Still Shiny

by

Matthew McFarland

Casey Chernisky had turned the shower on before he realized he was still wearing his jacket. He shrugged out of it and threw it onto the toilet. He shucked the rest of his clothes while he waited for the water to heat up. It always took forever. The heater in his apartment building was probably older than the building itself, and sometimes in winter it made a frightening rattling noise if he took too long in the shower. Today, though, he didn’t feel like waiting.

Casey stepped into the shower and immediately jumped back from the still-cold water. He stood there a moment, the water striking only his legs from the knees down, but now damp and aware of the drafts.

In a moment, the shower warmed up a bit, and he stepped into the water. He was immediately disappointed. He had hoped the shower would make him feel better, but he still felt sick. Not even sick, worse. When he was sick, he felt queasy, but if he puked he’d feel a bit better for a while. He had no answers for this. It was like walking in a deep haze, like he had just woken up and was a second behind the world.

He dropped his head against the side of the shower. On one level, he wanted to scream, to smash his hands against the porcelain walls until the water in the bathtub ran red and chalky with plaster and blood. On another, he wanted to fall. Just fall gently backwards and hopefully not hear the crack of his skull against the tub. Just lay there and drown.

“Fuck,” he whispered. His hand went to his face, ran over his stitches. He had an awful urge to grab the end and pull, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to look worse than he already did.

He carefully washed his stitches, and it felt good, doing something that he could be careful about, that he could concentrate on. But then he thought that it felt nice and the feeling returned. Why should anything feel good? he thought. Why? Nothing did. There was still that empty feeling in his stomach like someone had poured salt on a slug and made it shrivel up.

Casey half-heartedly washed the rest of his body, then stood in the shower for what seemed like a long time. He had no desire to get out. If he did, then he’d be in his little tiny apartment, filled with things that he didn’t want to see, walls making him feel like he should run out into the world that always kicked him.

He got out, toweled off, and threw himself, still naked and damp, onto the bed. The springs screeched in pain. He squirmed around onto his back and looked up. His ceiling was too low. The ceiling was too low; the walls were too close together. He felt like a G. I. Joe action figure in a dollhouse; the proportions were all wrong, no matter how nice it all looked. He chuckled; it had taken him a long time to afford moving out on his own, he’d almost lost the place while he’d been hospitalized, and now it was making him claustrophobic.

Hospitalized. He usually put it that way because it sounded better than “got the shit kicked out of me.” He touched his face again. He still didn’t have any good idea of how his face had gotten cut. Everything after “Fuck you, punk”, was blurry.

His mind started the projector, showed him the clip of that night. He didn’t want to see it. He hadn’t wanted to see it while it happened. He shut his eyes, but that only made it easier to see the door behind the club, where he waited for the guy. Lila was just inside, and when the guy came around the corner and started heading for the door, Lila had said, “That’s him”, and walked back into the club to get ready to call security.

Casey hadn’t known exactly who the guy was; all he had known was that he attacked Lila, or something. But he’d always said if anything were to happen like that, he’d take out the guy who did it. And anyway, he didn’t look so big.

When he walked toward him, Casey had felt much as he did now. Hazy, dreamlike. It wasn’t like he wasn’t himself; he knew who he was, he just couldn’t believe what he was doing. He’d shoved the guy. “Fuck you, punk,” the guy had said, and hit him.

The punch surprised Casey with its brutality. The guy hit him squarely in the nose, and all Casey saw was white. He felt pressure at the three punches the guy threw after that, pressure on his cheek, eye, and mouth. Then the guy had thrown him to the ground.

This was it, thought Casey. He’s done. He’ll walk right by me. Casey picked himself up to his hands and knees, and the guy kicked him in the ribs and jammed his heel into the small of Casey’s back.

Casey’s gum was still in his mouth, but all he could taste was blood and asphalt. His ears were ringing, throbbing, and his breath was gurgling in his throat. His mouth was full of copper, and he remembered spitting and seeing his gum sitting there in a pool of red, and then there was a pressure on his face -

Which must have been when he cut me, thought Casey. The doctors - and the cops - had said that Casey had been sliced with a broken bottle or something similar. Casey didn’t remember, all he knew was that when the pressure stopped, and he was trying to move, that’s when she saved him.

Casey got up, fought back the headrush it brought, and walked hurriedly, shakily, to the fridge for a drink. He dug out a half-full bottle of Jim Beam and took a pull, fighting back the urge to cough because it made his face hurt to do so. He just didn’t want to think of her, not in that light, not in that way that had started this whole thing.

