On a cold day, she'd wear her heart on her sleeve and her eyes would mist over at the sight of snow. And this was how she was like, so fragile, so shooken up like a spilled snowglobe. She was beautiful that way, I thought. She was untouched and she smelled of vanilla flowers, ones that you stopped to smell in the grocery store right before you reached the aisle with whiskey and wine. She talked with hesitancy and she spoke with cohibition. She was timid and small, her face reading like a book, but so quiet. And this was why we chose her. Because she was perfect. Because she was a virgin of conversation and wit. Because she couldn't open her eyes without feeling blinded.
She sat on the edge of the chair, her back slightly hunched, her eyes closed. She was so beautiful, you know? Her skin was light and her eyes were the saddest things you've ever seen. They were so blue, blue like the ocean, blue like the Picasso print that hung so loosely above her bed of white and feathers. So after mentioning Segovia, she shrunk back and she barely questioned me. She blinked, an emotion not yet registering on her fair face, and then a word so small and so large at the same time, "Spain." And at first I wanted to smile, smile that secret smile that I only had for her and her naivete alone, but I nodded. Spain. Segovia. Segovia was small, it was charming, and it was exactly where she was going. It was where she'd smile at the sun and let herself become the girl she was. It was where she was going, she wanted to, she had to. She had nowhere else to go. She was void of a home and a disposition. So now she only sat in silence. And goddamnit, that was why we chose her. That was why we chose her. She didn't smile, didn't look, didn't laugh, just stared. She sat staring at the mysteriously green carpet beneath her feet. She kicked it a little bit with her kitten heel that she so wanted to look normal on her, and let her satin feet plant firmly on the ground. She didn't know. She didn't know how much I wanted her to smile with me, how much I wanted her to stare down the barrel with me with a look of satisfaction, a look of hope. My hands flew across the small piece of paper and my signature was a tiny scrawl of ink on the bold line. A ripped the check out of the book with triumph and I handed her the last bit of resolve she had left, a check for 250 dollars. A check to revise her thoughts and a check for her to fund the only resolution left. Her hands, so slender and pale, reached for the check, but I pulled back and shook my head. She said nothing. I threw the check at her, it fluttered at her feet in languid movements and landed next to her precious little shoes. She made no move to pick it up, she just stared. Stared, stared, stared. Her eyes burned holes into the damp, green carpet and silence filled the room as she listened to the door click. And just like that, I had left it up to her. Exactly twenty-three days later, we sat together in a hotel room filled with musk and the stench of Spain. She was silent. She itched and tore as she fumbled with the black leather gloves that masked her pale hands. A thump. The same green carpet lay at her feet as she watched herself fall to the floor. I sat with silence and with praire as I sat in the small cushioned chair that sat so lonely at the corner. A soundless body lay at my feet, a gun still smoking at hers, and a trail of blood seeping into the green carpet that lay at his. No sound. Just silence and blood and Segovia. We sat for awhile, not watching, just sitting, and I let my eyes wander to the old Spanish guitar that leaned against the depressed walls filled with loopy designs that faded to a pale yellow. He always played, he was peotic and philosophical and he claimed that his heart belonged in music. He would write songs and letters and poems and store them in a box of cigars. He was so fucking poetic. His philosophy went to waste years ago and now he was just rotting like a fucking romancist crooning his songs of misery and theory in a city like this, a city with nothing but walls and sweat. So when I said my last goodbyes to Justin Timberlake, he stared at me with glassy eyes and I flicked my cigarette out of the balcony and waited for her to follow. She sat, with eyes closed, kitten heels kicked off, and a face void of emotion. She got up, slipped so gently into her heel that she never fit, and walked without a look of remorse. She stared down the barrel of the gun and threw a glance at me. I smiled, a secret smile. She laughed, a beautiful laugh. And she shut the door, slipped the gun so carefully into her coat jacket and reached for the thin material of the check. The only noise in the room that night was the tear of a check and the flutter of little paper pieces littering all over a philosophical husband that never learned how to say I love you and goodbye. |
