Frida's Waltz
Jan. 13th, 2011 03:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonBlack ice shut down the rails early and I was stuck outside the Perimeter with no way home. Options were looking scarce. What little money I had left might normally buy me a room for the night, but the nearest one I knew of was a five mile hump away. Meanwhile sundown bought with it a vicious, damp cold snap, one that jabbed through the layers to suck the heat out of my blood. As it was I was still fighting off the tail-end of a zombie grade flu and a march through the freeze could only lead me straight through the border of pneumonia country. Then I remembered that my old dancing partner Frida Magdalena lived close-ish , or at least she used to. I haven’t seen her since I dropped off the scene radar a couple years back. Still, with Plan B being a one man reenactment of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, I texted her a message praying she hadn’t changed her number and would still recognize mine.
One minute nothing. Two minutes and I start walking towards her place hoping for the best. Three minutes crunch by, dragged out by the spectacle of passing cars, clawing at the hill I’m climbing, before sliding or spinning back in retreat. Four minutes and my phone beeps. It’s her. She’s home. Stranded. Alone. Drop by. Bring wine.
***
We met in the late 90’s at some forgotten 80’s night in Midtown. DJ D20 on the decks, spinning a shit set to an empty floor. Most of the crowd huddled around the bar, trying to numb themselves to the music with the two dollar shots that drew us all in in the first place. A chance opening at the bar placed me Frida Adjacent. She was pounding back Vodka shots as quick as she could order them and chasing them down with glugs off a bottle of Cranberry juice she had stashed in her purse. At one point, between an unnecessarily extended remix of “I Want A New Drug” and “Here I Go Again”, I overheard her mention something to a buddy about wishing they’d play something cool for once. She rattled off Siouxsie and the Mission and the Sisters before the wish list got Whitesnake truncated to rolled, frustrated eyes.
Now coincidence or fate, I just happened to have at the time, a stack of CDs tucked away in the side thigh pocket of my camouflaged pants. Just picked them back up from a buddy of mine I ran into earlier who dropped them off along with an owed forty bucks I was blowing away as quick as I could. Amongst their ranks were “Floodland” and “Twice Upon a Time”.
So I went up to the booth and requested some Sisters. He didn’t have any. I flashed him the CD. DJ D20 replied that he didn’t do requests. I tried again, this time offering the disc along with its good friend, a very crumbled up Alexander Hamilton. He just looked at me contemptuously and ordered me out of his booth, barking something after me about how this “wasn’t no goth night”.
I sulked back defeated and ordered another round.
Then after a brief barrage of elevator worthy pop music, I caught DJ D20 pop out of the booth and do this pinched at the hips run across the floor towards the Head. My eye narrowed in on the booth’s door which was conspicuously hanging open. I looked around. Security was down to one man and he was checking the door. The rest of the staff were working the packed bar. Then I caught Frida
There was only one thing I could do.
I ran into the booth, closed the door quietly, bolted it behind me, slid over to the decks in a crouch and manned up the ‘phones. I stood there with my head down and hunched down. No one noticed or cared. From there a deep breath, a visual shot of Frida for courage and Go! I pop out the queued up ‘Bon Jovi Best Of’ and slide in Floodland. It loads and reads fine. From there I punch up track five and without waiting for whatever piece of shit that was still playing, rode the fader a hard right into “This Corrosion”.
The club exploded. The crowd flooded from the bar and straight to the floor. No exceptions. The staff hadn’t noticed yet. But ‘Corrosion’ is a ten minute song and DJ D20 was back by minute three. I caught him racing out of the Head and trying to wave me down from the floor. Fuck ‘em, figures I and I set up the next track with an old Siouxsie number. DJ D20 then hit the booth, started banging away, but, damn, I guess with those expensive ass headphones of his on, I couldn’t hear him. He took off and a few minutes later he was back with the Door Gorilla and the club’s manager. Now all three were banging and wailing away behind the door. But me… all I could see was Frida dancing away under the strobe light as if the song was written just for the way she moved.
