“Cheap Melancholy”

     My heart pounded in my chest like an engine as I paced the mall to try and shake the nerves loose. Children chased each other around the vending machines and almost bumped into me while young couples walked hand-in-hand past kiosks selling the trend of the week as a fiberglass kiddie train packed with families looped freely around the building. I weaved through the faceless masses that milled from one store to the next and finally took a seat at a soda-stained table at the far end of the food court when my stomach began to churn and fold in on itself.

     My fingers drummed against the faux-marble countertop as I scanned the Saturday rush to look for her in the crowd with no sign. I sighed and glanced up at the ceiling mural of the city from another decade. Its glass skylight was carved into the shape of the Rio Grande and formed a glowing river that eased past fiberglass mountains and skyscrapers that peeked out from between a set of dangling hot air balloons low enough to see yet forever out of reach.

     I leaned forward and looked out into the crowds again while my knee bounced arrhythmically under the table. The thought of simply getting up and leaving crossed my mind, but for some reason, I couldn’t move. 

     I scanned the crowds once more and my gaze caught a pair of unmistakable brown eyes that peered over the endless fleet of shoulders at the other end of the cavernous hall. We locked eyes, and for a brief moment, it felt as if the rest of the world had stopped with my heart. 

     I rose from my seat and we pushed towards each other through the sea of heads, meeting beneath a styrofoam awning painted to resemble marble. 

     My stomach continued to churn as I looked into her eyes. “Hey! You look good.”

     She smiled softly. “You too.”

     “You want to go check out the old comic shop?”

     “Food first.”

     “How about the Blue Moon downstairs?”

     She nodded with a smile and we made our way to the escalator where she boarded a step ahead of me. I leaned forward so she could hear me over the daily commotion and asked “So what have you been up to since graduation?”
    She glanced back at me. “College and traveling. I went to Italy last month and I just got back from Colorado with mom.”

     “What’s Italy like?”

     “Ancient. Lots of old buildings and canals.”

     “Nice. Never been. Hell, I’ve barely left the state these past few years. Furthest I think I’ve gotten since high school was El Paso to visit my uncle, and before that was Portales.”

     She smiled at the mention of a familiar town as the ground floor fast approached us. We stepped off and rounded the corner toward a restaurant carved into the end of the hallway marked with a purple neon sign molded into a cursive font. 

     “Oh, and when I get back to L.A. next week, I’m supposed to be meeting with studio recruiters for a thing sponsored by UCLA.”

     “Are those like job interviews?”

     “Basically.”

     “Any paying gigs or are they trying to lure you in with unpaid internships?”

     She shrugged. “Probably internships. I just want work.”

     I chuckled. “Hey, if you want a job, I know somewhere you can get a security license for cheap.”

     Her thin red smile flashed. “No thanks.”

     We passed under the neon sign for the Blue Moon Diner and a teen dressed like a Soda Jerk in a white button-up shirt and black apron ushered us to a corner booth upholstered with red naugahyde beside a jukebox that crooned an Eddie Cochran song. A pair of menus landed on our table and we looked over them, each item accompanied by a caricature of Elvis Presley or Buddy Holly savoring the respective meal.

     She looked up at me from her menu. “What about you?”

     “I was thinking you can’t go wrong with a burger and fries.”

     She giggled. “No, doofus. What have you been doing?”

     “Oh. Uh, I more-or-less moved in with Tommy after I dropped out of college and we’ve been working security until something better comes along.”

     “Tommy?”

     “Oh, uh, he was the guy I started the band with around Junior year.”

     “Oh, him. Didn’t he work at that Indian restaurant?”

     I perked up. “Yeah, actually. You ever eat there?”

     “Once. Mom ate there all the time. She mentioned there was one really nice server there who never smiled. Was that him?”

     I chuckled. “Yeah, that was Tommy. We used to call him ‘Nietzsche’ because of the way he’d sulk around during his lunch break. I actually worked there with him before I started college.”

     “Yeah?”

