Spring Fling

Another novel-in-progress. I must be nuts . . .


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE

Spring Fling
A Novel
By
M. C. Guimond

Prologue: C-Minus Film Project



Pay no attention to my narratives. My narratives aren’t too hopeful. Or helpful. They will not augment your consciousness. Like a beam of balmy moonlight dancing in and out of the periphery of memory she haunts me still. That is all I have to say. I could stop right there, type “The End,” and move on. But I won’t, so here it goes. She went crazy, that’s the truth, but that’s not all. She was beautiful like a fairy tale before the moral, and I loved her, and there were roses, and there was meaning, and there was walking on air, that’s the truth, but that’s not all. It’s terrible. Just now a devil in my ear is singing her morning song, “I’m the prettiest girl in the whole wide world, ain’t nothing gonna stop me now.”
Holly was drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon in the beer garden and chattering on about this and that in a mesmerizing singsong affect. I sat across from her with big eyes like a boy dazzled by a bedtime story. I don’t know how to account for it, save for the moon’s witchery and my own creeping intoxication. We were alone and together for the first time. I had been playing pool with Schneeb and Dave when she intruded upon us with a radiant smile and turquoise eyes that seemed to drift out of their sockets and precede her like smoke. Next I forgot my friends existed. Seemed like good times, forgetting my friends existed for a chance at female acquaintance. It’s terrible.
She howled at the stars. “If one more nut-sack tells me I create my own reality I’m gonna kill myself!” Her fist slammed the table. “Roll credits!”
That’s when she really had me. That’s when I knew that I knew I was in love. She was the first woman in my experience to share my belief: Reality is a movie. Actually it’s a C-minus film project turned in by a bleary eyed grad student in a higher dimension. You know, some lack-witted mother-fucker four and a half billion years ago pulls an all-nighter jabbing and hooting at the keyboard like a chimpanzee and here we all are living out the absurdity of it. Sometimes it’s funny I guess, but what I really want to say is that it’s terrible. Let me get back to Holly.
At some point it became obvious that the war would start in mid May. More brown people had to die. The President was upset. We weren’t sure if he was evil or retarded or a robot or a zombie. Holly didn’t like it when I went too far with the kook talk. She’d make fun of me and rein me in. Secretly I loved her for that, though I pretended to argue.
She took a long loud swig. “Lesson number one Jimmy is to love yourself.”
That broke the spell. My shoulders tightened. “I love myself.”
She gave me the funniest look like she’s been seeing through my soul my entire life. A look that said, “Come off it, no you don’t.” I struggled to produce a cigarette, then struggled to produce a lighter. I felt a hand on mine. Hers. Electric and milky. She smiled at me now and offered a lit match. I felt more composed after drawing a few puffs.
“Of course I love myself. What are you saying?”
She leaned forward with hands crossed on the table and scrunched up her face. “Oh? Then how do you explain your relationship with that David guy.”
“We call him the Mayor,” I said. I couldn’t stand her perplexed look anymore--was she mocking me? “What’s the matter Holly?”
“He treats you like he’s a king and you’re a subject. And you allow it. Don’t you love yourself?”
The moon was three quarters full and waxing, and a rare panoply of stars dazzled an early spring Portland sky. But I couldn’t enjoy it. I was under the gun. Thinking back at the pool table dialogue, trying to discern what she was talking about, I remember joking with Schneeb and the Mayor about a number of things in our deprecatory rapid-fire way, but I can’t be sure how much she’d heard or how long she’d listened. “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said, trying to look into her eyes without babbling at their beauty. “We joke around a lot. Was it the self-deprecating humor?”
She sensed my struggle and tossed me a life raft, her touch. She took my hands into hers, a shaft of soft light from over my shoulder (was it moon? star?) lit upon her forehead between her eyes like a firefly. Gently it lingered, and fluttered. Did I dream the thing? Memory isn’t perfect, but it seemed a third eye opened just then. In her first, then me. “You know,” she said. “You know.”
“I do?” I said, not really knowing intellectually, but I felt peace, like my heart knew or my soul, and that she wasn’t judging me.
“I absolutely require,” she said, lighting a cigarette, “that my boyfriend love himself deeply and sincerely.” She released my hands and wagged a playful finger. I felt cold. I already missed her touch. “No more phoniness,” she said.