Thankfully the lock was a bolt number so they couldn’t simply key their way in. Unfortunately that meant that the Door Gorilla was now starting to try to kick his way in. But by now the track was on its last legs and with little grace and no attention to the sacred art of beat matching, I faded into “Cities in Dust”. Just in time as the booth cracked open and Door Gorilla came barreling in.
I was dragged out by the back of my neck from the booth and when we hit floor, the whole crowd cheered me on. During the tussle shuffle with the staff, I snatched Frida’s gaze out of the corner of my eye and gave her this big, stupid wink before being hauled off exit bound. DJ D20 was super pissed and demanded 5-0 stat, because he was definitely ready to press charges. The Door Gorilla wanted a pound of flesh extracted from my ass for his bruised shoulder. But it was the manager’s call, and all he wanted was everyone drinking again. He handed down the verdict. I was kicked out and kicked out for good. As far as I was concerned his place was Club Exile. Door Gorilla tossed me, literally, out on my ass and I was sent spilling ingloriously into the pavement. When I asked about at least getting my CDs back all I got was the finger and a promise of an ass beating.
Well, that’s that, I thought.
I was still brushing myself off, when Frida and her best friend Vera walked out of the club. They asked if I was a DJ.. No, I said. They asked if I had a ride. No, I said. Good, they grinned and flanked me, wrapping their arms around mine and leading me off to the parking lot.
Any other man and this story would probably haven gone blue stat, Ménage à trois Follies would follow and all that good shit. However, me being me, we ended up just driving around all night. Normally I’m the shy type, but the shots of Stoli off a bottle Vera snagged from behind the bar - back when the staff was too busy trying to seize back their Shanghaied 80’s night – helped lubricate my social skills some. We had some laughs, funny guy me, clever women them. Then they dropped me off at my place and each imprinted a lipstick seal on each side of my cheeks. Vera black, Frida red.
The three of us were friends from then on… though eventually, I’d end up spending most of our time together trying to be much more to one, then the other, then to both and eventually settling for none.
***
I arrived about thirty minutes later and Frida’s already been drinking.
“You bring the wine?” she says through a cracked door and a blast of merlot breath.
I unzip the bomber and pull out a loaded brown paper bag , bobbing a nod affirmative.
Here’s one thing to know about Terminus, along with her satellite counties, the worst snowstorm in over ten years may shut down the roads, the highways, the stores, the jobs and the schools. But god damn if every bar and package store in the city wasn’t still open for business.
Frida flings open the door and jumps me with a hug. It’s not until a full minute after we get inside that I realize she’s used that hug hello as a way to slip the two bottles of five dollar Pinot Noir I bought out of my jacket.
***
By the time we reach bottle number two, we’re hanging out on the patio full time. Since we’re not allowed to smoke in her place and having grown tired of constantly bundling and un-bundling ourselves every ten minutes to satisfy our alcohol enhanced nic-fits, we’ve decided to camp out here full time. Damp lawn furniture dragged up side by side with the last bottle chilling several inches deep into a small patch of pristine snow. The patio opens up into a vast moonlit backyard, with the ice encrusted sheen of virgin white before us glowing with the sensuous violets and blues of silent films.
The conversation shifts gears through intermittent stages of catch-up, shop talk, gossip and what-not before inevitably arriving on the subject of Vera.
“So you guys still aren’t talking, huh?”
“Nah, not since Count Moodswing dropped by and…, “ and I let the rest drop off into a long exhausted sigh. What can I say? The truth? That Vera crawled through my window, scared off some lingering ghosts, got me drunk and just when I was face deep between her thighs, three licks towards the win, her man comes crawling through the window and catches our little impromptu act live. He wailed. He screamed. He cried. He hugged me. He decked me one and before I knew it I was watching them both make-out in the parking lot.
From that point on I was strictly Vera Verboten… by orders of Count Moodswing himself.
“Well it’s for the best,” Frida blows a thoughtful stream of smoke towards the invisible stars above.
“That’s what they tell me.”
“You disagree?”
