A rather long short story.

The Story of Ms. Faded Glory


My placid college existence took a sudden dive two weeks ago this Monday. The plunge began with a knock when Nick, a distant acquaintance, persistently banged on my door on a particularly dark Monday morning.
I was lying on my crimson couch in the living room, reading Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood next to a white ceramic table lamp when the headlights of Nick’s MR2 splashed through my blinds and onto Murakami’s pages detailing The Great Gatsby’s impact on Toru Watanabe’s college existence. I stumbled up from the cushions, grabbed a pair of Bullhead jeans, and opened the door. “The hell do you want? It has to be—wait, don’t even tell me,” I said. I rubbed my eyes and flicked the porch light on, enveloping my small drive-way and Nick’s red MR2, in a modest band of yellow light.
“Sorry about all this, I know it’s early and all, but uh, how’re you doing?” Nick asked. He was standing in front of my doorway biting his small lower lip.
“Man, I don’t know. I’d be a lot better if I was under my comforter. The hell do you want?” I asked again.
Nick wore a green bandana with black embroidery on his head. The bandana completely covered his long black hair except for the spindly strands that fell along the sides of his temple. His carefully trimmed beard and narrow mustache combined with his hemp necklace and tie dye shirt invoked the image of a man caught between attending a three night music festival and becoming a proprietor of a downtown bohemian restaurant.
“It’s not so much what I want,” Nick said. He released his lower lip, changed his thin lips into crooked smile, and made an attempt to walk inside as if it was a Saturday afternoon.
“Just tell me what it is; can you at least do that?” I asked. I blocked the door as I stifled a yawn with a closed fist.
“All right, all right, just take it easy will you,” Nick said. He was still producing a bent smile.
“Take it easy? It’s 6 am, take it easy won’t wake up till 9 am,” I said.
“It’s about Nicole…all right,” Nick said. The light from his black eyes waned and his smile vanished. He took two steps back from the door and sat, slumped up against the wooden support of the awning like a man who had received a series of jabs to his midsection. “Nicole needs a paper done and well, I need you to help me,” he said. His voice quivered slightly on the final syllable.
“Yeah, I’ll help you. I mean, I have to…you’re a fucking mess,” I said.
His hands were placed on the top of his head in an overtly protective position and his eyes stared down listlessly into the floor boards as if the answers that have kept men up into the early mornings for centuries had suddenly slipped through the boards below. Nick was always indifferent, far too indifferent for a display of emotion such as this.
As for Nicole, I knew her and it wasn’t like her to need help with papers or really, with anything. When people ask me about her I always tell them the story of a particular night that took place a few years ago. Nicole, for reasons I’d rather not speculate, found it necessary to drag me along to a golf course. It was raining, but it was one of those heavy rains that tend to stay with you after the sun returns. It seemed as if each individual drop of rain was creating a booming thud on the ground and the combination of hearing all the rain drops around you was like listening to a melodic, St. Patrick’s Day parade.
She brought along pieces of cardboard that we used to surf the fairways. We tried to cover the whole course, but on the ninth hole I reached the green from the beginning of the fairway in one glorious slide. I leaped off the cardboard and pealed off my white shirt in celebration. Behind me, bounding up a sand trap was Nicole. Her brunette hair was matted across her face from the rain, but she didn’t seem to care. Each step she made in the thick mud of the sand trap sounded like a thin sheet of plastic popping into the distance. “Looking like a natural,” she said, brushing strands of hair from her face.
“Oh, I wouldn’t read too much into it. It’s not that hard, really. You just have to gauge the right angle, body position, weight lean. It’s purely physics,” I said.
“Or purely luck--what was with the shirt thing?” She asked.
“Not impressed I take it?” I asked.
She brought her right hand across her chest and laughed, “I’ve seen better at Hooters. I’m talking, you know, about the fat, forty year-old men that drool over the busty eighteen year old waitresses as their six-year old son clamors for another Sprite.”
