By Jason P. Preu

    He tossed and turned, unable to settle down.  Fumbling in the half-lit room, his fingers searched over crumpled bed sheets and comforter until they found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the nightstand.  He propped himself up in bed and torched the tobacco, not giving heed to the oft-repeated advisory against smoking in bed.  Smoking is an ancient, sacred act that few smokers consider with attention.  This lack of focus contributes to there being all sorts of cigarette related accidents: burned beds, fingers, car seats, lips, and so on.  Not so for Seth.  He was serious about his cigarettes.  He knew that each cigarette held rolled bits of singed hair from the scalp of an ancient, Native god.  By smoking then, he was inhaling the divine. He also figured that if he was going to go through the trouble of killing himself in this deliciously slow manner he should devote himself properly to the task. 

    The phone that since sundown had been mocking him rested at his side.  He picked it up for the umpteenth time, punched the numbers with his thumb, and finally had to nerve to let the call connect.  “Hello.”  The deep yet unmistakably feminine voice sounded interrupted.  He hung up the phone and drew himself into a fetal position, clinching one of the two bed pillows tightly between his legs as he rolled over - lit cigarette sandwiched between his lips.  An entrepreneurial streetlight outside his window peddled its wares through the blinds, over and across his body.  His mind heaved while he gazed at the alternating rows of light and dark marking his hands. 

    A year ago, he’d been Florida bound, piling boxes into his truck, acting without reason.  He knew this, yet still he moved away fully expecting to regret every moment. When the regret came he found he could live with it.  The guilt, surprisingly enough, arrived some time after, when Tiscoe informed him of Elsinore’s state; told Seth that Elsinore had borne his daughter.  The guilt – that guilt – was impossible for Seth to idly co-exist with. 

    So, he had returned to see her - to see them.   He looked around the hotel room.  The walls were hopelessly decorated with an unassuming floral design.  Boxes exploding with clothes, books, and notepads fought for space upon the floor.  The phone, the bed, and the nightstand were the only things that seemed ready for use.  Seth rolled his wide body over and again dialed the seven numbers.

    “Hello.” Her voice was more expectant.

    “Um, hello?” Seth spoke as though he’d just learned the words that afternoon.

    “Yes, who is this?”

    “Ells, it’s me.”

    “Wha?  Why are you calling me?  We haven’t – ”

    “Relax, Ells.”

    “Don’t tell me to relax!  No one’s heard from you in a year and here you are calling me out of the blue on a Tuesday night.  What the hell is wrong with you?”

    “Ells, listen to me.”  Seth took a long drag on his cigarette.  The cherry glowed bright death as he inhaled, pleasantly reminding him of what he was inviting upon himself.  He didn’t force the smoke out in exhalation.  Rather, he allowed the cloud to freely climb from his open mouth, using his nose as a somewhat crooked ladder to explore the upper reaches of his dark bronze face.  Outside the streetlight beckoned his smoke-obscured stare.  “I wanted to call to apologize.”

    “You prick.  You big prick.  Apologize?  I don’t want an apology from you.  I don’t care whether you’re sorry or not.  What you did was wrong.”

    “You’re right. Still, I wanted to apologize for my own sake as well.”

    “Oh, you are a big, big prick.  Feeling guilty?”

    “Absolutely.  But this is not some mindless apology designed to ease my worried mind.  I’m not asking for forgiveness, Ells, just so I can get on with my life.  This is a real admission of sorrow.”

    “So you’re sorry.  That’s it.  I’m not your damn sounding board, Seth.  I truly can’t listen to anything you have to say for yourself.  Piss off.”

    “Ells, come on-”

    She cut into his sentence like an overzealous surgeon. “Wait, wait.  Where are you?  Are you back in town?”

    “Yes.”  Click. 

