees, sprinklers and drainage, those are the only things he looks forward to these days, and he is grateful he has something to look forward to other than going home and having to deal with Helen.

The developer has invited him to the inaugural bash. It is good for business to do some networking with architects and builders who can see his handy work right out of the window. There will be free food and drinks, and some pleasant conversation, and that may include talking to females. He is not looking for a relationship, but he feels that talking to other women is uplifting after not being able to communicate with his wife. It gives him proof that he can still talk, and be understood, by the opposite sex, qualities he comes to doubt when in Helen’ s presence.

He enters the lobby and walks through marble hallways to reach a room full of people. He puts on his best smile and jumps right in, ready to mingle, leaving his worries at the threshold. This is the time to look perky.

Time passes by Ken, a pleasant going of minutes devoid of marital preoccupations. People praise his landscaping. He knows his art is only dirt and shrubs and water pipes bundled by a carpet of grass but the good words uplift his spirit, and it doesn’ t take much to do that because his spirit has hit skid row in the last weeks. Not even Dr. D’ Angelo with her wisdom and science has been able to fix things. But he doesn’ t want to think about that so here focuses on the people at hand and relights his smile.

“ Do you want a lime with that Corona, hon?”

The female voice comes from behind him, where the wet bar is. The honchimes in his head like reverberations of things past. He turns around and there is this woman in a white shirt serving drinks behind the bar. Her hair is in a pony tail. She smiles at the man in front of her and pretty dimples form on her face. So pretty they are, Ken thinks, they make her look so cute…

And they are walking on the beach again with the surf licking their feet. The breeze blows her hair across her face and she smiles, the pretties of smiles he has ever seen. So young and so carefree both are, walking side by side as if the beach could go on forever and they could do likewise, laughing and just enjoying each other in a silly way…

There is the fear of eminent confrontation, a fear drowned by adrenaline, and a short lived fear it is. That fear is manageable as far as Debbie knows from her experiences. The fear of being jumped from behind, of being stalked like a deer in the woods, that fear doesn' t get her heart thumping like a drum major in a parade but disturbs her every minute of the day. Living looking over her shoulder is as unpleasant as living atop a dynamite factory that mayor not may blow up and the constant fear wears her out, frays her nerves and makes them hypersensitive to things that didn' t use to bother her before, like noises in the night outside her door.

She is sure that Billy is a parolee, even if he never admitted to it. Dropping a dime on him may work. Grabbing her hair and threatening her in public amounts to physical assault and harassment. That would be enough to get his parole revoked. On the other hand, she doesn' t want to piss him off and make things worst. If he runs out on his parole officer and there is a warrant for him, he will have nothing to lose and he may become more dangerous.

She is on her cell phone on her way to work. Coming out of her place and walking to her car had been frightening. She senses that Billy is up to no good. A jilted man like himself will want to reassure his manhood by force; Debbie knows the type well, but damn it, she is not going to run away this time. She has called Glyn, a thing she has never done before even though she has had his phone for months now. She doesn' t like to use the phone to chatter; if she has something to say, she would rather see the person face to face. Glyn knows it too so he understands right away that something must be amiss for Debbie to be calling him on his cell.