“If you asked me a year, shit, a month ago… I’d say ‘yeah’. Now?” I try shrugging it off but unfortunately the subject sticks. “I dunno. I just don’t.”
Frida lets the words freeze dry between us with small sips from her glass and puffs off her American Spirit’s. I glance over at her when she’s not looking. She’s aged some, sure, but she’s still sheer wonder to behold. A Bernini saint as painted by a love drunk Matisse. The wrinkles around her eyes the cracks in a masterpiece. The gray hair waiting patiently behind the red dye’s veil, crawling slowly along the neglected roots.
“You know what I hate?” My question catching me by surprise but not Frida, who just continues to stare off into the shadow void beyond the yard.
“What’s that?”
“She said this thing to me before the Big Incident, something that practically every woman I ever start to like tells me at some stage or another: ‘You’re too smart for me. You’d get bored’,” I light my next cigarette off the butt of the last one, “like I’m this big genius or something.”
Frida smiles sadly and refills my glass.
“Shit,” I mutter under frosted breath, “I can’t even drive a car.”
“Well, Jack…,” Frida snorts with a sad laugh, “I’ll tell you this. I know I’m smart enough to stop looking backwards when the only way out is forwards.”
I salute her with a toast of the glass and drink to her wisdom.
But still, I can’t shake the fugue funk off me. Wine hits me that way sometimes. Without meaning to I brood in reflections of Vera, Violet and Frida.
A small slice of eternity peels away before Frida gets up and offers me her hand: “C’mon… I want to show you something.”
I get up but leave the hand hanging: “What?”
“We’re going to dance, you and me… and if you’re not careful it’ll be the last time you’ll ever dance again.”
The words ring ominous, I shake my head and look around with a good humored smile: “Again… what?”
Frida leans in close, plucks the stub of my smoke from my fingers, turns around and flicks it into the backyard.
When it lands…
… a small but very loud explosion!
I jump back in shock and drop the glass. The snow muffles the impact and cheap Pinot Noir seeps into the ice.
“Did that… did that just really happen?”
“Yep,” Frida leans down and retrieves my glass, then the bottle, refills the glass and hands it back to me. “Here… you’re gonna need this.”
***
Once the smoke clouds disperse and the snow settles back down, I try to stammer out a question. I get a couple of sounds out that could be vaguely interpreted as a ‘why’ or ‘how’ or ‘what the fuck, Frida’.
“Some old relics I found when I was cleaning out Pee-Paw’s attic when I visited him last year. They’re probably not strong enough to kill you… least not outright… but they’ll definitely cost you an arm and a leg.”
“And you… you thought putting them all over your backyard was a good idea?”
“Uh-huh… haven’t been bothered since.”
“By who, Frida… the fucking Red Army?”
“Long story.”
“Do you know any other kind?”
“Ouch…,” Frida slaps me on the arm, “I’m trying to help you here.”
“So you want me to do what now… dance with you through that?”
“Blindfolded.”
“Blindfolded?” I light another cigarette through shaking hands, “and why the hell would I want to do that?”
“Because, if you make it back…I’ll be yours. Really yours. From now until the ice thaws, we’ll never have to leave my bed.”
“What about wine?”
“I have plenty in the basement.”
“Bitch!” I snort only half-joking.
“I thought the walk would do you some good. Now, c’mon… you’ve been waiting for this moment for twelve years now...”
“Thirteen.”
“Your lucky number,” she grins cool and coy, “so what do you say?”
I release a frustrated sigh, shake my head in disbelief and answer with shell shocked exasperation: “After you.”
***
A single hand-painted blue eye stares off the white satin blindfold; bandaged around the top half of my face slowly by Frida. She’s talking the whole time, as wine and landmines are prone to do.
“Alright, here’s how this is going to work. We’re going to go out there and I’m going to lead….”
“I see some things never change.”
“… hush. Now, we’ll dance to one song. All you have to do is decide if your spending the night here or at the hospital.”
“The ambulance couldn’t make it up the driveway anyway,” I smile. “Looks like you’re stuck with me either way.”
