The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) (32 page)

When I saw her face I wanted to love
her all over again. I remembered the way it felt with her head on my lap, her
hair splayed out across my legs. I remembered the warmth, the way time seemed
to last forever. I remembered the way she looked at me and I wondered if I’d
confused compassion for insanity. I remembered the way she tasted. I remembered
the way her skin felt in the shower and in bed. And all the bad stuff that
happened may as well have happened to somebody else.

Feelings of warmth and excitement
bubbled up in me. I wanted her to touch me. I wanted to feel the excitement of
something new and dangerous. I’d never know if things would’ve worked out
because our situation didn’t last very long. The harsh thoughts I’d harbored
for her seemed suddenly meaningless, as if her eyes made it okay to forgive her
for being what she was. Like, the way they looked at me made me think that she
never really meant to hurt me the way she did. It was all an accident. A
misunderstanding.

She drove off, slamming the Mercedes
into gear with all the passion I remembered from our nights in her apartment.
She sped through the little town, past the liquor stores and boarded up gas
stations, out of the projects and past the town hall and strip malls and fast
food joints. I watched her every move. Not because I was suspicious of her. But
because she excited me. It felt like I’d never left her side. My muddy memory
formed an unending chain of earnest events that began that day in Isaac’s
Records.

Dani and me last winter, staying warm
on dark mornings as it snowed outside.

Dani and me last fall, out for a walk
in a copper-and-brass-colored canyon,

bundled against the stiff mountain
wind.

Dani and me last summer, wandering
green fields where blueberries grew in such

abundance you just had to inhale to
taste them.

I saw myself in her eyes. Dark rich
forests and a fireplace blazing against the blackest of nights. A wide bed in a
room that never saw light. A table set for two with never-ending drink and the
sweetest sweets. I saw her coming out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel,
ready to love me again. I saw long conversations about who we’d used to be, and
felt the kinship of a girl who knew the trauma of growing up without parents to
call her own. I saw the bond that brought us together, the loneliness forged
against brothers and sisters who had parents they could hold and kiss. I saw
the invisible threads that made us a special pair.

I let my head fall back into the
headrest and closed my eyes. In that moment, I felt dry, and warm down to the
bone.

Danicka left town on a dark road that
twisted through wide bends. She hit the gas on the corners, letting the tires
slip on the narrow grey roads. Through cracked speakers shrill violins
screeched over staccato piano. The dashboard threw dim green light up at her
face. She tapped a pack of Lucky Strikes against the shifter until a single
cigarette popped out of the pack. I pulled it out, rolled it back and forth
between my finger and thumb, then pushed the lighter in.

When the lighter clicked I held it up
to her. She leaned into the electric orange glow and inhaled, lips puckered,
then cracked her window to blow the smoke out. As I lit mine, the road slanted
down steeply. The car accelerated through curves aided by the mountain’s slope.
I opened my window to let the moist spring air into the car. I wasn’t afraid.

“So,” I said, feeling the need to
finally say something. “Is this all you?”

“All what?”

“The storm and all that craziness?”

“Preston… That’s silly, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“It is silly. Are you a superstitious
twelve-year-old?”

Beyond the glow of headlights I could
only see total darkness. And within the glow, only a grey stretch of road that
disappeared into velvet blackness ahead of us.

“Well,” I said, blowing smoke. “I’m ready
to talk,”

She laughed. “I knew you would speak
first. But it doesn’t change the conversation. Not in the way you think.”

“So what do we have to do to take care
of all this?” I pushed through the fog in my head by flicking the cigarette out
the window. In the glow of the headlights I saw a yellow HOT SPOT sign like the
ones we had back home.

I reached up and ran a finger from her
temple to her jaw.

She closed her eyes and let her head
fall to the side. She inhaled deeply, then her lips formed a pout. “Preston,
don’t tease me. You hurt me, do you realize?”

