Perhaps it's Love

Perhaps it’s
LOVE


By Dennis L. Siluk





Copyright© 2005
By Dennis L. Siluk
Perhaps it’s Love

Graphic/ by the Author










The House in Seattle







Young Hearts Fall
With the Rain

Here lay where it fell, a natural death—
Where love and youth
Used to live:

The soft, soft rain, too high up
To calm the day—so, young hearts fall
With the rain…
By Tasma A. Stanley
1967 [diary]




1
Breaking Out


[1967] Her look was not tender, and tender was not the way she wanted it to be. All the same it was a real look—she knew the strong unexpected fear that would flow over her should she let up that tender—not so tender look; she was about to address the issue.
While resolution cooled, she decided then and forever—now, to be more than what she portrayed her, herself to be, she must had been waiting for this moment, an excuse to, a reason for, for her to applaud herself, for she was about to break away from old surroundings. She was of course, or better put, never had been rude, at times a bit inarticulate, and worked on efforts to be adequate—yes, equal and strong was waiting on her the other side of her growth, it was in her, it was waiting, she knew it, she needed to challenge it, today must be the day she mumbled.

Today was the day. It was not like a thousand other days, it was different for some obvious reason—beneath her skin (where flesh and bone meet), there—in the hollow casings of her body something was different, something was taking place as she stood outside her house. She was today, eighteen—all of eighteen years old. She was an only child. Her family had given up many things they had said, many things that would had swung life a little different had she not been born; it was used to control her of course, but it antagonized her more than anything else. But Tasma was born, and that was that; she was eighteen-yeas old today, now it was her life. She thought about it, prayed for it, waited on it, and even had a countdown to it—had started the countdown at age sixteen; thus, she had two times 365-days, or 730-days to count; today was Zero-day.
Some may have said she led a good life. Had things nice; but she would not have agreed; not completely. She felt more into being a prisoner, and her home being the jail; or as they had put it, her father’s home. She felt as if she was tied to a pole, her parents used her for their cat and mouse attacks on one another; both wanting her to take their sides.
For some particular reason she was closer to her father though, but got along with her mother nonetheless, as best as anyone could in her situation, I expect; or at least it seemed to go that way. As I was about to say, and bring to a close herself-deportation of the home, is that: she is now standing outside the house, fate would have it no other way—outside holding a small suitcase, and a small purse for a handbag. Yes, now to her, in her mind, standing alone—it all happened in what seemed, in the clap of an eye, thus, into a cool brisk autumn she was standing outside her house, suitcase and all; but of course, we know it didn’t happen that quick—don’t we, it just seemed so now to her, now that the moment had arrived.
“O-yes,” she murmured to herself, to the birds flying south over head; murmured: ‘Look at me, I did it (she’s doing it is what she meant)’; looking at the door for the last time—she hoped she’d follow through on this adventure.
She now gazed upward at her bedroom window on the side of the house, it was 5:00 AM in the morning and she told herself: ‘Once you turn about do not look back Tasma Autumn Stanley—do not look back!” The Sun would rise shortly.


This was no time to daydream, she had done that for seven years thinking about this day, and as I had mentioned, had a countdown for two of those seven years. She told herself her father, her father could now be himself, be more creative and less compromising, and have fewer headaches over her—once departed; as could her mother also, plus, she’d not be used as a ping pong ball by her: “Tell your father I said this,” she’d tell her, and he’d be ten feet away. He’d look at Tasma and smile and shake his head. Oh he had his moments also, especially when he’d come home and say, “It’s my money, I earned it, and I can say where it should go.” And that was that. But it was never that, mom would say: “Tasma needs this and that and you, you brought her into this world, and you will have to cloth and feed her.”
Thus, for her parents success she lifted up her small suitcase, slipped out of the house, and ended up standing stone-still looking at the house outside of it, feeling the breeze on the back of her neck, a cool autumn breeze, it was the beginning of fall.
Said Tasma in a low hum within her daydreaming, ‘Mother can now visit Sally and Uncle Chris and not have to worry about me,’ it was a simple thought, but she was uncomplicated, simple if you will.

—She now walked up the road, it was now a lonely road, or becoming one, she wanted to look back, but should she—she’d feel as if she would turn into a pillar of salt had she, and so she could not. This was the beginning of her journey, like all journeys, it was a moment that demanded she keep walking: walking straight down the road, the sidewalk; by the trees, past the telephone poles, lest she turn around and find herself looking out her window tonight and start counting down another 730-days: god-forbid.
It dawned on her slightly; there’d be two worlds now, the one she was leaving behind, the predictable one, and the one, that magical one, the new one, and the one that took the tenderness off her face today (meaning the unknown and scary world).
The further she walked down the lane the more her old world faded. The sun would come out soon: by that time she’d be on a train leaving the Midwest to the Pacificwest—she told herself.

As she sat on the train the chill from the window made her hug her coat closer, pushing it tighter around her. Under her feet was a space for her suitcase. In her purse—which had a long strap to it, of which was looped around her shoulder and under her armpit, she held it tightly in her lap—containing $50.00, all she had in her savings account, which was a sum to say the least.



2
Reverie [l967]

Across from her on the train were two men carefully smoking cigars—wishfully, she’d had liked to change her compartment but it was too late. She again put that un-tender façade on her face, stern as a hew-goat; yet her internal character was in a panic.
‘They know each other,’ she told herself, as they looked about at large. She simply looked out the window as not to show she took note of them eyeing the compartment, looking at it as if they were inspectors. She uncrossed her legs, held them in tight against one another, her coat over her dress.
After a few hours, the two elder gentlemen started to drink a soda mixed with something, possibly alcohol, it had a strange order to it she told herself, looking suspiciously at them and then from the side of her eye, it wasn’t long before the slimmer fella went to sleep. She apagogically said to herself: ‘No reason to panic,’ and thus she became a little unguarded and produced a slight smile to her face. The younger of the two men, not the one sleeping (about thirty-five), smiled back at her as he lowered his soda to his leg, holding it in place with two hands. He was more handsome than the old-fart sleeping, she thought; he was strained in the face, double chin, and the younger one, the one awake, was groomed much better she contemplated: what a team.
“Fact is,” he said with a jeer and smiles at the same time, kind of a taunt, or laugh at oneself, “I wish I had a sandwich, these rides make me hungry.” She didn’t say a word, just gave a light smile, an older looking smile, yet with a childish gesture, one that would take time and experience to get rid of, one that was innocent and naive.
The man stood up, he was quite tall she thought, and left the compartment for the dinning car. Her appetite was soaring also. Then she looked across from her: at the older man sleeping, a paper sitting on the seat by him, she glanced over at the paper, something about the Vietnam War was on the front page, so was the Beatles on another, which was hanging out of the front section. She felt some supplication emerging from her intrinsic character, like a chick cracking its way out of an egg-shell. From smiles to a making contact with a complete stranger, it was frightful and at the times her insides were cramped with fears of the unknown.
Her destination was Seattle, Washington. The man now had come back into the compartment holding three sandwiches; she pretended not to notice and looked out the window, but she did notice and was hoping one was for her, and if so, could she take it, I mean honestly take it without, as they say: red tape attached, or expectations.
As he sat down, he laid down one sandwich by his friend, and held out the other for Tasma to take with an extended arm, saying: “I don’t’ like eating alone, please take it.” She hesitated a moment, he added, “No expectations if that is what you are thinking,” then turned to see if the old man had woken a tad, and he had not.
Tasma had taken the sandwich saying, “Thank you sir,” she said it with her respectable deep blue eyes staring at the man’s dark deep-rooted eyes. He reminded her of her English teacher from High School: a long face, but handsome in its uniqueness.



The pace of the train was slowing down now, with that the two men left the cubicle, as it stopped in Denver, Colorado. As the two men left, a veil of impending loneliness befell her. She was childishly pleased to have made their acquaintance, as little as it was, it was a big beginning for her. As the train stopped at the platform, dock #5, it was filled with new passengers that had been waiting; and as she combed the dock area with her eyes, she noticed many were greeting those coming off the train. Even though she had eaten just a few hours earlier, she could smell the food coming from some of the venders and a café attached to the train depot: hamburgers and other fried foods came seeping into her environment, pastry as well. The cool air of the evening was also seeping into the train, as a draft through the corridors and window.
—The train was now back on its schedule and it was hauntingly dark outside as she rested her head gently against it, looking down toward the tracks, yet you could not see a thing: shadows, that was all that reflected back into and through the window, just shadows.
As the train went forward, far off in the distance she could see buildings, and now a few factories with lights on within them, the light of the moon now was assisting the shadows with the recaptured light; shadows shifting over shadows. The landscape could not been seen. She laid back, shut her eyes, and drifted off.



