Adriane Takes a Ride

The studio was her refuge. She barred Nick from it. “Sean, yes… he is the only one.” Even though he’d have to pass through the bedroom to get to it, Nick has never allowed past the door. Sometimes back, when Sean was drinking too, he would bring his old portable typewriter up to the studio and tap away at it while she painted, “I love the sound of his two fingered clickety-click and … there I go again.” She took a good pull off the pint. It was half gone already…. Where did it go? “It won’t be long before I finish it at this rate… maybe make a few phone calls… Naw… just go get another pint… one more for back-up in case I need it. Go ahead and say it, Sean… you love him, want him, don’t you?”

She could hear Mickey’s voice as though he was in the studio as before. She could hear him plain as day quoting something from the Bible, “We are not wrestling with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers of darkness…” whatever. He isn’t religious but he knows the Bible. He says it is a book that would be better-off kept from the hands of religious people who are too apt to take it literally. It is read so much more clearly in lands where it is banned. Truthfully, I have never read it, nor do I care to, but this principality business makes sense to me. I’ve been wrestling with dope and booze since I was fourteen…”

“Shit…. I haven’t been home a day and I am drinking already.”

Chapter Two:

A Conversation Without Words

It was about a week later, as she was in the middle of a painting… a full body self portrait …, standing in front of a mirror with hands down… the mirror image facing directly out. It was an angry one; in cadmium reds, yellows and black… it screamed, “I hate you!” She heard the dogs barking and then they calmed down. It was someone they knew well enough. She looked out from her studio window down to the garden pathway that led from the garage. Her heart leapt when she first saw it was Nick. She dropped the palette and rushed down the stairs to the back door to greet him. But, before she got to the door her mood changed.

He stopped… stunned to see her when she opened the door, “When did you get home?”

“Is that what you want to know? Don’t you want to welcome me?” No answer to that.

“You look fucked up,” changing the subject he tried to skirt past her.

She could see his eyes… the pinhole irises. “You could have called to find out? I left a message for you before I left Orly,” she grabbed his arm, “Aren’t you going to greet me with a hug?”

He gave her one of those pat-pat on-the-back hugs: he smelled of perfume.

“Nice cologne,” she sniffed, letting him escape her embrace. “What is it, au de pus-say?”

“I’m not going to argue with you. You smell like vodka.” He then dashed up the stairs to the room he kept that they had converted into his office.

Sushi stood by her side and followed her into the kitchen where Ishegot her a doggie treat. Tofu heard the bag open from way out in the garden and he was there at her feet before she could get the treat to Sushi. “No Tofu… I am not giving you a treat,” She teased. He stood on his hind legs and she gave him one. “No more. You go back outside and guard the house.” She then gave one to Sushi who always waited her turn patiently.

She grabbed the phone and went back up to the studio to call Mickey. The phone rang several times before the answering machine turned on, “Who are you to interrupt me?” it said: After a pause… the beep.

“Mickey, are you home? Pick up the phone. I have been home a week and you haven’t called. I miss you and want to see you.”

She was flushed with joy when the phone was picked up…

“What, are you out of pot?” he sniped. “I haven’t been smoking pot these days…

“No, that isn’t why I am calling. Please, can I come over Sean?” She purred like a kitten.

“Cigarettes, yes, but I don’t keep it around anymore, not like the old days…” he carried on.

“Please Sean.”

“Sean? You’ve never called me Sean.”

He was melting… purring like a kitten always works with him.

She purred some more, “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

When she got to Mickey’s place he was working on his motorcycle in front of his truck in the shade of the orange tree. That tree had sweet and juicy oranges, better than anything you can buy in the grocery store. She pulled a ripe one off the tree and opened it up with her thumbs, sucking out the juice.

Smiling he looked up and said, “Love to watch you do that, Fu.”

Spitting out a seed, “I know. You are a pervert and you like to watch me suck.”

“Ooooh, don’t get me excited, girl.” He went back to changing a chain on his bike. It wasn’t a big bike… a small Honda he calls his Rebel.

She knew nothing about motorcycles but she remembered Robert once had a Harley. Though Robert was a big man but she thought he looked silly on it: like a banker trying to look like a bad-ass… not a Hell’s Angel. He wasn’t that committed. He was more of a halfway type… a Purgatory’s Angel.

Mickey was another story altogether. Though he dressed and looked a little rough, he wasn’t a bad-ass either. He was just okay to her on any kind of bike. “Why don’t you ride a Harley, Mickey?”

“I ride a Honda because I can’t afford a Harley. Harleys have been priced out of my reach since all the lawyers and yuppies turned fifty. They want to have what they had no balls for when they were busy making money and becoming bored with themselves.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. My brother had one.” She watched him as he started the motor, checked the chain and adjusted a bolt while it ran. He looked so professional. She admired that about him. He was able to fix almost anything.

 “The only way I could afford one now would be to either get a good job or sell drugs,” he grinned, showing a row of nice but somewhat neglected teeth… one was missing on the side of his mouth. She had asked him what happened to it and he said it had been knocked out.

“Where did you learn to fix bikes?” She knew the answer but was doing her best to show that she was proud of him.

“Where did you learn to be so damned sexy?”

