Asch Goes to the Big City
I tried copy and pasting my full story which I realized I never posted the final version on here. But now all the punctuation is messed up. Anyways I thought I should at least put it up here since I am going to attempt and get it published.
He leans forward over the coffee table and glares down at the miniscule advertisement. It is there: pathetic, blatant, and revolting. Male. Microbiologist, Assistant Forensic Scientist. Twenty nine. Enjoys: Nothing and everything. Seeks: No one and someone. Hobbies: To find out what it means to live and to be alive. He stares. The black words suddenly seem to remove themselves from their blurring white background and float up towards his face. Furiously he rips the page in half, pushing it away like an air bag that grasps to save his life and yet suffocates him in the same instant. "... th' hell was I thinking?" The two flights down to the corner drug store below his apartment are frustratingly long. The woman with the familiar Asian face smiles roundly into a blur past him, as usual. "Jose!" Asch is breathless as the glass door raucously clashes behind him, startling the man behind the counter. "I need every copy of the Post!" Minutes later, exhausted, Asch stares, brooding. Delicate paper flakes of the Post flutter around him.
* * * Asch was sentimental about everything under the sun. He wasn't gay, but the majority had their suspicions. His name and slightly sophisticated manner didn't hurt the argument, either. Aschley Dempsey II, his given name, was a possession he clung to fiercely, the way an alcoholic grips a whiskey bottle, even for all the trouble it gives him.
* * * Asch mumbles into his cell phone, pressed sharply between his ear and the pillow. "Turning thirty next Thursday." "You think I could forget? I've only known you ... it'll be ten years Thursday!" "You wish you could forget that day." Smug-faced he slowly falls onto his back. She ignores the gibe. "Hey. Now you can read the Song of Songs, Asch!" Sarcastic enthusiasm flowing from a smooth voice fills up slowly in his head. "Pardon?" A vague smile partially opens his lips. She can hear his smile. "Song of Solomon, Canticle of Canticles, however you want to call it- from the Old Testament, Asch." "... and I, a delinquent Episcopalian who doesn't give a damn about religion, am supposed to know what an educated, former Orthodox Jew knows?" Whispery laughter settles like fog around him. He smiles fully. Then her voice chills. "According to the Rabbinical, Hebrew tradition, no one was permitted to study it until the age of thirty... way too risqué for the 29 and under crowd." He hears more laughter, much harsher sounding this time. "Fabulous. Really can't wait for that. But, hey, I have a lot of samples coming into the lab tomorrow."
* * * Gazing with one eye into the streaming shaft of white light, in a long white lab jacket, Asch feels suffocated by whiteness. The lab is filled up with light for once, the shades all drawn up by the short dark-skinned woman by the windows. Damn, woman won't quit muttering. Hears a slight clacking of beads. "Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros peccadores, ahora en lahora de nuestra muerte." Asch's strong eye slowly slides over from the illumined blood sample to her vein-laced, muscular hand, which moves synchronously over the glass. They are opaque with years of dust. The rhythm of her movement, the clacking beads, her warm-toned prayers have a sleepy, innocuous effect. Asch's blood flows slower and thicker. His eyelids falter. Suddenly, a patch of glass bursts free from the dirt, like a white flame. Imposing, it follows a quick path, clashing directly on his face. Dust particles cautiously emerge from the shadows, swirling into the light-stream. Asch exhales angrily. The woman's name, its Rosa, maybe, he thinks. She turns her wizened native face to his. Her knowing smile turns his stomach. The lab jacket clings to the linoleum floor and Rosa watches his back disappear behind the door.
* * * "Acsh- I hafta ask... what is this? Why all these personal ads everywhere?" She holds up a half-crumpled newspaper, forcing a casual stance, wearing Asch's BostonMarathon t-shirt. He is pensive. "An advertisement for love." His voice is blunt without a second's hesitation. He exhales from a long drag, relaxed. He sees her lose her balance from the corner of his eye and glares indifferently towards the window. The silence stiffens her. He feels her moistening stare. "Ten years... I thought you love- me." Her voice is barely there. "Did I say that?" "You know you barely speak in words, Asch." "You're right." "So I'm not enough." "You're enough." "Then what else are you looking for? Damnit Asch! What the Hell are you asking from me? Don't you know I love you?" "You don't know how to love Trish. And neither do I."