3
Exhilarated


As she laid back and shut her eyes, hence, falling fast to sleep was but a few minutes; yet she drifted back and forth though the labyrinth of sleep’s corridors; within her slumberous awakenings, listening to the sound, the hum of the iron-tracks: the hum of iron on iron; train wheels on train tracks: metal on metal—the bulk and solidness of the locomotive (the engine): the slowing down of the train, the whistle, and the cold window on her forehead. There was no turning back now—her subconscious told her, told her second-self (each hum bringing her closer to her destination): for she had mumbled, ‘Maybe I should go back, I didn’t leave a letter?’ She asked her sleep-self that question, found the sector within her mind to deliver it to, and left it there for safekeeping. ‘Maybe I should go back and just tell dad I, I was going to go visit a friend from school.’ These misgivings soared up to her brain: then fizzling out, dispersing here and there. Her stomach now became uneasy. Funny she thought: here I am sleeping, I guess, I think, and I ask a question and my stomach hurts, why not my head [?] It was nice she told herself, that is, the two men taking her attention away from her for awhile. It was funny though; peculiar might be a better word for it: she could even hear a man’s voice. How strange dreams can be, she told herself. How very tired one can become just from sitting and traveling, was another passing thought; she felt a little uncomfortable, as if her body was trying to tell her something. But she resisted it, she didn’t’ know her body had a mind of its own, a protective-self one might say. ‘Go back to sleep, listen to the hum,’ she told her mind. ‘My uncle and aunt, the Belmont’s have told me time and again to come down and visit them in Seattle, and Jill, she will like it when I show up at her house—. Jill being the same age as Tasma, older by a few months. ‘I should have told them I was coming.’ The hum of the train kept a smooth cadence, a rhythm for the sleeping spirit, like poetry in motion for the body. ‘There comes that voice again in my head, it is that man who gave me the sandwich, it must be him, who else could it be [?] how did he get in my dream, I can’t see him, but I hear him,’ funny she thought: how can dreams be so real.

The train was coming to another stop, it started to jerk, she must had fallen to sleep completely: at least for a number of hours anyways; it was as if her eyelids were plastered on with tape, they were so hard to open. Her last thought was the humming of the tracks, her arguing with herself to go to sleep. She opened her eyes wider now, her head still against the window, there was daylight and it was refreshing to see it. She had an involuntary smile.

“Seattle Station!” bellowed out a voice. She was now trying to catch her breath; this would be the second part of her journey—as she allowed her inner-self to tell her physical eyes, as they stared out the window. She looked down onto her lap, sliding her eyes to the floor of the train, and back up and out into and onto the station platform. Again, she sensed something, not sure what, but something, she was missing something, and again she was not listening to her intuition: her body talking to her.



[Seattle Station] As she looked down again, trying to wakeup, shaking her head, it came to her that her purse was not on her lap, it must had fallen during the long sleep, the ride: this was her first thoughts. ‘Fallen off my lap,’ she mumbled to herself, for there it was on the floor: sure enough. “How the heck,” she said loudly, opening-up her sleepy eyes wider. “How the heck did it get there?” she asked herself. Then she looked closer as her focus became more clear, “Damn!” she announced to the empty room—her purse strap was cut, and everything in her purse was all about on the floor of the train compartment: ‘…the train must had shifted: back and forth,’ she analyzed as she looked about for, and at all the items on the floor: the lipstick, comb, brush, fingernail polish, etcetera. She quickly checked under her seat for her suitcase, it was there, ‘Thank god,’ she whispered. Then it dawned on her: ‘…what the heck was my strap cut for?’ It made no sense for the moment, she wasn’t thinking like her inner-body was, nor had she ever had such an experience.
Aimless and forlorn, her heart beat faster than a woodpecker gnawing on a tree. As she quickly gathered up all the items belonging to her purse, she noticed the $50-dollars missing from her wallet: her trip money; her only money.
“Of course,” she concluded loudly, “How, how…shit!” She never swore, but when I say never, I will not leave out a few bad words for such occasions as this.
Suddenly a porter walked by the door—bellowed: “Last Station, disembark, last station, last station!”
“Oh I can hear, I can hear,” she sighed with an angry-tear; she was trying to hold back her madness as well as she could. “But, but, I had my money….” before she could finish her sentence the porter was at the next compartment, giving information to an elder lady and man, she thought it would be rude to interrupt, so she hesitated—waited, the lady looked from the side of her eye at Tasma, and went right along with the frivolous questions she was asking, as if to say: you have to wait, I dare you say something; that was what Tasma had picked up from her untrained lip-reading, but then Tasma was at this time, heartbroken, and thought the worse for humanity, it had to be what she was saying, or at least, thinking she told herself. Another porter came behind her, “Let’s go ma’am, no time to stand around young lady!” Therefore, he walked on by her, and she just shook her head and vacated the train, as if it was all hopeless. What could they do anyhow she remitted to herself.
Her voice was now thin and cracking, she wanted to cry hard, but ended up like the dozens of people being pushed body to body, like sardines in a can: all bushed together and wanting to get out and off the train at the same time; all hurried along like a herd of cattle. A man stood by the door as she stepped down onto the platform of the station, she said: “My name is Tasma (a pause took place, someone else was asking a question, at the information booth); my name is...my money got stolen on the train, $50-dollars,” she finally got it out quickly before someone else came and dominated the dialogue.
The man pointed to a small room at the station, “The police are in there Miss, you can talk to them, make out a report.” As he looked at her, she seemed to him as if she was going to cry, but he was lost for words but delicately said, “I’m sorry Miss, really I am, I can’t do a thing, you got to see the police.” Like a pup that had lost its master she walked slowly out onto the main area in the station. The man walked back into the train now, gave her another glance and was gone: and so was his three piece stand that he kept his schedule on as people got on and off the train. She looked at the police hut, checked her pocket in her coat, .75-cents she pulled out, and Jill’s address.



4
City of Seattle


Seattle was to be her oasis, but instead it was turning out to be her desert, or so she was feeling. Yet, she was wise enough to convince herself it was just the beginning.
Standing outside the station she now tasted the unfamiliar salt in the air from the waters of the Puget Sound. She put back on her face that new untender smile, the one that helped her get away from the house and the same one that outstared the stranger on the train. The street was a rush of people. And the Space Needle that was built for the World’s Fair a few years earlier could be seen and that told her she was far, far away from where she had started [St. Paul, Minnesota], a true adventurer.
For a moment, standing still, gazing at the Space Needle she had lost her self-pity. The morning sky was bright and clear and the Puget-Sound echoed: here is a new morning, a new day. In her hand she held the address to Jill’s house, it was quite a distance to walk, perhaps four or five miles, she concluded after looking at a map of the city behind a glass encasement at the station, but .75cents would not buy much transportation.
Said Tasma in her murmuring, soft, soft voice: ‘What will happen to me if they refuse me room and board? Her insides were silent to herself it didn’t answer her like it did in her sleep.

—As she walked up a long and enduring hill after about three hours of walking to get to the top, a family of dogs raced by her, past her: mother, father and three young ones; they all ran by her and through some cars—dodging them to get to the other side of the street where a café was, where they’d go to the back and find garbage: lunch for them. But this also told her she was getting to the residential section of the Ballard District of the city, where her cousin Jill lived. As she looked down the hill, and across the city, there was the University, but she paid little attention to it and continued to walk up the hill. The day had turned out to be cool and fresh for walking, not even building up a sweat, and just a little moisture on her forehead, nothing to speak of. She found the street, it looked like Jenks, 844 Jenks she told herself, something like that, she was so tired she couldn’t make it out, and the note in her hand was perspiring a little and had fogged the address now. As she walked up to the house, knocked at the door, to her dismay, no one was home. Consequently, she went to the neighbor’s house and asked the question (an old woman with frosted white hair stood outside her porch), “Ma’am, I’m looking for the Belmont’s”
“For the Belmont’s you say!” a little hard of hearing.
“O-yes, yes, I’m a relative of theirs, do you know where they might be?”
“Might be, oh yes, oh yes, where they always are, up the street about two blocks away, at the “Due-Drop-Inn, the bar, that damn bar, I do hope you’re not a lush like them?” she said with a sneer on her face.
Tasma looked a little frazzled, “Lush, I don’t understand.”
“Good heavens, you are much too naive for this group, go back home child before you become…, she stopped and said no more and walked back onto her porch. She peeked her head out of the screen window, “My name is Alice Whitehead, just thought you should know.” Tasma gave her a bright and cheerful smile, and for some odd reason the old woman returned it.
It was a long haul, thought Tasma, from Minnesota to Washington State, and now five miles through the city to this large looking house. As she walked down the block to the bar she tried to straighten herself up a bit. It was for all intent and purposes the end of her journey, she hoped.

