Halien, Part 1

Yet another inspiring short story for the edification of all brethren.


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE
Halien
Chuck twirled the strange clover by its stalk with middle finger and thumb. She wanted our brief touching to be wed with an object of remembrance. He lifted the nine-petaled, purple-veined thing to his nostrils and closed his eyes. Like cinnamon but not quite. Nutmeg but not quite. Peppery as well. Unknown spice. “Ah Haley,” he said with a sigh and set the clover down beside a writing tablet on his desk. To his left, and unopened since late morning, was a letter. Stamped into the place where the return address would normally be was a nine-petaled clover, same as the one he’d just spun.
Green meat with purple veins. And to its right, a nine-pointed red star.
The autumn sun was setting now in the west Portland suburbs, aged orange butter
melting into a V-crotch of distant hills whose light sliced obliquely through the burgundy-leaved maple trees of the yard, and came to an end as an ellipsoidal puddle on Chuck’s windowsill. The ocean’s over there, a hundred miles away where once we laid together beneath the stars. Chuck eyed the envelope with wistfulness and dread. The words, Charles Dearthmont, were scripted upon the addressee space, sans address, with elegant looping curves. How did you find me, Haley? I never gave my last name. Three months since you left and I’ve told no one where I’ve moved. I wanted a carte blanche start but now this. He lit a cigarette and pulled the coffee tin turned ashtray towards him for easy tapping. He looked down at the six words he’d penned ten minutes prior and read them over thrice while mutely moving his chapped lips. Forget her! Aum Mani Padme Hum. A sage admonition to his curiosity, followed by his favorite mantra in times of fear of coming unhinged. Chuck sniffed the back of the envelope at the seal. A pungent potpourri of
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competing incenses, of lilac and honeysuckle, of cucumber and cantaloupe. Oh Haley, what are you doing to me?
It was May 1st when she first visited Chuck’s life. He replayed the story in its entirety as the natural light dimmed and he chainsmoked alone with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons sounding cheerfully from the ghetto box. He did not flick on a light. He did not want to ruin the reverie with the intrusion of something artificial. He flung his left leg over his right knee, slouched in his chair, puffed and remembered.
Downtown at the Bullpen tavern drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon after another ho hum day of slinging meat and squirting mustard at the sad raison d`etre I call Sandwichland. I was feeling pretty smarmy after lecturing Sam and Andy on the origins of the labor movement, going so far as to laud Luddism, and illustrating the point by refusing to use the tomato slicer in favor of the intimacy of doing the job with a simple hand-held knife. Alas, they lacked the brainage necessary to understand, but I wasn’t expecting solidarity from those two servants of the system anyway. I was proud of my argument and felt powerful in my sense of alienation as I sipped my beer at the bar stool.
Her giggle drew my attention away from the televised baseball game. It came from the pool table, to my left. It was a nervous giggle, kindred to my own. If that giggle had betrayed confidence or strength I never would have looked over, and none of what follows would have occurred. She stood with stick in hand at the far end of the pool table, facing but not noticing me. She did not strike me as beautiful at that distance. Her hair was short and chopped. Her Levis baggy and boyish. She was eyeing the eight ball which rested against the far bank midway between the corner pockets. Impossible shot.
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Was she also lonely? Her shot was impossible because the cue ball rested as well against the bank but at the opposite end of the table, and also at the midpoint between corner pockets. It would take an aggressive and masterly down swipe at the cue ball just to strike the eight at all and move it off the rail. But make it? Anywhere? I was good enough to know better.
She giggled nervously again, chalking her cue while giving her friend, a pretty Latina, an embarrassed shrug. Her friend sat behind the pool table with one leg bobbing upon the other and wore on her peanut butter face a look of bored indifference. “Why don’t you miss for once and give me a chance, Haley.”
“That wouldn’t be fair, Suzanna. Besides, this ain’t no gimme.”
Nice sense of humor I thought. Would you find me funny? Haley raised her stick high behind her, gripping it loosely as if it was just something to occupy her hands while daydreaming out the window. Suzanna smoked with her back turned. “Cue ball off the left bank, kissin’ the eight to the far right corner pocket,” Haley said.
What? I thought, sipping my beer, my eyes transfixed to her face which was lit by a wry little smile. Then the stick blurred through the air and whacked against the cue ball clean and true; the ball zipped past the left side pocket and ricocheted off the rail at a ninety degree angle straight to the left side of the eight ball, which it kissed simultaneously with that bank, sending the object ball on a felt-hugging course towards the intended pocket, wherein with dying momentum it fell in for victory. I gasped with amazement as Haley shrugged at Suzanna and sat next to her.
“It’s not fun anymore, Haley.”