“Things didn’t turn out the way I’d
hoped when I first met you. But things changed, didn’t they?” I rested my hand
in my lap and turned toward the window. “Besides, you weren’t seeing only me.”

“Is it fair that I protect myself? If
I saw anybody else it was only because I didn’t want to get hurt. I didn’t love
Hicks, or any of them.”

“Like you loved me?”

“I did. You were special.” She looked
at me when she said it.

“Dani, I saw you with Hicks. I know you
were seeing other guys. It’s fine. It happens.”

“So just like that our time is reduced
to sentences. Apologies. Those nights when we shared dark bits of our past are
only memories. Dates on a calendar like old birthdays.”

“I think you know that isn’t true. I
think deep down you know that I would’ve dropped everything to be with you if
you would’ve given me half of what I needed.” We crossed under I-68, past
Listravia Avenue, and where the Sheetz and Burger King in Sabreton should’ve
been. When we passed Fawleys I looked to see if I recognized any of the cars in
the parking lot, but Fawleys wasn’t there. With a bit of a stutter, I added,
“You know that I gave you everything and if I thought for a second you were
giving me half as much, I would’ve been there for you.”

I turned away from the window because
none of it made sense. It felt like somebody had superimposed 1980 over my
mental map of Morgantown. The cars were old Ford Thunderbirds and Pontiacs. Big
cars from the early eighties and late seventies. I thought I knew what was
happening here and tried to focus on my job. Letting my mind get away from me,
like it had with Jane, would’ve been a typical Preston move.

Time to be new.

The stores in the strip malls were
old, hanging on at the very edge of my memory. I knew I’d find the Hills
department store over in Star City instead of the Target on the other side of
the river. There’d still be a Scotto’s Pizza on High Street, but no Black Bear
on Pleasant. There’d be coin-operated ponies in front of Kresge’s. I knew
Mountaineer Mall flourished, with its Pizza Inn and Murphy’s Mart, and the
Lum’s where we’d go for a “fancy dinner” with Pauly’s mom because mall
employees got a discount. At Murphy’s, I’d look for new G.I. Joes in the back
while Pauly checked out the fish tanks. I said, mostly to myself, “So, what is
all this?”

But my memories drove the car. She
didn’t. We headed up Greenbag Road, past the old miniature golf course where
the whole scene bathed in the glow of reminiscence. Past the trailer park where
Stu lived. Past the middle school. Slipping deeper and deeper into a sea of old
photos and smells. Deeper and deeper into memories of family events. Old toys.
Birthday parties and Christmas parties in elementary school. Embarrassed to
exchange gifts because mine came from the dollar store.

I knew the farther I got from
Simoneaux’s juke joint, the harder it would be to get back to it. So I fought
to keep memories of Katy in my head like a trail of breadcrumbs to find my way
home, even if I didn’t know whether or not she’d still be waiting.

With that thought, Danicka skidded to
a stop in the big Mountaineer Mall parking lot. It snowed. I heard the
Salvation Army bell from over at Montgomery Ward’s. People left the mall with
bright plastic bags. Some pushed shopping carts. Some loaded the trunks of
their cars. Old ladies with their waitress uniforms sticking out from beneath
their winter coats led a pack of mall employees into the rows of Lincolns and
Fords. TV salesmen in wrinkled suits. Kids from National Record Mart in leather
jackets, laughing. At the tail end of this pack a pair of girls walked
arm-in-arm, sharing a cigarette and a Tab. They had big hair and wore acid
washed jeans.

I rolled the window down.

My mom and Pauly’s mom.

They laughed as a pair of guys in an
old Ford Bronco tooted their horn. When my mom opened the back door I heard
David Bowie and Bing Crosby’s “Little Drummer Boy.”

My mom was pregnant.

“So what, Dani? So fucking what?” I
figured my dad sat in the Bronco and decided I didn’t need to see any more.

