(no subject)
This is not a story you want to read. It is not happy, it does not have a hopeful ending. Hell, Parker doesn't want to read it and he lived it, if 'living' is what you call it when the love of your life dies in the middle of the night, killed by a disease you can't cure unless the cutting and the burning and the killing the patient to try to kill this disease makes it give up and decide to go into remission.
The story in fifty words or less sounds like this: Boy meets girls, they kiss, they have sex, they fall in love. They break up because he cheats and she can't forgive him. He leaves. A while later, they meet in Reno and get married because they're still in love. He finds himself unable to cheat on her again, ever. She dies.
They were fourteen when they kissed, sixteen when they fucked, sixteen when they broke up, seventeen when he left, 19 when they married, 24 when she died, and now they're 27.
With anyone else, being in love the way that they were would be a gift.
*****
Parker doesn't sleep well when he's jailed. He never does. There's too much stress, the beds are too uncomfortable. By that he means that outside, he can sleep anywhere because he can always wake up and leave. Here he can't go anywhere and so he tosses and wakes at any sound, wakes and remembers his dreams and falls back into sleep like a drowning man.
There is one dream that he has twice and he remembers because he holds onto it with both hands, clinging to it. It starts like a memory, where he's standing in their old kitchen doorway, watching Isabella comb her hair. It's long and dark, and in the filtered light, it had golden highlights. He was smiling, because it was one of her good days and it was back in the beginning when her good days outnumbered her bad.
In the dream, she turned to him and made a face. He walked towards her and leaned down to grasp her face in both hands and kiss her completely. When he pulled back, she had a smear of motor oil where his thumb had rubbed against her cheek.
Usually, he didn't dream of her in prison, but he thought a lot about he fact that for a few weeks he'd been in love with Lawrence and for a few weeks he'd been screwing around with other people and for a few years he'd been missing her.
The guy in the cell next to him is a lot into Jesus, and recites Bible verses in Spanish until a guard breaks his jaw. Parker is the model prisoner, because they feed him twice a day, visit him every few, and he gets a head shaving on the same day as his scrub down with detergent and a fire hose every three days.
There are things that Parker doesn't think about. He thinks about black cats and vampires and goes back to not thinking. He hates Mexican prisons.
*****
He gets free like this:
They come for him and he follows until he realizes that he's being taken outside, where the shot won't wake the other prisoners.
He's always said, die young, leave a pretty corpse. Up until he finds himself struggling, jerking and getting a good working over for resisting, he believed that. Now, he'd rather go down fighting, so he yanks and fights until someone brings a baton down hard onto the back of his head and he can't move for a little bit, has to struggle to see.
When he gets shoved into a car he tries again, a weak move that stops as soon as he hears Longbaugh say, "Calm down."
He relaxes as the cuffs click off. Says, "Messed myself up pretty good."
Longbaugh drives, a snort implied in a sharp exhalation of air.
*****
Parker sits, bleeding quietly onto the floor rug of a 1997 Ford. The sound of blood on rubber is rhythmic and soothing. He does not think, "This is my blood" or "I am injured" until Longbaugh says, "Do you think you need a doctor?"
Parker licks his lip, says, "I don't know."
"I'll check," Longbaugh pulls off the mainway into a parking lot.
Which is how they end up in a McDonalds where everyone was tactfully ignoring Parker spreading red blood all over the tan and brown table.
In Mexico, Parker found you could order tortillas off a standard MickyD's menu. He ordered a Big Mac, said, "I'm going to check that I'm not pissing blood."
He shouldn't be surprised that he ends up in Milliways, but the darkness of an impending faint make him sit down suddenly.
The story in fifty words or less sounds like this: Boy meets girls, they kiss, they have sex, they fall in love. They break up because he cheats and she can't forgive him. He leaves. A while later, they meet in Reno and get married because they're still in love. He finds himself unable to cheat on her again, ever. She dies.
They were fourteen when they kissed, sixteen when they fucked, sixteen when they broke up, seventeen when he left, 19 when they married, 24 when she died, and now they're 27.
With anyone else, being in love the way that they were would be a gift.
*****
Parker doesn't sleep well when he's jailed. He never does. There's too much stress, the beds are too uncomfortable. By that he means that outside, he can sleep anywhere because he can always wake up and leave. Here he can't go anywhere and so he tosses and wakes at any sound, wakes and remembers his dreams and falls back into sleep like a drowning man.
There is one dream that he has twice and he remembers because he holds onto it with both hands, clinging to it. It starts like a memory, where he's standing in their old kitchen doorway, watching Isabella comb her hair. It's long and dark, and in the filtered light, it had golden highlights. He was smiling, because it was one of her good days and it was back in the beginning when her good days outnumbered her bad.
In the dream, she turned to him and made a face. He walked towards her and leaned down to grasp her face in both hands and kiss her completely. When he pulled back, she had a smear of motor oil where his thumb had rubbed against her cheek.
Usually, he didn't dream of her in prison, but he thought a lot about he fact that for a few weeks he'd been in love with Lawrence and for a few weeks he'd been screwing around with other people and for a few years he'd been missing her.
The guy in the cell next to him is a lot into Jesus, and recites Bible verses in Spanish until a guard breaks his jaw. Parker is the model prisoner, because they feed him twice a day, visit him every few, and he gets a head shaving on the same day as his scrub down with detergent and a fire hose every three days.
There are things that Parker doesn't think about. He thinks about black cats and vampires and goes back to not thinking. He hates Mexican prisons.
*****
He gets free like this:
They come for him and he follows until he realizes that he's being taken outside, where the shot won't wake the other prisoners.
He's always said, die young, leave a pretty corpse. Up until he finds himself struggling, jerking and getting a good working over for resisting, he believed that. Now, he'd rather go down fighting, so he yanks and fights until someone brings a baton down hard onto the back of his head and he can't move for a little bit, has to struggle to see.
When he gets shoved into a car he tries again, a weak move that stops as soon as he hears Longbaugh say, "Calm down."
He relaxes as the cuffs click off. Says, "Messed myself up pretty good."
Longbaugh drives, a snort implied in a sharp exhalation of air.
*****
Parker sits, bleeding quietly onto the floor rug of a 1997 Ford. The sound of blood on rubber is rhythmic and soothing. He does not think, "This is my blood" or "I am injured" until Longbaugh says, "Do you think you need a doctor?"
Parker licks his lip, says, "I don't know."
"I'll check," Longbaugh pulls off the mainway into a parking lot.
Which is how they end up in a McDonalds where everyone was tactfully ignoring Parker spreading red blood all over the tan and brown table.
In Mexico, Parker found you could order tortillas off a standard MickyD's menu. He ordered a Big Mac, said, "I'm going to check that I'm not pissing blood."
He shouldn't be surprised that he ends up in Milliways, but the darkness of an impending faint make him sit down suddenly.