Beautiful Words

disclaimer: this chapter may or may not contain beautiful words. Jimmy gets a job! also, what's up with Olivia? tbc

Last night I dreamed I was Michael J. Fox, and I played “Johnny Be Good” at my parent’s school dance in front of a sea of gaping teenagers in fifties finery. At nine AM, in the middle of my guitar solo, my phone rings and jolts me into reality. I grope for it in the dark and when I answer I am greeted by the cheerful voice of Roger, the manager at the garage where my uncle used to work. 

“Hello, Jimmy?” 

“Uh, yes, that’s me.” I rub my eye.

“This is Roger Chapman, from Mac’s Garage.”

“Oh, good morning, sir.” I try my best to match his energy level.

“I have good news! We’re looking for someone to replace our weekend guy, he’s moving to Dallas. Can you start Saturday?” 

“Yes, sir, absolutely.” I feel my heart stop.

“Good. Come by at seven thirty, I’ll show you around the shop.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

After I hang up I walk to the kitchen, looking for Olivia, but she is gone. She left me a note explaining that she is at another doctor’s appointment and punctuated with a smiley face. I go back to bed and fall asleep for a few more hours. When Olivia gets home she collapses on the couch.

“I have good news.” I sit down next to her and her eyes open halfway. “I got a call from Mac’s Garage, I start on Saturday.”

“That’s great.” She smiles faintly. 

“You look like you could use a nap.” 

She nods wearily, so I cary her to her room and set her down in her bed. She says it’s nice to have your own personal steed. 

“Thank you, Jimmy.” She squeezes my hand and rolls onto her side. I shut the door quietly. At three o’clock I wake her up for work and she gets ready, but she is still very tired. A few hours after she leaves my brother’s car appears in my driveway next door. I watch him bang on the door for a while, before opening it and going inside. It’s not locked, because why would it be. They spend a good fifteen minutes looking for me, then get back in the car and drive away. 

After dinner I go next door and shave for the first time in like a month. My facial hair grows in pretty scraggly, so I try to keep it shaved when I, you know, give a f**k. I dry my face on one of my scratchy towels and look at myself in the mirror. So does this mean I give a f**k again? I’ve got thick eyebrows, and thin lips and brown eyes and hair. I am incredibly unremarkable. This is not the face that will change the world. It’s a face you would pass over in a crowd. I comb my hair a little, but it won’t stay down. I turn to walk back next door, but I have a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Even clean-shaven and gainfully employed, I don’t deserve Olivia, and I know I never will. 

When she gets home she strips out of her uniform and goes to bed. She is sound asleep in moments. I am restless, though, so I walk out into the woods and sit with my legs dangling down into my grave. Every bone in my body, every vain, every nerve ending, wants me to lay down in the dirt and never get back up, but I don’t. There’s so much noise inside my skull and I just want it all to stop. I cycle through an endless, maddening series of memories and images: Katie, Olivia, the liquor store, Katie, David and Maria, Katie, Olivia, Julia. I want to be grateful for a second chance, but I’m not. I still want to die. I am still consumed by the dark emptiness of my grave. I go back inside at one in the morning and fall asleep on the couch. 

When the sun comes up and shines through the kitchen windows it wakes me up and Olivia is sitting at the table in a big t-shirt, with a mug of coffee in her hands. She smiles at me as I pull myself to my feet and come join her. 

“You shaved your scruff.”

I nod, “It was pretty gross.”

She reaches up and runs her fingers over my chin, “It looks good.”

I miss her touch as soon as her hand is gone. 

I pour myself a cup of coffee

“I had a nightmare last night: you got me pregnant.” She says without looking up. 

I raise my eyebrows at her over my first sip. 

She laughs, shakes her head. “Ugliest freakin’ baby I’ve ever seen in my life.”

After breakfast I walk back to the bedroom to get dressed, and find myself distracted by a dog-eared volume of poetry which is sitting on the dresser. Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows by Rod Mckuen. I read it cover to cover before noon. I love poetry, I tried so hard to write it in high school, but I was never any good. I just hate metaphors. I don’t get them. Katie used to read poems she liked to me, and explain them. She got metaphors. She always had beautiful words to say. I wish I could say beautiful words. I wish I could go back in time six years and say words so beautiful that she would never leave. 

I put the book back on Olivia’s dresser and take three deep breaths, wiping the tears out of my eyes. 

