Chapter 6: Trespassing

All day they roamed the mall.  Walking, talking and holding hands, even pausing to cuddle at the center court for a short time, they stole kisses and gazed at each other’s faces as if they both felt they had known the other would come into their lives.  It was as if they had forgotten it but as it occurred they remembered feeling like this before with this very person.

Peaches swung his hand high and wide nearly taking David off his balance.  He pretended to lose his balance and fell, quite realistically crumpling on the floor right in the middle of one of the wide halls.  Then he seemed to remember her laughing and pretending to kick him, all the way from his distant childhood.  Thinking it had been a premonition he had back then that was only now being fulfilled.  Now it was him who became troubled.

Peaches stopped her play seeing it similarly from her own childhood the same way.  So, she helped him up though he didn’t need it, and he accepted because it was offered.  They stared at each other a moment, each one staring into the other’s very dark eyes.

“I saw you do that whole scene when I was seven,” he said.

“Me too,” she said and then added, “But I was six.”

David said, “I never told anyone until now.”

Peaches looked down at the floor where David had pretended to fall.

“I told everyone who would listen,” she said.

David hesitated a moment and then said, “I know.”

“They think I’m crazy,” she said and fell silent.

He just walked along waiting for her to continue.

“It was because I told them it was because you were going to die before I met you.”

He still waited.

“I thought you were going to … well; die because even though I knew, I never stopped you.”

He started to protest but she put her fingers on his mouth so he stopped himself.

“I pretended Eugene Poole was going to instead of you.”

David was aghast, “Why would you do that?”

“I gave up on it being real … sort of … and thought I was pretending.  When I saw his name in the Variety section, I knew it was for real.  That is why I called him and told him.  Just like that I called his cell and got him, first try and all.  He had seen it too.  We often got together to figure out how to prevent it.  Each time we met, he was more and more despondent like.  But you know the end of it.  He just couldn’t stand not knowing when, so he chose his own way and time.  Then it was like the premonition had completed itself and everything had gone the way it was supposed to except I didn’t know anything about you.  Then you said what you said in the store, and I knew it was you I had been seeing all those years.”

Then she fell silent and David knew it was for real too since it was like he was finally able to hear a movie because they fixed the sound the second time he saw it.

“I don’t know how it comes out though?  Do you?”

“This is probably the end of it then, for I don’t either.”

“I need to sit down,” Peaches said rubbing her feet as they stood there in the main hallway.  “How about we go to the Lost Donkey?  The most they will do is throw us out, right?”

David said as if knowing it for sure that they would not do that.

Peaches asked, “Even yet?” and meant to ask whether he was still experiencing the fulfillment of their common premonitions.

He nodded and they walked out of the mall and then the short distance to the bar Peaches had suggested. 

No one was there but the bartender and two waitresses.  The couple sat in the corner and drank; a lot, and fast, fearing each drink might be their last since they were both underage; just barely.  It never happened and finally they realized they had to leave for the place had filled up and everyone else seemed to be leaving.

“What nationality are you anyway, Bucko,” Peaches blurted out as they drunkenly left with a group of others they didn’t know, causing their company to laugh and catching their attention as if they hadn’t even noticed anyone was around before that.

“I don’t know,” David said, “But I think my dad was either Egyptian or Palestinian, maybe Israeli.  He never said.  That’s because of my last name, Suez, and all.”  Then he stood and wobbling waited for her to say something which she never did, stooped over a little and his head moving side to side like the trunk of an elephant except that it moved much more slowly.  “Don’t you think so too?” he said and straightened up when she did not answer and added, “You’re drunk,” and began to stagger away.

“Where the hell are you going?” she said and swung him all the way around.

“To catch a bus,” he said.

She asked, “This time of night?” and then took out her cell and called a cab to meet them at the sub shop on the corner which if she had not been drunk she would have realized was not open.

“Where are we going?” he yelled not wanting to part from her even though they were drunk and it was late.

“Yes,” she was saying in concluding the call, and then turning to him she said, “We can go to your place if you want?”

He had been digging in all of his pockets and could not find his keys. 

He said, “No we cannot,” and frowned as he pulled his pants pockets out while holding his wallet between his teeth.

They weren’t completely conscious of the cab ride there, but they found themselves standing in front of that old Pentecostal church and set out to walk Peaches home.  But they were feeling really amorous and more fell through the door to a place Peaches assumed was some friend of David’s, and which David assumed was Peaches’ House, figuring he had been wrong in assuming she still lived in the apartment where she had hosted Eugene Poole.

They engaged in intense though drunken foreplay as they passed through the living room, down the hall, and into the bedroom on the right.  Then they apparently completed their memorable lovemaking in the dark and passed out.  Morning came, but without full recollection of what happened after they got to The Lost Donkey bar and grill on either one’s part.

David fumbled in the dark until he found the door.  But he was unable to find the light switch.

“Peaches, honey, where’s the goddam light switch; ain’t there any lights in your goddam bedroom?” he asked impatiently.

“My bedroom!” she said, “I thought it was your friend’s bedroom.”

David found the door handle by then and after turning it, tried to push it open.

“Well, open the damned door!” Peaches yelled feeling very ornery.

“I’m trying but the f*****g thing is stuck or something.

“Be quiet in there,” a raspy old woman’s voice sounded out on the other side.  “And, quit that swearing bullshit!  I don’t like swearing in my house.”

“Hey?” Peaches yelled.  “We wound up here by mistake and the door’s jammed.  Let us out of here if you can?”

“I could, but I’ll be damned if I do.  You damn drunks stagger in my house and take right to my bed, leaving an old woman sound asleep in her rocker.  No sir, I ain’t going to do it.  And, that’s for damned sure.”

They were all quiet as it soaked in on the couple what they must have done.

“As soon as I can find my glasses I’ll call the cops.  They’ll fix you so they will!  Damned trespassers; that is what, you are; goddam trespassers.  ”

David sat back on the bed in the complete darkness.  Peaches sat beside him. 

“We are locked in,” he said verifying what he thought he understood.

Then they started yelling as loud as they could.

After they had made as much racket as they could for a while the old woman said, “You might as well give up on that … they call it sound proofing … you probably can’t hear them shouting let alone the crying and singing they’re do out here.  Don’t matter though.  I’ll find my glasses.  Then the both of you are going to jail, and rightly so.”