We sat, facing each from both sides of the hole on the ninth green. Stretching out our legs, and leaning back on our hands; the grass, finely cut, felt like small spikes against the skin. In a comfortable silence we leaned our head back and caught droplets of water from the dark clouds levitating overhead. “You figured out what you want to do yet, you still thinking of writing?” Nicole asked, interrupting our meditation as she brought her head back from the sky.
“Yeah, I enjoy it and it doesn’t involve math. Two huge bonuses,” I said. I stretched out my hands, imitating a man detailing the exaggerated size of his recent catch from a fishing trip.
“Stick with it, that’s what I’d do. I’m thinking of real estate though. Hell, maybe I’ll be a burn out wearing military boots. Maybe I’ll be a burn out with a listless boyfriend.”
“Sounds promising, burn outs are in high demand these days. It’s a very popular profession,” I said.
“Well, you know how much I love to fit in with the crowd.”
“About as much as Rick Santorum enjoys watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. You know, maybe I’ll have a listless girlfriend and we’ll all hang out a couple years down the road and do whatever burn outs do,” I said. I was enjoying my joke until Nicole broke the feeling of mirth.
“To be honest though, there’s nothing I want to do,” Nicole said. She lifted one side of her mouth up into a smirk, and dropped her eyes. I can still follow her lips when they tumbled down seconds later.
When we headed back from the ninth hole to her white Honda-hatch back smiling, covered in particles of grass and dirt, a broad bolt of lightning silently shot across the sky, followed immediately by a deafening crash of thunder. I’m not ashamed to admit that in the echo of the thunder, my casual walk turned into a desperate, frenzied sprint. In one motion I slammed the passenger door shut and fastened my seat belt. Placing my hand on the wool covered head rest, I gazed back pensively through the rear window, and watched Nicole stop, look up, wipe away a strand of mud from her forehead and yell over the heavy rain, “Lightning be damned, lightning be damned.” It was her fist standoff with the world. I like to think that she won the first battle.
I remember hearing on the radio, from a public broadcast station to be exact, that in the minor key, the mind reminisces: I should have said something about your hair extensions; I should have laughed, smiled, joked, or spoken softer. To this day, whenever a song playing contains a mellow guitar in the minor key, driving drums, and a bass playing three chords, I think of the rain drenched fairways.
More than two years have passed since that night. I lost touch with her when I heard she was seeing Nick.
“You’re serious? Okay, thought this was going to take hours. Meet me on campus in two days. I’ll give you the information then,” Nick said. He jumped up without a moment of hesitation.
On Wednesday I located Nick on the court yard in front of Strozier library. A game of Ultimate Frisbee was nearing a dramatic completion. Dave, a part-time chef, took a second out of the game to shout a greeting, and waved his long hand in the air. Nick was sitting south of the water fountain, playing his acoustic guitar in the shadows of a tightly grouped trio of pine trees. Sitting with him in the shade were four girls listening with alarming interest; their bellies and elbows resting on the grass, and their small chins resting on the inside of their hands.
“What’s the topic?” I asked. The girls looked up abruptly, revealing faces that expressed a clear disproval for my sudden interruption.
“John, how’ve you been?” Nick asked. He smiled and placed his guitar carefully on his knees.
“I’m sleeping better; what, with no Phish roadie knocking on my door at four in the morning. What’s the paper on,” I asked again.
“Oh, right, it’s a close reading on Walter Scott. It needs to be about eight pages long,” said Nick. “Compare and contrast—.”
“I know what to do, it’s not a problem. I’ve done this paper already; I’ll just change a couple things,” I said. One of the girls, tired of our banter, brushed off a clump of pine needles from her pink shirt and stood up.
“I’ll let you get back to your little concert. You’ll get the paper by Friday,” I said. Nick quietly bowed in response, carefully repositioned his green bandana, and as I walked away I regretfully listened to the slow strumming of a G cord and Nick’s grating, whining voice lift into the limbs of the pine trees standing overhead.
