i don't love you

Oct 20, 2008 12:48

In Atlanta, it's always twelve noon, so hot your lungs feel sticky with the humidity and your limbs are too heavy to move.

We'd been on the read for three months, two days, sixteen hours, and forty five minutes and the only reason I know is because in Atlanta there was nothing to do but count the seconds.

Ben was at work. Megan had gone with him. Jay was just gone. We hadn't met Trace yet.

The only reason it worked, five people living in a studio apartment the size of a matchbox, was becasue we were gone all the time. In Atlanta, it's always too hot to stay inside.

Like I said. Ben, Megan, and Jay were gone, so it was just me and Marianne in the place.

I was laying across the pull-down bed, flat on my back, staring at the ceiling and counting the seconds. Forty one forty two forty three forty four. In Atlanta it's always too hot to write, the humidity heats up your thoughts until they're too sticky to put on paper and then all you can think of is the heat. All I could think of was the heat.

It was noon, and there was sunlight coming in fron the one window, landing straight on my chest and burning.

Marianne was in the bathroom, talking on her phone. The door was shut between us, muffling the sound of her voice from specific words into just a dull noted hum. Once or twice I tricked myself into thinking I heard her say my name.

After a minute, she came out, running a hand through her hair, damp with sweat. Our place didn't have any air conditioning. She said, Tom, it's hot as fuck.

Hot as fuck. Yeah. I was distracted by the cut of skin showing between the end of her shirt and the start of her jeans.

She watched me, leaning in the door frame. Said, Listen, the door doesn't lock anymore, the humidity's swelling the door up too much. Said, I'm gonna take a shower, cool off. Said, Don't come in, got it?

I didn't speak. Just nodded.

Marianne smiled in that way she had. Yeah alright, she said, turning around.

Before the door shut all the way, I saw her shirt come up over her head, saw her eyes catch mine, saw her teeth catch at her bottom lip. I groaned without meaning to and rolled over, my face in the pillow, hips shifting against the matress.

In Atlanta, it's always too hot to think.

- - -

I wish I could tell this in order, but I don't remember it that way. I'm not even sure I'm remembering it right. In Atlanta, maybe I didn't see Marianne through the crack in the door. Maybe I shut my eyes and imagined it. Her arms wrapped around herself, almost demure but not quite. Maybe that's what I was thinking of, when it was too hot to think.

Listen. I wish I could tell this in order, but I don't know what the order is anymore. I know some things, but I can't tell what really happened and what is my mind filling in the gaps.

This is what I know to be true. I know I met the Neo-Beats in L.A. I know we went to Austin and Atlanta and Chicago and El Paso and New Orleans. Probably more. I know we met Trace in New York City. I know by the time we reached Detroit, the Neo-Beats were rotting from the inside out.

Everything else could be a total lie.

&incomplete, prose, genre: general, prose: the neo-beats

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