Craig

Craig

Hell found me, Jackie wrote on the alcohol-splattered newspaper clipping.  The bold print of the obituary hovered above the grainy black and white images of those lost.  She gnawed at her lip, hardly realizing she was staring at the shelves of liquor until the shadow of the bartender fell across her empty glass.

“Another round?”  It was a statement more than a question, and before Jackie could even glance up, the woman poured vodka into a glass.  The splash of cranberry that followed caused her stomach to quiver, but she ignored it with a glare at the window.  A neon Karaoke sign hung behind the glass.  Her ears pounded with the giggly rendition of “I Will Survive” as it was led by two college students, their crimson lipstick smearing against the microphone.

         She looked up as the bartender slammed the drink onto her napkin. 

         Her tongue, even her skin, felt ragged and dry, like a sponge whose water had been squeezed out.  She could feel her flesh crinkle as she sat on the barstool.

         Her fingers ran around the rim of the glass.  She plucked out the sliced piece of lime and placed it next to the newspaper clipping.

         Why did she cut out that obituary?  More than that, what had possessed her to leaf through the Sunday Times on that particular weekend?

         Tears welled in her eyes, but with a deep breath that sent daggers gutting her throat, she stayed in control.  Movement in the narrow hallway next to the entrance caught her eye. 

         Through the dimmed lights of the bar, she saw his shadow dodging between people, coming back to her.  She swiped the newspaper clipping off the counter and dropped it into her pocket.

         Blinking with alcohol-glazed eyes, she grabbed her glass and tossed the drink down her throat.

         He smiled as he slipped back onto the neighboring barstool.

         “I was thinking about this in the bathroom,” he said, resting his forearm on the bar and leaning closer.  His warm breath whirled past her cheek.  He screamed the words into her ear, but because of the noise, she still had trouble hanging onto his voice.  “I’m glad you came.”

         “Why wouldn’t I come, Craig?”  The question was empty, just a half-blown helium balloon she released into the air.  She stared down at her drink, counting the reasons in the ice crystals.  She saw her life, the health she felt during moments in the sun, not surrounded by his poison.  She saw the man she married, lying asleep in the king bed they shared, blindly believing her lies that let her escape tonight.  She glared at her drink, fighting to push back the wave of guilt that threatened to ambush her.  Her late night rendezvous, like the heartache stuffed inside the pocket of her jeans, was her burden to bear.

It wasn’t always this way.  At one time she wore that gold band around her finger with pride, holding tight to the man who had offered it to her.  She used to think this was what she wanted.  But now her days were filled with silence at the dinner table, a half-consumed bottle of wine as the rain slid down her window, and his chatter that her mind had learned to drown out.  Her smile was forced, as were the lights in her eyes, and whenever she stared at her warped reflection in her wine glass, she’d often wonder if his smile was fake too.

Now that ring was more of a shackle than a prize, twisting her life down a path she’d never expected to take.  And when the loneliness was too much to bear, her thoughts wandered to Craig.

Each brief thought of him that caught itself at the contours of her mind tugged at the fantasies of earlier days like a summer breeze—other roads she might have taken, other paths she could have crossed.  She looked back at him, and although she remembered she had reservations about meeting him, she could no longer recall what they were.  She bit her lip, unable to contain the smile creeping up her face at the mere view of him.

         She raised her empty glass into the air, motioning to the bartender for another round.

         “Just glad you came,” he answered.  Under the sheen of the light, he looked like the same boy from college.  The bright blue eyes, the short clipped brown hair, the rush of heat his gaze brought to her face.  Even his skin, fourteen years older than the last time she’d seen it, was still youthful and taut.

         They had shared so many moments together, but still those moments hadn’t been enough.  Why did everything end?  Over the years, her numbness erased the details.

         But they had sworn they’d find each other again.  They’d promised they just needed time to grow up.

         Jackie took a final gulp of her drink as the bartender placed the next in front of her.  She reached for her glass with two hands.

         Why hadn’t she waited?

         When she looked up at him again, she noticed he’d moved his stool closer.  He rubbed the cuff of his dark blue dress shirt before straightening out his tie.  “How’s work?” he asked.

         “Fine.”

         “Did you ever travel?  Like you said you wanted?”  Despite all the years, his eyes still maintained that fire, that energy, that by just looking at her, could set her aflame.  The embers spitting in his irises were dimmer now, the blinking of his eyelids somehow heavier, but the shadows of his youth remained.

         Paris, Sydney, Bangkok…all cities they’d fantasized of visiting together.  But when the smoke cleared, all she had left were the ashes of memories to stand on.

         Craig cleared his throat.  “How are your parents?”

         “Fine.”

         He deliberately plucked the sliced lime off his drink and placed it on her glass.  “Your husband?”

         A new mob of Karaoke singers ambushed the floor.  “He’s fine,” Jackie finally answered as she watched them, her voice clipped.

         Craig nodded.  “Then why are you here?”

         “Why are you?” she snapped.

         He smiled, and Jackie immediately bit her lip, her insides drowning with the overflow of emotions threatening to burst forth.  He leaned forward, brushing his hand along the small of her back.  “You look beautiful tonight, by the way.”

         A girl moved forward, falling into Craig’s stool on her way to the bathroom.  He jostled forward, gripping the edge of the bar.  The girl didn’t stop, didn’t even look back.

         He turned to Jackie, a shy sideways smirk creeping up his face.  He nodded to the door.  “Let’s get out of here.”

