Jose Rodriguez - Snapshots of Modern Love

Her door is half open, and the lock is broken amid splinters.

She freezes in place and her hand closes its grip around the revolver. She wants to run downstairs but then what? Call the cops and wait. She is not running, she reminds herself. Right before she turns back down the stairs she remembers her cats. Ernie and Munch!She cannot leave them in there. Her hand comes out of her pocket with the revolver. She approaches the ajar door and pushes it open with her prosthesis, both hands now holding onto the raised revolver.

Once inside, she cannot recognize her own place because it has been vandalized with the single-mindedness of the obsessed. Not a single piece of furniture has escaped unscathed. Her clothes are ripped and scattered everywhere. Her TV has a hole in the screen. The couch is ripped open and its stuffing lies everywhere.

She moves with slow but sure steps, revolver at the ready. There is no noise inside the apartment. Now and then she stops and spins around to check her back, then listens for any clues of an intruder or her pets. Nothing. Her cooking pots are on the floor. She smells piss! They are full of urine.

In her mind there is no doubt, Billy had been here. He had found out where she lived and had come to leave his calling card. Her stomach gets sick at the sight of what once had been sweet home, not much of a place but her place, now soiled beyond repair.

Even the toilet and the sink in the bathroom are broken. By now Debbie is sure that Billy is gone. Where are Munch and Ernie? She calls them but nothing breaks the eerie silence. She steps out of the apartment and puts the revolver back in her pocket. Using her cellphone she calls 911 and awaits for the cops while calling for Munch and Ernie aloud from the balcony, her voice falling on the parking lot. She’ s ready to burst out crying for her pets. Where are they?

Ken drives northbound on I-25 towards Denver. The raising sun appears over the horizon to illuminate grassy plains that flare in gold and roll away from both sides of the highway. A freight train like a rosary of coal beads moves south along shiny tracks. The hum of the engine and the tires on the pavement sooth Ken and he thinks of nothing; he just admires the open landscape and he enjoys the blank space in his mind.

Having decided to be on the highway had not been an easy decision. It had been an unavoidable decision but one that he had finally acquiesced with after spinning it in his head for days, always knowing he would do it but trying to fool himself into believing he wouldn’ t do it.

He had left the party at DTC without talking to Debbie, or the stranger that looked like Debbie. In his gut he knows she is Debbie but in his head he tries to maintain the logic that a stranger is such until proven otherwise. In leaving the building that night he had noticed the catering van and the name of the catering company written on it. Phone book in hand, he had searched for the name and had found out their closest location to DTC. His hunch was that the caterers had come from this location.

This was the logical part of his search. The crazy part would come next with him sitting in his truck by this location to watch workers come and go, hoping to catch Debbie. The next part of his plan did not exist. Ken had no clue what to do if he ever saw the woman again. He had made it this far and knowing what to do next would have to come to him like a bolt of lightning from nowhere because he doesn’ t have the will to think about it.

He would pull the next move out of his ass, he had thought and that had been enough for him to start his journey in search of something, a something he was not sure what it was or what it would turn out to be.

Debbie sits in a cheap motel room with Ernie in her lap. The vet said he will be OK and that the limp in his front right leg will be temporary; there are no broken bones or torn tendons. After the cops came the next door neighbor, a sour lady whom Debbie didn' t use to care much for, stopped by to say that she had seen one of her cats by the trash bin. She recognized the cat as one of the two that was always catching the sun on Debbie' s window ledge. Debbie thinks that you cannot judge people until things turn bad, then their true selfs will reveal themselves. The sour lady, Bernice is her name, went to the trash bin with her and helped her get Ernie back. He was shocked and hiding and it took a great deal of cajoling and patience to get him to come out of the hole he had escaped to. And the vet too; he didn' t want to charge her for taking care of Ernie. "You already had a shitty enough day," he had said. Debbie also thinks that for every few nice people on Earth there always is an asshole ready to make life unpleasant for others.

Her tears fall on Ernie' s fur. He purrs but Debbie can feel the nervousness still scurrying under his skin. The noise from a loud TV next door comes through the thin walls. Traffic noise filters through the windows. The lady cop had come out of the apartment and had said to her," sorry ma' am, your cat is dead." Debbie felt her hearth break and fall to the ground in pieces. "We found its body under what was left of the couch. It was stabbed." The vet hadn’ t charged her for disposing of Munch’ s body either.

Her place had been throughly destroyed together with all her belongings. She drove to the motel in her Geo with the clothes in her back, the cash she had recovered from its hidden place under the bathroom sink' s counter, Ernie, her cell phone and her revolver. The cops had shaken their head in disbelief at the destruction and the meanness behind it, and Debbie thinks that they believed every word she told them, and they should because she spoke the truth, and Debbie also believes that the cops were mighty pissed off at whoever had destroyed her place. She told them about Billy, about him coming to the bar and attacking her, and about his threats, and she also gave the cops his date of birth. She can’ t figure out why she still remembers his birthday. He never remembered hers, and nobody before Billy did either.

The cops called the dispatcher with Billy’ s name and D.O.B. And true enough, Billy was a parolee just released from jail. Now the cops and his parole officer are looking for him, and he has bolted out of the halfway house in violation of the terms of his parole. One way or another he is going back to Canon City.

That' s what worries Debbie, one way or another ; the bastard know she' s a wanted man and who knows what his sick mind will be capable of doing. Debbie thinks of Billy as a cornered madman with a sharp butcher knife in his shaky hand and a heart full of hate towards her. The motel room is both a hiding place and the only roof over her head she can afford; she cannot stomach to see the shambles of what once had been her place, a peaceful oasis for her and the cats, now in ruins and profaned by Billy' s madness. The landlord said he can have the bathroom and the kitchen fixed by the end of the week but Debbie is not willing to go back to what once had been her place. Munch’ s blood on the carpet and Billy’ s piss on the kitchen is too much to take.

Tears and sobs are subdued but each one causes her great pain. She rocks back and forth on her chair, hugging Ernie with his bandaged leg. Her revolver is by her side. Dark thoughts of revenge lurk inside her head.

I wonder how long it will be before the cops show up and cite me for loitering in this parking lot. This is the third day in a row that I spend in my truck watching caterers and drivers getting in and out of the business across the parking lot. I’ m now running my affairs from the cab of my truck using my cell phone but I wonder how long I will be able to keep it up. Now and then I take a drive to the Taco Bell in the gas station on the other side of the street and walk around for a while, but then I have this urge to come back to my observation post, an urge that fools me into thinking that Debbie is going to show up just when I turn my back or I’ m having a burrito.