She hadn’t said a thing to her crazy boyfriend. She just touched his chest and looked him in the eye. Then she knelt down to Casey. He could smell the smoke from the club still on her. She must have been cold. All she was wearing was the uniform of the evening, tight black shorts and a white T-shirt. Her hair was that indeterminate light brown sometimes called dishwater blonde, but it was thick and it fell on Casey’s forehead. The light from the door was behind her, and she didn’t smile or anything like that, she just looked scared. I’m okay, Casey had thought, I’m okay. But he hurt too much to speak. She had started to say something, and then the psycho yanked her away. Casey hadn’t seen her again until the hospital.

He sat down on the bed and switched on the TV. There really wasn’t anything on he wanted to watch; even MTV was playing rap, and that would annoy more than distract him. He took another drink, then got up and put the bottle away. Getting drunk wouldn’t help; anyway, he had to work the next morning.

I wonder if they need a closer tonight, thought Casey. I could go in and close, then just sleep in my car and open tomorrow. It’s always busy around now.

They couldn’t use me, anyway, though, he reminded himself. The little diner he worked in had told him that he couldn’t make food with a big wound on his face, and he was to avoid working counter or tables if at all possible. This left doing dishes and other “out of sight” work. The only thing to do now would be dishes, and he was sure there’d be someone there for it. Damn, he thought, I can’t even kill time working.

The worst thing was, he had no idea how much time he had to kill. When he had a cold, he’d just rest, but doing that now would just let his mind wander. But he didn’t have the energy to actually do anything, or the initiative to think of anything to do. It was late; the malls were closed, there were no more movies to see, and only the bars would still be open. Casey hated bars.

He got up again, and pulled on a pair of sweats. He considered renting a movie, but he’d have to be careful what it was. A horror or action movie would get him too keyed up to sleep, as would any kind of erotic or psychosexual thriller. A drama was right out. A comedy would be good, if it was something silly and lowbrow; a romantic comedy would probably really upset him. A good porno might be nice, but the last time he had rented one, every woman had looked like her, and he had to turn it off.

He grabbed his cordless phone off the cradle and punched in Lila’s number. He was pretty sure she wasn’t home, but it was worth a try. He stood there, pacing, while it rang, his gigantic feet scuffing on the threadbare carpet. After four rings, she answered.

“Hello?” Her voice was sleepy. Damn it, thought Casey.

“Hi. It’s me. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Oh, hi.” She didn’t sound annoyed. “No, I was just watching TV.” Pause, apparently as she turned it off. “What’s up?” Concerned. Probably knows why I’m calling, he thought.

“Nothing, really. Just bored. Nothing to do. I hate this fucking city.”

“Yeah.” She yawned. “You sure you’re ok?”

“I guess, why?”

“Oh, I went into work to get my check and saw Misha.” Here it comes, he thought. He was sweating. The shriveled up feeling returned to his stomach, and spread all the way from his throat to his balls.

“Yeah?” he managed.

“Yeah, she just said you’d been in and you guys talked and you seemed really upset.”

“And?” There had to be more than that. They had been so tense, the both of them. She’d seemed so scared, and all he’d wanted to do was hold her, but she’d been -

“And...nothing. She just said you had a crush on her and she told you she had a boyfriend and all and that was it.”

“Oh.” The shriveled-up feeling was gone, and in its place he felt queasy and rotted. “Yeah, that’s about what happened.”

“So are you OK?”

“I don’t know, Lila.” His voice cracked. He knew how weak and psycho he sounded, but he couldn’t think of a way to cover it.

“Hey,” it was a whisper, a cool, kind voice, “do you want to sleep here? I saw Crystal today. We could smoke.” That sounded good. It was always good when Lila bought from Crystal.

“Ok. I’ll be over in a while.” He hung up. Good old Lila. She always seemed to be able to help him. Hanging with her, talking, getting high, that might be ok. With anybody else, smoking right now might make things worse, but Lila could usually keep the mood light.

Casey took off the sweats, grabbed his jeans and a dingy sweatshirt, tucked his wallet in his pocket and yanked on his shoes. He looked around for his jacket for a frustrating ten minutes before he remembered he’d left it in the bathroom. He switched the light off, and trudged out to the parking lot.

He was walking quickly by the time he reached his car. He’d never been mugged in the lot, but other people had, and just now he was sure he looked like a target. Face all cut up, looking like he was about to cry, that must be an invitation. He unlocked his car and slipped into the seat.

The radio came on blaringly loud when he turned the key, the Danzig tape he’d been listening to still set to full volume. “Shit,” he hissed, wincing and then recoiling from the pain that wincing brought. He turned it down to a reasonable level, and pulled out of the lot.