The entrance was infested with smokers getting a fix, grey balloons of smoke billowing into the night sky.  She lost her footing as she stepped off the sidewalk, her bleary eyes  squinting ahead as her hand rummaged through her purse for her car keys.  As she crossed the parking lot, a man standing on the corner called out to her, but before the goose bumps had time to prickle her skin, Craig wrapped his arm around her waist.

“Let me drive.”

“No.  I can do it.”  She unlocked the doors, stepping over a puddle.  The bottom of her heel skidded across the water.  As she slipped inside the car, she caught sight of the flicker of hesitation that momentarily paralyzed Craig’s fingers.  Finally, he joined her in the car.

Headlights splattered across the misty road as she slowly pulled onto the street.  She squinted ahead, focusing on the drive.  She could not think of the man sitting to the right of her.  The night, the clock on the dashboard, all reminded her of the inevitable tomorrow.  The rising sun, the end of the right now, until tired eyes would clump tonight with the past.  Just another memory.

Her two-handed grip on the steering wheel intensified with the sharp bend in the road.  Beside her, Craig inhaled.  His hand clenched nervously on his thigh.

She almost asked him where he wanted to go, but when her eyes flickered to his shadowed form in the passenger seat, he looked away.  She drove to the end of the street, coasted over a small hill, and finally pulled off the road into an unpaved lot.

She quickly turned off the headlights and cut the engine.

Craig looked at her for a moment before the corners of his eyes crinkled, preceding his smile.

         “You look exactly the same,” he murmured.

“You too.  Except look at you now, with your fancy suits,” she teased.

         “Oh stop,” he smiled, shoving her legs playfully.  His touch lingered.

         She looked out the windshield, her eyes gazing across the pitch black sky.  It was a solid sheet of darkness, an impenetrable abyss.

         All she could hear were the breaths of the man sitting in the passenger seat.  Was he watching her?  She couldn’t bring herself to look.

         “What have you been up to?” she asked slowly, attempting conversation.

         “This and that.”

         “Still so vague,” her voice cracked.

         “You love it though,” he teased.

         She licked her dry lips.  “And still so self-assured.”

         “Jackie.”  Her name was a soft rumble in the back of his throat.  His lips grazed her ear.  She turned to him.

         “What?” she whispered.

         It’s that moment before something big happens, when water rushes behind the ears and the mouth dries, and it’s impossible to freeze time because whatever is about to happen, one thing is for sure: Good or bad, nothing can ever be the same.

         Hot air whirled into her mouth.

“You left,” he murmured, his lips brushing against hers.  They were softer than she remembered, like clouds.

         “Yeah…” she swallowed. “I did.  And I have no idea why.”

         “Yes you do.  You wanted to go.”

         Her voice cracked.  “I missed you so much.”

         His kiss struck her like no time had passed.  The rhythm of his lips against hers was a set groove, unable to be washed away by the tide that came with the years.  Instinctively, she reached her hands around his neck, tugging where closely cropped hair met soft skin.  She breathed in exaltation as he pulled her closer.  She steadied herself with her palm on his shoulder.

         His fingers played with the bottom of her shirt, flirting up her stomach and pulling it over her head.

         “This is a bad idea,” he moaned into her mouth. 

         “Very bad idea.”

         Soft fingertips teased her arms, softly drawing her closer, deeper, into the kiss.  Her skin prickled as she gnawed at his lip, hungry, desperate for him.  How could so much time have passed, yet as Craig’s hand cupped her cheek, she could be easily thrown into him again as though not even a blink of time had gone by?

         Her eyes fluttered open, and his blue orbs, masked in shadows drawn from the rain, watched her.

         “I love you.”

         He smiled.  “I’ve waited so long for you to say that.”

         She leaned forward and grasped his wrist.  “Let’s run off together.”

         “We couldn’t,” he answered, picking her shirt off the floor and slowly handing it to her.

         She slipped her top over her head.  “Why couldn’t we?  Of course we could.”

         Craig looked out his window, resting his forehead on the glass as his blue eyes squinted into the darkness.

         “Jackie,” he murmured, and though the night was warm, his voice sent chills prickling across her skin.  “Where do you think you are right now?”  He leaned across her and flipped on the headlights. 

         Silence rang through the car as she stared ahead at the humps of stone protruding from the ground.  They glistened in the rain.

         “What—?”  She turned to Craig.

         But the seat was empty.

         “Craig?”  She whipped her body toward the backseat.  “Craig!”

         She opened her door and slowly stepped out into the night.  The car idled behind her as she stumbled onto the dirt.  Gravestones stretched into the sky, marble and granite slabs etched with names of those lost.  Leaves crunched under her feet as she moved toward a newly dug grave.  The headstone was already there, but the mound of flowers over where the body lay stung of sorrow.  Photographs and mementos decorated the bouquets, and as the headlights blared into the starless night, she slowly advanced.  Vision blurry with waves of tears behind her eyes, she gasped in an attempt to suck back a sob.

CRAIG HANDERSON

APRIL 20, 1975 – DECEMBER 12, 2010

         She pulled out the contents from her pockets.  The obituary she’d written on in the bar fell to the moist ground.  A picture of a man, 35, face youthful and bright, grinned through the black and white.

         She could still hear his voice.

         The wind brushed past her cheeks, his cologne wafting through the air.

         Lips swollen, eyes raw, hair askew, she let her mind race through chances not taken, testing words left unsaid.

         She could still taste him on her lips.

         The careful tone in which he’d say her name still cradled in her ears.

         “Jackie.”

         A single sob racked her body as the first of her tears began to fall.