* * * Trish lies on the black tiles of her apartment kitchen, staring up through the skylight. For almost two days she has not moved. Her face is smooth like hard clay. Her tears surge like an ocean behind it, wanton to burst through the clay wall, to loosen and shatter her face. If she let it, this river of tears would flood over her body, eventually drying in swirling salt patterns on her skin, like vague white sand on the desert floor of her stomach and legs. Her clay face is a Jewish one. At once vibrantly pale and dark, harshly beautiful, like every movement she makes, like a desert sandstorm. A small fissure breaks in her smooth cheek. The crack spreads in small spidery lines, and the clay mask breaks; the salty deluge shattering the wall. She thinks "...and they went down into the depths of the mighty waters... and then the Egyptians got fucking drowned... the Egyptians are the ones supposed to drown, Godamnit!" In her mind, one side of a room chants,Thy way was in the sea, then another echoes,Thy paths in the great waters. She sits up jaggedly and screams "By the hand of Moses and Aaron? Say it, you idiots! By the hand of Moses and Aaron!" She pulls her self up against the counter, crazed, a glistening fire in her eyes. She picks up a glass jar from the counter. "Where the fuck is Moses now? Ready to save the fucking chosen people?" She shatters the glass against the wall. Whispers, "If not Moses, who?"
* * * The cool, familiar darkness has settled back into the cave-like laboratory. "Mr. Dempsey?" Asch turns from the counter to face the woman who is shifting, out of place in the doorway. "Is there a way maybe you do something for me, Senor?" "What do you mean?" She gently pushes a small boy out from behind her. A thousand questions race through Asch's mind, like cars past a hitchhiker on a freeway. "El hijo de mi hermanita. This is Manuel. His mother, she is... she... You watch Manuel today." Her statement carries a gentle authority, such that no questions arise in Asch's mind. Her eyes are strikingly dark. How do I know you? he muses to himself. Asch looks down at Manuel, whose large brown eyes are shining and placid. He wears a white shirt lined with faded red strips. He wears a black backpack, looking deflated. Its length is more than half of his small body. His right hand is clenched tightly in a fist. An empty shirt sleeve hangs where his left am should be. "How long do you need me?" Asch is strangely calm.
* * * "You like hot dogs, don't you?" In unison Asch and Manuel sit on the shifting sun spackles, which dance hypnotically to the breeze on the bench. The mud-crusted toes of Manuel's sneakers barely graze the gravel. His eyes are fixated on a sudden fluttering of bird's wings from the canopy of illumining green above the makeshift pair. Ash leans forward, considers looking into Manuel's eyes, then sits back quickly against the bench again. Those eyes, something about the kid, are unnerving. It turns his stomach. He notices a smooth, jagged scar on the top of Manuel's head where no hair has grown and jerks his head away. Fuck it, I tried. Ash grabs his cigarettes, thinking, And, we're outside; he's got enough of his own air... "Do you suppose those birds are fighting?" Asch is surprised at the suddenly shattered silence, especially since the recent barrage of unanswered questions. Asch looks down at Manuel, avoiding the upturned face and focusing on the small clenched fist. He takes a quick glance towards the place where a few shreds of torn leaves gently circle down. "They are either fighting or mating." He flicks his lighter. He's glad he's considered all the possibilities. "O! Mis pajaritos... tienen ninos! You have ninos now!" escapes from the boy's lips in a whisper breat. He is not talking to Asch anymore. Half awake, Trish hears her doorbell frantically echoing over and over. Who is that?! Her half-opened eye angrily reflects the red-light numbers from her nightstand. She rips a damp bathrobe up from the floor, cursing, and pulls it on harshly. Asch stands in the door. A dark haired little boy with pale skin lies across Asch's forearms. She sees a spark of something in Asch's eyes that she's never seen. "What is it?" "He needs someone." Manuel's bony arm is wrapped tightly around Asch's neck. Manuel's sweat-soaked shirt is missing, his shorts are soaked. He shakes violently, causing Asch's voice to quiver with him. Asch sees a darkness rise in Trish's eyes he has never seen before. Her eyes grow darker, flashing anger. The words prey from her lips in a low growl, "Whose kid is that?" "I don't even know. I babysat him for the day and his aunt never came back to get him." "I don't want that kid in my place." "What?" Asch holds his ground and Manuel solidly. She whispers venomously, "You heard me." "I need you to help me help him, Trish." Her voice rises steadily, "Don't think I'm not serious, Asch. I said I don't want that fucking little imposer in my place." Asch's eyes are searching desperately into hers for a glimmer of the light he always used to see inside. They find only closed doors.