Lila and Casey both lived in the north end of town, which was universally agreed to be the city’s white trash colony. Casey, however, lived further east, closer to the lake, whereas Lila lived just outside of downtown. This meant that Casey had to take Lake Drive to get to her place, which took him (appropriately enough) directly past the lake. He stared out at the water, through the rather flimsy guardrail. They should fix that, he thought with offhanded indignation. Somebody goes through that guardrail at least once a year.

He took the curve too fast, and had to step on the brakes to avoid becoming this year’s addition to that statistic. His heart didn’t jump, there was no rush of adrenaline. He didn’t care. He looked out at the water again, wondering how cold the water was. It looked cold. In summer, it looked inviting some nights, and he knew that high schools kids would canoe to the tiny island that sat a quarter mile off shore and fuck on the banks. He smiled as he remembered his days in high school, when one of his good friends had to swim after his canoe - naked - when it had floated off while he was occupied.

Casey had never done anything like that. He’d had a girlfriend in high school, but they hadn’t had sex until the night before final exams. He’d gone crazy until then, but privately. She’d wanted to wait. Now, two years later, he had no idea where she was. College, he imagined. He wondered if it mattered to her now, all the waiting and the “of course we’ll always be together”. It mattered to him. He hadn’t been the one to break it off. He never was.

Suddenly, randomly, Casey pulled off the road onto the gravel shoulder. He got out of his car and climbed over the guardrail, and walked on the rocks to the water’s edge. There was really no beach here, just sharp, white rocks. At the end of his block, the ground dropped away to those rocks without even an inch of sand in between. When he was feeling suicidal, he’d think about driving his car straight out to those rocks, just to see if his car would explode before it stopped rolling or sank into the lake.

At the moment, however, he wasn’t feeling suicidal. He just wanted to see how cold the water was. He balanced on a large rock and dipped his hand in. The water was freezing, just as he had thought. It stole the heat right out his hand, and Casey let it sit there in the water for a moment, feeling the cold, then the pain, then nothing as his hand went numb. He pulled his hand out and clambered over to a larger rock, and sat down.

How romantic, he thought, bitter as yesterday’s coffee. Sitting on the rocks, watching the moon - no, wait, no moon - watching the clouds, watching the black, freezing water. Just makes me wish I had someone to sit he and dip my toes with. Such bullshit. That’s what you get, he reminded himself, for watching too many movies and believing what you see. It all falls out so perfect then, girl comes out of nowhere, stops her psychotic boyfriend from killing you, and then you and she are supposed to fall in love.

He had. Misha hadn’t. She’d missed her fucking cue.

“Such bullshit,” he said aloud. He grabbed a pebble and threw it across the water. He heard a wet thunk out in the black distance as it sank. He felt cheated. He hadn’t realized that until now, but he felt like he was being shit on. It wasn’t, after all, like he had walked up to her and said, “Hey, wanna fuck?” or something like that. He wasn’t like a lot of the shits from his side of town, walking around with their mouths dumbly open, waiting for some chick that was bored enough to spread for them. He didn’t care so much about that. He loved Misha. So why hadn’t she at least been interested?

Because he’d come on too goddamned strong, that was why. Instead of saying, “Thank you so much,” or “How come you came to see me?” or something reasonable, when she’d come to see him in the hospital, he’d said, “God, you’re beautiful.” No “hello”, nothing like that. Just wake up, boom, there she is, and without even thinking, “God, you’re beautiful.” She’d blushed, said thanks, and they’d talked for a while, but Casey could tell she was nervous. Maybe she wouldn’t have been, if he’d thought before talking. Maybe she’d be more at ease, maybe.

He stood up, and jumped to another stone, trying to return feeling to his ass, which felt frozen. Yeah, maybe she would be. But hell, all he had done was complimented a woman. Why was that such a big deal?

Casey looked down at his watch and remembered Lila. She would be waiting, and probably worried, given how he’d sounded on the phone. He was feeling better, anyway. The rotted feeling was giving was to annoyance - why hadn't she at least given him a chance? He was OK, not a criminal or a rapist or any of the shit you might expect from a guy from his neighborhood. He was still thinking about this when the gleam caught his eye.

Something in the rock was catching the light from the streetlight. Casey leaned down and tried to get a better look, but any way he turned, he found he blocked his own light.

Probably a quarter or something, he thought. He stood up, and then leaned back down. He stared down between the rocks. He wondered if he could reach whatever it was. Casey was big, and his feet were enormous, but his hands were very small in comparison. He flattened his hand and reached into the crack. His hand fit, barely, and the tip of his finger touched the shiny object. It was a ring, it appeared, but he couldn’t quite get his fingertips around it.