—Now standing in the bar, the first time she had ever been in a bar, she started to cough from the clouds of smoke of the tobacco that were floating in the air: smog. She could also smell the barley and fermentation of the drinks and hear the transverse of the conversations as they shifted from one side of the barroom to the other. In the back left side of the bar was a pool table. To the front of her was a long bar, looked like mahogany wood, like in the movies. She had read the sign [overhead] as she had walked into the bar and therefore knew it was the ‘Due-Drop-Inn’: what a name she thought, cleaver but dumb. A line of men were standing at the bar, and several seated on stools, others filled up tables, there must had been fifty people in the bar that seemed not to be much larger than a full size basement (possibly nine-hundred square feet). It seemed to her the men and women were hugging their drinks, kissing the glasses. Keeping them close by as if someone might hit it or take it when they were not looking, like her purse, or something might happen unexpectantly; was it gold her mind told her.
She currently looked about for her aunt and uncle, and possibly Jill, but she’d be too young to be working in here she thought, but Mrs. Whitehead said they were all up at the bar, so she implied, thought Tasma.
She had only seen her aunt and uncle on sparse occasions, when they’d come down from Washington State, to Minnesota and visit her mother, at which time, Jill and she would play. They were always saying they’d take her to back to Seattle with them someday, or to this place or that place, but they never did. Promises, promises; her mother got mad once and told them to stop telling her such things: that being, they’d take her places because they never did, and again I must repeat, they never would; although Tasma’s mother would have her sister Ann tell George to stop telling Tasma such things.
‘Oh well,’ Tasma deliberated, ‘…it’s all in the past; water over the dam now, as they say’: she did it on her own, and here she was. She now asked the waiter [Tommy], “Could you point out Mr. and Mrs. Belmont for me, I’m a relative to them, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen them?” Without hesitation, the young man did just that.




5
The Do-Drop-Inn


To Tasma the last thirty-six hours was half a life time, if anything it was at best, a journey of alarm; at worse, well, she’d find out that at this very moment: it could become more desolate she supposed, and her life prematurely vacated like an empty glass on the bar waiting to be filled but rather sent back home, or turned away. So we shall see, was her attitude, as the young waiter pointed to the Belmont’s. But just as he did that, a girl walked up to the couple, was about to sit at the very table the waiter was pointing to, she resembled a picture she had of Jill, one she had sent her; she looked so grown up now, ‘could it really be her,’ she murmured under her breath—for sure her eyes said: it’s her, it is Jill.
As Tasma approached the table, the closer she got the drunker the older couple looked that must had been the Belmont’s, so she concluded. They both had pale skin and their eyelids were but half operational, so it seemed to Tasma, as they tried to open them—like car wipers that were working automatic-slow motion; it seemed they couldn’t open beyond a certain point, so they allowed them to remain lazy and staring. ‘Awa,’ said Tasma in a silent whisper, ‘now I know what Mrs. Whitehead meant.’ Jill was staggering a ting. She caught a glimpse of Tasma coming forward to her table. Before Tasma could say a word, Jill screamed: “I don’t believe it!” Jumping with hesitate disbelief, she almost toppled Tasma to the floor as she fell upon her arms wide open, hugging her recklessly; she was strong as an ox thought Tasma, and as drunk as a sailor on leave.

—Jill didn’t look all that much different from what Tasma remembered her as, she was a speck taller than her now, more outgoing, probably seriously outspoken, she’d find out. She was a smidgen thinner than she had remembered her as, high breasts, dark eyes, short black hair, not like Tasma’s, which was reddish-auburn, almost like the faded colors of the autumn leaves in Minnesota, but her hair glowed as if strings of beaming sunshine were netted into it. She had a few freckles yet, full lips and nice curves to her body. She had a slight tan left over from summer, and deep-sea bluish-green eyes. They looked at one another trying to see the differences that had occurred over the years.
Tasma in thought: ‘She still has that nice olive skin, pale as it is, promiscuous eyes yet, hidden secrets in them for sure, as they always proclaimed to me. Her midnight black hair has a tint to it, sparkles, with a thread of purple here and there, a hippy maybe; a flower tattoo on her upper portion of her arm, and one by the small of her back.’
Tasma now held Jill steady after the initial blockbuster jump towards her. Then she looked down toward the Belmont’s, George and Ann.
“Look mom,” she said, as if they had not seen or heard it all already, “Cousin Tasma is with us.” George looked closer, leaned a bit on the table with his elbow holding him up for support, hand in his chin as a pillar, unable to see her completely, but could make out (strenuously) whom Jill said she was; Tasma’s coat covering most of her body from her neck to her knees, “So it is young Tasma, so it is our little niece,” he couldn’t remember where she had lived, “…Iowa, right, how is Iowa nowadays?” he asked Tasma.
“No father, Minnesota, she’s from Minnesota.”
“Oh yes, yes, that is right, Minnesota.”
“Oh everything is fine Uncle George.”
“Ooooh so it is, soo it is,” said Mrs. Belmont, with an inquisitive look, eyes opening up slowly like a python; then looking at Tasma as if she had seen a ghost, said: “My gosh, it’s really you Tasma, what brings you way out here?”
Tasma wanted to speak, answer her, but her voice was frozen all of a sudden. A moment passed, and finally she said: “I came to visit you folks, I hope you don’t mind?”





6
The Visit




As Jill and Tasma laughed, George asked, “Is your parents alright?”
“Oh yes sir,” she replied.
“Hmmm,” he murmured.
“You came all this way just to visit us?” he questioned.
Tasma felt a morsel dim, looking into his inquisitive drunk eyes, pale-foggy eyes, eyes that had red veins circulating here and there like a spider’s web, eyes like a guerrillas; her dread was near-term, coming back, which was always tucked somewhere far back in her mind anyhow, but she had $50-dollars in case they did not want her, before that is; for now she had but .75-cents. Jill noticed a poignant grin appearing on her face. And put out her long thin strong but gentle hands to Tasma.
“You expected more I think,” Tasma just looked blank.
“You can stay in my room, I, I mean in the guest room as long as you’d like, a week, month, even a year; who cares, not me. I think you ran away from home, but you have your reasons.”
Inside of Tasma, she was outraged, for how could an eighteen-year old run away from home, she was of legal age. But she did make a bulls-eye, I mean, she left home as if she was running away, as if she was sixteen years old, and now she felt like it.
Said Jill, “Let’s sit down here, what you want to drink?”
“I’ve never drunk liquor,” answered Tasma.


—“Coke, I’ll take a coke,” bellowed Jill at the waiter as they both sat down.
Said the waiter to Tasma as he returned: “So you’re family, and you traveled all those miles just to see Jill, that is great!” he had overheard them talking.
“My mother’s Mrs. Belmont’s sister,” she said with a proud, but thin smile.
“Yes, I guessed as much,” said Tommy with an air of intelligence. “Well, welcome to the great city of Seattle, you know we had a World’s Fair here a few years back?”
“Oh yes, I heard of it, and Elvis made a movie, I saw it, I really enjoyed it.”
“That’s Tommy,” said Jill.
“Yaw, I should have introduced myself. I hope she’s staying Jill, she seems like a lot of fun.”
Tasma looked apprehensive, everyone seemed to be a part of the family, which was fine she concluded: but did they want her in the family, was her unspoken question. Tommy’s dark-blue eyes gazed into hers as if they were reflective of the morning sky. He was handsome she thought. A tad older than she, she guessed—possibly twenty-one, or twenty-two.

“You seem to know each other quite well,” said Tasma to Tommy.
“We should—we live with each other, together, that is; I live at her parent’s house, I have for some three years now,” he finished as he looked at Jill.
“Sha-seeeee,” came out of Jill’s mouth, as if to say: did you have to explain it in depth, and looked blank into the air, upwards.
Thought Tasma in a millisecond—reviewing what was just said; as Jill’s eyes started to refocus back at hers: she must had been only fifteen-years old she thought, when he moved in—but she held that thought in a grave, and kept a natural and acceptable smile in place.

Both Jill and Tommy were dressed plainly, but clean and nice; Tasma was a little dressier, in that she had a skirt and semi long coat on, one that covered her to the knees. A ruffled, but tidy blouse buttoned to the very top and a light blue sweater over that.
She noticed Tommy was no drunk, and had a glow to his skin, something the Belmont’s didn’t have, nor Jill. And you could tell Jill was a little more, or a lot more, sportier than she was [twice now she scanned her appearance]: her shoulders had become more string-straight with narrow hips. She had a natural olive color to her skin, and dark eyes with short black hair; kind of a mystical look.



