65

IRON BRIDGE

“Will the rain just go away now?”

She said to me reluctantly, quietly from across the car. I could barely see out of the windshield. I rolled my eyes.

What am I to do about this

Supposedly, the forecast called for light showers until noon, which happened to be false. It was now the early evening and there was no sign of the storm letting up. Street lights went out around town and vendors ceased operations early. Ambulances raced on every intersection, hauling the dead from five car pile ups. The lifeless, homeless, fleeing for cover.

Torrential downpour ensued and the eye of God showed itself upon us — man. Swelled toward the top of the sky were large, impending clouds that hurled millions of tears down upon the emotionless — me and mine.

With blank faces, we watched as the rain fell. I would propose today.   

She wore her grandmother's day dress and it smelt like death. I cracked my window before we left to avoid offending her, additionally, to avoid offending my nose. This beautifully ugly mess of stained fabric lived in many closets, eventually ending up in ours. Was a meal for many moths and household insects. She wore this dress to adhere to a maternal tradition on her mother’s side of the family. Leaving me to bear the haunting scent.

The window remained cracked for the entirety of the drive, leaving my left side soaked. 

I never could focus with windshield wipers.

We hit the railroad tracks hard causing her to lose grip on the beer bottle she sipped on. The commotion caused a cracked tooth and a trail of blood down to her hemline. I watched as she examined herself in the passenger mirror. Red blood stained the olden dress and beaded at her chin. In this tragedy, I saw beauty, but when she looked at me with a broken smile, I saw that before death, we would part.

She wanted a ring and I wanted to return home to fuck her. Or to do anything else aside drive in the dark, awful weather. The only store that remained open during the storm was the pawn shop across town. We had called ahead to make sure. The man who answered sounded excited to do business. We’d been there before to buy a few guns, but the background check came back negative so he’d sent us on our way. 

I loosened my tie to reach her face and undid my seatbelt to get a better look at the damage. She got herself good, that's for damn sure. Half of the tooth was missing. I didn’t have the guts to break it to her. She was too drunk to care and frankly, so was I. I grabbed a few tissues from the glove box and told her to bite. 

The parking lot was dark and empty. The glowing neon lights of the shopfront stung our eyes. Outside — a violent wind-hell hurling tiny needle drops at high speed.

When she opened her door a few bottles fell from the side. Full ones. 

She pranced through the rain like one of those magical elves, with a mouth full of cotton and a head full of booze. Her stilettos cackled and that beautiful blonde hair of hers battered by water,

I remember only one, tiny, reflectant droplet on the top of her cheek. 

Lovely, is the world when you're sick and young and insane. 

The shop owner sat at his podium like a big, judgemental pig. The overhead lighting was just as bright as the outside fixtures. She ran towards the glass like a child — stuffing her face against the display. Signets, Opals, gems, and big diamonds all caught her attention. Just about every ring was stolen or sold in desperation. 

I walked towards the back of the store to meet the Devil for our usual business. He came in many forms, today coming in the form of a taxidermy quail. 

We got to talking about the proposal and the likelihood that I would walk out of the store with a ring. It was slim. He suggested dope and to forget about the whole thing. I tried to steer the conversation back to finding alternative ring options. He told me about a ring in the store that the owner kept behind the counter with a big swastika on it. I told him no because we were both communists. 

“Let's get back on track.” I said.

I fixed his feathers and turned him towards me. He sat on the fifth shelf of the cabinet. His beady little yellow eyes stared at me blankly and that demand didn’t sit well with him. He refused to give me an answer after that. 

She was toying with a large Samurai sword towards the front of the store as I made my way back from my conversation. I asked if anything had caught her eye and she said yes a few things. She walked me over to the cabinet. The storm picked up outside. 

Everything she pointed at was a grand and collectively we had twenty seven dollars. 

The first ring she tried on had a big abalone pot leaf stuck in the middle of it, the second had a skull — the third was a cat with devilish eyes and I quite liked that one. 

We forgot that the smaller zeros on paper tags meant cents and we walked out with a ring that we both liked.

She gave me a big adolescent smile when the man rang us up. He handed me the ring in a bag and gave me a strange, black-toothed smile.

We held hands and walked out of the pawn shop into the pouring rain.

I lit a cigarette in the car because by now, I needed one. We began discussing places where I would ask. She mentioned the front steps of the church and I suggested the drive-in. She didn’t like my idea, or any of them, so we just went back to driving around in the squall. 

I blew smoke out of the crack in my window and swigged my drink. 

We drove over a bridge that overlooked the terrible weather of today, revealing an opening to the end of it, above a vast sea of treacherous waves and wake. Maybe it wasn’t the damn church or conventional by any means but we were young and had a few fuck-ups to cash in. 

So I pulled off to the side and told her to run down the sand. 

The water ran down the sides of the big metal beast above us and reflected as her chin did,

her hair soaked and body silhouetted against the smothered sun. 

I asked,

And we were divorced a year later.