* * * "What were you so scared of last night Manuel?" Asch's pathetic, flattened attempt at pancakes smolder like steaming, sappy charcoal on Manuel's plate. The fork in his small hand looks huge. Asch laughs, smiling widely across the kitchen table. "You know you look like now kiddo? Jack, from Jack and the Beanstalk." "Did Jack have one arm too?" "Well, never mind that Jack fellow- it's Manuel now- Manuel and the- Manuel and- fuck- its- Manuel and Asch now. That's a better story, you know." Asch surprises himself at how well he is handling the conversation. "It is?" "Yes. It's definetly a better story then Jack and the frickin Beanstalk... th' hell thinks of this stuff ...?" "What happens to Manuel's mama in the story?" "She- sheum, loves Manuel- very much..." Manuel gets quiet. "Did you remember your Mama died Manuel?" "My Mama's not dead." "Do you know where she went then?" "Yes." "Where is she Manuel?" "The place we went last night." "Last? Manuel- that woman- that was Trish- not your Mama... I'm sorry... it wasn't her..." Manuel's eyes fill up. "It was my Mama. She was my Mama. I know it was." His tears fall quickly from his brown eyes and mix with the maple syrup. He suddenly drops his fork, reaches in his pocket and then rests his clenched fist on the table. His whole body begins to shakes. Asch has Manuel in his arms as the fear surging in his vein pumps his heart faster and faster and he starts to sweat. Asch holds him tightly against him. He whispers, "Its alright son. 'S alright kiddo. I gotchu- I gotchu." Asch pulls his cell from his pocket gently and dials Trish's number with one hand. "Trish. Hey. Please, Trish. I need you to come over here... now. The kid. Just do it Trish... do it... Uh-huh. Yeah... please... Trish? ... I love you. I love you. " Looking down into Manuel's clenched, convulsing face, nothing but sheer terror written in his pale face. And memories flood Asch's mind. Five years ago. The woman. The slow, knowing smile. 'Rosa' on her lapel, behind the desk, at the clinic. Staring at the wall, endlessly. The second hand- screaming. The woman's screams. Trish's screams. A baby- screaming- and then silence. A dead, stiff silence. "My baby... my baby... my baby" Trish whispers feverishly again and again in the car. "My god, oh god-- my baby!" Asch falls, his knees hitting the kitchen tiles. "It's alright son. I've got you."
Set me as a seal on thy heart, as a seal on thine arm, for strong as death is love. Many waters are not able to quench the love, and floods do not wash it away.The Song of Solomon
He leans forward over the coffee table and glares down at the miniscule advertisement. It is there: pathetic, blatant, and revolting. Male. Microbiologist, Assistant Forensic Scientist. Twenty nine. Enjoys: Nothing and everything. Seeks: No one and someone. Hobbies: To find out what it means to live and to be alive. He stares. The black words suddenly seem to remove themselves from their blurring white background and float up towards his face. Furiously he rips the page in half, pushing it away like an air bag that grasps to save his life and yet suffocates him in the same instant. "... th' hell was I thinking?" The two flights down to the corner drug store below his apartment are frustratingly long. The woman with the familiar Asian face smiles roundly into a blur past him, as usual. "Jose!" Asch is breathless as the glass door raucously clashes behind him, startling the man behind the counter. "I need every copy of the Post!" Minutes later, exhausted, Asch stares, brooding. Delicate paper flakes of the Post flutter around him.
* * * Asch was sentimental about everything under the sun. He wasn't gay, but the majority had their suspicions. His name and slightly sophisticated manner didn't hurt the argument, either. Aschley Dempsey II, his given name, was a possession he clung to fiercely, the way an alcoholic grips a whiskey bottle, even for all the trouble it gives him.
* * * Asch mumbles into his cell phone, pressed sharply between his ear and the pillow. "Turning thirty next Thursday." "You think I could forget? I've only known you ... it'll be ten years Thursday!" "You wish you could forget that day." Smug-faced he slowly falls onto his back. She ignores the gibe. "Hey. Now you can read the Song of Songs, Asch!" Sarcastic enthusiasm flowing from a smooth voice fills up slowly in his head. "Pardon?" A vague smile partially opens his lips. She can hear his smile. "Song of Solomon, Canticle of Canticles, however you want to call it- from the Old Testament, Asch." "... and I, a delinquent Episcopalian who doesn't give a damn about religion, am supposed to know what an educated, former Orthodox Jew knows?" Whispery laughter settles like fog around him. He smiles fully. Then her voice chills. "According to the Rabbinical, Hebrew tradition, no one was permitted to study it until the age of thirty... way too risqué for the 29 and under crowd." He hears more laughter, much harsher sounding this time. "Fabulous. Really can't wait for that. But, hey, I have a lot of samples coming into the lab tomorrow."
