by Jesse Raub
Shuffled #4

If she followed the plan, she would have met me on the corner of First and Kentucky Avenue.  I waited for three hours on the bus stop bench, sitting next to a revolving cast of second-shifters in coveralls or thick tweed skirts heading to a factory, coughing on the bus exhaust everytime the hydraulic brakes hissed and the bus idled on the curb to even out the schedule.  I didn’t bring a book, so I was left with examining the grime covered sidewalk or crippling memories of her.  The sidewalk didn’t entertain me long enough.

Bundled in a wool coat and scarf, every set of nylons that passed set my heart alight, but none of them were her, just grandmothers built like linebackers with handkerchiefs tied around their hair — peasant stock, in the old Polish neighborhood.  Fleeting glimpses of her cherry red lipstick against the grey-green sky, a flash of her cobalt blue dress along the black soot-soaked brick.  Eyes were playing tricks on me, and then I was lost in the past.

The soft touch of my fingers along her the curve of her hip; the glance from her grass green eyes across the table, floating above the steam rising from our coffee cups; a flicker of a smile through the peephole of a cheap motel room. Each one pouring ice water over the burning coals in my chest.  I had promised her I’d go on without her, that I’d continue the plan.  She told me that if he found out he would kill her, and that I couldn’t look back.  I had to just keep going.  But when I walked down to the bus depot, I just kept walking past.  I had the ticket — one way to New Orleans — instead I shoved it back into the front pocket of my jeans.  I couldn’t do it.

Weeks passed.  Back to the normal grind.  Suit, briefcase, accounting.  Wife, dog.  Grocery shopping with a raincloud behind my eyes, swirling into a dark thunderhead.  There are only two thoughts in my head: How much longer can I do this? and How painful would a bullet be?

I don’t need an answer because days later I see her.  A ghost of her face while I’m walking down the street, her arm around some man.  I see the lipstick, the eyes, the smile fleeting through a crowd.  I almost laugh.  I don’t even care about the money gone, or the gold necklace she’s wearing that I bought her. Another rube.  I wonder what she’s taking him for.  The crowd swirls and they’re lost, and then it breaks again and I see him full on.  He’s short and thin, walking with a heavy limp and a cane.  His face is gaunt and thin.  She told me her husband was a failed prizefighter, a violent man with a heavy fist.  She didn’t mention his ill health.  Over the top of the crowd I see his head and shoulders stoop as he stumbles, and her face is sheer terror as she dives to grasp his arm and support his weight.

And then, the rainclouds gone, and I find myself walking towards the bus station.

“Kentucky Ave” by Jesse Raub is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

“Kentucky Ave” is a short fiction interpretation of the Tom Waits song of the same name from the album Blue Valentine, released through Asylum Records in the year 1978. It is the fourth story written as part of the Shuffled series, in which inspiration is chosen by random computerized algorithms on a well stocked iPod.