“Damn,” he hissed. He laid down on his stomach, his legs spread, his feet on different rocks, and forced his hand down farther. He felt the skin on his hand chafe, and he wondered if this was really worth it. It was, he decided. He didn’t know why, but maybe that ring belonged to some woman in the south part of town, on the other side of lake, and she -

“And she what?” Casey snapped to himself, jerking his hand out of the rocks. More skin tore, but he didn’t care. “And she what?” he repeated. He knew what his mind was doing. He want that ring to belong to some woman he could love, and then she would love him for being kind enough to return the ring, and then they’d both love each other because the fucking script said so.

Casey sat back on the rock in disgust. He wanted that ring to be Misha’s, that’s what he wanted. “Did you lose this?” he’d ask. “Gasp, where did you find this?” Misha said back in his head. “Oh, by the lake,” he answered. “Thank you so much!” Hug, kiss, fade to black. Such bullshit. It was never going to happen.

But I can still get the ring, he thought. At least, if nothing else happens between Misha and I, I can say that I found this ring because of her. What the fuck? He jammed his hand down between the rocks again, heedless of how much the cold hurt his already damaged hand. His fingers hit the ring, and knocked it farther out of his reach.

“Oh, no you fucking don’t,” he threatened it. He lay down again, pressing his face up against the rock, straining to reach the ring. His fingertip touched it. He pushed farther, trying to pick it up. He felt the edge of the rock against his face, pushing on the slice on his cheek. He kept pressing, almost there.

He heard a crunch of gravel by the road. He moved his head, and felt a stitch break against the rock. He cursed in pain, and in sheer, quivering frustration, thrust his hand down and grabbed the ring between two fingers. He sat up on the rocks, feeling a trickle of blood on his face.

Suddenly, there was a light in his eyes. He held his hands up to shield to his eyes. He heard a man’s voice say, “You OK down there? What’re you doing?”

“Nothing.” He felt like a kid caught searching for his dad’s porno mags. “Could you get that light out of my face?” The light fell away. Casey stumbled over the rocks and climbed the guardrail again, tucking the ring into his pocket. The cop put the light back up as soon as Casey cleared the guardrail.

“How much have you had to drink tonight?” asked the cop.

Subtle, thought Casey. “Nothing.” It didn’t even occur to him that he was lying.

“Let me see your eyes.” The cop looked at his eyes, and Casey just tried to look sober and uninteresting. The cop shined his light over Casey’s car, and then back at Casey. “What’d you do to your face?”

“Got in a fight about a week ago. I slipped and hit it on the rocks.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“Nothing,” Casey repeated, by now feeling annoyed. “I was just sitting out there. Is that OK?”

“Yeah, but you shouldn’t park your car here.”

“Oh, OK.” Casey turned around and walked - in a deliberately straight line - back to his car. He got in, turned up the music, and drove away.

He didn’t think about the ring again until he got to Lila’s. He was thinking more about his face. It looked worse. One of his stitches had broken, and the cut was wider in the middle. He’d need to go back to the hospital and get it fixed, he realized. He mopped the blood off his face with a napkin, trying to keep clear of the wound.

He knocked on Lila’s door, and she answered. He could smell incense from inside. “What, you started without me?”

“No, just burning incense. What the hell happened to you?”

Casey walked in and sat down. “Just get the bowl. It’ll seem funnier if we smoke first.”

Lila nodded, locked the door, and brought out her bowl. They smoked together, quietly, Enigma on the stereo, coughing and occasionally sighing. Casey told her what had happened, more or less. He didn’t bother to tell her that the ring belonged to a woman that didn’t exist, the woman that loved Casey in the same fucked-up generation X obsessive stalker way that he loved her.

“So where’s the ring?”

“Oh, shit. I haven’t even looked at it yet.” They both laughed, Lila rather loudly, Casey silently. It hurt his face less that way. He pulled the ring out of his pocket. It was a small, thin, silver band. Once, there might have been something etched on it, but it had faded too much to tell exactly what the design was. Lila took it and tried it on - it fit her index finger.

“Kinda pretty.”

“Yeah, whatever. Can’t believe I fucked up my already fucked up face for her.” Casey didn’t even realize his word choice until Lila caught it.

“Her?”

“Her. It, I mean.”

“Mmm.” Lila was holding the ring between her fingers, watching it shine in the candlelight. She always did that sort of thing while stoned. “Who’s the ring?”

“I don’t know whose it is.” Casey took another hit from the bowl, and decided he’d probably had enough. He did have to work in the morning, after all.

“I didn’t ask you whose it was, I asked you who it was. You called it “her”.”

