“I’d like to say I loved the man,” she said, “but I wouldn’t want to lie.”
She could try to lie, but I would have known. She did love him once, I am sure, but it faded and emptied. Like our beers. Like my life.
Was she asking me to tell her that I always loved her? That I felt love for her right there, sitting in a cold car with snowflakes covering the roof of my Toyota, burying us alive together. For a second, my undead soul was in communion with someone else.
On the radio, Winter Wonderland played. Unmarried lovers wanted Pastor Brown to marry them in town. The vows would be broken, but the memories of building snowmen in the meadow would not.
“You still buy records, don’t you?” she asks. “Because I saw you in the record store. You were flipping through vinyls of The Velvet Underground. I almost said Hi. I heard you were traveling. You were getting gigs everywhere. I thought you must be doing well.”
“Do I look well?” I ask, but before she could answer, I add, “I miss it, I miss my music, I miss my audience.”
“Audiences loved you,” she said, and the words strum chords in my heart.
She was my audience, doesn’t she realize that? She was the only audience that mattered, but I spent so much time apart, going from small town to town, hoping for something bigger to prove to her my talent, my passion. My brain flashed back through the years, images scattered like puzzle pieces, none making sense on their own. If I had only stayed with her, instead of looking to the road.
“The audience was heavenly, but the traveling was hell.”
God, this was all too much.
She knew I had enough. That I couldn’t take it, so she leaned forward to kiss me. Not on
the cheek, but the lips. The sound of the soft smack was frozen in the car. I waited for any trace left of my soul to respond, to be brought to life, instead of a scream of agony.
“God gives us what we need, if we just look,” she said. “And I needed this, to see you. What we had together is proof of grace. Please be well and remember that. Please keep your music playing.”
Acid flames in my gut. I felt that old familiar pain. Now I had nothing. Just the sight of her red brake lights as she drove away. The taste of her lips on mine would soon fade.
Snowflakes dropped from the cold God in the sky. The bile in my stomach returned, sizzling like a steak on the grill. I reached for the safety of the gun in my pocket.
Something would have to give. I can’t handle life anymore, but I will certainly not harm another. She saved me from that.
Instead of boiling anger and hurting another, I wanted to die in a cold shattering of icicle tears. The gun to my own head was the answer. I needed to go. Let me out, I’ve had enough.
My chest heaved with anticipation. I started to pant like a dog. Lights all around me from strip malls full of people who would never know my pain. I can’t take it. Can’t take the coldness of life falling on me tonight. I will die if this snow keeps falling. Each flake of snow that froze my world is proof that this cold feeling is permanent. I say a prayer, softly, Pabst Blue Ribbon in my hand and empty seat next to me. ‘God show me you care. Show me some warmth. Make this snow stop.’
I had fully planned to kill myself that night, at home with as little mess as possible, but I changed my mind and spent Christmas morning alive and breathing instead. I even made it to New Year’s day.
Because as I turned to make my way back home, the snow had turned into rain.
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LET ME OUT I'VE HAD ENOUGH