* * * Gazing with one eye into the streaming shaft of white light, in a long white lab jacket, Asch feels suffocated by whiteness. The lab is filled up with light for once, the shades all drawn up by the short dark-skinned woman by the windows. Damn, woman won't quit muttering. Hears a slight clacking of beads. "Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros peccadores, ahora en lahora de nuestra muerte." Asch's strong eye slowly slides over from the illumined blood sample to her vein-laced, muscular hand, which moves synchronously over the glass. They are opaque with years of dust. The rhythm of her movement, the clacking beads, her warm-toned prayers have a sleepy, innocuous effect. Asch's blood flows slower and thicker. His eyelids falter. Suddenly, a patch of glass bursts free from the dirt, like a white flame. Imposing, it follows a quick path, clashing directly on his face. Dust particles cautiously emerge from the shadows, swirling into the light-stream. Asch exhales angrily. The woman's name, its Rosa, maybe, he thinks. She turns her wizened native face to his. Her knowing smile turns his stomach. The lab jacket clings to the linoleum floor and Rosa watches his back disappear behind the door.
* * * "Acsh- I hafta ask... what is this? Why all these personal ads everywhere?" She holds up a half-crumpled newspaper, forcing a casual stance, wearing Asch's BostonMarathon t-shirt. He is pensive. "An advertisement for love." His voice is blunt without a second's hesitation. He exhales from a long drag, relaxed. He sees her lose her balance from the corner of his eye and glares indifferently towards the window. The silence stiffens her. He feels her moistening stare. "Ten years... I thought you love- me." Her voice is barely there. "Did I say that?" "You know you barely speak in words, Asch." "You're right." "So I'm not enough." "You're enough." "Then what else are you looking for? Damnit Asch! What the Hell are you asking from me? Don't you know I love you?" "You don't know how to love Trish. And neither do I."
* * * Trish lies on the black tiles of her apartment kitchen, staring up through the skylight. For almost two days she has not moved. Her face is smooth like hard clay. Her tears surge like an ocean behind it, wanton to burst through the clay wall, to loosen and shatter her face. If she let it, this river of tears would flood over her body, eventually drying in swirling salt patterns on her skin, like vague white sand on the desert floor of her stomach and legs. Her clay face is a Jewish one. At once vibrantly pale and dark, harshly beautiful, like every movement she makes, like a desert sandstorm. A small fissure breaks in her smooth cheek. The crack spreads in small spidery lines, and the clay mask breaks; the salty deluge shattering the wall. She thinks "...and they went down into the depths of the mighty waters... and then the Egyptians got fucking drowned... the Egyptians are the ones supposed to drown, Godamnit!" In her mind, one side of a room chants,Thy way was in the sea, then another echoes,Thy paths in the great waters. She sits up jaggedly and screams "By the hand of Moses and Aaron? Say it, you idiots! By the hand of Moses and Aaron!" She pulls her self up against the counter, crazed, a glistening fire in her eyes. She picks up a glass jar from the counter. "Where the fuck is Moses now? Ready to save the fucking chosen people?" She shatters the glass against the wall. Whispers, "If not Moses, who?"
* * * The cool, familiar darkness has settled back into the cave-like laboratory. "Mr. Dempsey?" Asch turns from the counter to face the woman who is shifting, out of place in the doorway. "Is there a way maybe you do something for me, Senor?" "What do you mean?" She gently pushes a small boy out from behind her. A thousand questions race through Asch's mind, like cars past a hitchhiker on a freeway. "El hijo de mi hermanita. This is Manuel. His mother, she is... she... You watch Manuel today." Her statement carries a gentle authority, such that no questions arise in Asch's mind. Her eyes are strikingly dark. How do I know you? he muses to himself. Asch looks down at Manuel, whose large brown eyes are shining and placid. He wears a white shirt lined with faded red strips. He wears a black backpack, looking deflated. Its length is more than half of his small body. His right hand is clenched tightly in a fist. An empty shirt sleeve hangs where his left am should be. "How long do you need me?" Asch is strangely calm.