She blows off the retort: “You got it?”
With the blindfold on I couldn’t see shit, save a numb light filtering in through the cracks at the cheek. “Yeah.”
And with that she takes me by the hand and verrrrry, slowly we make our way out to the field. My breath quickens in anticipation and without the sense of sight amplifies into a dull roar. Somewhere across an unfathomable distance, the faint crunch of our boots across the snow.
We stop. I feel her hand shift in mine and then another one slap across my lower back. Then the front of her body presses against mine and the jab of her chin rests in the space between chest and shoulder.
“Ready?” She whispers.
“There’s no music.”
“Hush, “ she whispers and begins to sway the top half of her body. It takes me a few tries but I lock onto her rhythm and synch into her motion. We just stand there rocking lightly in embrace for a few seconds, when from… the house? The neighbor’s yard? My head? I begin to hear the song start up slow.
The lush flight of a cello struggled to free itself from the jagged branches of a John Cage inspired desyncopation, and sawed against the frigid air until it soared into the majestic wings of a sweeping tempo.
And below me I feel Frida take her first step and with glass brittle fear, I follow along. We step, and step, and sway and step… with each move bringing with it the promise of death.
But eventually we begin to move quicker, with confidence, we find each others pulse and segue into a rough harmony. The music speeds up and whether we are chasing it or it is chasing is no longer clear.
Eventually the fever of my panic is smothered against the press of her breasts against me and free from thought my body takes over.
We glide between aborted explosions and dodge potential fireworks, until our boots no longer sink into the snow and the frost-bitten wind drifts beneath our heels.
Then my private darkness dissolves into her face…
… as beautiful as that first night, when her feral black mascara eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror.
Then the face shifts into Vera’s, elongates into Violet’s, before flickering between the portraits of all those who said No, who said Yes, all the of those who I was too scared too even ask. Faster and faster they shift, as the cello’s flight ignites into the race of a fleet of arrows…
… and I realize suddenly that I’m dancing alone.
I stop and the music crashes into a harsh silence.
Stupidly I feel around for her with outstretched arms. Nothing.
I yank off the eyeball and look around. I’m alone in the yard and Vera’s… Frida’s no where to be found.
“Frida!” I shout and in return a dog barks in the distance. “Frida, c’mon… don’t do this to me.”
No answer save the extinguishing of the patio’s light.
“How’m I supposed to get back?” I shout, the fear naked in my voice and shivering.
No answer.
So I just stand there, light up a cigarette and wait for her to grow bored of her stupid little joke.
I want to say I stood there an hour, can’t say for sure, I left my phone inside on her coffee table, and still no Frida.
Finally I burn through my last cigarette, each butt carefully put out with a drip of spit and a pinch of the thumb, and start to feel the wine buzz fade into a dull resignation of doom.
I look down around me and see the path of our dance, thinking distantly on how sweet it all was until she left me to…
… the path of our tracks?
A small pilot light ignites through the gloom of my despair.
I scan around desperately, the moonlight almost now completely vanished behind the surrounding trees and finally spot a single pair of tracks leading off back to the patio.
Carefully, I pivot and begin tip-toeing my way into each frozen footprint left in our dance’s wake until I make my way over to the tracks of her retreat. From there I cautiously step my way back to the patio, where I discover the bottle of wine still waiting and down it straight from the neck until the nerves re-settle.
When I kill it I laugh victoriously and in a mad rush of inspiration I toss the bottle out into the field in hopes of setting off a victory explosion.
Nothing.
Disappointed, I pack up a snowball and toss it straight into another part of the yard.
Still nothing… with the same result after a few dozen snowballs had been tossed.
“I only had the one, Mister Too Smart For Me,” Frida laughs from behind my back. I didn’t even hear the door slide open.
I spin around on her: “What?”
“Mine… not mines. Singular. As in just the one.”
“Jesus, Frida…” I turn to the yard, then her and back again. “Why… why would you even… I mean, the fuck, woman?”
