Margie

Margie

by

Gary Kinney

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2011 Gary Kinney

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Chapter 1

Margie was right where they suspected she would be, bobbing like a cork in the little ripples at the edge of the river. Serene and indifferent, she floated face down in the brown water, clinging to the crook of a partially submerged branch with her wrist.

His initial impression was that of some overweight swimmer resting for a moment on her way downstream, but the frilly, light-blue dress gave her away. One of the shoulder straps was undone and streamed out beside her in the water like a flag. And yet, he knew Margie would never have allowed that.

She looked quite pretty, actually: the light-blue fabric against her white, clean skin, early morning sun glinting off her back like a neon sign as successive waves washed rhythmically over her. Sensuous too, he thought, as she rocked gently in a more turbulent back-eddy. Her long blond hair was tangled now. She'd had it in a sort of bun before, but most of it had escaped, and long stringy fingers of it groped periodically for shore, then changed their minds, embarrassed. She had always been unpredictable -anomalous- he thought, but she'd never let anyone close enough to be certain.

Suddenly, caught in a larger ripple from the deep brown current, she pitched violently from side to side then overturned. Her face was a grotesquely swollen marshmallow, and as it rolled in the swell, the one sky-blue eye still recognizable in the cardboard folds of flesh stared brazenly about, as if hunting for something. Slowly, it narrowed its range and looked sternly and accusingly at him.

Dizziness, then blackness, like the deep hollow black of space, swallowed him in a single gulp: eternity...

Emptiness, dark and aloof, stood quiet guard outside an opened window, its presence a fist in his chest. The window itself was a blacker hole in the darkness of his room -a focal point, a node. As if the room were a sink, and the hole a drain.

Jason opened his eyes with a start, and the shadows on the wall at the foot of his bed acknowledged in a slow dance. Even though the window was open, and a damp breeze meandered around the still-grey bedroom, he was covered in sweat. The blankets lay gnarled like some ancient root on the lumpy bed. But it wasn't the shadows that puzzled him, nor the wind on his feet; something was missing.

He cast his eyes about the darkened room like baited hooks. Half-formed images struggled through the porridge of his mind, then disappeared -bubbles at the surface.

Out of the window, he could just make out the branch of a tree waving restlessly in the wind. There were no leaves on it, nothing to commend itself to the day. It just happened to exist; so did the window and what it framed. Funny how that worked. The branch existed in his world only because of the window -otherwise it would simply be an unnoticed part of a nameless tree, no why's or how's. And the window? -a hole in his wall to let the branch in...

He blinked slowly and tried to concentrate. The room was the same: his small wooden bed, a black, scratched metal folding chair with a lonely, unadorned light bulb hanging from the ceiling above it like a sleeping eye, an over-filled brick-and-board book case squatting beside the bed as if it were trying its best to remain inconspicuous.

Had he missed anything? A carpet and curtains of the same indescribable colour. And a pudgy, toad-like phone that never rang, crouching on the floor by the bed. A phone to let in the outside -like the window- but it, too, was just a hole, really. And time escaped through it whenever he sat waiting for it to ring.

Sometimes, for something to do, he would dial numbers -randomly- and talk to whoever answered. Occasionally the voice was familiar, usually not. Numbers are like that: some are better -more productive- than others. Like the one that connected him -whenever she was home- to his mother.

His mother! God forbid, he had come full circle. But only she would listen attentively to his silence, then intervene with words. Just words -as meaningless as clothes on a mannequin usually- but islands, nonetheless, where he could rest.

Helpful -that was the word. She was always helpful. Just the sound and the meaningless prattle, helped him orient himself in the fog that was his life. What could she really say that would help? That she would phone Sheila? That it would be all right? Sheila. The porridge bubbled, but he felt strangely calm.

He rechecked the room. It was new, and yet familiar -like a hotel room: home, after a day or two. It was a home, but lacking the continuity, the memories, that should have given it significance. It was a destination, a place to which one traveled at the day's end to be engulfed -not kindly but impersonally, as a lake would a stone.

His attention shifted to a corner -ceiling meeting walls. A powerful area, he thought. A place where three merged into one -a different name, a different function. Another destination. A corner was a sort of synergy. Not just this corner -all corners: things came together as unique individuals, and then suddenly, in the shift of an eye, blended into something entirely different, infinitely small.

He felt sick. Sheila was gone. He began to sweat, and his heart slammed madly into his chest. Memories sloshed over him like a puddle splashed. He found it difficult to breathe.

*

I've had it Jason! she said, staring at him from across the dinner table with brown, malignant eyes. You never even try anymore. She seemed furious, and scraped up the last few crumbs of pie crust with her finger in an attempt to contain herself. He hated it when she did that. Not the yelling, or even the anger -those things one could get used to. No, the stupid, animal fingering of an empty plate. She might as well have used her tongue -lowered her face into the filthy thing and tongued it clean.

I mean it this time, she said, spitting the words at him, as she watched his disapproving stare. But how could she mean it? He hadn't done anything different; every night was like this: silence for half of the meal, her short black hair shaking gently as she chewed -the quick sharp clink of cutlery the only indication that he hadn't suddenly gone deaf. Even her eyes would sit quietly on her plate. Then, for no apparent reason, words would surface in the air like clouds, and drift his way. At first, they were usually benign: light and frivolous, as if they had escaped without her noticing. But they were mindless -merely the sound of her mouth exercising before the really important business began. The weather, the dinner, the day -they were all glottal calisthenics.