It was Thursday when I decided to talk to Nicole. She was living with Nick in a little two bedroom house with a screened in porch and a circular drive-way near Florida State University. Nicole was dressed in Capri pants, a pair of large black military boots, and a black halter top. Her brunette hair was cut shoulder length and deep lines were evident under her brown eyes. Graciously, she invited me in and the two of us walked to the couch in the living room as her large boots knocked on the hardwood floor. Nicole positioned herself on one end of the beige couch and casually crossed her legs. The lights were all off and the blinds were closed. Not a single stray ray of light reached the room.
“I hear Nick’s got you working on a paper,” She said, breaking the silence. With a light tap she placed an ash-tray on the glass covering of the coffee table and took a long drag on a fresh Virginia Slim. Slowly exhaling, she leaned against the back of the couch, adjusted her hair, and said, “I’ve been so busy lately, did you know that? “I’m like a damn indentured servant these days.”
“Busy? The guy down the street working two jobs is busy. The mom raising two kids by herself is busy. I really doubt that. Wait, what do you mean by a paper?” I asked, “You mean your paper…right?” I waved a hand in defense of the approaching cloud of grey smoke.
“John, you have to always be so serious. The one time I saw you loosen up was on that golf course a couple of years ago. Then the thunder just had to come--you know me, right? We’ve been friends for awhile now, right?” Nicole asked. She leaned slightly forward to study my reaction. The embers of her dwindling cigarette burned a crimson red.
“Yeah, I mean, I think I do,” I said, “but who actually knows anyone?” I glanced away and studied the empty guitar stand as a desire for light came over me. I was on the verge of asking if the blinds could be opened when Nicole stopped me short of asking.
With her cigarette nearly exhausted, she said, “The paper isn’t for me, it’s for Nick. Now, I hope you won’t get mad with me.” She extended a Virginia Slim to me as a truce offering. “Here, you could use a relief. I can tell.” Her light voice almost made the offer sound agreeable.
“A Virginia Slim?” I asked. “That’s a kind of emasculating, don’t you think?” “No one’s around to notice, it’s just me and you, I won’t tell a soul,” she said, smiling.
“I’m not interested, it’s the principle of the thing to be honest, just tell me what the hell is going on,” I said, nodding slowly in murderous exasperation.
“You already seem mad---you see, he needed help so I told him that you’d do it if you were kept under the impression that the paper was for me,” she said. “It’s been strange, really strange. We’ve just grown so far apart these past months; I just don’t have the desire to help him. John, a word of advice, don’t you ever get in a relationship.”
“Have you seen me hit on a member of the opposite sex?” I asked, my eyes opening wide in surprise.
“Oh, I have. It’s not pretty. The term ‘gag reflex’ comes to mind,” Nicole said.
“Damn, that’s a bit harsh, but yeah; I’ll admit, it’s pretty bad, kind of like driving by a car accident. It’s going to be horrible, but you can’t help but watch the remnants of the accident; you know, a broken limb here, a shattered ego there,” I said, laughing. “There was that one a couple years ago, but throughout the whole damn relationship she was stoned and I was lit like Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.”
“How’d it end?” Nicole asked, showing unexpected interest.
“Nicholas Cage dies,” I said.
“No, how’d your relationship end? You never told me about this.”
I thought I had told her. You see, a relationship carries significant weight for someone like me, specifically due to the rarity of the event.
“Well, we both kind of sobered up one morning. We threw the covers off, looked at each other for what was really the first time, and well, we didn’t like what we saw. One could say it may happen when the lust wears thin.”
Nicole laughed briefly, and looked down. She ran a hand along the seam of her pants; perhaps my story reminded her of a past fling. “So true, you won’t have to worry about it anytime soon. You know, Nick plays guitar for those fucking girls, probably sleeps around, the hippie, and I— I just sit here in the damn dark.”
I attempted to open the blinds, but Nicole, acting like the warden of a prison and with her eyes wrinkled tight, leaped up and said in a dry delivery, “No, please.”