“Slip of the tongue.”

“Mmmm,” Lila purred again. “Maybe. But I think bullshit. Freudian slip. Who is it?”

“Don’t get all deep on me, OK?” Casey laughed. “I just found it. If it’s anybody, it’s somebody faded and old.”

“But still shiny?” Lila was playing with it again.

“Huh?” Lila repeated herself, but Casey was thinking about what she said. His non-existent woman wasn’t shiny, she was gone. She was a dream, some fucked up excuse for a sexual fantasy without the filler of the sex. She was what he couldn’t have, he thought. But still shiny? Still enough to catch his eye?

He tried to clear his head, but it wasn’t working. He watched the ring shine, and shine it did, so much that both he and Lila watched it, mesmerized, until the candle suddenly burnt out, and they were left in the dark.

“You got your lighter?” she asked. Hers was on the table, and she couldn’t reach it easily.

“Yeah,” he said with a laugh. Lila didn’t react to the laugh; Casey was thinking that his quest for the ring might have been easier had he remembered he had a lighter in his jacket. Casey reached across the floor for his jacket, and pulled out the latest in his series of lighters. He never ran out of fluid, he just always lost them. He didn’t smoke anyway, so he wasn’t ever sure why he carried one; they just seemed to come in handy. He lit the candle again, and noticed Lila was wearing the ring on her finger again. “You like it, huh?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, it’s kinda cool.”

Casey smiled with the side of his face that didn’t hurt. They were a pair, the two of them, him with a big gash over his face, her with a broken nose. “How’s your face?”

“Hurts. Yours?”

“Hurts.” He scooted closer to her, rubbed her shaved head. “Fuzz.”

“Yeah.” She lay down and put her head in his lap. “It’s been a fucked up day.”

“Yeah it has. Every day is fucked up if you’re fucked up.”

“Are we?” She turned over and looked up at him.

“I think so. I think everybody is.”

Lila looked thoughtful for a minute. Then, she shook her head. It tickled Casey’s leg through his sweats. “Do you love Misha? I mean, it is like a crush or like an obsession?”

“I don’t know,” Casey sighed. His hand dropped to her stomach. “I think I was obsessed for a while there, but now I’m just sort of pissed that she didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“She’s fucked up.”

“Everybody is. I don’t love her. Maybe I could’ve, but it’s weird. It’s like, you say something, and right away everybody thinks you just want to screw. I don’t really even care about that.”

“No?” They’d had this talk before, and it always seemed to surprise Lila.

“No. I mean, I like sex, but it’s not like all I think about. Am I gay?” They both burst out laughing. Lila sat up and pulled off her sweatshirt. For a moment, her T-shirt came up with it, and Casey got a glimpse of her breasts. They were small, round, and pretty. Lila, thought Casey, was really very sexy, when she wasn’t wearing baggy clothes that hid her body.

“What?” said Lila. Casey was still watching her.

“Nothing,” answered Casey, shaking his head. “You just, uh...” he motioned to her shirt.

“Oh, did I flash you? I’m sorry.” She laughed again, and leaned against his shoulder.

“Oh, like I’m gonna complain. Just ‘cause I’m not a walking hormone don’t mean I can’t appreciate your tits.” He grabbed his lighter and jammed it back in his pocket, and then saw the look on her face. It was a smile, but not a playful one, just a caring one. Then she looked thoughtful, and staring over his shoulder, poised her mouth as thought about to ask him something. “Yes?”

“Casey?” Still not looking at him, still looking thoughtful.

“Yeah?”

“If I were you ask to sleep with me, would you?” Casey thought about this. He and Lila had been friends for a long time, but had never been intimate that way. He’d thought about it, even called her face to mind during late night masturbation sessions, but never really considered it. Now he did. Would he like to? Yeah, I would, he thought, but not because I need a place to stick my dick. Just because it would be cool, because we’re friends, and it would just be something that friends would do if everybody weren’t so afraid of it.

“Yeah,” he answered.

She pounced on that answer with another question. “Why?”

He edited his answer a bit. “Because you’re my friend, and I care about you, and I think it’d be cool. Why?”

She shook her head. “Tell you later. I told you, been kind of a weird day.” She blew out the candle, and then he felt he lips. He reflected that they would both have to be gentle with each other’s faces, and he felt her take off her watch and her rings.

“You can keep that ring, by the way.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. It fits you, and anyway, I thought maybe I should give it to someone-” she cut him off, kissing him.

“Let’s discuss it later.”

They got up and walked into the bedroom, and Casey carefully shut the door behind them.

© 2000 Matthew McFarland

No reproduction is allowed without the author’s express permission.

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