    Seth kept the phone to his ear until his melancholic meditation was interrupted by the phone’s sudden cries to be hung up.  He ashed upon the floor then drowned the butt in a half-empty beer bottle.  Seth dragged his body from amongst the wrecked conglomeration of bedclothes.  He rummaged through one of the detonated boxes for a t-shirt.  Finding one he hoped was clean, he sniffed his armpits (mostly inoffensive) and pulled the faded tee over his ink black, multi-spiked hair, barely covering his bulky frame.  He looked around the cramped, disorganized hovel for his keys and, finding them on the nightstand, grabbed them along with the pack of cigarettes.  He knew that his best defense when dealing with Elsinore would be stick after stick of a god’s burning hair.

    He walked out to his truck and climbed into the cab.  He fired up the engine and a cigarette.  Seth drove the truck out of the hotel lot using his left hand to roll down his window while the right twisted the radio’s dial.  He steered with his knee until the window was completely open.  Eventually his right hand settled on a station broadcasting bits of electronic ambience.  Settling back into the seat, he hung his cigarette out the window.  The air whistled by his ear and every now and again bits of burned cigarette would fly up into his face.  They smelled like smoldering hair.

    The way to Elsinore’s castle came to him unconsciously.  Though he’d been away for over a year, he didn’t need to think too hard about where he was going.  I20 West to Lake Blvd. East to Algonquin – hard right –to Wayout Road and Castle Woods subdivision.  Assuming Elsinore hadn’t moved (a possibility Seth had failed to consider) her castle was one half of duplex number 1232.  And there was Ginger in the driveway.  He pulled up behind Elsinore’s decrepit Thunderbird while at the same time killing the truck’s engine and lights.  As he walked past the car and toward the front door he ran his hand along Ginger’s roof, slapping the hood.  “You need a bath, girl.”  Ginger didn’t reply.  Seth thought that she must be pissed at him too.

    Seth came to the castle door and thought about lighting a smoke but decided to wait until he saw Elsinore’s reaction.  The light in the front room was on and through the thin curtains he spied as distorted images played themselves out across a small television screen.  He could see the outline of a pair of large feet resting upon the edge of a coffee table.  The body those feet belonged to, however, remained obstinately obscured.  He lightly knocked upon the door.  No answer.  Seth waited a bit then sharply knocked again.  The door opened a few inches and Elsinore stood peering down at him from between the crack.  She was wearing her glasses and a backwards baseball cap.  Seth looked up into the visible sliver of her tired face.  Elsinore looked down at him in utter, irate astonishment, quietly said, “You’re barefoot,” then shut the door and locked it.  All righty, thought Seth, lighting up a cigarette.  He knocked on the door again.  “You’re barefoot, too, Ells.  C’mon.”  Elsinore’s voice came to him muffled from behind the door, “Go away, Seth.”  He placed his palm flat on the door where he imagined her head to be.  Then, with bold, tattooed knuckles, he loudly knocked again. 

    Elsinore Walnut was leaning with her back against the door and Seth’s second knock, coming from right behind her head, startled her.  “Ells, will you open the door?” Seth pleaded from the stoop.  He must be standing on his tiptoes, Elsinore thought.  She didn’t want him to knock any louder; she had finally gotten things settled and quiet around the castle.  Leave it up to Seth to ruin it.  She unlocked the door, opened it, stepped out into the humid evening, and, without completely shutting it, closed the door behind her.  “Will you please keep it down?” she hissed. 

    Elsinore was huge by any person’s standards.  She stood six feet five inches without shoes and one of her hands could palm Seth’s head like a basketball.  Her arms were sleeved from shoulder to wrist in tattoos.  Seth wasn’t intimidated, even though on more than one occasion she had put him in a headlock for letting his mouth spout off before his brain could stop him. Seth reminded himself to keep a cool tone with her.  He was determined to get her to listen.

    “Let’s go inside, Ells.”

    “Not with that cigarette.  There’s no smoking in the house anymore.”  She stood barring the door like a cigar-store Indian.

    “Since when?”  He asked then, answering his own question, said, “Oh, yeah.”

    “What do you want, Seth?  I thought hanging up on you would be a sufficient hint that I didn’t want to hear from you, much less see you.”

    “I’m sorry.”

    “Sure you are, Seth.  You’re sorry all over.  Give me a cigarette.”  Seth put a cigarette into his mouth, lit it, and handed it over to Elsinore.  He hoped the burning god would keep her in an indulgent mood.