The time to leave settled on us as we again sat motionless in the dark. She lit another cigarette and we said our goodbyes. Driving away, I turned down the radio, and remembered her smelling like sulfur, and she had never smelled like sulfur before.
It was Friday afternoon when I saw Nick again. He was playing guitar under the pine trees with the same audience. I held up my hand as he attempted to say hello and ignoring his pleas, I ripped his guitar from his hands. I sent the six string instrument into the trunk of one of the pine trees, shattering it like a piece of glass as cries of protest issued forth from a gathering crowd.
It was the evening when I returned to see Nicole. Nick was standing on the screened in porch, smoking a Marlboro cigarette. He paid no mind to the sound of my approaching steps as they crunched on the gravel drive-way. He just sat their, sucking in the tobacco and staring off into the passing cars. “You’re the last person I thought I’d see coming to this house, after that shit you pulled on me today,” Nick said, finally noticing me. “You owe me, John.” It was the first time I noticed him without his bandana.
“I don’t owe you a thing. I’m just here to see Nicole, it won’t take long.”
“I bet you do; she’ll be thrilled to see you. Well, go on. We can talk about the guitar after the two of you are done.”
Nicole was sitting on the couch as I came in. Her head turned abruptly when the door closed as if she knew it was me. She had on a white, short sleeved sweater that hung loosely around her shoulders.
“Why?” I asked. It was the first thing that came to mind.
Keeping her spot on the couch, she said, “Like I said, I knew you’d do it, and well, you did.”
I placed my shoulders against the door, “What about destroying the guitar?” I asked.
Nicole placed her arm along the back of the couch and faced me, “Yes, especially you destroying the guitar. You’re an idealist John. Your belief in love and your belief in me are things even a fool can manipulate. Save for maybe Nick. By the way, will you tell him to come in as you leave? He can nurse a cigarette longer than anyone I’ve known.”
I was about to shut the door, but I held it ajar. A thought was becoming a splinter, driving relentlessly deeper and deeper into my mind. I realized as I stood in the doorway that something very acute happens to certain people between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four. In that brief span of time their ambition becomes suppressed; wrapped up tightly with a white cloth as if their closely held desires have turned into a wound that needed to mend and heal for the rest of their existence. To remove the bandage would lead to an emotional suicide. They’re brown, and curled up on the edges like a leaf I thought as I wavered at the door and stared at Nicole. They’re enjoying a free fall until the ‘real world’ sets in at age twenty or so. After the descent, they lay rotting, motionless and without resistance. Their death, already an afterthought, is a mercy offering to their body years later.
With the grooves of the wood paneling grazing against the tips of my fingers, I said, “I just want to know what happened to you. You’re nothing now, just a crumbling cynic. With a boyfriend who you can beat down with your own pessimism as long as he’s afforded the opportunity to lay on top of you for maybe three minutes at a time. That’s if he’s lucky. That free spirit, that vitality is gone, nothings left.” I closed the door to the image of Nicole standing up, her eyes narrowing in anger.
“I was never something,” I heard her yell through the wooden door as I walked away.
I made my way back to my car in a trance, further angering Nick, who was banging on my car window for compensation for his totaled guitar. I think I even heard a rock hit my back window, but it could have been the throbbing in my head.
Nick still plays under the pine trees in the court yard, but it’s only his grating voice, and a single, run-down bongo drum making noise now. His audience has been reduced by half. The last I heard Nicole is no longer concerned about Nick’s fidelity and he hasn’t found it in himself to purchase a new guitar. Lightning be damned, I won’t fade.

Ah, the writers of Florida State University. I miss those breezy days in 2000. Lovely, just lovely.

Typical of the y and post-y generation, I feel.

Be blessed,

Jared

Small world, good times though, eh?

Have any constructive or destructive criticism to offer?