* * * "You like hot dogs, don't you?" In unison Asch and Manuel sit on the shifting sun spackles, which dance hypnotically to the breeze on the bench. The mud-crusted toes of Manuel's sneakers barely graze the gravel. His eyes are fixated on a sudden fluttering of bird's wings from the canopy of illumining green above the makeshift pair. Ash leans forward, considers looking into Manuel's eyes, then sits back quickly against the bench again. Those eyes, something about the kid, are unnerving. It turns his stomach. He notices a smooth, jagged scar on the top of Manuel's head where no hair has grown and jerks his head away. Fuck it, I tried. Ash grabs his cigarettes, thinking, And, we're outside; he's got enough of his own air... "Do you suppose those birds are fighting?" Asch is surprised at the suddenly shattered silence, especially since the recent barrage of unanswered questions. Asch looks down at Manuel, avoiding the upturned face and focusing on the small clenched fist. He takes a quick glance towards the place where a few shreds of torn leaves gently circle down. "They are either fighting or mating." He flicks his lighter. He's glad he's considered all the possibilities. "O! Mis pajaritos... tienen ninos! You have ninos now!" escapes from the boy's lips in a whisper breat. He is not talking to Asch anymore. Half awake, Trish hears her doorbell frantically echoing over and over. Who is that?! Her half-opened eye angrily reflects the red-light numbers from her nightstand. She rips a damp bathrobe up from the floor, cursing, and pulls it on harshly. Asch stands in the door. A dark haired little boy with pale skin lies across Asch's forearms. She sees a spark of something in Asch's eyes that she's never seen. "What is it?" "He needs someone." Manuel's bony arm is wrapped tightly around Asch's neck. Manuel's sweat-soaked shirt is missing, his shorts are soaked. He shakes violently, causing Asch's voice to quiver with him. Asch sees a darkness rise in Trish's eyes he has never seen before. Her eyes grow darker, flashing anger. The words prey from her lips in a low growl, "Whose kid is that?" "I don't even know. I babysat him for the day and his aunt never came back to get him." "I don't want that kid in my place." "What?" Asch holds his ground and Manuel solidly. She whispers venomously, "You heard me." "I need you to help me help him, Trish." Her voice rises steadily, "Don't think I'm not serious, Asch. I said I don't want that fucking little imposer in my place." Asch's eyes are searching desperately into hers for a glimmer of the light he always used to see inside. They find only closed doors.
* * * "What were you so scared of last night Manuel?" Asch's pathetic, flattened attempt at pancakes smolder like steaming, sappy charcoal on Manuel's plate. The fork in his small hand looks huge. Asch laughs, smiling widely across the kitchen table. "You know you look like now kiddo? Jack, from Jack and the Beanstalk." "Did Jack have one arm too?" "Well, never mind that Jack fellow- it's Manuel now- Manuel and the- Manuel and- fuck- its- Manuel and Asch now. That's a better story, you know." Asch surprises himself at how well he is handling the conversation. "It is?" "Yes. It's definetly a better story then Jack and the frickin Beanstalk... th' hell thinks of this stuff ...?" "What happens to Manuel's mama in the story?" "She- sheum, loves Manuel- very much..." Manuel gets quiet. "Did you remember your Mama died Manuel?" "My Mama's not dead." "Do you know where she went then?" "Yes." "Where is she Manuel?" "The place we went last night." "Last? Manuel- that woman- that was Trish- not your Mama... I'm sorry... it wasn't her..." Manuel's eyes fill up. "It was my Mama. She was my Mama. I know it was." His tears fall quickly from his brown eyes and mix with the maple syrup. He suddenly drops his fork, reaches in his pocket and then rests his clenched fist on the table. His whole body begins to shakes. Asch has Manuel in his arms as the fear surging in his vein pumps his heart faster and faster and he starts to sweat. Asch holds him tightly against him. He whispers, "Its alright son. 'S alright kiddo. I gotchu- I gotchu." Asch pulls his cell from his pocket gently and dials Trish's number with one hand. "Trish. Hey. Please, Trish. I need you to come over here... now. The kid. Just do it Trish... do it... Uh-huh. Yeah... please... Trish? ... I love you. I love you. " Looking down into Manuel's clenched, convulsing face, nothing but sheer terror written in his pale face. And memories flood Asch's mind. Five years ago. The woman. The slow, knowing smile. 'Rosa' on her lapel, behind the desk, at the clinic. Staring at the wall, endlessly. The second hand- screaming. The woman's screams. Trish's screams. A baby- screaming- and then silence. A dead, stiff silence. "My baby... my baby... my baby" Trish whispers feverishly again and again in the car. "My god, oh god-- my baby!" Asch falls, his knees hitting the kitchen tiles. "It's alright son. I've got you."
Set me as a seal on thy heart, as a seal on thine arm, for strong as death is love. Many waters are not able to quench the love, and floods do not wash it away.The Song of Solomon
posted by Velvet at 1:14 PM
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