    “Can I see her, Ells?” Seth’s voice seemed uncharacteristically desperate.  Smoke hung in the still air above their heads.

    “No you may not.  She doesn’t know you.  I’m not sure she should.”  Elsinore didn’t look at him but out over his head, into her castle grounds, and the street. 

    “Bullshit.”  He tried to will her into looking him in the eyes.  “I’m asking you to forgive me, Ells.  I’m asking you to let me see our daughter.  I think it’s my right.”

    Elsinore thought she’d never heard so bold a statement.  Her indignation coursed throughout her body and her eyes came down upon him like a bird of prey about to swoop.  “Your right?  As far as I see it, by taking off and leaving your pregnant girlfriend, no, fiancé, you forfeited any right to be a part of Sera’s life.”

Seth took a final drag from his cigarette, flicked the butt into Elsinore’s driveway.  He’d respond to this accusation soon but feeling he was about to get smacked he thought to shift the conversation.  “Sarah?” he asked.

    “Sera, short for Seraph, Seraph Anaxamandria Walnut.”

    “Jeeeesus, that’s a fucked up name,” Seth chuckled.  “You’re going to give the kid a complex.”

    Elsinore smiled, looking away from Seth.  “Shut up,” she said tersely, but Seth could hear her grinning through her tension.

    Making the most of her willingness to be humored, Seth continued, “Seriously.  She’s going to have a hell of a time filling out her name when she has to start taking those bubble tests.”

    “She’ll do just fine.  It’s a regal moniker.  Besides, that’s why we call her Sera for short.”

    “We?” The word stood out from Elsinore’s sentence as though it were in boldface type.

    “Mom and I.”  She looked down to face him with a slightly softened air.  “What did you think?  Another guy?”  She inhaled some smoke.

    With a deadpan expression and looking up into Elsinore’s eyes, Seth said, “I hoped it wasn’t another guy.”

    Elsinore blew a thick cloud of smoke into his face.  He coughed.  She laughed.  “Single boys don’t want to date girls with kids, you asshole.  It makes them think that they might actually have to act like men.”  She put her cigarette down on the concrete then crushed it underfoot.  Seth watched her as she picked up the extinguished butt and put it into her pocket.  “She’s sleeping.  If you’re loud inside and wake her up, I’ll flush you down the toilet.  Also, don’t touch her.  You stink.”  She opened the door to the castle and Seth followed her inside, sniffing an armpit.

    Her place wasn’t as messy as he’d expected.  The television emitted a sputtering light and a quiet drone.  Seth spotted an open book on the coffee table.  “What’re you reading?” Seth asked, walking over and picking up the book. 

    “J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.”

    “So, what do you think?” Seth asked with some interest.  He put the book down and looked around the room.  Two, overflowing bookshelves against the wall, a tiny kitchen in the corner, no ashtrays.  He’d hoped she was lying about not allowing him to smoke inside.  No such luck.  Elsinore came up beside Seth and picked up the book.

    “It’s brutal as hell.  Taking me forever to get through it.  Not much time to read anymore, trying to spend time with Sera and work at The ‘Mecium.”

    “Oh wow, what’re you doing there?  Bartending?”

    “Sometimes.  Lee Lester quit last month and put in a good word for me with Parvati.  So, I went down to The Paramecium, Parv asked my favorite band, cheered out loud when I told him, “Joy Division”, then started letting me help out at the bar on weekends.  Come to find out though, that what he really hired me for was to work in the office booking shows and hooking up the bands with hotel rooms, dinner, and whatever else their little hearts desire.”

    “Sounds like a sweet job to me.”

    “Except for the fact that I don’t make dick.  The office job only pays eight bucks an hour.”  She lay the book back down.

    “What about the bartending?”  Seth asked.

