Only Fools Here, Stay Read online

  ONLY FOOLS HERE, STAY

  by

  Phaedra Weldon

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Caldwell Press on Smashwords

  Only Fools Here, Stay

  Copyright © 2010 by Phaedra Weldon

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

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  ONLY FOOLS HERE, STAY

  by

  Phaedra Weldon

  The nightmare took hold of Mary's fears, caressed them, reshaped them like molding clay fresh from the package, then reformed them into greasy-spoon replicas of the things that represented failure in her world...

  She was bloated, overweight and pregnant.

  Five more rug-rats of varying ages fussed and jumped about the booth beside her inside the Sonny's Barbeque establishment along the interstate in a no-name town in a no-name state. Thunder blasted the velvet sky outside while somewhere Hank Williams Sr. twanged about broken hearts and lost dogs from tinny speakers.

  Her thick, naked, dimpled thighs adhered to the orange vinyl seat like fried eggs on an un-greased skillet. She picked at the kid's discarded fries with un-manicured fingers. With the attention given a gnat she dipped the half-cooked remains into pink mixtures of ketchup and mayonnaise and shoved them inside her mouth. From a mason jar she sipped cloudy, candy-sweetened tea to wash away the bad taste life had given her.

  One of the brood jumped on her shoulder, knocking a French fry into the seat behind them. The child then pushed its tiny, chubby fingers deep into the ketchup and mayo before wiping it on her sleeve.

  She looked at the man across the table from her. A husband of untold years. Upon his head rested a Braves baseball cap, cocked so the bill saluted upward at the restaurant's ceiling. He looked at her through bottle-thick glasses as he too picked at the fries with grime-encased nails. He wore a greasy, dark-stained sweatshirt. His two-toned arms, brown from his elbows to his wrists and a pasty white to his shoulders, were folded over another and rested on the table.

  The kids jumped up and down like bear cubs too long sequestered within a forest cave. They yelled and screamed, tussled and tumbled. The couple at the table next to her asked them to leave. The youngest child vomited on the floor. The eldest child took off running down the isles of the restaurant.

  She looked at her husband. He gave a loud, echoing burp…

  The clap of thunder – the clay was smashed – but deep within its soft texture the essence of the fear remained, and waited until night came again and slumber beckoned the sculptor forth...

  Lunch with her best friend Brent Cox at Café Luna, a fine dining bistro in mid-town, became the highlight of her day. The morning production update meeting at work had proven to be little more than a self-masturbation session for her boss, who'd absconded with her ideas on the shipment problems out of Vancouver.

  And her boyfriend of three days had cancelled their dinner plans in favor of working late.

  Code name for I've lost interest.

  The seasonal wheel had turned once again back to fall and dead leaves rustled and shushed as the brisk wind of November carried them along the street outside the café. Her cream and burgundy silk suit felt like chilled satin sheets against her skin as she locked her BMW and walked as quickly as she could across Peachtree Street.

  To the right a woman pushed a stroller designed for twins down the sidewalk. Her eyes held the vessel of the living dead, and Mary found herself staring at the visage of her dream, at the nightmare of a woman bound and chained to conventional prejudices. A woman who no longer owned her life. Who no longer chose her destiny?

  She shivered and mentally brushed aside the brief snatches of the nightmare as she stepped inside the café.

  The pleasant aroma of spicy tomatoes and aromatherapy candles of patchouli greeted Mary as her eyes adjusted to the dim interior. Brent waved at her from a table near the back wall-mounted waterfall.

  Café Luna spaced their tables far enough apart to allow for private conversations, and though this decreased the number of patrons to serve, the prices on their entrees alone compensated. Linen cloths of alternating midnight blue and off-white beige covered their centers. Once settled into the cloth-wrapped folding chair, the waitress brought them each a glass of water and took their drink orders.

  A Perrier for her and a diet coke for him.

  Sarah McLaughlin's "Stumbling Towards Ecstasy" filtered softly from the state of the art sound system.

  "Good God, you look terrible."

  She gave him a withering look. "It's been a shit day. Martin's gunning for that promotion that I rightly deserve, and the very fact he has a penis, and I don't, places him six miles ahead of me on the starting pole. And," she rubbed at her right temple with her thin hand with its pink nails. "I had that damned nightmare again last night."

  "Oh," he made a face. "The one where you've got the kids and the no-career hubby?"

  "Yeah," she set her menu down, a cardboard directory of low-calorie treats. "Only he just burped this time. I was still pregnant, and I had three kids."

  "Only you can have nightmares like that." He buried his nose back into the menu. "I think I'll have the non-fat with no anchovies Caesar salad."

  Mary sighed as she looked back down at her own menu. She wasn't hungry. She still felt full from greasy French fries and ketchup.

  "Well," Brent folded his menu down. "So where are you and the new hottie going tonight?"

  "Nowhere," she pursed her lips. "He cancelled." She peered over the cardboard at her best friend's sympathetic look. "It's okay."

