The first thing that comes to mind when I think of her is it always being fucking cold. I guess that’s because the first day was that kind of freezing where your hands turn red and swell up and you feel like they’re gonna fucking explode. I was walking down first street, planning on going to Dunkin’ Donuts but starting to rethink the journey, given the cold.
I thought about going home, but dad had come home at three in the morning, so mom was currently tearing him out for that, which was something I really didn’t need to hear. So I kept walking, and finally I reached the corner of first and fifth, which was where DD was located. There are five of them in the city, but with public sanitation laws being as they are (ie fucking nonexistent), this was the only establishment you could count on to pick out the bugs from the coffee.
She was standing outside, wearing clothes that had the appearance of being nice at one time or another, but had been worn too long to withstand it. Her hair was tied up with a piece of string, and her makeup was smeared in the way runway models strive for; grungy and vaguely reminiscent of a raccoon. She was a fucking mess, in other words.
She was leaning against the handicap railing, glaring at the world. When she saw me staring, she smiled with surprisingly white teeth and held out a ragged coffee cup. “You look like you want to give a poor little girl a dollar to buy booze,” she said in a hoarse voice.
“Aren’t you supposed to say you want to buy a sandwich or something?” I tried to just walk past, but she stepped in front of me, putting her hands on her hips.
“Maybe. But we both know I’m going to end up buying Jack Daniels and getting sick in some poor schmuck’s hydrangeas.”
“Hydrangeas aren’t in season,” I muttered, once again trying to sidestep her.
She reached out to stop me, grabbing my arm. “I don’t give a shit,” she growled.
“Well I don’t have a dollar to donate to your booze collection box, so fuck off,” I walked past her this time, but she followed.
“Alright. I’m sorry. How about you buy me a cup of coffee? Teach me to fish, so to speak.”
I turned to look at her and sighed. “Fine,” I said.
“Fabulous!” She skipped to the door, opened it for me, and curtsied.
I walked in, shaking my head.
“So can I ask you a question?” I blew on my coffee as I asked, causing the steam to swirl upwards mysteriously.
“Why not,” she crossed her legs and laid her chin in her hands.
“How come you’re not a prostitute?” She looked up, surprised. “I mean, I don’t want to insinuate anything, but you are young and beautiful. Usually there’s a use for girls like you.”
“I applied, as it happens. They didn’t want me. Apparently my boobs are too small.”
“I didn’t know that was a factor in their decisions.” I took a sip of my coffee, but the stuff was fucking hot, so I spat it out and yelped. She laughed and threw a napkin at me.
The rest, as they say, is fucking history.
We fell in love in the city. She didn’t have a home, and I still lived with my parents, so there weren’t a ton of fucking options. Sometimes I’d sneak her into my house late at night, but only on weekends when dad was too drunk and mom was too upset to notice the creaking of the doors and stifled laughter coming from my room.
I grew up on her dramatic gestures and mood swings, her addiction to chocolate, her fantasy of being an actress (what else?), and her constant sarcasm. Her laughter was my enslavement, her smile my only desire.
“What would you do for a Klondike bar?” She asked me one night when we lay on the roof looking at the stars.
“Fucking anything. Those things are fucking delicious.” We’d had too much to drink and the world was that beautiful shade of hazy that only comes from cigarettes and Jack Daniels, her moonshine of choice.
“Would you throw me off the roof?”
“Undoubtedly,” I said, turning over and looking at her profile in the nighttime light.
“Me too. Love those things.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. “Fucking tired.”
I felt her get up, but paid no attention. Her attention span barely outlived that of a fruit fly, and I was used to her constant coming and going. I heard her curse and the bottle break when she dropped it.
“Shit, sorry Jack.”
“You gotta stop doing that,” I said, sitting up and smiling.
“Doing what?”
“Naming the booze. Makes it hard to drink.”
“Screw you. You don’t need to drink anymore, anyway.” She picked up the shards of glass and held them in her hand. I couldn’t tell which sparkled more.
“Fuck, you’re right.”
She laughed, and threw the glass across the rooftop.
“Shit, I want a Klondike,” she said, and jumped.
I brought her Klondike bars in the hospital, and a card that said “You fucking idiot, why do I love you?”
Ironically, her almost-death brought on a spasm of sympathy from my parents, who couldn’t stand to see a girl in such an “unfortunate position,” as they said. Really it was just that they were embarrassed that their one and only spawn was in love with a psychopath, and all they could think to do was hide us both away.
Which was fine with us- fuck, we got an apartment out of the deal. We lived in the city, a block away from Dunkin’ Donuts. Every morning, she’d get up and buy us a breakfast of fucking champions; three donuts apiece and a cup of coffee to share. We watered it down with splenda and orange juice. She called it “shitlickers dream” and it somehow caused enough pain to cure even the most headpounding hangover.
It was a poetic life, ours. She had a job, and I did too. She worked as a secretary for a theatre company, and I toiled at an art supplies shop. We fancied ourselves artists, but fucked if we weren’t kids living ten years ahead of our age. Fucking pretentious, really.
Anyway, every night we’d go out. It didn’t matter where, because by the end of the night we always ended up in the same place; the roof of my parents house. They didn’t have a fucking clue, not about this, not about anything. We’d climb up the trellis and make love on the shingles, and in the winter we jumped into piles of snow.
After we’d been living together for months, and her CDs littered the floor of my room, and I’d become accustomed to her singing as she walked down the hallways, she told me she was leaving.
Where she was going, she didn’t say, only that she couldn’t handle it anymore. I begged her to stay, I fucking humiliated myself, but she was worth it. She was worth all the shit she gave out. She just shook her head and said she needed something bigger, more fucking exciting.
I cried so hard the night she left, I could’ve supplied a fucking desalinization plant. I threw her CDs across the room, then taped them back together. I couldn’t stand to destroy even the faintest memory of her exquisite existence.
It needs an ending, please help thank you.