Tasma could see a freedom in both Jill and Tommy with their parents—one she almost envied; oh, they were drunks, but beyond that they had something she longed for.
Jill, still standing with Tommy—both smiling, the Belmont’s still drinking and watching from the corner of their eyes what was happening. Tommy then quickly left and got Tasma a coke and they all merrily toasted to the moment upon his return; Jill with a slight jeer to the corner of her mouth. (During the greetings, Tasma, did not hug Tommy as she had Jill, it would seem embarrassing she demised—not sure why, but she felt out of place to do so. And just gave him a quick smile in place of it.)
—They all seemed to take a big swallow from their glasses, all apart from Tommy and Tasma that is. Tommy had rum and coke and sipped it, so Tasma noticed.
Had this been a movie, Tasma would had put it in the category of the slightly romantic category, possibly under ‘Casablanca,’ and then created more, many more possibilities, but she was only a visitor she told herself in a small dramatic play: in the here and now.
She had come some two-thousand miles and now Jill and Tommy were embracing her like a sister, it was all she had hoped for; tears almost came to her eyes, she got her welcome—the one she dreamed about (excluding the drunkenness and the bar scene). She had run away, and it was all right with them now, or so it seemed.
She then said with tearful eyes, looking at Jill: “Someone took my fifty-dollars; all I have is .75-cents. Her voice was cracking when it came out, as she looked down toward the floor, and then to the back to Jill.



Tasma headed straight back to their house with them, and upon arrival Jill made a hot meal for her, well, kind of a meal, she warmed up some pizza left over from the night before. Tasma ate three pieces of the pizza, not realizing how hungry she really was.

The afternoon had come upon them, and the cool air that had seeped into her bones was leaving her as she sat at the table and started listening to Tommy and Jill talk, as the warmth of the place soaked into her flesh and bone, right through to her marrow. She chewed the pizza slowly as not to choke on it, and listened at the same time to their conversation; the hot chocolate Jill had prepared for her was full of flavor.
Her tears had dried up, leaving a light smug of mascara under each eye, but her face was shinning, instead of the pale dread it had an hour earlier. She glanced out of the window that was in back of Jill, which led to the backyard; the kitchen-basin (sink) stood right under the window. Birds were tweeting-chirping, singing along as if they had no cares in the world beyond the window. It is how she wanted to see things, just like the birds, undemanding. As Jill and Tommy continued to talk, she couldn’t think of anything much to say; thus, finishing up her last bite of the pizza, and listening to the birds, along with their conversation all at one time; which was kind of amazing, in the sense she could now transcend more than one happening at a time in life; then she sipped her hot chocolate to its bottom, and tried to absorb the moment some more.

—The house was a turn of the century wooden Victorian House, with a bluish-gray tone to its exterior. A brick or two were missing from its chimney. There was a screened-in porch with three soft chaise lounge chairs to relax in. And a double garage in the back of the house, with a gray wooden fence dividing the neighbor’s lot from theirs; a handsome looking house she thought.



7
The House


Tasma—was, was somewhat surprised to discover the tidiness of the house, it looked comfortable, with older-style furniture, but comfortable nonetheless; as if they had bought it new before Jill was born, and was supposed to last forever. It looked more akin to the l940s style couch and sofa chairs: rounded top with some wood smoothly fitted into the fabric; a long coffee table to put a number of items on should one wish to lounge about, for it was but three feet beyond the couch: a nice setup to use for eating or drinking at night while watching TV she thought. The walls were egg-white, except for the kitchen which was yellow from the top down to the middle, thereafter it was white tiles that went to the floor.
“How tidy,” she said to Jill as her parents went upstairs to their bedrooms to take a nap. Her mind was telling her it was not much different from her house in Minnesota, made of wood, glass and stone foundation.


—For the most part, everything was new for her. Her mind was filling up with free-stimulation, images and expressions, emotions, speculations; all the intimidation she felt in the bar, the train, the walking out of her house uneasily, was fading similar to a candlestick burnt to the end of its wax. She would have pinched herself to see if she was dreaming, except for her shyness, or perhaps, inhibitions.
Above all things, she was unsure how she’d feel in time, but it would take time to mold her into the fabric of this new world she was trying to fit into.
—The thought crossed her mind: was Tommy a gigolo? she’d had read about them in those cheap magazines: short stories on how men become whatever the woman wants just to get them in the sack, and then their true identity comes out afterwards. She sat back in the soft chair, sunk into it like a tender doll, reminiscing of home a smidgen; it seemed so fuzzy now, perhaps less vague by the hour.



Tommy, now sitting on the couch—Tasma still in the sofa-chair, Jill now in the kitchen, the parents in their bedroom watching television, everything, and everyone seemed to be in place.
The television in living-room had on The Adventures of the Lone Ranger with his horse Silver, they were on a hill looking down upon the bandits; George Belmont liked the show also, had they walked by his room, you would have heard the same music, the William Tell Overture playing (the theme of the Lone Ranger), which he watched every week, when The Lone Ranger came on, as did Jill.
Tommy smiled over at Tasma—she seemed so helpless I suppose, he couldn’t help but want to nurture her, if not care-take her.
Smells now came from the kitchen, creeping in—into the living room, popcorn with butter. It all seemed a ting familiar now, like it used to be back home when they’d come visiting her for the summer. Jill seemed to be the old Jill she once knew, years ago: other than she had just acquired some adult features she never had before, along with some new experiences, she had gathered up in life: like we all do. She still liked Johnny back in Minnesota (had a crush on him yet), and now she liked Tommy in Seattle; perhaps that can be considered normal: with a little confusion mixed in, she deliberated. She told herself: ‘…we all like cute boys, don’t we [?]’. Tommy was cute I suppose, gentle he seemed to Tasma, not easy to trigger his temper like Johnny, whom could be snobby, or angered, and quite easy to trigger especially when he was drinking and he liked to drink, and drink a lot, and fight: but he never hurt her, he never hurt Tasma or Jill, when Jill was in Minnesota dating him a few years earlier. Actually he looked out for Tasma, protected Tasma should she ever be around him and someone, some bully that is, try to pick on her, or even call her a name. Johnny would do a double take on the fella and he’d normally walk the other way. He was no one to fool around with. Surely Jill’s type, but what a surprise it must had been for Tasma to see her with Tommy, quite the opposite.
The outside now was as dark as the bottom of the sea thought Tasma as she glanced to the side window and back to the movie. The other surprise was George and Ann. Everyone knew they drank a lot back in Minnesota, but I guess it didn’t register with Tasma they were drunks. She was taken back a bit as she only saw them sparsely, that is: going to or coming back from the bar, and into the bedroom, or briefly to the kitchen.
This was a big step for Tasma, it was as if she was waiting for someone to kick her out: only to borrow her train fare back to St. Paul; I mean, what could she do if it was insisted upon. To her, she’d have no choice. This was the most daring thing she had ever attempted; and so she remained guarded.
She sat quietly succumbed in the big sofa chair in the living room, as if she was enveloped in it, and it hugged her just right. She was proud of her first step, it brought fear and anticipation, which led into adventure; she could not enjoy the moment by moment reality of it at first, not yet anyway, for she was too petrified, but it was coming she felt. But as she looked back—not in days per se—but hours, she had come a long way in a short period of time. It felt to her as if she was building a house on a fault-line [crack in the earth] and predicting it was going to explode, burst open, at any minute; but for some queer reason, it didn’t’. The earthquake was yet to come, should it come at all; but nonetheless, she had convinced herself she’d take it as far as it would go. It is always the first step she told herself (her father had told her something along that line) that mattered in life, that was the hardest, it was the motivating step.
“Here’s the popcorn,” said Jill with a smile from ear to ear, adding (in jest), “And I got a girlie-friend to talk to now, Tommy!” She had a tray with two bowls on it, one for Tasma, the other for her and Tommy.



To Tasma’s amazement, things seemed less complicated than at home, she was actually talking freely or freer, and didn’t feel as much watched over, not inhibited so much, not trying to please or feeling shameful or guilty for any unknown reason; not even feeling she had to take sides with anyone. Maybe it wasn’t right to bust out and run away, break out or whatever, so she told herself, but she did. If guilt was to be hung out to dry, then for now let it. She was actually talking freely about a TV show with Tommy and Jill. The TV was actually lulling her to sleep, whereas back home it would be paranoia just thinking everyone was looking at her, ready to use her to win an argument. She seemed to have had a close relationship with her father, but mom was always picking, needling her, and she’d grab the first chance she could to be with dad on the weekends and take long walks in Como Park, and visit the Zoo that was there. Mom would actually get jealous at her, tell her so, and tell him so. Although he didn’t take it personnel, but when dad was gone, mom would drill her. So this peacefulness was appreciated, if not for very long, for the moment it lasted, in any case.
Here at the present, no one seemed to have expectations, or asked for, or planted any; plus she didn’t have to restate what she meant (clarify), trying not to offend anyone. Normally at home she had to concentrate on how to say something at the dinner table, kind of edit her sentences; or at least so she felt she had to: lest she start or trigger a war.
—Jill had asked in a curious way, how Tasma’s family was, but Tasma simply said in a polite but brief manner, “As always, the same as they were when you were there years ago.”