“You figured it out though, didn’t you, in case there really were more of them. Of course not as quick as I had hoped… I almost fell asleep in there waiting on you.”
I go to say something but nothing comes out. I try again but get more of the same. Finally I manage to ask her for a cigarette.
“They’re inside.”
“I thought we couldn’t smoke in there.”
“I thought you’d be smarter. Looks like we were both wrong,” she grabs me by the hand again and leads me back. “I mean all you had to do was look around you.”
One minute nothing. Two minutes and I start walking towards her place hoping for the best. Three minutes crunch by, dragged out by the spectacle of passing cars, clawing at the hill I’m climbing, before sliding or spinning back in retreat. Four minutes and my phone beeps. It’s her. She’s home. Stranded. Alone. Drop by. Bring wine.
We met in the late 90’s at some forgotten 80’s night in Midtown. DJ D20 on the decks, spinning a shit set to an empty floor. Most of the crowd huddled around the bar, trying to numb themselves to the music with the two dollar shots that drew us all in in the first place. A chance opening at the bar placed me Frida Adjacent. She was pounding back Vodka shots as quick as she could order them and chasing them down with glugs off a bottle of Cranberry juice she had stashed in her purse. At one point, between an unnecessarily extended remix of “I Want A New Drug” and “Here I Go Again”, I overheard her mention something to a buddy about wishing they’d play something cool for once. She rattled off Siouxsie and the Mission and the Sisters before the wish list got Whitesnake truncated to rolled, frustrated eyes.
Now coincidence or fate, I just happened to have at the time, a stack of CDs tucked away in the side thigh pocket of my camouflaged pants. Just picked them back up from a buddy of mine I ran into earlier who dropped them off along with an owed forty bucks I was blowing away as quick as I could. Amongst their ranks were “Floodland” and “Twice Upon a Time”.
So I went up to the booth and requested some Sisters. He didn’t have any. I flashed him the CD. DJ D20 replied that he didn’t do requests. I tried again, this time offering the disc along with its good friend, a very crumbled up Alexander Hamilton. He just looked at me contemptuously and ordered me out of his booth, barking something after me about how this “wasn’t no goth night”.
I sulked back defeated and ordered another round.
Then after a brief barrage of elevator worthy pop music, I caught DJ D20 pop out of the booth and do this pinched at the hips run across the floor towards the Head. My eye narrowed in on the booth’s door which was conspicuously hanging open. I looked around. Security was down to one man and he was checking the door. The rest of the staff were working the packed bar. Then I caught Frida
There was only one thing I could do.
I ran into the booth, closed the door quietly, bolted it behind me, slid over to the decks in a crouch and manned up the ‘phones. I stood there with my head down and hunched down. No one noticed or cared. From there a deep breath, a visual shot of Frida for courage and Go! I pop out the queued up ‘Bon Jovi Best Of’ and slide in Floodland. It loads and reads fine. From there I punch up track five and without waiting for whatever piece of shit that was still playing, rode the fader a hard right into “This Corrosion”.
The club exploded. The crowd flooded from the bar and straight to the floor. No exceptions. The staff hadn’t noticed yet. But ‘Corrosion’ is a ten minute song and DJ D20 was back by minute three. I caught him racing out of the Head and trying to wave me down from the floor. Fuck ‘em, figures I and I set up the next track with an old Siouxsie number. DJ D20 then hit the booth, started banging away, but, damn, I guess with those expensive ass headphones of his on, I couldn’t hear him. He took off and a few minutes later he was back with the Door Gorilla and the club’s manager. Now all three were banging and wailing away behind the door. But me… all I could see was Frida dancing away under the strobe light as if the song was written just for the way she moved.
Thankfully the lock was a bolt number so they couldn’t simply key their way in. Unfortunately that meant that the Door Gorilla was now starting to try to kick his way in. But by now the track was on its last legs and with little grace and no attention to the sacred art of beat matching, I faded into “Cities in Dust”. Just in time as the booth cracked open and Door Gorilla came barreling in.
