Gin and July

It was one of the hottest nights in July.  She and Leigh had seen the music together in downtown, overpriced gins, besting arrogant city crowds, but still enjoying the tapestry of hidden mythologies, the happy blistering sound barrier of music that overtook them.  He had been there too, making his usual appearance and then claiming he wanted to listen from up in the balcony.  She saw him up there, lowering and rocking back his hair in slow succession to the pounding of the bass, under the blinding grey-blue light. 

She and Leigh had gotten a cab, as they tired of walking and decided why not just head to the watering hole, with what few dollars they had between them.  They knew everyone there and someone would take care of them, the bartendress at least.  They exited the cab, just as she told Leigh all about how she and he had reached something, yet again, that summer, which started in tragedy and humid weather and continued, unyielding.  Leigh was slightly disturbed, but knew that it was inevitable.  Of course, the moment the two girls (she fancied herself a women, but felt a bit more like a girl when around Leigh, who seemed forever the teenager in her naivete and schoolgirl giggles) exited the cab, about 50 feet down from the bar, there he was, walking as he usually did, out of nowhere.  Out of darkness, his army jacket, his hair tucked behind his ears, and his unusually long legs in stride, moving...he could have walked from the show to here in 10 minutes, manhattan to brooklyn, if he really wanted to. 

She could only blurt out a sarcastic half insult, per her usual defense mechanism when her heart sensed trouble.  "God dammit, can't I get away from you".  He wasn't moved and didn't flinch at this; he invited them both up to have some food.  He had plenty and would make it.  Pork chops, and tomato & mozzarella salad.  And gin, more gin of course.  With this beautiful bitter lemon type stuff which she adored.  He knew her love of gin ran deep, and the hotter the weather for it the better.  No bread or grain to be had - she found his lack of grain in meals and in his daily eating habits, which bear enough for twenty other tall tale, endearing and a little funny, since he just didn't think of it, ever.  Explains how he could drink buds all day and all night, and not have a stomach in sight.  His energies just ran that way -- to the wild, outlying edges of manic thought and movement. 

They ate, Leigh left halfway through the bad and entertaining film that he and she watched together.  Again.  He was conducting one of his self deprecating tests.  Not that he called them such, or called them anything at all.  He was trying to make it through summer without an air conditioner.  On this incredibly scorching night, there was no relief in sight.  No wind, no breeze, no anything but still, dank and wet air like walls around them.  They hadn't, he and she, been in each other's private company for some time.  There was always a reason it didn't continue, and they had just been speaking and thinking and connecting yet again after her closest friends lost their first baby, a son.  He was there for her, and she forgot how good he was at doing so.  She wasn't sure what else was happening here, just now, but there she was.  Fate had placed him in her path on her way home to the local streets within their private universe.

Somehow the drinking continued; gin was the only thing to help the heat stay at bay, just slightly.  They went to bed and it was so hot she could barely breath.  They ended up embracing, kissing, but something different in the way of their kiss.  As if the darkness and empty spaces which followed him as he had walked towards her that evening emptied itself from him, and it was as if he wanted to fill himself with all the forces coming up through her lips to his and back again.  Sweat was pouring off him, as it usually did, but she managed to stay mildly dewy and just this side of clammy.  Soon, their exhaustion at the night, at the heat, the hours standing up with throngs of people, the summer, the aloneness and the time apart leading itself into this newly awkward situation which bred a new one to occur.  He gathered up his limbs and wrapped himself around her, literally.  On top of her, his wet hair blanketing her chin, and she not caring, as he went from resting the side of his face on her breasts, as she could hear his heart beating so loudly with her own; his panic and dynamism and energy which never failed was able to calm and still itself, and she cradled his big Scottish head and dark, soaked up hair in her arms, smoothing his hair in between her fingers, and running her very same fingers, necessary and bare and without presence of any contrived kind, down his neck and back again, kissing the top of his head as he calmed further, and started to fall asleep, his legs and arms tightening around her, for dear life, as she comforted his huge fucking brain to her chest and gave it repose.  They fell asleep that way, in the midst of the black night, wherein the slightest breeze made its way through themselves to the room itself.  She had brought the quiet to his mind, and the slightest coolness from the night windows of heaven on down.  ch

When she awoke again, in the early pre dawn, he was still on and around her, but somehow in the night, without her noticing, his head had made its way down to between her legs, and his face slept story like and with new tales to dream of, there between her womb and her inner thigh, wrapped tight and fashioning up new worlds that he could finally see, with the presence that eluded him, and eludes him still.  Her holding of him would not cease, and they stayed that way, until the drier warmth of the summer sun made the day come round them, without them noticing that the night was gone. 

M. Lucia