8
Remembering Johnny


“How is Johnny, you know, the boy who had a crush on me, I forget his last name?”
“Oooo,” said Tasma, “Johnny Lemons you mean, he got married last year, right out of High School, got a kid also. I think his wife is on assistance, and he lives with her off and on. It’s not a good scene. I like Johnny but he’s just bad news most of the time.”
“Oh well, he shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place. He was wild that was for sure,” said Jill taking in a deep breath. “I really liked him, but then I was just a kid, wasn’t I?”
“His older brother Dennis went into the Army, to Vietnam, he’s in Vietnam right now I think,” said Tasma.

(Johnny was more a Tarzan figure to Tasma, somewhat of an indescribable sort of fella. ((Handsome indeed, was what Jill recollected, but didn’t say.)) He had a healthy brain: a bull’s head and at times seemed even to snarl like one; so Tasma would have described Johnny.
On a similar note, I doubt anyone could read his thoughts or desires; but when he was in sight of Tasma he always was inspired; like a gracious brother to a younger sister. He was one of the great apes in those old Tarzan movies Tasma thought: oh, she liked him dearly, but he was too rough for her. She would have been ‘Teeka,’ had she played a roll in a Tarzan movie with him: a playful creature she remembered Teeka as, and a lively primate. They never had any, or retained any desire to frolic, they just grew up by each other, went to High School together, and knew one another, and often talked in the lunchroom, or outside before you’d go into school, where most of the kids hung out, around the steps and doorway, until the bell rang; or after school if he got into a fight, she’d support him with a smile, and he’d always win the fight.)

Jill continued to eat her popcorn, said with a precise entry: “Remember how handsome he was. He was built strong, weight lifting, and loved to fight, and seemed as he was always in some kind of trouble, but always got out of it. He was a bodybuilder with weights, right (rhetorical question, she looked at Tasma).” She remembered, as if Tommy was not present, and like Tommy who was kind of puny in the muscle department, was now a little embarrassed. He had auburn hair like Tasma, and deep Irish blue eyes, with a temper that went with it, but normally under control, more pouting than action. All the girls liked him; this is what filled Jill’s brain.



Tasma wasn’t sure what to say staring at the T.V.; Tommy next to her, “He was kind of a cute and a gallant sort of boy the few times I met him. Actually you fixed me up with him on a date once Tasma (said Jill animatedly); we were but thirteen-years old at that time, the last time I saw him, the last time I was in Minnesota. He used to write me you know, and then, then [a pause], he just kind of stopped writing.” She hesitated a moment, “He was a chatting kind of fella, not like you Tommy, you’re a little reserved.” Tommy looked a trifle tarnished, if not kind of see-through, or thin for the moment.
In unthinking haste, Tasma answered, “Yes I remember,” trying to change the focus on Tommy, he gave her a glance of relief. The silent dark had blackened the windows from outside in. Tasma would have liked to continue on with the subject, but it would somehow bounce back to Tommy, and he’d get wounded somehow again, she suspected. She was surprised she, on one hand had said anything about Johnny, and when she did, made it obvious she seemed to still have a crush on him, was this not better left in the back of one’s mind she concurred with her second-self. But maybe that was just Jill, she was if anything, unpredictable.


[Sleepy] She was now unpacked and was given the guestroom on the second floor, down the hall from Jill, on the south side and across the hall, and around the stairway, away from those two bedrooms where the Belmont’s bedroom where; it was a bit more quiet for the elder couple. Tasma’s room was about half the size of Jill’s but cozy nonetheless. Both Jill and Tommy noticed her face seemed a little more relieved. Jill pulled out a cigarette from her coat pocket and Tommy a stick of gum,
“Take your pick,” they both seemed to say in harmony, chuckling a minute.
“Oh! the gum, I don’t smoke.”
“Of course you don’t,” remarked Jill, adding: “I only smoke when I get surprises, or when I’m drinking or under stress— (Tasma looked nervously at her). Today it is for something new and good; you know good stress.”



[In the bedroom] With a soft-focus Tasma watched Jill strike a match to light her cigarette, and said, “I would guess Tasma, you’re a bit surprised at my parents, Tommy and I, living all together?”
Tasma hesitated, a long pause, looking downward to find her right emotions to this whole scene, “Everything outside of my house is strange and surprising for me.” Jill then turned off the lights and caught Tasma’s smile at the same time.
—It was now dark in the room, and in some corners shadowy dark, her eyes adjusting to the one window in the room, and the one door, the four walls, and the, the light shinning through the window, the one picture on the wall of the room she couldn’t see now, but she knew it was there and of a sailor in a boat, escaping from a ship with her lover. It reminded her of the story by Jack London, ‘The Sea-Wolf.” The ship looked something like an 1872 Clipper, with three huge masks, and sails galore and enough rigging to tie the ship up into a ball of string. The young lady in the boat was being saved; this was the makings for a good dream night she thought. Or was she already dreaming. All in all, this just suited her fine, for she was feeling as if she was escaping, running way. It was a bold looking picture she told herself.
Tasma had read a lot of Jack London, Faulkner’s short stories on New Orleans, Hemingway’s travels in Africa, Fitzgerald’s Europe and The Jazz Age, along with poetry of: Sylvia Path and Dylan Tomas; as well as, the story: “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” and a variety of other readings. She remembered Jill did not take too much to reading, kind of a tomboy. But she was always fun.
She twisted about in the bed to find the right place to sink her head into the pillow—then hovering over it a minute, she twisted her toes back and forth, feeling the cool sheets and the warm quilt she had over her, then like a rocket, her head fell into that exact spot she had selected. Then suddenly the door opened (she took in a deep breathe (inhale) as if to say upon exhaling, ‘now what?’ but didn’t say it), and there was Tommy with an apple and two slices of bread on a plate. He said speculatively, as if written on paper, “Thought you might get hungry in the middle of the night,” he put the dish next to her on the night stand, and quickly left her room. She had barely poked her head out from under the covers, noticed him and then he was gone. If anything, the gesture told her she’d not have to worry about starving in the morning, that might help her sleep better, and when she woke-up, she’d find food, ‘How strange for him to think like that,’ she told her second-self.
She did not want to appear to him, or anyone as trivial or sensational, but rather adventurous. I suppose as a man would like to not to be seen as ‘Peter Pan,’ so she thought as she moved her head back into that little spot: I am learning how to be adventurous.



9
Tommy


The night went by slowly for Tasma, and again Tommy came to check on her [2:00 AM], just opening up the door a bit to see if she was doing well. She seemed so helpless, almost lost when he last seen her at the bar (the ‘Due-Trop-Inn’).
“Come in, if you wish,” said Tasma unexpectantly. I mean, she had never asked a person before to come in to her bedroom, it was strange for her to be so brave and trusting, if not down right stupid, so her mother would have said.
“Do you mind?” said Tommy— [a pause] then added, “…of course not, you said it was ok,” and so he did, stepping from the lit hall into the darkroom, with only the reflections of the arc-lights across the street and by the corner, shinning through the window slightly, and seemingly precautious. Unknowingly, or so it seemed, he sat on the edge of the bed, Tasma’s head peeking out from the covers; you could only see her head and two hands as they held the covers, gripped, as if to hide should she need to.
“What do you do?” asked Tasma.
“Do, you mean, work and so forth?” she nodded her head ‘yes.’
He answered, “Well, I write poetry, some short stories and I’m finishing up my degree at the University in Psychology, and I’ll need to go on further to get my license for counseling; I’m also finishing up a poetic epic, I call it ‘The Age of Light,’ a poetic revelation of Hell. I will show it to you sometime. I also work at a hamburger joint, on call on the weekends, and at the bar as you already know, and the Belmont’s let me live here. I used to date Jill strictly platonic, and we still do of course date that is but not platonic; on the other hand we seem not to agree lately on a number of issues: in particular, on where we want to go with our relationship.”
Tasma looked surprised, “Oh—” she said with a follow-up, and pause, “that’s great.”
“Oh yes, don’t I look like a counselor?” He responded quietly as not to wake the household up.
“Not at all,” she answered.
“I’m going on twenty-one in November,” said Tommy, as if it was to inform her that he was older than he looked.
“Are you now,” said Tasma with somewhat of a surprised lack of interest to her tone of voice. Having said that, Tommy excused himself and left the room to rejoin Jill whom was fast asleep in her bedroom.