I was dragged out by the back of my neck from the booth and when we hit floor, the whole crowd cheered me on. During the tussle shuffle with the staff, I snatched Frida’s gaze out of the corner of my eye and gave her this big, stupid wink before being hauled off exit bound. DJ D20 was super pissed and demanded 5-0 stat, because he was definitely ready to press charges. The Door Gorilla wanted a pound of flesh extracted from my ass for his bruised shoulder. But it was the manager’s call, and all he wanted was everyone drinking again. He handed down the verdict. I was kicked out and kicked out for good. As far as I was concerned his place was Club Exile. Door Gorilla tossed me, literally, out on my ass and I was sent spilling ingloriously into the pavement. When I asked about at least getting my CDs back all I got was the finger and a promise of an ass beating.
Well, that’s that, I thought.
I was still brushing myself off, when Frida and her best friend Vera walked out of the club. They asked if I was a DJ.. No, I said. They asked if I had a ride. No, I said. Good, they grinned and flanked me, wrapping their arms around mine and leading me off to the parking lot.
Any other man and this story would probably haven gone blue stat, Ménage à trois Follies would follow and all that good shit. However, me being me, we ended up just driving around all night. Normally I’m the shy type, but the shots of Stoli off a bottle Vera snagged from behind the bar - back when the staff was too busy trying to seize back their Shanghaied 80’s night – helped lubricate my social skills some. We had some laughs, funny guy me, clever women them. Then they dropped me off at my place and each imprinted a lipstick seal on each side of my cheeks. Vera black, Frida red.
The three of us were friends from then on… though eventually, I’d end up spending most of our time together trying to be much more to one, then the other, then to both and eventually settling for none.
I arrived about thirty minutes later and Frida’s already been drinking.
“You bring the wine?” she says through a cracked door and a blast of merlot breath.
I unzip the bomber and pull out a loaded brown paper bag , bobbing a nod affirmative.
Here’s one thing to know about Terminus, along with her satellite counties, the worst snowstorm in over ten years may shut down the roads, the highways, the stores, the jobs and the schools. But god damn if every bar and package store in the city wasn’t still open for business.
Frida flings open the door and jumps me with a hug. It’s not until a full minute after we get inside that I realize she’s used that hug hello as a way to slip the two bottles of five dollar Pinot Noir I bought out of my jacket.
By the time we reach bottle number two, we’re hanging out on the patio full time. Since we’re not allowed to smoke in her place and having grown tired of constantly bundling and un-bundling ourselves every ten minutes to satisfy our alcohol enhanced nic-fits, we’ve decided to camp out here full time. Damp lawn furniture dragged up side by side with the last bottle chilling several inches deep into a small patch of pristine snow. The patio opens up into a vast moonlit backyard, with the ice encrusted sheen of virgin white before us glowing with the sensuous violets and blues of silent films.
The conversation shifts gears through intermittent stages of catch-up, shop talk, gossip and what-not before inevitably arriving on the subject of Vera.
“So you guys still aren’t talking, huh?”
“Nah, not since Count Moodswing dropped by and…, “ and I let the rest drop off into a long exhausted sigh. What can I say? The truth? That Vera crawled through my window, scared off some lingering ghosts, got me drunk and just when I was face deep between her thighs, three licks towards the win, her man comes crawling through the window and catches our little impromptu act live. He wailed. He screamed. He cried. He hugged me. He decked me one and before I knew it I was watching them both make-out in the parking lot.
From that point on I was strictly Vera Verboten… by orders of Count Moodswing himself.
“Well it’s for the best,” Frida blows a thoughtful stream of smoke towards the invisible stars above.
“That’s what they tell me.”
“You disagree?”
“If you asked me a year, shit, a month ago… I’d say ‘yeah’. Now?” I try shrugging it off but unfortunately the subject sticks. “I dunno. I just don’t.”
Frida lets the words freeze dry between us with small sips from her glass and puffs off her American Spirit’s. I glance over at her when she’s not looking. She’s aged some, sure, but she’s still sheer wonder to behold. A Bernini saint as painted by a love drunk Matisse. The wrinkles around her eyes the cracks in a masterpiece. The gray hair waiting patiently behind the red dye’s veil, crawling slowly along the neglected roots.