“It comes natural… with the territory, maybe it eez zee ac-cent… eh?” she flirted, pouring on her French accent.

“Some are born with it and some have to work at it,” he answered spontaneously.

She had to admit she enjoyed teasing him. He always came back with a good one and they had some good laughs together. As they laughed the wrench came off a nut he was adjusting and he cursed, “Damn. See, that is how I lost this tooth.”

“I thought you said it was knocked out in a fight.”

“That was just to impress you.” Again, he ginned pointing to the gap in his teeth, “Truth is I am too slick to get hit in the face to have that happen.”

“Oooh, I am impressed alright.” I cooed, “You never lost a fight?”

“I didn’t say that.” he stood and did what she’d heard them call shadow boxing, “I just never get in a fight with someone that is bad enough to do that.”

“You are a champion fighter?” She posed in an old fashioned boxing stance like in the old posters.

“No, I am a champion coward.” He faked a couple of jabs at her stomach, “I get in fights with people I know I can beat and stay out of the way of those I know I can’t.”

He danced, backing away like Mohammed Ali, “Fly like a butterfly and flee like a rabbit.”

She came at him like John L. Sullivan. He pretended he was backed-up on the ropes and curled his fists up against his chest… she came at him feigning a punch… he grabbed her hand, pulled her to his chest in his arms. He kissed her on the lips. No tongue… He knows she doesn’t like French kissing. Pressing her lips to his she held on to him and let the affection flow as they stood there embracing. She never wanted to let go but when she did he didn’t insist. She thought; That is the way he was with me… he just backs-off knowing… knowing what? Knowing better after being burnt so many times… the boundaries? I don’t know. There is a knowledge that is intuitive… it has no logic… you can’t be taught that; when to go… when to stop, like the act of painting.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he looked into her eyes.

“Yes and no…”

“What do you mean? Yes and no.”

“Okay, we put away Papa. I am not over that yet.”

“As you ought not be.”

“Robert swept my mother away and I hardly saw her at all.”

“Robert, your brother?”

“Yes, luckily for me he was in Paris with her most of the time and I was able to get clean before they got back.” She was fidgeting now.

“You want to go for a ride? You’ve never been on the bike,” He really wasn’t asking because, before she knew it, he was on the porch and coming back with a couple of helmets.

“Here, you’ll look cute in goggles.” He handed them to her and she put them on.

“Hey, do I look like a pilot?” she felt light-hearted and almost completely sober.

“Yes, you are a, World-War-One, flying Ace!”

They took off out of the yard onto the sidewalk… and he gunned it onto the street as she held on to him against the acceleration.

Even though his little Honda purred, rather than roared like a Harley, they still couldn’t talk or hear without shouting while riding. She couldn’t joke around against the sound and the rush of the wind caressing her face. She held onto him thinking, Sometimes it is best to have a conversation without words. An occasional shout of glee is enough and all is said with our bodies leaning in tandem as we swerved around corners on the mountain roads around Santa Barbara. She held more tightly to him and that was exactly what she needed for a homecoming.

Up on Camino Cielo they stopped at a place that was special to Mickey. They hiked back a half-mile or so to a place that was an amphitheater circled with boulders. He pointed out one, “See, that is a hippopotamus.”

“Yes, I see. It looks just like a hippo with its mouth open wide looking up from the Nile. I’ve heard of Lizard’s Mouth, is that it?”

“No, that’s on the other side facing the ocean. When my daughter was a year-old our friends came with us up here to picnic and celebrate her birthday. I love this place…haven’t been here since then.”

He looked sad to her and she wanted to comfort him, hardly ever hearing him talk about his daughter, but Adriane did know that she just graduated from high-school last June. Saying nothing more, looking down from where they sat on top of a boulder, with a view of Cachuma Lake in the distance below.

“What happened with Rod when you went home? Is he still in your retinue?”

“No, I threw him out. Did you know he kept a shotgun under my bed after you broke his jaw?”

“No, but I hoped you’d threw him out when he finally pressed charges.”

“I found the shotgun under the bed and I asked him, ‘What the fuck is this?’ like he is going to shoot someone? He just said that he kept it there in case you came back around.”

“A brave man.”

“So who’s your lady friend?

“What lady friend?”

“The one you were humping the… you knew I was there, didn’t you?”

“I saw your car but I wasn’t sure until I heard it pull out of the driveway.” He was grinning at her.

“Shame on you, you bad boy: I was going to let you get lucky that night.”

“Should I say thank you?” He put his hands together, Namaste style.

“You still haven’t told me who she was.”

“Just a girl… a friend, you know.”

“What is… how you say it now, a friend with benefits?”

“Yes, she still uses so I don’t even try to get too close to her. Know what I mean?”

“Fucking isn’t close?” she chided but, even then, she began to feel a little jealous.

“You ought to know better than me.” He sounded just a little bitter.

 She thought of his poem and didn’t say anything more. She couldn’t let him know how much it hurt. However, in spite of her longing, she saw that it was beautiful to watch the sunset from there. It started to get cold. She shivered, dreading the ride back to town in a light windbreaker… He saw her shiver so he took off his leather jacket and offered to trade.

“How gallant… But no, I’ll just hold on close to you.” she teased, “Riding behind a man is the most fun a girl can have outside of bed.”