[Ukulele] As Tasma dosed off in slumber, she could hear the noise from the car tires outside her window, it sounded as if it had started to rain a little also, the wet on wet tires gave a winding sound to them. A few horns sounded, different tones, it was a busy street thought Tasma, unless the horns were coming from the main street up the block by the bar, that went north and south by the bar, instead of east and west, outside her window, it was hard to tell.
There was headlights reflecting by the curtains; and you could hear the old mantle clock in the living room downstairs as it would hit the half hour and then the hour with its ring (or dingdong) as loud as the car horns, and somewhere down the street you could hear drums and a ukulele being played, and people singing, it most likely was at the bar (they often left the door open and the sound would come running down the street).



She would have liked to have been able to write home to tell everyone, everything that was taking place, but she didn’t’ want to be persuaded to return so she avoided such thoughts, and hid them in the back of her mind. For some peculiar reason she had thought about Johnny now: in that, Jill seemed a little let down when his name came up. Perhaps she could write to him to let him know all was well; tell him how adventurous she was, had been. He’d appreciate it from her. And why not inform him Jill had asked about him, he would like that surely. Write she would, but not home yet, another time, when everything in her life had gotten a little more stabilized, a little more settled and when she herself had gotten acclimated to the environment.

—[Morning] She woke up to the rain hitting the window; it sounded fresh and filled with new life, new horizons, and new beginnings, new everything. She had always been wakened by an alarm clock before this journey; how funny she thought to be woken by the mind-clock in one’s head. She looked around as she dressed; putting on her dress—looking for a clock when she knew there was no clock. Out into the gray wet sky she looked, where a few beams of sunlight was shinning through, giving birth to a new day: thus she stood by the window trying to close it. Little did she know it was 2:00 PM? She had slept fourteen-hours. Her mind was much clearer now, as she looked out the window noticing the Belmont’s [George and Ann], were walking under an umbrella to the corner bar; Ann was arguing about something with George. George was thin, about five-feet eight inches tall, worked for a heating company; and Ann was a secretary, short, about four foot, ten inches. It seemed she won most of the fights, but then, George knew where to hide better than her, and would escape her bickering.
Standing at the window, trying to close it, the wet rain started to splatter against her thighs as the wind pushed her dress tightly between her legs, it was as if she’d be a part of the main mast of a ship, or main sail of a ship. The wind must have been thirty miles an hour or more—she guessed—but the rain wasn’t bad, just a light drizzle, yet constant, and with it, it hit her face, lightly speckled her arms, but it was refreshing as it found its way through the screen and open window. She now headed downstairs.



10
The Ship


O, if this house had been a ship (The Belmont’s house, she was on the poop-deck (or above the upper quarter deck) looking out; looking out into the sea. But the boats were replaced by cars, the sea by asphalt. She felt she had the whole ship in her pocket, the yard, the mast, the boom, the sails, the decks, and the haul and gallery; the stern and the bow—everything. She was from Minnesota, land of wet, rain, rivers, snow: water in every dimension; the point where the Mississippi originated, flowing all the way down to St. Louis, and beyond to New Orleans. She loved the calm of water, the fancy boat rides up and down the river in the summer. She was most happy with rain—so Seattle was befitting; and she loved the long walks along the river banks, around the many city lakes. Today was a nice day to be alive she thought; and the rain was just part of the glory of the day.

—In the living room, behind Tasma, at this time, stood Jill; as Tasma turned a forty-five degree angle, she had a smile waiting for her. It was a fresh smile, for a fresh day, a sober smile, she commented: “Let’s walk in the rain like we used to do when we were kids [a pause] you remember, remember when we’d come visit you in Minnesota, have those picnics, and we’d stay over at your house and we’d run in the rain, play in the puddles.” There was a melancholy tone and countenance to her voice and face now. She had not visited Minnesota since she was thirteen, but before that, it was once a year, that was before her mother and father took to drinking on an excessive regular schedule.
Tasma quietly thought, as she looked into her strong looking face, almost mannish like, tight skin, square jaw, deep eyes, pretty, but looked much older than eighteen. Tasma’s eyes were telling her those were good days, family days, days you tuck away for retrieving when you are older, or in need of them on long journeys; yes, these were days to remember later on and talk about when you were old and gray; but running in the rain now was on Jill’s mind, it was a little indigent thought Tasma, she pondered, as her eyebrows tried to announce that, as they went up towards the top of her forehead, lifting her eyelids and a portion of her cheek, and exposing her dark greenish-blue eyes and long eyelashes, “It might not be the best thing to do,” she commented; there was a moment of dark-silence.

Always a little aggressive was Jill’s nature: with impatience, and unexpected behavior. Jill looked straight into Tasma’s eyes as if to say: sorry, you’re going one way or the other.
“Sure, that sounds fine,” said Tasma, “I should put on some pants instead of a dress I mean trousers.” Within a heartbeat and a chuckle, no umbrella, Jill with her white t-shirt on, one you could almost see through should it get wet, which would be plastered onto her thin body, grabbed Tasma by her right arm and pulled her along as she started running out the door, and down the sidewalk, into the street, back onto the boulevard; in the rain, dancing, and singing, drowning in the rain, wet as ducks, both now laughing, crazily laughing at being silly. Tasma had started to shake her head as if she was mad, but then uninhibited, she let go and joined in the moment’s jubilee (Tommy was gazing out the window, watching them from the second story, from Jill’s bedroom).
Then as they neared the corner where the bar was, the ‘Due-Drop Inn,’ they did an about-face, and Jill let go of her hand and they both ran back to the house, Jill’s white t-shirt glued to her bosoms, like white on rice, and showing every curve and bump around her nipples. Tasma, she couldn’t help but see Jill had grown to womanhood, like her, but it was different it seemed, to see the shape of another girl’s body in such a manner, and Jill not blinking an eye about her few quick stares.
Tasma’s dress was stuck to her thighs from the wind blowing the rain on to her like an iron on top of a shirt, and soaking into her every layer of fabric and onto her flesh. And her blouse, white and fully covering her upper body and across her shoulders was almost as revealing as Jill’s, but you could not make out the full form of her bosoms, like you could with Jill’s t-shirt; Jill looked at her with wondrous eyes; eyes that said: we are not children anymore are we, for she had not looked so closely before at another woman’s body (Jill noticed Tommy looking at them both, and how focused he was, not moving just revealing his interest). They both then ran to their bedrooms to change and get out of the wet cloths, still laughing. (Tommy was thinking, if only boys could have such fun, but when boys play they think so seriously.)

Tommy—while Jill was changing her wet cloths for dry cloths—went into the hallway to wait, pacing the hallway back and forth. Through Tasma’s slightly open door he happened to stop and glance in, thus, seeing her, her completely naked, wiping her legs and stomach area dry with a short towel; next, she then lowered her leg from the bed, from which it was resting as she wiped her thigh, and looking for trousers, Tommy noticed her womanly curves, form and toned body, her pear shaped back lower area. It was even more so than Jill’s he thought, more pleasing to look at.



She had whitish creamy soft looking skin that seemed to melt his eyes, not one square inch too tan, thought Tommy—‘but how can one tan in Minnesota anyhow,’ he murmured to himself. Her skin looked fresh, and almost rosy with good-blood circulation.
“Hello,” said Tommy as he knocked on the slightly opened door. Tasma not knowing how much of her he saw, but knowing he saw nonetheless, something of her nude body, returning a bashful look—stood stern-naked with a blouse in her hand, one leg crossing the other, her stomach firm, and muscle tone in her upper legs showing; slowly she turned as if nothing had happened, and as she turned, ”Oh,” she said half-astound, she started to put her cloths on now; her back to him, as he witnessed the arch of her back, her spinal cord, and all that a woman has to offer. It was but a moment and the show was over, her pants needed to be sipped up only, and so she did it quickly; she then quickly tucked in her blouse and for some reason became un-bashful (she was surprised she was not as untactful as she might had been, felt, or thought had it happened back home at her house in Minnesota, in front of him, odd as it seemed to her, it was a moment of being in control, and yet out of control, all the woman in her whispered it was ok).
As she turned around fully dressed now to meet him by the door, her body quivered a little; she wanted to ask what he was doing there, but said not a word (it was a little late for that, and had she yelled at him, Jill would have taken it as a threat, one way or another), and so she simply asked: “Is Jill ready,” not knowing what ‘ready,’ really meant, I mean, they had no destination to get ready for. She almost felt she had to protect him from Jill’s finding out he stood there, what a peculiar feelings he reflected to her. As she looked for a response, Tommy seemed to release his sucked in air, as if he couldn’t have moved even if she screamed at him to have moved.
“Tommy,” said Tasma, a little louder, “should we go see what Jill is up to?”
“Yes, yes, sure, I was just a little in awe, let’s go check her out.” He couldn’t look Tasma in the eyes for that moment. What was she up to he asked himself in the corners of his secret-mind, as they walked to Jill’s bedroom, he didn’t really know, he liked Jill, they were talking about marriage—had brought it up when things went well, and tucked it away when they were not; what was he doing; just a moment ago, he asked himself, ‘…just a quick moment one falls into, no big thing,’ he told himself. So he told himself, several times as they walked to Jill’s bedroom.