“You know what I hate?” My question catching me by surprise but not Frida, who just continues to stare off into the shadow void beyond the yard.
“What’s that?”
“She said this thing to me before the Big Incident, something that practically every woman I ever start to like tells me at some stage or another: ‘You’re too smart for me. You’d get bored’,” I light my next cigarette off the butt of the last one, “like I’m this big genius or something.”
Frida smiles sadly and refills my glass.
“Shit,” I mutter under frosted breath, “I can’t even drive a car.”
“Well, Jack…,” Frida snorts with a sad laugh, “I’ll tell you this. I know I’m smart enough to stop looking backwards when the only way out is forwards.”
I salute her with a toast of the glass and drink to her wisdom.
But still, I can’t shake the fugue funk off me. Wine hits me that way sometimes. Without meaning to I brood in reflections of Vera, Violet and Frida.
A small slice of eternity peels away before Frida gets up and offers me her hand: “C’mon… I want to show you something.”
I get up but leave the hand hanging: “What?”
“We’re going to dance, you and me… and if you’re not careful it’ll be the last time you’ll ever dance again.”
The words ring ominous, I shake my head and look around with a good humored smile: “Again… what?”
Frida leans in close, plucks the stub of my smoke from my fingers, turns around and flicks it into the backyard.
When it lands…
… a small but very loud explosion!
I jump back in shock and drop the glass. The snow muffles the impact and cheap Pinot Noir seeps into the ice.
“Did that… did that just really happen?”
“Yep,” Frida leans down and retrieves my glass, then the bottle, refills the glass and hands it back to me. “Here… you’re gonna need this.”
Once the smoke clouds disperse and the snow settles back down, I try to stammer out a question. I get a couple of sounds out that could be vaguely interpreted as a ‘why’ or ‘how’ or ‘what the fuck, Frida’.
“Some old relics I found when I was cleaning out Pee-Paw’s attic when I visited him last year. They’re probably not strong enough to kill you… least not outright… but they’ll definitely cost you an arm and a leg.”
“And you… you thought putting them all over your backyard was a good idea?”
“Uh-huh… haven’t been bothered since.”
“By who, Frida… the fucking Red Army?”
“Long story.”
“Do you know any other kind?”
“Ouch…,” Frida slaps me on the arm, “I’m trying to help you here.”
“So you want me to do what now… dance with you through that?”
“Blindfolded.”
“Blindfolded?” I light another cigarette through shaking hands, “and why the hell would I want to do that?”
“Because, if you make it back…I’ll be yours. Really yours. From now until the ice thaws, we’ll never have to leave my bed.”
“What about wine?”
“I have plenty in the basement.”
“Bitch!” I snort only half-joking.
“I thought the walk would do you some good. Now, c’mon… you’ve been waiting for this moment for twelve years now...”
“Thirteen.”
“Your lucky number,” she grins cool and coy, “so what do you say?”
I release a frustrated sigh, shake my head in disbelief and answer with shell shocked exasperation: “After you.”
A single hand-painted blue eye stares off the white satin blindfold; bandaged around the top half of my face slowly by Frida. She’s talking the whole time, as wine and landmines are prone to do.
“Alright, here’s how this is going to work. We’re going to go out there and I’m going to lead….”
“I see some things never change.”
“… hush. Now, we’ll dance to one song. All you have to do is decide if your spending the night here or at the hospital.”
“The ambulance couldn’t make it up the driveway anyway,” I smile. “Looks like you’re stuck with me either way.”
She blows off the retort: “You got it?”
With the blindfold on I couldn’t see shit, save a numb light filtering in through the cracks at the cheek. “Yeah.”
And with that she takes me by the hand and verrrrry, slowly we make our way out to the field. My breath quickens in anticipation and without the sense of sight amplifies into a dull roar. Somewhere across an unfathomable distance, the faint crunch of our boots across the snow.