     “Oh, yeah. He was an assistant manager for like three years and he got me a job doing prep-work and dishes. One time, it was just me, him, and our line-cook Iggy during an off-hour on like a Thursday. Iggy was about to clean a wok and Tommy joked that he was going to become our new head chef and he started dumping a bunch of random spices in it. There was like a cup of cumin, a half-cup of salt, a few tablespoons of garam masala, then Iggy mixed in some coriander and cardamom and I contributed a few cups of milk, sweet tea, and a splash of mint chutney. Iggy let it boil for a few minutes, we let it cool, then we poured it into a soda cup and kept daring each other to drink what we started calling ‘El Agua Muerte.’ We bet a dollar each to whoever would drink the whole thing and we finally agreed that whoever drank it before closing time would get to keep everything in the tip jar.”

     She was visibly amused. “Who drank it?”

     I couldn’t contain my laughter. “No one. Our manager came by to take inventory and threw it away when she caught me adding ketchup to it.” I burst out with laughter at my own story and watched as the thin red smile crept up on her face and slipped into a laughter that harmonized with mine for the first time in years.

     We talked through our meals and when the ketchup-soaked plates were taken away, we spent the rest of the day wandering in-and-out of various stores. We exited a comic book store that advertised a Going Out of Business sale and I looked up at the Rio Grande in the ceiling as the sky’s waters turned orange. I looked over at her as she flipped through a comic she’d just bought and asked “anything else you want to get up to after this?”

     She shrugged.

     “Want to drive around town and be alone with our thoughts?”

     The smile flashed. “Still do that a lot?”

     “Only when I have gas money. Otherwise, I just drink.”

     She laughed. “We could hang out at home. I’m staying with mom.”

     “She won’t mind me coming over unannounced?”

     She shook her head with a smile and we boarded the escalator to ascend back the way we came.

*****

     The Cul-De-Sac of white manors shone in the rising moonlight as I parked my car against the curb adjacent to her family home. She waited in the driveway parked among luxury sedans and muscle cars from the 70s and as I stepped out of my car, she motioned for me to follow her up the yard of raked gravel to the porch lit by a fixture shaped like a gas lamp. She unlocked the door before I had a chance to catch up and I followed her inside.

     We were greeted by a cavernous foyer made of an Earthy stucco that I hadn’t seen in so long, I’d forgotten it was there as she called into the living room nearby. “Hey, mom?”

     A voice called back. “Yeah?”

     “I hope you don’t mind, I have a friend over!”

     The sound of a chair shifting in the living room echoed off the looming walls of the house and her mother peaked around the corner at us, a 5’3 lightning bolt of a silver-haired woman. She beamed a great big smile at me and said “Oh, I remember YOU! Can I get you two anything? Warm tea? Cookies?”

     “No thanks, mom.”

     “Well, you two holler if you need anything!”

     She crossed back into the living room lit softly by a chandelier and sat back down on a hand-carved wooden stool beside an easel nestled in a tarp under a tin statue of Kokopelli. The room was barely furnished save for the easel in the corner and a leather couch set before a TV large enough to cover the wall. Her father and little brother sat on opposite ends of the couch and her dad gazed lazily at a football game while her brother flipped through a book. 

     “Psst!”

     I turned back and saw she was halfway up the stairwell motioning for me to hurry up and follow her. I crossed the foyer and bounded up the carpeted stairs towards her. 

     “Your mom’s surprisingly trusting of us.”

     She looked back at me with a playful smile. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

     I thought about it for a moment. “Good point.”

     We ascended past the second floor used solely for storing sports memorabilia and art supplies up to the third floor where her room awaited us. The chipped blue door creaked on its hinges as we pushed inside and she flicked on the overhead light that bathed the room in a soft glow.

     The walls had worn paint and layers of dust outlined where the furniture and trinkets used to be before they’d gone to California with her in a cardboard box. All that remained was the bed, a desk, a set of astrology curtains I’d gifted her the last time we saw each other, and a fetal pig in a mason jar of formaldehyde sitting atop the shelves. 

     She pushed past me towards her bed where bits of clothing sat folded next to her half-full suitcase. “Here, so we have somewhere to sit.” She began to stuff the clothing into the suitcase as I mosied across the room to the formaldehyde jar on the shelves and flicked it with my pointer finger. The pig twirled in the unspeakable fluid and I looked over at her. “New tenant?”

