Ursula Pflug - Seeds and Other Stories

I looked everywhere. I spent fortunes on a half-awake cabdriver, asking him to wait outside. He waited, and I always came out alone. He grumbled at me in his rear-view mirror, telling me I’d never learn. Finally he drove me home.

No Little there to kiss me to sleep, just a hollow in my gut where he’d been. The bed was big and grubby; the morning light too critical for the dust we were always too happy to clean. I got dressed again and walked over to the Fifth Street Deli, and on my way there clouds came, and it started to rain. With the rain, even the pigeons took cover.

It was noon when he found me at my table, littered with newspapers, coffee cups, Kleenex. He ordered a tea and sat down across from me. He looked different. I was withered, shrunken, but the hours had changed Little the other way; he was more substantial. His body took up space, filled the room; I’d only seen him float before. But Little wasn’t dancing any more.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Little.”

“Ruby.”

“How come you done what you did?”

“We’re going to quit.”

“Quit? What are we going to quit? You don’t want me anymore. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“No. No, it’s not, stupid. You and I are going to quit our jobs at River Street. Preferably we are going to quit this town, this country. We are going to quit.”

“You sure know how to ruin a good thing, baby.”

It seems he’d seen a friend turn blue. The other kind. From lack of breath. They are always cooking up new drugs to dump on the street, and this one hadn’t passed the test. Or it had. Whichever way you look at it.

“Drugs are thieves,” Benji always said.

“The Blues is just the same, Ruby. Maybe it don’t steal your breath but it numbs your soul. Just because it’s government run doesn’t mean it’s exempt. Especially because. I don’t need to see it, what’s happening to us. To you, especially. I’m new to this game, but you, Ruby, are going nowhere fast.”

Big deal, I figure. I’ve been going nowhere fast my whole life and I still haven’t arrived. “Yeah sure, Little,” I say. “We quit. You and me. You gonna go back to dancing on tables at The Ocean? That silver paint shit for your skin, Little. You know some other way to feel this good?”

“It doesn’t look to me like you feel very good, Ruby.” And then he looked tired. I’d never seen him look tired before. It made me feel sad to know even Little could get burned out. That he would get old. I put my hand over his.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

We’re sitting at the big factory windows, looking down at the ships. I’ve told you we’ll quit, but I’m afraid. I’m afraid if I take away The Blues this will be gone too, these moments with you. Without The Blues, you’ll see me as I really am, and, having seen, you’ll leave me. Why would you stay?

I remember what it was like here, before you came. I’d sit at this window for hours at a time, smoking cigarettes, watching the river. And towards dawn, when the loneliness got too sharp, when the memories of my father came crowding in, I’d reach for The Blues. I’d send him away again, send him drifting down the long blue river of forgetting. Then when he was gone, I’d be alone. And I would dance. And in the morning, there would be birds.

There’s silences between us as we sit here, watching the river. Palpable silences I can touch, that I know will open, will draw apart like a curtain, giving birth to what?

Little hands me the joint, as though, holding it, I’ll be defenceless, will have to listen.

And he tells me I am proud to be a scar.

I don’t say anything, because the curtains are drawing apart, and they’re taking my breath with them. I can’t speak, so Little tells me what I’m saying.

“It’s like you say to everyone, “You can’t hurt me, see how hurt I am already.” You do yourself in so there’s only leftovers for the rest of the hyenas. You take all their glory away—and you think that’s good enough—you think you’ve won. But you ain’t. ’Cause when you’re Blue you’re stuck, you never get to rise above it, to where the real colours are. The colourful colours. There’s always been people who really do love you, Ruby. There always will be. You’re lucky that way. For some people, there really isn’t anyone. You’ve met enough of them on the job. You should be able to tell the difference.”

He gets up, goes over to the stereo, turns the music down. “You’re right. Most people don’t give a shit about you. But the ones who really do care, you should treat them well.”

The curtains are all the way open now and I’m trying as hard as I can to feel what’s there, what it is they’ve opened to. Because it can’t be seen. You have to feel it.

And I think maybe it’s love. The other kind I hadn’t known existed. I think maybe this time I can finally afford to believe, that this time he’s given me the currency I need to hear the words only love could make him speak. I wonder from who Little learned it. He’s only twenty years old. I wonder who made Little get so wise.

He comes walking back towards me. He’s wearing a red kimono. With birds of paradise. At least, I think that’s what they are. “Treat yourself well, Ruby. You, more than anyone, deserve it.”

But I don’t. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve him. If I had, I wouldn’t have tried to buy him. For a moment you get a glimpse of it, your chance at happiness, but it’s not a real chance, because no one gets happiness, at least I’ve never met anyone who did. It’s just a trick, to let you know what you’re missing. So that it hurts more, when you wake up, and things are the same as they ever were.

“You’re too smart,” I say. “You’re too good-looking. You make me feel old, and I’m only twenty-six. And you make me feel ugly, and dumb. You’re too fucking good. You’re too perfect. Let up a little, will ya? Give the rest of us gimps a chance.”

He looks at me from so far away, as though the room just grew a million miles long. I can’t make out his face and I don’t know if it’s because I’m crying or because he is.

“Go away,” I say. “The Blues has scrambled your brains, baby. Leave me alone.”

He goes. From far away across the room I watch him go, walk ever so slowly towards the bedroom door. I sit where I am, frozen to death. I want to call him back but I don’t know how. I’ve never done it before. At the door he stops, then turns.

“I don’t believe you,” he says. “I can’t believe you are really such an asshole, Ruby. A real live honest to goodness asshole.”

“You just a kid,” I say, from where I’m sitting, frozen. The words come out of my mouth like they’re someone else’s, but I can’t stop them, I can’t help what they say.

And because, after all he is just a kid who loves me, he goes.

And in the morning he gets up and goes to work on a case he never comes back from.

Benji is gone now, and I am alone in this room. This room, made, like any other room, of walls. Grey and carpeted, soft to mute the sounds that fear makes.

Before she left, Benji told me about her case, a man who said he’d come for sex. Somewhere he’d heard that’s what we were. People hear things. It took her a long time to bring him round to seeing what his real problem was. Himself. As usual. You get so tired.

Hookers. We had a big laugh over that one, me and Benji. It’s our souls we measure out here, one little piece at a time. Some nights I think I’d rather be out on the street, out there in the traffic, with the red tail lights.

We are inside, always inside, enclosed by soft grey walls of fear.