Absolution

Three days had passed, slowly, but I mulled over my brother’s words and decided I really should get to know the singer, the supposed girl of my dreams, better. That proved a challenging task, as she wore a more intricate and elaborately designed mask than I did. I grasped from aimless conversations that we enjoyed similar pursuits, so I took her to one of those vintage type cinemas and we watched a Western with Clint Eastwood in, then I took her for a slice of pie – she ordered lemon meringue and I had apple cinnamon.

I asked her about growing up and she said she wasn’t privileged – daddy was a drunk and mommy was out fucking some hick police officer whilst she was out smoking pot behind the gas station. She said she grew up in a town that meant nothing to anybody, where the Confederate flag flew highly and lynchings happened on a monthly basis. As she spoke her eyes looked up at the bright strip lights and they seemed to sparkle with wonder – she held no eye contact with me and her hands made big gestures to accompany her big claims.

Probably the most truthful thing I heard that night was something vague, a passing statement, very dull in comparison to the rest of her tales. She said, “I knew how I wanted my life to go at age 13 – only I made certain it would happen at 14.” She then explained how she’d achieved all she wanted and how she couldn’t part with her past, no matter how much she wanted to, because it al created the person, the image, the singer, the girl she was now.

When she spoke of things society would see as taboo, she pulled at the tiny golden crucifix sitting on a chain above her St. Christopher. Her use of extravagant lies seemed almost as if she was trying to cast herself away from a religion engraved into her mind, one that she felt guilt for betraying, so much so that on her left shoulder blade, the words ‘In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti’ were tattooed in black, gothic script, with a small cross placed carefully under the prayer.

I’d studied her body, with means of finding out more about her and came back with better results than I did just from talking to her. There was a faint silver scar on her temple, which was from a drunken fall at boarding school (a prestigious school in New York somewhere) when she was 15; two slight dents on her nose from when she’d had a terrible nosebleed and her brother squeezed way too hard; a tattoo on her hand that said ‘PARADISE’, I guessed it was an homage to her road mentor, Sal Paradise, or to one of her ideas that never failed to inspire her; hand-print shaped bruises on her hips from when a “jerk-off” got carried away, and then two cigarette burns on her left thigh that she laughed off and attributed to when she’d broke her ankle, dosed up on morphine and was brave enough to test her pain threshold out.

She had a Monday to Thursday job near her apartment, working in a bar or something; she didn’t really elaborate on her work outside of singing and when I found myself sitting in a booth in the early evening with the kid and his two other English friends, they didn’t know shit all about her either. The one with the quiff and the leather jacket called her a “right shady bitch” and the other one, the reject Beatle in a pinstriped suit, agreed and stole a cigarette from between his friend’s long, slender fingers. He took a drag and spoke, saying that the greasy, pallid and track-mark covered man who always gave her a rose at the end of her shows was her husband or something.

The kid didn’t protest when I looked at him sceptically, he just shrugged and tapped along to Marrakech Express playing in the background. I lit a cigarette and inhaled the fumes, repeating the scornful face pulled when the one with the quiff commented on the girl in my head; both him and the other one pulled similar faces of displeasure.

I looked away from the door I was staring at dazedly and the kid whacked me arm and pointed to the one in the suit. I looked up at him with my eyebrows raised and cigarette hanging loosely from between my lips and he smirked, told me to, “Look here, James Dean – get away now, this singer, she’s some kind of witch or succubus or something; the only one who hasn’t shagged her is the one who still admires her, we all thought she was magic when she was riding our dicks but, y’know, I look back and I could never watch her perform again, because she’s a real weird girl. Messed up in the head, if you understand.”

The quiffed one nodded enthusiastically, high-fived his friend and added, “Says some real fucked up stuff about God and Satan and shit. Creeped me out to no end, mate.” I laughed with a roll of my eyes and took a drag of my cigarette, saying I grew up with a father obsessed with sin and Satan, so it wasn’t that much of a big deal. He continued and said she was fearing, but not afraid if that made sense; she’d accepted her apparent fate but was terrified of it.

I pressed my lips together tightly and stubbed out my cigarette on the table, brushing it and the ashes to the dirty ground. I stood up, finished my drink and said goodbye to the three of them, exiting the bar and getting into my car. I then drove to a gas station, topped up my car with fuel, got some change, drove back to my motel, called up my brother for advice on information digging and decided, with his help, I would put the family business on hold for my happiness and tomorrow, I would set out on the mission to get more information on the singer – I would happily pose as an FBI agent and they would happily believe me and not only serve their homeland, but also serve myself.