We stop. I feel her hand shift in mine and then another one slap across my lower back. Then the front of her body presses against mine and the jab of her chin rests in the space between chest and shoulder.
“Ready?” She whispers.
“There’s no music.”
“Hush, “ she whispers and begins to sway the top half of her body. It takes me a few tries but I lock onto her rhythm and synch into her motion. We just stand there rocking lightly in embrace for a few seconds, when from… the house? The neighbor’s yard? My head? I begin to hear the song start up slow.
The lush flight of a cello struggled to free itself from the jagged branches of a John Cage inspired desyncopation, and sawed against the frigid air until it soared into the majestic wings of a sweeping tempo.
And below me I feel Frida take her first step and with glass brittle fear, I follow along. We step, and step, and sway and step… with each move bringing with it the promise of death.
But eventually we begin to move quicker, with confidence, we find each others pulse and segue into a rough harmony. The music speeds up and whether we are chasing it or it is chasing is no longer clear.
Eventually the fever of my panic is smothered against the press of her breasts against me and free from thought my body takes over.
We glide between aborted explosions and dodge potential fireworks, until our boots no longer sink into the snow and the frost-bitten wind drifts beneath our heels.
Then my private darkness dissolves into her face…
… as beautiful as that first night, when her feral black mascara eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror.
Then the face shifts into Vera’s, elongates into Violet’s, before flickering between the portraits of all those who said No, who said Yes, all the of those who I was too scared too even ask. Faster and faster they shift, as the cello’s flight ignites into the race of a fleet of arrows…
… and I realize suddenly that I’m dancing alone.
I stop and the music crashes into a harsh silence.
Stupidly I feel around for her with outstretched arms. Nothing.
I yank off the eyeball and look around. I’m alone in the yard and Vera’s… Frida’s no where to be found.
“Frida!” I shout and in return a dog barks in the distance. “Frida, c’mon… don’t do this to me.”
No answer save the extinguishing of the patio’s light.
“How’m I supposed to get back?” I shout, the fear naked in my voice and shivering.
No answer.
So I just stand there, light up a cigarette and wait for her to grow bored of her stupid little joke.
I want to say I stood there an hour, can’t say for sure, I left my phone inside on her coffee table, and still no Frida.
Finally I burn through my last cigarette, each butt carefully put out with a drip of spit and a pinch of the thumb, and start to feel the wine buzz fade into a dull resignation of doom.
I look down around me and see the path of our dance, thinking distantly on how sweet it all was until she left me to…
… the path of our tracks?
A small pilot light ignites through the gloom of my despair.
I scan around desperately, the moonlight almost now completely vanished behind the surrounding trees and finally spot a single pair of tracks leading off back to the patio.
Carefully, I pivot and begin tip-toeing my way into each frozen footprint left in our dance’s wake until I make my way over to the tracks of her retreat. From there I cautiously step my way back to the patio, where I discover the bottle of wine still waiting and down it straight from the neck until the nerves re-settle.
When I kill it I laugh victoriously and in a mad rush of inspiration I toss the bottle out into the field in hopes of setting off a victory explosion.
Nothing.
Disappointed, I pack up a snowball and toss it straight into another part of the yard.
Still nothing… with the same result after a few dozen snowballs had been tossed.
“I only had the one, Mister Too Smart For Me,” Frida laughs from behind my back. I didn’t even hear the door slide open.
I spin around on her: “What?”
“Mine… not mines. Singular. As in just the one.”
“Jesus, Frida…” I turn to the yard, then her and back again. “Why… why would you even… I mean, the fuck, woman?”
“You figured it out though, didn’t you, in case there really were more of them. Of course not as quick as I had hoped… I almost fell asleep in there waiting on you.”
I go to say something but nothing comes out. I try again but get more of the same. Finally I manage to ask her for a cigarette.
“They’re inside.”
“I thought we couldn’t smoke in there.”
“I thought you’d be smarter. Looks like we were both wrong,” she grabs me by the hand again and leads me back. “I mean all you had to do was look around you.”