Natalie

I can feel Natalie slipping out of my life like an image on poorly fixed celluloid. She fades further away each day as the etching of time subtly erodes what detail of her still remains. I am in the darkened theatre of my life, watching her greedy apparition dissolve to white.

In the next reel I know she will take to the dance floor with a strange muscular man with large white teeth who twirls her about to flamenco music. The scene ends with them flailing about on a large bed with silk sheets.See how I torture myself.

I wish we would have a raging fight and throw our wedding china around the apartment, so one of us has an excuse to leave and have it mercifully over. But no, we keep the charade alive. She because of what her family and friends will think of her failed marriage. Me because, god help me, I still love the bitch.

Some time when it hurts too much I image her suffering some humiliation to soften the pain of the fantasy. To scrape the emulsion from my memory.Nothing physically injurious. Oh it's nothing violent I imagine. Not usually anyway. Mostly it's seeing her with a custard pie the face, or in her black lawyer gown standing in front of a jury, with a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe.But let's forget her for awhile.

The real question of the day is has spring finally arrived? Surely it must be. The last of the gray slush has melted away in the rain, stranding road sand and soggy cigarette buts, in the gutter. Thrusting mountains impregnate dark swollen clouds as they move east of the fecund ocean. They gestate above the prairie and swoop across the northern woods to spread their birth fluid over our gray city. A monochrome world of subtle gradation and course-grained silver nitrate waiting for the birth of the sun to fully form it's captured image.

Rain beats at my window and soggy pigeons coo on the sill as I work all day at the editing table, cutting and taping brittle celluloid. Mixing up the moments in time. Scissoring one place in beside another. Creating continuity that alludes me in my own life when I turn from the allusions on the bright editing screen to my own inescapable experience.

There was a time before vanity and the subtle tingling of arthritis to come that I'd run to my room on a rainy six day like this to strip of jeans and drag on my bathing suit from the drawer. All the neighborhood kids would run joyfully into the warming rain, to jump in puddles and splash muddy water up each other's legs. That alas was before puberty struck and the poisoned arrow of passion was thrust into my receptive breast.

It is dark and still raining when I close up the editing studio and walk to the lot where my car is parked. Around me the recently renovated factory buildings of the old garment district drip with new money. I pause under the awning of a woman's clothing boutique. The window mannequin has Natalie's nose and sharp upturned breasts.

As I look up at the heavy gray blanket of starless sky I imagine it protecting all the sleepy lovers. They wake in the morning to untangle limbs and behind the shaded windows they sort out their underwear on the bedroom floor and begi9n the days conversation.

A pressure like deep unresolved hunger rolls up from my groin and lodges in the pit of my stomach. I am tempted to slip out of the light into a darkened corner and relieve my carnal pressure under the gaze of this counterfeit voyeur. Like some street corner pervert whacking off in front of startled schoolgirls. And as I stand there staring at the window I realize there is more than a resemblance to Natalie's flesh in this porcelain facsimile. They are both hard and cold.

A taxi sloshes by with its darkened roof light and steamed windows. Rushing on with its human freight. For a moment I feel safe and protected under my wide English umbrella. A wet mist settles slowly on the black pavement and yellow globes of incandescence surround the street lights like balls of pain.

At the corner a man in a wheel chair sits out in the drizzle. Caught in the spotlight during the filming of a bad movie: the dark side of Singing in the Rain. His dirty pant legs are tucked up under his stumps and his metal cup is overturned on the sidewalk. Pennies and nickels scattered like a lost and desolate life, exposed.

His thin gray hair is plastered to his head and tears streak his dirt stained face. He reeks from cheap wine and tobacco and as I push him under an awning he opens his eyes and looks up at me. He points nicotine stained finger at his scattered coins and I scuttle out from under the awning to sweep them up.

A passing car splashes a wave against the curb. It licks at my leather shoes and at the last second melts back onto the road and runs fiercely along the gutter seeking the drain.

The man stares at me with a toothless grin as I hand him the cup."Bless you." He says, gripping my hand tightly as I try to pull back. His dirty fingers are cold and as he draws me closer I fear he means to thank me with a kiss from those cracked and pealing lips. But he only looks into my eyes as if searching for some answer, and satisfied it's not there he lets my fingers slip away.

I turn from the old man slumped in his chair under the awning. I am half way down the street when he begins to sing something Irish and mournful. It drifts towards me on the empty street like some piece of shared history I've long since forgotten and he feels I should remember.

I turn the experience to productive currency. A voice over narration for some as yet unrealized project.

Role the film. Music. Narration.

"You out there sitting safely beyond pity in the darkened theater. Why all this human suffering you ask. To what purpose this life of grief and pain? No answer? Tell me this then. Did you think to discover wisdom laughing and playing in the Garden of Eden?Ah! If only it were so simple."



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