literature

Marlboro Meteorology

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Daily Deviation

Daily Deviation

December 4, 2010
Although =AlecWolfe suggested another piece by this deviant, I decided on Marlboro Meteorology by ~Chatzoth504 for its crisp imagery. It pulled me in from the opening lines, as much of this deviant's work does.
Suggested by AlecWolfe
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Literature Text

I can always predict the weather given how my morning cigarette goes.  If it tastes like cardboard or an old apple, it will rain hard in the late afternoon.  If burns the back of my nose, it will be cloudy all day.  If I get a toothache it means hail and anything blowing up into my eyes means hot, humid, and sunny.   My great grandmother had the same talent.  If her back itched it meant snow, if her neck hurt it meant midnight rains had come and gone.  Some things must jump generations.  

Looking at our flowerbed, you'd think it was snowing in July.  The kid above me would chain smoke and scream language learning dialogues at his computer, tossing ashes out the window in a steady, Vesuvian stream.  The land lady would always leave a filter or two as her treat when she'd leave notices for the rent crammed into door frames and mailboxes.  And of course I carried my own weight, poisoning tulips and lilacs.  It never washed away in the rain; it just thickened into a paste that crept between the landscaping pebbles.  Of course, you'd never notice it at night, just in the dull coppers of twilight and on cloudless days the sooty gray would drag your eye to it.  I'm glad she never came by at a time like that, letting herself out before dawn and usually crawling in with the cold and the rain.  

I never figured out if she smoked, even after tasting her lips and fingers countless times.  She always had a sweet merlot kind of flavor as she warmed up, distilling the cloying webs of evaporating water with her skin.  It felt so typical, sitting by the window on a silt sky day with a cup of oolong and The Great Gatsby, her waltzing into the apartment in a dim sepia haze and hanging her wet clothes over the shower curtain rod.  They'd linger there for days, dry leaves refusing to jump from a tree until the first real blizzard.  

Other times she wouldn't come.  I'd make some pasta with a garlic laden sauce and open a bottle of wine, lie on my bed and watch the ceiling spin wildly out of control while upstairs the furious muttering of Japanese sounded like demonic incantation.  My trash can full of banana peels and rejection letters, I'd relish the feeling of sinking and force myself to laugh out loud upon waking, dry mouthed and dizzy, a few hours later, mocking that stupid dash of time.  If it's bound to lap me eventually, why not stay alongside for a bit and relax?  I can be hellishly hypocritical at times.

She'd walk in while I was in the shower or stare at me for my last few minutes of sleep.  She always sent my dreams to cats hunting crabs.  White cats with brown spots, black cats with white spots, red crabs, blue crabs, green crabs.  The cat would paw the crab, get a pinch or two and throw the thing down the shore only to pad cautiously after it.  I'd wake up craving sea food and would steam some shrimp or mussels with or without her.  I didn't trust the crab this far from the coast, but we would whisper to each other about a day we'd both chip in and order one of those frozen Dungeness crabs from Alaska, steaming that ashen shell into a shiny lip stick red.  

I remember those afternoons the best, even though I don't dream of cats or crabs or anything much at all anymore.  She was always the dreamer; I just saw weather patterns in my cigarette smoke.

"We have to go all the way.  A huge ass crab so sweet we'll get sick."

"Works for me."

"No need for butter.  Just the meat, pull it from the legs and the claws and boil the shells for stock.  Call off from work on Friday.  We'll just crab all weekend and we'll make the bath smell like the ocean."

"I wish the bath could hold water for more than five minutes at a time."

"It doesn't matter.  We'll just refill it when it gets cold, steam the crab, steam ourselves, make the walls drip!"

"There's cats in these dreams too you know."

"I'm not eating cat.  We're getting a crab."

And we never did.  She just stopped coming round and I figured she'd graduated or something.  The image of her face got hazy and I couldn't be sure if it was her nose or my aunt's I stuck on the memory.  There's a paralyzing horror in losing memories like that if you let it get to you, it turns the blood blue.  So I busy my hands with cigarettes and spatulas and tea cups, waiting to get a good agent so I don't wind up memorizing how to get a hotel room before the kid upstairs.  I can already ask the time.  

I got an envelope this morning, my tongue scraping the roof of my mouth, stale with the taste of a UPS box.  The return address was written in Martian.  Or Arabic.  It was illegible.  Inside was a $30 check with 'Crab' scrawled in the memo line.  I knew it wouldn't bounce.   And I knew I wouldn't eat alone if I ordered it before the rain left.  So I grabbed my debit card, punched in some numbers, and paid with the last $20 I had set aside for July contests.  Sometimes there's exhilaration in sprinting, in catching up with that last 300 yards and tearing ahead through whatever Japanese slurry or suffocating heat hangs in the air.  That self-generated breeze, that throbbing in my legs.  I started to wonder why I ever gave up running, the sudden pounding of the rain masking the creak of my door.
The Chariot! At last, this one was so elusive... I still feel this piece is hazy, but I plan on working on it like all the rest. It's so nice to see a project come to a close, at this rate I'll actually meet my deadline!

A Daily Deviation?! Goodness! A great many thanks to those who read and enjoyed this!
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