Goodbye Alice

A love story told a little differently.

                                                  GOODBYE ALICE

He sat on the roof of his apartment building, playing his guitar and dreaming of a girl that had no clue he was alive. The summer wind was hot on his face, but the shade of the flue of the old, antique chimney kept it bearable. Carelessly, he strummed a soft tune and stared across the street to the neighboring apartment complex, his eyes fixed on a lone figure tending to a mix matched garden of flowers, herbs and vegetables.           From this distance, the figure was a soft glow of colors lit by the slowly fading evening sunset. The figure moved about its mess of green and dots of many colors holding a yellow blob and touching each mess of green with it. Smiling whimsically,  he watched the figure, imagining the smells and sounds and mysterious of this creature that he dreamed of every night and day-dreamed of all day.              

 This was Alice...                                                                                                 A tall thin beauty with shining brown hair, a face of a kitten, a scent of musky, and a voice like a haunting dream. Every evening around four, Alice appeared with her yellow watering can,  lovingly attend and care for her little, green paradise lost in a metropolis of concrete and pollution. Ignorant to the boy with the guitar watching her every single night for nearly a whole year.                                                              Litir had accidentally overheard her name one late afternoon as he was coming home from the campus.  Alice and a couple of her girlfriends were outside her apartment washing Alice's blue mustang car. Her girlfriends were chasing Alice around the car with soapy rags singing a horrid diddy; they couldn't rhyme and sang like old witches, but Litir didn't care, through their tortures din, Litir learned Alice, and that made those girls sing like a chorus of angels.                             

Litir knew it had become an obsession with these gratuitous feelings for Alice, which only seemed to deepen as he allowed himself to cling to these feelings and dreams. His friends at the university called it a unhealthy infatuation; or some whimsical esctasy driven by lust, but that was the only reasons for them to seek female companionship at all.                                                                 

 As he watched Alice finish tending to her plants and vanish into her own apartment complex, Litir suddenly felt the familiar presence of depression and annoyance as he found himself alone in the cool city night world, surrounded by only the company of stars and distant life humming on some distant street. These dark feeling always filled Litir's soul as soon as Alice vanished from his life and he was left alone with only his own foolish mind.  "Damn you, Litir." He scolded himself with disgusted, the whirlwind of emotions plunging him deeper into his dark mood. "You watch that girl like a demented b*****d and yet, you don't have the guts to even speak to her."  Jumping to his feet, Litir stepped up against the edge of the roof and peered down into the many glowing lights of the apartment across the street, one of them belonging to Alice. Unaware and detached from Litir's strong emotions and longing for her with every breath he took. "You've wasted an entire year of your life allowing your damn emotions to play the fool and you are willing to waste the rest of your life for a woman that doesn't even know that you are alive and doesn't  give a s**t about you, or your obsessions with her."                     

Smiling bitterly, Litir knew that if he could catch Alice glancing at him once, just one quick glance at him, he would wait all his life for her.                                               The next day, Litir was riped from another perfect dream of Alice by the  excruciating shrill of his cell phone blaring in his ear. It was Nishad, a long life friend from grade school. He was practically screaming in the phone when Litir answered it. Ranting and raving about some big audition that they had been dreaming about since Litir and Nishad had been singing together since high school. In college, they meet up with three other fellow music junkies and formed a farce resemblance of a band.               Sleepily Litir listened to Nishad blather like a fool about this big break of theirs, which would start in San Francisco in less than a week. It was a big deal to Litir too, he hated being cramped in an lifeless void called a classroom, while overly paid professors pumped their students head with vacuous propaganda on what it took to be civilized.    When Litir didn't respond with equal exuberance over the news, Nishad suddenly became sensitive and agitated. "Damn you, Litir, we  finally  get our biggest break in years, and all you can do is sit there like a dumbass and mull over some girl that you don't even know and who, by the way, doesn't give a s**t if you are alive or not."         Throwing the phone across the room, Litir stared vehemently out his bedroom window, more angry and disgusted with himself than Nishad. Nishad was only repeating what Litir had already told himself over and over again. Alice was only a name and a face, Litir had told himself for millionth time, but deep inside, where it hurt and burned the most. But he knew that Alice had become more than that; she was an anchor in Litir's chaotic world with all his  insecurities and fears, the hope and happiness he could cling to when their band was rejected, when his grades dropped, or he thought of home too often.                                                                                     

 Maybe it wasn't the woman across the street that made Litir become so obsessed, maybe there wasn't meant to be a future or a chance with Alice for Litir. Maybe Litir had created Alice something beyond anything physically possible for a single person to be; maybe Litir would come to hate Alice after only one day in her company. But if he hadn't noticed that beautiful girl on the rooftop during the darkest moments of his  life, he knew that he wouldn't have made out of them without a bullet in his head.    Didn't that  count for something?                                                                            That very afternoon, Litir had a plan. He was going to go with Nishad and the gang to San Francisco, but before he went, he would go right up to Alice and finally and completely tell her about his feelings and interest in her and then ask for her phone number. It was a long shot and Litir was scared to death, but he couldn't wait forever...Nishad and the guys meant a lot to Litir and he couldn't  let them down or betray them.                      