  "That's the fifth cancel this month. What do you do at night in that big apartment all alone?"

  The waitress drifted over in a soft perfumed cloud of Obsession perfume. Mary pursed her lips as she looked at the wedding band on the young girl's left finger. This woman had given up her freedoms to pledge her loyalty to some man who was probably working at a job at this very moment. On this woman's face Mary saw happiness, contentedness. No verbal battles of past arguments had carved their initials there.

  The old questions surfaced as she watched Brent order with the efficiency of someone accustomed to spelling things out for the obviously uneducated.

  Yet Mary's concentration delayed on the waitresses supposed background. Did this girl and her husband share an apartment, or a house? Did they watch movies together? Did they share the same hobbies, or maybe the same strange love of Kevin Smith movies?

  Or were these the things Mary wished for in her own personal life and wondered in the odd thought if other people found them.

  This young lady smiled sweetly, her gaze even and relaxed. Then again, her clam demeanor could be from sucking up the ambience of Luna Café where Mary believed the daily dose of incense batted the brain about like a ping-pong ball.

  Mary hovered over the garden salad and the penne pasta, then ordered the salad. After the waitress left she rested her elbows on the table. "What do I do? I read. A lot. And I rent movies. Netflix…a single gal's best friend."

  "But don't you get lonely?"

  The restaurant's music tracked switched to an acoustic rendition of McLaughlin's "Possession."

  Mary felt the truth ground deep, somewhere near her solar plexus. Guilt jumped up and down from what her therapist named her 'theater of truth,' a plac
e where her deepest dreams remained hers and no one else's. Where her childhood dreams mingled with her present fantasies, played by actors that raised their hands to snag her passing attention like a New Yorker waved down a fast moving taxi.

  The answer was yes.

  "No. I do what I want, when I want. I answer to no one. It's the life I've always wanted."

  Brent nodded. Mary chewed on her bottom lip.

  The waitress with the wonderful life set her salad before her. Settled happily to the right of a cherry tomato lay a French fry.

  Again the dream came, the clay molded just a bit differently now. But the base images were the same, and she knew the sculptor had stepped into her theater to yank a dream here and there and twist its shape into something unwanted…

  The kids were downstairs. She could hear their voices echo as they bounded off the couch and were punted back into play by the paneled walls of the den. Mary folded color-faded clothes on a bed covered in a beige and purple comforter whose seams of nylon thread had popped and unraveled, leaving gapes in the subtle criss-cross pattern. A pink dragon with green horns and wings lay on its side beside her husband's pillow.

  An odd odor drifted about the room, something close to a freshly used litter box.

  This was the third load of the day. It was Saturday. The sun was shining in late summer, and her husband had left the house early that morning for a local comic convention.

  Her back ached and she wanted nothing more than to sit on the bed and take a nap. She dreamed of sleeping deep until the baby was born – but her slumber averaged only six hours of sleep, if she wasn't lucky. That was counting on no interruptions brought the littlest child who'd been told by her older sibling that the new baby was going to make mommy love her less.

  But there was no sleep, not in a house full of kids. There was no going out with friends, no running to the store for a quick errand – not without taking the Viking Horde. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gone out and eaten in a nice restaurant.

  She counted the minutes until her husband came home. She planned on taking a nice, luke-warm bath (there was were no hot baths this far along in a pregnancy) and then turning in early. Mary had kept the kids during the day – the responsibility now rested on him.

  The phone rang. It was her husband. He was down at Henry's Bar and Grill, and wanted to stay out late for a poker game. She tried not to whine – she needed help at home. There was supper to be fixed and kids to get bathed. Her back ached and her feet had swelled into the size and shape of two cantaloupes.

  But before she could protest, he said, "I love you hon. I'll make it up to you." And he hung up.

  And somewhere down inside, drowned out by the kid's screams from downstairs and the occasional kick of the new baby within her womb, she knew he did. And she trusted him to make good on his word.

  "Mom! Eric's painting the wall with his poo-poo!"

  Again the nightmare receded, but not as quickly. The sculptor stood in perplexed curiosity at the fears and how they twisted round and round about the original seed, and buried it just below the surface…

  Mary typed out the final touches of her monthly report, complete with color-coding and charts. Six phone calls later from her boss' upline, several agonizing moments stressing over figures, and the project was done. She'd often resorted to bringing her work home with her to fill the awkward gap between arriving home and going to bed.

  What else did she have to do at night? She'd watched every Brad Pitt movie she could find on Netflix. Maybe she should sign up for some Cusak films?

  Sitting away from the computer, Mary reached for her glass of Glenn Ellen and reclined back in her chair as she took several sips. That project was done. She looked about the spacious apartment. Now what could she find to fill the spaces between?

  Hard wood floors gleamed beneath the track lighting mounted from a vaulted ceiling. Skylights opened up to the night on a black background with no stars. She never saw stars in the city. A gas-fed fire crackled in the fireplace. Its noise reminded her of more cozy mornings at home with her sisters and brother. Siblings she'd lost contact with over the years. They were married with children, and nested away in suburban America.