    “I get OK tips working the bar, thanks to my tits and tats.  I just don’t get to work there enough.  The Mecium’s bar is already overstaffed.  I couldn’t work there at all if Mom didn’t help me out with watching Sera.  She watches her too much, actually.  But I don’t know what else to do.  I’m fucking broke and being broke is a million times more unbearable when trying to support an angel.”  Elsinore went into the kitchen to throw away the remains of her cigarette.  “You want a beer?”  Seth shook his head no. 

    “Can I see her, Ells?”

    Elsinore didn’t say anything.  She walked from the kitchen towards the back, unlit section of the castle, pausing before stepping into the hall.  Seth made to follow and she continued on, leading him down a hallway lined with baby pictures, baby with pink-haired mommy pictures, baby with green-haired mommy pictures, and baby with grandma pictures.  They walked past a bathroom and, finally, came to the last door, slightly open, on the right.  Elsinore whispered, “Please don’t wake her up.  She’s worse than you when she wakes up and harder to put back to sleep.”  Seth nodded.  Elsinore tenderly pushed open the door, leading Seth into a blue-moonlit room with a white, antique, wooden crib standing against the back wall.  “Seraph,” she whispered.

    Seth looked into the crib and in doing so his life before that moment evaporated into wispy, vapor tendrils of memory stuff.  There was for Seth only this particular moment, only this one opportunity to distill from experience brand new memories, memories worth clinging to.  The little girl was surprisingly tiny.  For some reason he’d pictured her longer.  She lay there asleep, clothed in miniature, purple pajamas.  The room was so still that he could hear Sera breathing.  Seth dropped to his knees and waddled like a thick duck over to the crib.  Elsinore stifled a laugh.  He gripped the top of the crib’s side with his hands and, looking closely at the baby, his baby, brought his forehead to rest upon the crib’s thin, bone-colored bars.  She looks like a gorgeous, minature, old man, Seth thought.  He wondered when Elsinore was going to start dying the child’s hair.  As he watched Seraph’s fragile chest move up and down in its infant meter, his own breathing slowed in an unconscious effort to match that blameless rhythm. 

    Seth remained there for some time, overwhelmed by Seraph’s presence, simply breathing with her, being with her, until Elsinore put her hand upon his shoulder and squeezed.  Seth turned and looked up at Elsinore.  The tear-tracks lining his cheeks dimly glistened in the blue-gray light.  She let go of his shoulder, bent to his ear and whispered, “C’mon, let her sleep.”   Seth lifted to his feet and followed Elsinore from the room.  On the way back to the living room he grabbed a napkin from the kitchen to dry his face and eyes, blow his nose.  He wadded up the napkin and tossed it into the trash.  Elsinore went into the living room and sat on the couch, channel surfing.  “You should have seen her when she first came out.”

    “I wish I had.”

    “I couldn’t believe that she was what was inside of me.  I hope she doesn’t get as big as me.”

    Seth grabbed his enormous belly.  “Or as big as me.”

    “Where did you go?” Elsinore asked.  “Your parents were worried sick.  Rye and Tiscoe wanted to kill you for stiffing them on the rent.  You ask me to marry you.  A week later you vanish?  There is something fundamentally wrong with a twenty-eight year old man up and running away.”  She clicked the remote control too fast to notice what was on any of the channels.

     “I didn’t go anywhere really.  Physically, I tooled around; hung out a while in Florida with Gumby Harris.  You remember him?”  Elsinore nodded, clicked, clicked.  “Then, I got tired of all the old people there and headed up to Minnesota;  got a job washing dishes for a truck stop at night and spent the days writing.  I rented a cheap room in town and just lived and worked and wrote.  Mentally though, I never went anywhere.  All I could write about was here.”

    “What’d you have to write about this place?” she asked, clicked.

    “I wrote a book about us, Ells.”

    Suspiciously, “Us, huh?  Is it the truth?”

    “Not particularly.  Well, some of it is, but the majority of it I made up.  What would’ve happened if I hadn’t left, that sort of thing.”

    Elsinore huffed, “You’re so stupid.  You mean lies, ‘That sort of thing’ meaning lies.  You ran away because you wanted to make up lies about what have happened if you’d stayed?”

She put down the remote control and cocked her head towards him.  “I don’t understand why you didn’t just stay.  Why run?”