Candy canes and snowmen hung from the
light posts. Fat Christmas bulbs did little to warm the night or make it seem
any more festive than any other day of the year.

“Nothing, Preston. I thought you might
like to see.”

“Well, I don’t. I’m here to resolve
things and you’re playing head games. And I know it’s in my head. I know it’s a
mash-up of my memory and my imagination and I don’t appreciate it.” I made a
fist and pounded her dash. “Stop it with the fucking games!”

“If you are certain that is really
what you want.” Dani put the car into reverse and hit the gas. She backed all
the way to the end of the row and slid through the wet snow while the National
Record Mart gang stared in mock disbelief. She turned the wheel and banged it
into first.

I looked for my mom in the side view
mirror. For the smallest part of a second, I wanted to tell Dani to turn around
and go back, but pride wouldn’t let me. She used my emotions to manipulate me,
just like she had when we were together. Part of me—the part that wanted to see
my mom alive, to see her smile, to see the way she interacted with my adoptive
mother—didn’t care.

I twisted in my seat and reached for
the door handle, but Dani hit the gas and skidded through the icy parking lot.

“Please stop,” I said, louder than I
wanted to.

She turned out of the parking lot and
sped down the hill to Greenbag Road, ignoring stop signs and traffic lights.
Drivers honked as she cut them off. She ran the light at the bottom of the hill
and raced down University Avenue toward town.

“Slow down,” I said.

She drifted into oncoming traffic to
go around the row of cars stopped at the Pleasant Street intersection. I
grabbed the seatbelt and tightened it.

She hung a sharp left and I fell into
the door. When we crossed the Westover Bridge, she said with a smile, “Ever
wish you would’ve jumped too?”

“No. Never.” As I thought of all the
things she said that night, my mind struggled to find a way to gain control.
But the absinthe wore me down, and I didn’t feel as sharp as I should’ve. All I
could come up with, “I’m in love with Katy, and I will always remember that day
as the day everything changed. That day we were born as a couple. I think that
I gained my freedom that day.”

She forced a little laugh. “You are
not free, Preston. What you call freedom is an illusion, and you will never
know otherwise. Never. It is easy to live with your eyes closed, isn’t it?”

She pushed the gas pedal all the way
to the floor. Street lights and lights from store fronts blurred as they swept
past my field of view. The car skidded through turns, and I held on because I
knew this wasn’t real. Even the transition from pavement to bricks did little
to stop this speeding bullet. She had an agenda. A mission. I was just along
for the ride.

After a while, I lost track of
Westover’s twists and turns and tried to find something to orient myself. The
river was too far away, so I looked for the Coliseum. Then I looked for the
interstate. Then I looked up, into the black sky, and could see no light at
all. Only the amber glow of the headlights fading to black. I didn’t want to
look at Dani, so quietly stared ahead.

She lit another cigarette. I declined
another.

Mile after mile of black silence
yielded to a glow at the edge of my vision.

Lights finally appeared on the gentle
horizon. When the streets narrowed she let the car slow. The roads in this town
rarely met at right angles and curved for no particular reason. Old churches
that looked like cakes decorated in stained glass and stone and long blocks of
apartments stared quietly. She hit the brakes for a big red streetcar that
rattled ahead of us on rickety tracks.

Everything around me moved in
extravagant motion. Orange-tiled roofs rested next to tall white spires that
extended their arms into space. Patches of light and shadow played with
alternating patches of red and orange and stark whiteness. Bold columns held up
gold curves bursting open with long white pearls. Every building seemed like a
palace that could evoke a vision more potent than any fairytale castle could
ever dream to. Lavish statues and concrete bows kept even the straightest of
lines from being ordinary. After a few minutes of squeezing through the cobbled
streets I fought to think of new words to describe it all.
Melodramatic
splendor. Anxious. Lavish. Intense.

“Is this Paris?” I said, figuring if
Morgantown, West Virginia, was purgatory, then this must be heaven.