When I step out of the bedroom Olivia is standing in the middle of the living room, in front of the blackened television screen, still in her pajamas. Her feet are apart, and she is bent sideways, so the arch of her back is nearly parallel with her long, slender leg. I watch her slowly straighten upward, then bend the opposite way, resting her hands on her right ankle this time. She holds this pose for a few breaths, then straightens once more before getting to her knees and bending backwards until her palms lie flat on the floor behind her. Our eyes meet and she sits up so she can turn and face me right side up.

“How long have you been standing there?” She asks, smirking, leaning on her bent knee. 

“Oh, uh, uhm, n,not long. I mean, long enough. Wow.”

She laughs, “Would you like to join me?” 

“No, no, I’ll just watch.”

She shakes her head, chuckles, “Come here.” 

So I spend the next half hour doing yoga with Olivia, which is awkward. I feel like a moose trying to keep pace with a fawn. I am not flexible or graceful, but Olivia tries not to laugh at me and ignores my obvious leering. 

When we are finished I collapse on the floor and she straddles me, one leg on either side of my pelvis. She leans down and kisses me, I close my eyes and feel her tongue probe the inside of my mouth, her chest pressed against mine. When she sits up again she runs her hands over my chest and I feel light-headed. Over the past week I’ve grown so accustomed to seeing that devious, toothy smile, framed by her wispy, honey-colored hair. 

“You are so beautiful.” Katie used to call me guileless. She said it didn’t matter how beautiful the words were if they didn’t mean anything. But I always said what I felt, and she thought that was “spectacular”. But I know better: anybody can be honest. There isn’t anything spectacular about it. Suddenly, I’m struck with loneliness, and I wish I could get up and go find a private place to cry for a while, because the way Olivia is looking down at me doesn’t show appreciation for my guilelessness. I wish I could take it back. 

She slides off of me and lays down on the carpet by my side, her eyes are laughing at the pathetic, helpless look on my face.

I want this moment to be over so bad, to wash away the stains left in the air by my last words, so I clear my throat and say, “So you do yoga? You don’t seem like the type.”

She shrugs, “Recently, yea. I like it. It’s. . . Relaxing. What do you mean, I don’t seem like the type?” She grins, looking at me sideways. 

I shrug, “I don’t know. I thought the only people who did yoga were health freaks.”

She smiles, “Nah, it keeps me bendy.” She winks. There’s a brief moment of silence. “I wish I had met you at a different time in my life, Jimmy.” Olivia’s voice shakes as she says this, then she gets up and leaves the room. 

I spend the next half hour laying on the floor looking up at the ceiling, because what the f**k does that mean?

When Olivia leaves for work I go back into her bedroom to take a nap. The few articles of clothing I have here have been cleaned and sit, folded in a neat pile on her dresser. This is a painful reminder that, firstly, I’m supposed to be dead by now, and also I am sleeping with the sensual embodiment of perfection. I lay down, but I can’t get to sleep: her sheets smell like fresh-baked cookies. I lay on my back and count the cracks in the ceiling. Perhaps there is something I do not know about Olivia. She can’t be all shower sex and yoga, right? And whatever it is is the reason she isn’t looking for a boyfriend, yet continues to treat me like one. It is the reason she is sweet but distant. It is the reason she wishes she had met me at a different time in her life. 

I consider the possibilities, but nothing I can come up with seems to fit quite right. Fleetingly, I wonder if she’s pregnant. That would explain it, right? Pregnant girls act weird, throw up a lot, and she’s waiting to tell me about the baby because she doesn’t want to scare me away. With a frown, though, I remember her ribs pushing up through her skin and the cigarettes she was constantly lighting, holding between her fingers or extinguishing at the bottom of a very full ashtray. She can’t be pregnant. 

I step into the bathroom and I notice Olivia’s medication sitting on the countertop. I read the label: prednisone. I’ve never heard of it. My mother ran the gamut of anti-depressants over the years, and that’s not one of them. So I look the stuff up on the internet. Wikipedia presents a long list of disorders the drug is used to combat, including asthma and lupus. Suddenly, I am very uncomfortable, so I shut the browser. Big angry knots are tightening around my organs; I guess I’m concerned about her. She does go to the doctor a lot, maybe it’s something serious. I bet she has her reasons for not telling me, though. I shouldn’t have gone looking for answers to questions I wasn’t ready to ask.

When she gets home all I can do is sit in grim silence and wonder. She is cheerful and flirtatious like usual, only I can read the pain and lethargy she’s been hiding just below the surface.