     She looked up at me. “What?”

     “The pig. Did your parents sublet your room to him?”

     The thin smile flashed and she went back to sorting. “Got it at an antique store in Taos a few days ago. I’m taking it back to Santa Monica with me. Maybe I’ll name him after you.”

     “I thought that’s what having kids was for.” I leaned in to examine the pig and glanced back at her to see if she was paying attention. I reached over, slightly unscrewed the lid, and took a curious whiff of the contents. The scent of formaldehyde and death stung my nostrils and I gagged on the smell as I quickly screwed the lid back on.

     “You opened the pig jar, didn’t you?”

     “Sorry.” I continued to sputter and cough as I sat on the floor beside the bed to get away from the pig and she decided to stop sorting and follow suit, taking a spot on the floor beside me. 

     “So, Los--” A few more coughs escaped my lips “--ew, fuck. Los Angeles, huh?”

     She smiled. “Yep. Los Angeles.”

     “You like it out there?”

     “It’s all right.”

     “You ever miss it back here in Albuquerque?”

     “Sometimes. I mostly miss my family, but it’s not too bad. Mom rented an apartment near mine so she can visit once a month.”

     “Hm. You ever think about moving back here one day?”

     She shrugged. “All of the animation studios are out in LA.”

     I smirked. “What, you’re too good for the heroin-hovels off Central?”

     A flash of red. “There’s crack-shacks on Figueroa. I’ve got everything I need back in Cali.”

     I laughed. “Except me, of course.”

     She smirked. “I don’t think my roommates would like the way you stink up the place.”

     “I’ll just sleep in my car in the parking lot. I’d blend right in.”

     Our laughter filled the room and as it faded, our attention shifted to the sound of a train passing in the distance, the rumbling slowly filling the silence in the room. 

     She smiled. “Remember?”

     I nodded. “Here, let me paint the scenery.” I stood and reached over her for the lightswitch and with a click, the lights died and left us alone with the moonlight cutting through the teal curtains. I sat back beside her and we listened to the train echo between us. 

     For a moment, it felt like we'd just arrived late at night in the town of Portales for a class trip to visit the local university when we were 16 and 17. While everyone else was carrying their belongings from the bus to their assigned motel room, we snuck off and sat alone on a bus bench facing the vast and empty desert we'd just emerged from populated only with a lone road and a set of train tracks. We were talking about anything and nothing when a freight train lumbered out of the darkness and we watched silently as it ran past us to its predetermined destination. The lights on the train passed fast enough that they seemed stationary, like the stars were just across the street and we could reach out and grab them.

     I looked down at her hand resting on the floor beside me. I timidly reached over and placed my hand upon hers as the rumbling of the train filled the air between us. The horn blared louder and louder as my heart pounded with the locomotive. I glanced at her and watched as different emotions flashed on her face. She pulled her hand into herself from beneath mine and curled her knees against her chest. The air grew thicker with the train’s horn and she softly said over the noise “I have to go back to Los Angeles.”

     I leaned back against the bed and my heart began to slow. “I’m sorry.”

     “I have to go back.”

     “I’m sorry.”

     I saw what looked like slivers of moonlight or teardrops run along her cheek as she looked down at the floor and the train rumbled further and further away until it disappeared towards its unknown destination. All that sat between us now was silence.

     I quietly watched the shadows dance on the white stipple ceiling for a few minutes before I finally rose from the floor and crossed the room towards her door. The yellow light of the hall flooded the bedroom as I stood in the doorway to look back at her and she receded further into herself. I softly murmured something that didn’t matter and descended the staircase through the darkness of the second floor back down into the darkened foyer. 

     The lights in the living room had been dimmed and the chandelier cast star-shaped glimmers on the walls while her family continued their activities in their own corners. No one noticed as I pushed through the front door accompanied by two chirps from the house alarm and I crossed the yard towards my car. 

     I twisted the key in the ignition and felt the car rumble softly as I looked over at her window, but with the lights off, there was nothing left to see.