As she warmed up, though, the words assumed different and more menacing shapes: mental darts. Soon they became painful and he had to reply in kind. Guerrilla tactics, usually: crouched behind an innocuous sentence, another spear, a quick, penetrating innuendo. But marriage was like that. Give and wound. Ego repair.

I've had it, Jason. -and that was all the warning she'd given. Then a polite -almost- request for him to leave. The next day an even more polite letter from some female lawyer strongly suggesting it.

Leave? Leave to where? Where did one go after nine years of living in a particular house, sleeping in a particular bed? Where was 'away'?

*

He took a deep breath and looked around him once more. 'Away' was a room with different shadows.

A toilet flushed noisily overhead somewhere. The light was improving -if that was the word. The window was now full of grey, and the tree branch wet, not with the borrowed light of the somber street lamp, but dripping in the haze of another winter dawn.

He felt terrible; his muscles ached and his head was throbbing -worse when he sat up. The room looked even more depressing in this light. A shirt hung limply on the chair back, and his pants lay in a defeated heap on the floor under it where he had kicked them the night before. Dirty laundry grew like a wart on the carpet behind the door. The walls were papered in some yellow pattern, but at first glance they looked more like stains, or maybe a disease acquired through contact with the balding lime-green carpet growing on the floor. There was not a picture, not a plant for anything to hide behind, either -only the window with its fringe of fraying cloth broke the stale monotony of the room. The ceiling seemed too low, and the floor too high -it gave him the uneasy feeling of pressure. One day he would come back and discover the bed crushed and oozing from the window like toothpaste.

He yawned and stumbled to his feet, the bed and everything else a memory by the time he walked through the door into the rest of the apartment. The 'rest' was larger than the bedroom, but that was its only redeeming feature. It had a partial view of some cold, grey-and -white mountains across the bay, but as with the bedroom window, it only served to emphasize his isolation. If there was an 'out there' then there was also an 'in here'.

In here consisted of a tattered brown, two-cushion sofa, a blemished, arthritic maple rocking chair that had worn grooves like tire tracks in the still-green carpet, a dark round table of some synthetic wood, and four rickety chairs that shared its genes.

A minute kitchen was tacked onto the wall opposite the window as an excuse to charge more rent. Everything in it worked -the stove, refrigerator, sink- but it was too blatant, too obvious. Indiscreet -that was the word. It reduced all life in the room to the basics -like seeing someone's underwear.. He couldn't describe it exactly, but it seemed so shameless to have everything exposed.

The carpet didn't even change color from the bedroom, to the living room, to the kitchen. Only the bathroom had no carpet. It also had no bath -just a shower, and that was imprisoned in an upright, coffin-like box with peeling once-white tiles. Clean? Arguably, but as exposed to the toilet, as the kitchen was to the living room. Bachelor accommodation apparently left little to the imagination, and even less to aesthetics.

He felt raw here, all dignity sanded smooth, but as he had told himself for a month now, it was only a place to sleep. One didn't really live in an apartment.

Of course that raised the very real and pressing question of where one actually did live, then. On the beach? He had tried that -or rather sampled it- but a beach in winter was not for sitting. Beaches were for friends, and conversation washed around him like an incoming tide. Downtown? Where? In the mall? Or maybe wandering along the crowded streets hoping for a smile? Bars certainly weren't the answer. Nobody he'd select would go to a bar alone. And anyway, he'd never be able to go up to a stranger and ask her out.

He'd had a hard enough time with Sheila, but she'd understood his shyness -then. They'd met -where?- at a house somewhere -a party- both standing by themselves against a wall. She was beautiful: long black hair, and incredibly large brown eyes that enveloped him like an old friend. She didn't look like the sort used to standing by herself -unlike him. He had been like that since university; crowds bothered him, smothered his originality. In fact they overwhelmed him and made him say silly, inappropriate things. Sheila, however, was merely bored. But their solitude was a bond.

Do you stand here often? (Had he actually said that? Brilliant.)

I'm waiting for something to happen...

Did you plant a bomb, or something? -it had just come out; he hadn't planned to be so stupid.

Sheila had just stared at him, looked around the room, then smiled. No, but I farted! She pointed. Over there. Her eyes, narrowed and twinkled. Don't eat the dip.

Had it really started like that? Or had he embellished, as usual, painting to suit his latest frame? Sheila would never talk like that now. She probably wouldn't even notice him at a party. But she was ten years more mature now.

Jason wandered over to the rocking chair, still in his underwear, and stared forlornly out the window. The day was cheerless and indistinct. Maybe it was raining. Funny how you often couldn't tell these things from the fourth floor. Perhaps rain only started on the third, and this was cloud.

What now? It was a question that often plagued him on weekends -especially Sundays, when most of the stores were closed. What was one supposed to do with time, anyway? Another book? He let his eyes drift slowly around the apartment. Books! He had hundreds of them. Some lay open on the couch, others were piled in little teetering heaps beside the window. In fact, everywhere he looked were books. Most were started, then set aside while he read a few pages of another. Philosophy, science, sociology, psychology... A history of the middle ages, half read, half forgotten, lay on the kitchen counter. Readings in Zen were filed just under the couch, with only their corners sticking out as if in mute testament to samsara.

The bedroom was for novels and short stories which, once read, ended up like medals in the shabby bookcase in there. He kept a