 Litir was practically in Alice's apartment building, when from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a man with thick, curly black hair and a dark grey coat being assaulted by two punks with an attitudes that reek worse then their smell.                             Without thinking, Litir rushed upon the two punks smashing, kicking and punching at anything that looked like it could cause serious pain. In a moment, the punks were upon Litir, only it seemed that they made every blow count, it was like being being beaten to death by a slug hammer. But Litir didn't back down, he kept reeking as much havoc as he could, reaching for eyes and hair and swinging at balls in hopes to even up the odds. This only happened when the guy in the grey coat began to fight with Litir to take down the punks, and with the two of them, they finally managed to send the two idiots gimp/running down the alleyway with a volley of profanities echoing behind them.                                                                                           Bleeding and sore, Litir glanced over at his ally in the fight, a young man with large eyes and a face meant to be carved in a Michealangelo statue. He flashed Litir a bloody grin, which in turn forced Litir to grin back and then wish he hadn't, his jaw felt swollen almost disconnected from the rest of his bruised and stiff face.              Micheal."  A familiar voice cried out, filled with anxiety and concern. Turning Litir watched Alice come rushing out onto the street dressed only in a tank top and shorts, her long hair flying behind her and her face twisted into a look of anxiety and yet relief. She rushed past Litir and straight into the arms of the man Litir just saved. She threw her lovely arms around his neck and washed his bloody face in kisses and tears. Micheal melted into her arms and gladly accepted all her fretful affections and pawing.                                                                

  Behind them, Litir's world exploded into an  apocalypse. His heart wrenched and then shattered into a million pieces and the dream of Alice suddenly become nothing more than some lunatics fantasy that was to ridiculous to believe. He had chased a ghost that was never meant to catch and now that same ghost stood there laughing at his agony and shame.                                                    

 Turning his back to Alice and her boyfriend, Litir quickly ran from his foolish hurt feelings and the loss of Alice, before she could see the truth on his face. If they saw him leaving or called for him to come back, Litir was to shook and numb to recall.        Seven days later, Litir sat in his now empty apartment with Nishad sitting across from him, drinking the last of the coffee and listening to Litir's demo song for the millionth time that morning.  Nearby, lounging across the couch, Litir stared up at the ceiling with this detached look on his face, his dark ringed eyes shining with utter contempt as he listened to the fool play his heart out on the tape.                                            Finally Nishad stopped the tape and pretended not to be effected by the strong emotions and plaintive cry heard in the music. He didn't ask how Litir got such an inspiration to write such a despondent song. The answer was written all over Litir's face and clung about him like a haunting ghost around a deathbed. "Needs a title, man." Nishad finally remarked, noticing the tape label was blank. "You got a title for it yet?"                                       

   "Yeah, I got a name." Litir hissed softly, dropping his gaze to Nishad's and smiling such a bitter smile it almost seemed to hard and bitter to belong to a whimsical, passionate man that Nishad had known for almost all of his life. He laughed harshly sitting up and rubbing his hands down his face, trying to hide the tears from Nishad.     "Just call it Alice."                                                                                              Throwing his gear in the back with the rest of the gangs, Litir glanced once more back at the apartment building that he had made his home for two years. The funny thing was that he was  never able to like it enough to consider it home, there was always something there to remind him how much he hated being there and how it wasn't a real home. Without daring to look across the street, Litir climbed in to the car with his friends and steered the car onto the main highway and headed west towards San Francisco and the future.                       

Six months later, Litir and his friends song got their big break, a large recording company signed them up for a two year contract and three songs off their first album became an overnight hit, Litir and his friends were suddenly living up their dream. A year after that, Litir agreed to record and release his song 'Alice' which soared to nearly the top of the charts.                                                     

But Litir never was proud of it, and never allowed it to be played if he was in the room, he never spoke about it or gave insight to why and how he created it. Only Nishad knew the story behind the song and he loved and respected Litir too much to betray him.                                                               

On the night before a big concert, Nishad found Litir sitting on the rooftop of the concert hall, staring out at the glowing and moving city. He sat dressed in his stage clothes and his old guitar leaning against his thigh. When Nishad came close to him, he noticed a single piece of stationary held in Litir's fingers, and a look of pain on his friends face.                                                                          

  "What is it? what happened?"  Nishad demanded.                                                Wordlessly Litir handed Nishad the piece of paper, his focus locked in some forgotten memory or feeling that only Litir could fathom.             

 "Dear Litir," it read in a woman's perfect penmanship. "I don't know if you remember me, my name is Alice and I use to live across the street from you..." Nishad glanced over at Litir, but his friend was far away. " I had been trying to find a way to contact you for the past two years and thank you for saving my husband's life that day when he was attacked on the streets and you so bravely came to his aid, neither of us can thank you enough  nor find a way to show our gratitude  for saving his life. I also wanted to say that I had always expected that you were destined for something great, the music you use to play on the rooftops was always so enchanting and unique, it was bound to attract someone's attention and lead you onto greater things...I shall always remember the extrodinary man whose music seemed to almost make the stars dance..."                    

Taking the paper from Nishad, Litir held it up by one corner and carefully lit the bottom corner with his cigarette lighter. The flames slowly crawled up the paper, eating away the words of Alice and almost all the  emotions and feelings that Litir had for this woman, but not all, some would linger in his soul like a bittersweet memory in his heart.                                                                                    

 "Goodbye Alice." Litir whispered as he held the burning paper over the edge of the roof and slowly let it slip from his fingers and fall like a falling star from heaven.        Goodbye Alice." 

Author's Note

Please tell me your thoughts.....