  Bookshelves reached from floor to ceiling about the black leather couch and sofa set before the fire. The works of local artists rested on the painted shelves, baubles of hand-blown glass and shiny painted ceramic. No books.

  Why hadn't she had books out? Not even a stuffed animal.

  Hunger announced its arrival with a war cry that bounced from the walls of her showplace. Mary padded on bare feet into the kitchen. The refrigerator held nothing interesting other than a bag of salad that looked as if the previous renters had left it. The freezer held little else, save a bag of frozen French fries.

  She heated them up in the rarely used stove and allowed them cool on a plate on the black marble island of her kitchen. Without conscious thought, Mary retrieved the ketchup and mayonnaise from the refrigerator, mixed them in a separate glass bowl and ate the fries as she stood in the kitchen, sure that her chewing echoed off the empty walls.

  Soon there would be no more molding – and the nightmare will have ended, its purpose only known to the one that dreamed it…

  He touched her cheek, caressed it with fingers like fresh sandpaper. But she didn't mind. Her extended belly prevented their bodies from melding too close, but he didn't seem to mind. The room was light, the lamps still lit, their brilliance exposing every fault that marred her once perfect skin, brought to light the web of spidery veins that had popped and seeped beneath the surface of her skin with the circular strain of bearing four children.

  She could see the silvery tears along her flesh where the skin had stretched again and again and no amount of witch hazel could smooth away. All these things she worried over as he touched her, caressed her, and brought her forward into the place of her greatest pleasure.

  And a tiny part of Mary, that part that was more spectator in the dream was shocked more that this man seemed genuinely concerned over her needs, before his own.

  How…different.

  She felt him enter, moving and curving his body to accommodate her extended belly. Gentle. Soft. Warm. Caressing. Loving.

  Passion.

  There it was. That single word that struck fear and loathing into the heart of the spectator, the sculptor of dreams.

  The smells of sex filled her nose, brought warmth to her most intimate dreams, as she felt him buck against her. She fought to see his face – to see the painful ecstasy that took him into her heart and folded him there in love and comfort. He leaned into her, held her in his arms, as the waves passed over him, leaving him a quivering man of substance, no longer a God of passion and ruin.

  He opened beautiful, sad, blue eyes to her – eyes that smiled as he brought her close to him and kissed her lips passionately, bruising her with his desire. "I love you," he whispered.

  The nightmare released. The sculptor moved back – the clay too hard to mold. Too much lost in those dreams of something secretly desired, yet openly feared…

  In the meeting, her boss presented the final proof to the Executive Chief. Her boss received a resounding pound on the back and a promotion.

  Mary partook of a nod, and found a nice company coffee mug on her desk.

  Yahoo for the corporate ladder. It seemed to have few rungs missing.

  Brent called her for drinks. His latest date had been delayed at work and he didn't want to be bored until the two of them could meet up. He chose a nice, unassuming bar in Mid-Town called Chimera's off of Amsterdam. The clientele were mostly upper crust gay, nicely dressed and the drinks weren't watered down.

  Mary knew the bartender by name and he had her a gin and tonic waiting when she arrived. Brent stepped in on her heels and the two grabbed a table.

  "I know…I look bad." She sighed as they sat across from one another.

  "I take the meeting didn't go well? Didn't like what you did?"

/>   "Oh, no. That wasn't it." She told him about her boss and the events that preceded her acceptance of his drink offer. "I need a new job."

  "I think you need a man."

  She opened her mouth to speak – and found her words, oh so ready words of protest against love and marriage – silenced. Memories of arms enfolding her, wrapping her in strength and safety with promises of company and companionship.

  And blue eyes. Sad, beautiful blue eyes. "I don't… I don't need a man. I'm self-sufficient."

  "Uh-huh. Self-sufficient – and slowly dying on your feet, Mary," Brent sipped his drink and wrinkled his nose. He paused. "Ever thought about going to a bookstore, the way you used too? Find something that interests you, not something that'll move your career forward? Grab one of those passion-pit romances. Get all hot and juiced by the hot parts."

  "Yeah," she nodded. In fact, she had considered that very thing in the shower as the six showerheads washed away the scent of sex from her body. "I think I will."

  She blew the afternoon off, a reward for a promotion not received. Mary parked her BMW in the back lot of a small bookstore she once haunted – before the big job and the big rewards.

  The smell of old stories greeted her as the door banged open, a bell announcing her arrival. Stacks and stacks of paperbacks, stuffed in random order, some upright – some on their side, lined the floor to ceiling shelves that hid the back of the store to the front.

  "I'll be right there!"

  Mary glanced in the direction of the voice and nodded. Which was silly. No one could see her. Somehow the day's stress seemed less important, part of a world she'd only dreamed of…once. Long ago.

  Her first impulse was to seek out the horror section, take in a good King or Koontz.