Tommy followed Tasma down the stairs as Jill was standing by the TV looking out, staring out the window. He could picture her naked with her high breasts, narrow hips and string-straight shoulders. She was more masculine than feminine he told himself, not like Tasma, or perhaps he was trying to convenience himself of something. The truth of the matter was, even though Jill was thin in many places, she was flabby, not toned in all the needed to be places, especially her behind; and her eyes dropped a little with her face, which was pale (from all the drinking I would expect, loosing its elasticity). It was a disappointment to Tasma to see her once lovely olive colored skin, a natural coloring that she once admired about Jill, being shriveled to paleness; an asset from her father’s side.
In a way it seemed Tommy was embarrassed for Jill (especially now that Tasma was around), she had had many a boyfriend, not much taking care of herself in-between them, and was peevish somewhat—about life, yet likeable, but always discontent, or seemingly so with him, and them.

In contrast, Jill felt, he [he being: Tommy] was always too laid back for her; she joked about that, and he’d remark she was too wild for him. Possibly, opposite attracts: an old saying they’d both quote to each other, assuring their relationship was ok with the other. And they both gave each other more than enough space, possibly too much; and conceivably it was for convenience. And today Tommy was surprised he was stifled over Tasma, and Tasma seemed to notice this, and was womanly proud, but felt the spectacle of what had taken place, it should not have happened, and she’d not allow it to happen again she assured herself, and should, she’d have to go the length it took to assure he’d not trespass, whatever that might require. But it seemed at this point, it was an accidental intrusion at best.


—It seemed Tommy worked late hours at the inn, and Jill worked just before him, and when she needed to go elsewhere, he’d look the other way, that is, not blocking her from going, if she was going with some of the guys barhopping with a mixed group, that also was fine. He never asked questions. And now Johnny’s name had come up. He never heard it before. Not really. She had mentioned she had dated someone from Minnesota when she was a kid, but that was as far as it went. Funny he thought: how can that trigger such jittery emotions when she goes out with groups—barhopping and so forth, and he does not get jealous, and here, he is jealous over someone she dated five years ago for a short period of time, one summer to be exact.

“Do you mind,”’ asked Jill, “to make some coffee?”
“Oh no—of course not,” said Tasma.
“Good then, I’ll make the eggs and bacon, and Tommy—he can make the toast and sit at the table and be served like a king.”
Her mother had gone out earlier to McDonalds to have a quick breakfast with her father; they didn’t seem to be patient nowadays.
“What’s that,” asked Jill. Tasma was holding a letter in her hand.
“Just a letter I’m sending it to Johnny Lemons, telling him about my adventure, and that you did remember him in a conversation after all these years.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Jill said with a stare of blankness.
“Yes,” said Tommy a little hurt at her smile as she pulled out of her blankness; Jill noticing this, she gave Tommy a beam from her eyes-that was attached to a smile, and it seemed to iron out all the hurt Jill’s stare provoked.


“Tasma’s not afraid to get wet Tommy,” Tommy smiled, as Jill made this little remark.
“Yes, I saw that.”
“Dad and mom must be at the bar by now—they like playing cards on the weekends; sometimes Cribbage, sometimes Hearts, and Poker, and you know, just cards in general. I like darts; how about you Tasma?” She asked as she put the strips of bacon down into the old cast iron frying pan, as the fire had already heated up the bottom of the pan when the bacon hit the pan it sizzled like the zzzzzz’s in lightening-sounds. It smelled frisky-fine, thought Tasma, like a fresh drifting smell from the train station—the one she had stopped at on her way to Seattle.
Tasma had found the coffee pot and had filled it up with water, at present, she is putting in the coffee grounds, looking over her arms and over to the stove some four feet from her, “No, I’m aw’fly afraid I’m not any good at any of those things,” she uttered.
“Stick to that,” said Tommy; it was similar to a blurb out of nowhere, he even looked like he surprised himself. Jill didn’t turn round to see Tommy sitting at the rounded Formica-top kitchen table, playing some kind of finger game, or catch. But it did cross her mind to say to Tommy: ‘It’s good enough entertainment for you.’
Said Jill in a more realistic voice: “There really isn’t much around here to do, I mean the bar, our neighbors, like Wes and his family who lives on the south side of this house, and Janet with her four kids who live on the north side; I know there is a church down the block, it’s a Christian one, not sure what denomination. We are both gone pretty much, Tommy and I. Tommy works at the bar at night, and is finishing up an Independent Study course he does at the library for the University, and that is his final paper for his degree, or whatever. He will need a practicum, and that will keep him busy thereafter, or sometime in the future. And I work at the bar, mostly in the afternoons, most every day of the week. Tommy will be a Therapist, or Psychologist, something bordering on that. I like being a waitress; maybe I can get you a job there, I mean, if you’d like me to [?]”
—At that final word, Tommy stood up and excused himself, saying he had to go to the library to study, working on his papers.




11
Bustling




“Tommy seems really nice, I like him; I think you found a good mate,” said Tasma with a little flatness to it to Jill.
“Well, I suppose, I mean, everyone likes him, he’s not like Johnny, I mean, wild like Johnny and me, but maybe I need that,” she said unenthusiastically.
Tasma simply avoided the subject, it was, or could surely end up, too deep for her understanding. From what she remembered of Jill, it would be an ongoing open-ended conversation and end up with Johnny somehow dominating the scene.
After breakfast was over and everything put away, they both went to Jill’s bedroom, she had to waitress at the bar in an hour or so, and then before dusk, Tommy would take over as the waiter.



[The Bedroom] Tasma noticed Jill’s bedroom was quite spacious, at least, twice the size of hers. She had a number of paintings, sketches and photographs of nudes on the walls, possibly a dozen or so; even one of Elvis, a photo a record, it looked signed, the Doors, Beatles and Janis Joplin all photos. Tasma’s eyes opened up wide as an owl checking out corner to corner of the room, wall to wall. She even noticed holes in the wall used for incense: it seemed she must have burnt some, for there was still a strong smell in her room.
Then over the bed was kind of a bookcase, there was somewhere around twenty books on it—all on psychology, behavior modification, counseling and psychotherapies. They were obviously Tommy’s, she concluded.
As Jill changed into something more favorable for waitressing she noticed on the side of the bed on a stand was a picture of Tommy. And next to that were a number of magazines on hunting, shooting and sailing.
“You can borrow any one of my magazines if you wish Tasma,” Jill commented.
She had also noticed in the living room a number of volumes on Patrick O’Brien, another kind of Jack London I suppose, she may have concluded. Possibly they belonged to her father, or who knows, maybe her; she noticed one book called “The Pat Hobby Stories,” her father had that one in Minnesota, the last book to her understanding of F. Scott Fitzgerald, just published last year [l966] she thought. Some 75.cent paperback Tarzan books were lying about. Jill could see Tasma pacing and looking about through her mirror, “The Tarzan stuff belongs to Tommy, not sure why he likes him, he is far from the macho Tarzan himself.”
Tasma was not going to touch that remark, it was too precarious, and she could see from the side of her eye Jill curiously waiting (should she stick up for him or not). But she had learned from her family arguments: she did not need to respond to every rhetorical question someone brought up to her, or what she felt was rhetorical. It didn’t surprise her that Jill didn’t have any classical books, like Hemingway, or older Fitzgerald books, or books by Faulkner, or Jack London, writers she liked, and writers her father liked—as they say, ‘like to like,’ when it comes to father and daughter in writing, she’d always say that. And I suppose no matter what, we pick up traits from our parents. She was in essence looking for a romance novel, but couldn’t find one describable to her liking; she noticed one she had not seen before though, the novel itself, nor had she heard of the author, The Promise of Love, but paid little attention to it, it was a paperback and the book on the back showed something of a hospital, and she didn’t care for hospitals in particular, but the front was appealing, it showed two people hugging (Mary Renault). There was another book that caught her eye “Granite & Rainbow,” by Virginia Woolf; the author was recognizable but not the book. So she had her female writers as well, she figured.