    “I don’t know.  I was scared.  I was stupid. I was-”

    “Stupid, inconsiderate, deceitful, selfish, immature – everything but thinking.  That’s what you were, Seth, everything but thinking.”

    “I didn’t know about Sera.  I swear to God I didn’t know what I was leaving behind.  When I talked to Tiscoe-”

    Elsinore was heated.  “You were leaving me behind, Seth - me.    Never mind Sera.  She doesn’t know you, doesn’t love you.”  The weight of her words exerted copious pressure upon him.  Elsinore quickly changed the subject, “You talked to Tiscoe, huh?  He didn’t tell me.”

    Seth was taken aback, so he spoke unsteadily, “When I talked to Tiscoe to let him know I had his money– and he told me about Sera– I told him I was coming home and asked him not to say anything to you.  I didn’t want you consciously avoiding me.”  He looked at the television.  The Weather Channel’s meteorological gurus were prophesying stormy days followed by cloudy, temperate ones.  “Can I smoke?”

    She shook her head.  “Not in the house.”  She smiled.  “You nervous?”  Seth didn’t answer.  Elsinore stood up from the couch and said, “C’mon, we can go back outside.”  The two walked out onto the front stoop.  Elsinore left the door standing open with a hairline fracture.  Seth lit up two cigarettes and handed one to Elsinore.  She took it and sat down, cross-legged.  Seth did the same.

    “So what do you want from me, Seth?”

    “Truthfully, I don’t know.  Another chance?”

    “Truthfully, you don’t sound too sure of yourself.  You better think long and hard about what you’re asking.  She’s a cruel miracle,” Elsinore said.  She held her cigarette in her mouth and took off her hat, undid the ponytail underneath.  She ran her big hands through waves of purple hair.  “My whole train of thought is wrapped up in her well being.  I can’t do anything without taking her life and all its possibilities into consideration.  I suspect it will be like that for the next eighteen years, if not forever.  Obviously I have to spend time away from her but not for one second is she out of my mind.  It’s painful, Seth.  I wouldn’t trade that pain for anything, but I don’t kid myself about having to bear the weight of Sera’s world on my shoulders.  It hurts.”  She sniffled.  Seth put his arm around her.

    “Hell, Ells.  That’s the whole reason I came back.  And I hadn’t even met her yet.  I’m telling you, when Tiscoe told me about Sera...that was it.”

    Another sniffle then, “Look, Seth, I don’t know what you want.  You don’t know what you want.  You want to help?  You want to be a part of our lives?  No words, no words, no words.  Show us you want to be here.  That’s all you have to do.”  From within the castle came the sounds of a baby’s cries. So that’s what she sounds like, thought Seth.  Elsinore crushed out her cigarette, put the butt into her pocket and stood up.  “I’m going to go in and check on her.  Do you want to come back inside?  We could watch The Weather Channel over some coffee.”

    Seth thought for a minute then stood up and said, “No, Ells, it’s getting late and I should probably get back to the hotel.  Is that OK?”

    “It’s fine, Seth.”  Elsinore turned to go inside.  She hesitated.  “Hopefully we’ll see more of you.  You haven’t seen her smile yet,” she opened the door, “or changed her diaper.”  She walked into her castle.  “Adios.” 

    “See you soon, Ells.” 

    The door closed in front him.  A few seconds later the light in the front room went out and the T.V. followed its lead.  Seth stood out on the stoop for a while, relishing a final lungful of combustible god fur.  That kid is not the cruel miracle, Seth thought.  It may have seemed that way to Elsinore but Seth refused to believe it.  He stood in the night, fully aware that the cruel miracle is living on the verge of forgiveness, ecstatically happy at the possibility of being forgiven yet unable to know if it will happen and unable to think beyond what happens if forgiveness never arrives.  Seth sighed then smiled.  No words, no words, no words.  The action is what mattered now.  He walked past Ginger and noticed a baby seat in the back.  He wondered how he’d missed that before.  He climbed into the truck, started it, and shifted into reverse, thinking of his, no their, daughter.

The End