—Jill was now ready, and without reluctance, Tasma opened the door to the hallway, and bustled out.
“Listen up,” said Jill, “If you need to talk about why you’re running away: feel free to do so, if not, well, that’s also fine with me. Sometimes it helps to get it out, or so I’ve heard by everyone it seems, and I suppose sometimes it doesn’t.”
“No big reason, other than I had to go, or so it seemed at the time, kind of like Elvis’ song goes: It’s Now or Never.”
“Hmmm,” came from Jill’s voice—“Bustling out or breaking out, or running away, it’s all the same to me; never thought you’d do such a thing though. Should I call your mother and let her know you are safe?” She then lit a cigarette.
“You’re not pregnant, are you?”
Tasma with an eyebrow almost touching the top of her forehead (with a chuckle) said, “Of course not Jill—gosh no!”



Jill seemed a bit dumfounded thinking there was more to this than meets the eye; for she herself was the only child also, as her parents had had her late in life, for they were now in their early sixities. Tasma was from a middle class family, a well educated family. They didn’t drink or smoke, and went to church on Sundays, but they didn’t agree on much either, and Tasma was normally the one in-between. They were in a way, like the bulk of married couples I suppose, but there wasn’t much freedom in her eyes; something she envied Jill for, and evermore with Tommy. Whereas, Johnny was kicked out of his house at seventeen, his parents would had done it earlier but waited until he graduated from High School, and it was probably the only reason he stayed so long at home, so as to not get kicked out.
She tried to think of a reason she ran, but there was no reason other than she ran to run, to get away, and wasn’t sure how far she’d go, but here she was. Seattle had come to her mind a half dozen times, but so did a few other places. And then out of the blue, it was planned and she left. There was no real mystery to it other than her subconscious had put the puzzle together while she was sleeping, and her living it out while she was awake was now; as often times the mind works.

—Jill played with her cigarette smoke, blowing smoke-rings as she grabbed the umbrella. For that moment she didn’t feel brave, as brave as she had felt; as Jill stood thinking on what next to say and Tasma feeling there was nothing for her to say. Then suddenly out of nowhere, tears broke out, erupted in the corners of Tasma’s eyes; out from the long silence that prevailed between Jill and Tasma.
“You can’t please anyone, ever, ever, ever. No one, everyone wants you to take their side against the other. Always in the middle; always pretending to be what they want to see from you. But you Jill, you are you; you don’t have to please anyone. (A pause came; she took the moment to put herself back together, and continued with what she was about to say.) Yes, if you want you can call mom and dad, but I’m not going home. I thought you were on my side for once.” She hesitated, looked down, and said in a pitiful manner, “Maybe I’ll have to go home then.” She had no other recourse should it come down to that, except walk the streets and that was not any life or a respectable option for her.
Jill’s cigarette almost burnt her fingers, had she not felt the heat in time. She quickly put it out, staring into Tasma’s rainbow greenish eyes, eyes as deep and green as Seattle’s Port.
“Listen up,” said Jill with a motherly tone, but the tears started to come back nonetheless; she was in another world—disassociating with Jill’s voice, and almost in a catatonic state. Jill grabbed her, shook her like a bag of popcorn, by the shoulders, she had a strong grip—digging deep into her shoulder blades; she then caught her eyes as she opened them up wide.
Said Jill in a forkful manner, “I didn’t mean to put you into shock
I’m really sorry, what can I do for you; I’m here for yaw—really. You can stay as long as you want. But you got to find something to keep you busy, a job, school, you know, something or you’ll go buggy. What can you do?”
“I don’t know” snuffled Tasma.
“Well, take some time and think about it.”
“Sure… (a pause, Jill looking at Tasma), I really mean it, I will think about it as you say,” the house thereafter seemed to turn a silent gray for Tasma.
“You all really got enough problems,” said Tasma, as if she knew something which Jill knew she didn’t know: Jill looked at Tasma, and marked it as just loose talk coming out to Tasma.
“We’ll have fun, you and I, us two girls, girls talking about boys,” a chuckle then came out of Jill’s mouth, and Tasma produced a smile.

As Tasma sat back into the sofa chair, soundlessly, Jill mentioned in passing, as she turned on the TV “St. Paul, Minnesota, should be getting their lovely autumn leaves soon (a statement-question) I suppose you miss that.”
“Oh yes, it is beautiful in Minnesota during autumn, it’s the best time of the year there. It was always the best time for me (long pause)—
Autumn that is.” Then out of the window a lawnmower was heard, they both could see their neighbor Wes cutting the grass.




12
Remote


Tasma had fallen to sleep in the sofa chair upon Jill’s arrival— whereupon she woke her up, it was 7:00 PM, “Would you care to talk?” asked Jill.
“Oh,” she answered, a bit groggy, rubbing her eyes, noticing it was now dusk, as she peered out the window.
“Tommy’s at work now, I wanted to see how you were doing?”
“Doing, oh, oh I’m doing quite fine cousin Jill,” it was meant in jest, for a smile appeared between both of them. She added, “How did it all happen between you and Tommy?”
“Well,” she started to say and paused while sitting down on the arm of the chair, “We kind of met at the bar, he was working on his degree in psychology, and, well, we went out between his working and going to school; and I liked how he kissed. Oh he’s a little coy at times, but can be frisky; not like you, you can be spunky (Tasma like the comment she made of her, and smiled).”
Tasma commented: “Wild would be the word for you,” funny she thought, spunky was a good word, it never occurred to her and it fit just fine for her ego. “But Tommy looks so tame, gentle, and courteous,” she said out loud.
Jill continued, “To be frank, Johnny was a better kisser I suppose, that is, better than Tommy; I mean if I were to compare them two. Funny Johnny never called me these past years; we got along so well when I visited you.” Tasma took that as a rhetorical question and said nothing, plus she was lost for words in such matters.
“Anyhow, Tommy has been living here a while, a long while now I suppose; a good two years now that I think about it. Mother and Dad didn’t’ say much about him moving in and here he’s been, and he’s been good company. I thought of Johnny often, but he just never wrote me back, nor called me. And after Tommy stayed here awhile, well, I invited him into my bedroom, and so he’s stayed there ever since. Maybe I replaced him with Johnny, I hope not, I don’t’ think so. Let’s leave this between us girls; you know it is girl talk, right?”
“Right,” said Tasma with a sharp edge, and double r, with a slur to the ‘R,’ part of the word.
“Good girl Tasma; you’re my favorite cousin [long pause], you really are you know. (Tasma just smile, again not knowing what to say) I think I was thirteen years old when I met him,” said Jill.
“Met who,” asked Tasma, kind of drifting off.
“Johnny of course, who else?”
“Oh yes, yes, that’s right, I’m still waking up.”


—“Did you forget something? I had an impression you deleted something.” Jill had lost focus for a moment also, Wes next door was walking his dog, he was barking, creating a little distraction.
“We had sex a few times, Tommy and I, but I thought it not to be such a great idea after a while, we seemed too much like brother and sister, and after all we are really opposites. But recently we started back up again; it was, or never has been I expect, as fulfilling as it was with Johnny; perhaps because Johnny was my first lover.”
The evening twilight brought dimly-lit shadows to her countenance. (Tasma was never sure if she was a person who could be loved, least of all, worth loving. On the other hand, Jill figured: who could fall in love with Tasma in the first place, she was safe with Tommy or anybody for that matter; in that she was so unromantic. Such a pity she murmured silently to herself.)
“I’m so happy you told me for some reason I’m more at ease. It’s good you look at all sides of a relationship. I never had one so I don’t know.”
“Yes,” said Jill, “Tommy is always preparing for life, while Johnny takes life as it comes, they are both polar opposites, are they not (a rhetorical question I would gather).”
“Oh Johnny can become a jerk at times,” said Tasma.
“Yes, Johnny and I had a short summer fling, when you fixed us up, and he was rough, but no more than I, I suppose.”


In St. Paul, Minnesota Mr. and Mrs. Stanley (Tasma’s parents), in their bedroom (on Albemarle Street), both with their mouths slightly opened, books on their laps, covers, covering them up to their waist, laying back against the bed board, a draped light over the head of the bed, ungracefully about to turn off the lights to go to sleep. Outside the window you could see the weather was freezing up, drifting snow from one yard to another, creating little mounds along fences. Somehow Mrs. Stanley (Tasma’s mother) turned her eyes to the side where Tasma’s picture was on a small table by the bed-stand, where an alarm clock was also; she knew where Tasma was, Jill had notified her, and understood some of the ‘why’s’ of Tasma’s issue. As her husband turned off the lights her mind held stone-still, a reflection of the picture, her mind heavy with calmness now, tranquility was present. As she lay back down, she could see her husband’s face, it did not move, lest it should not disturb his wondering thoughts, nor did she say a word. It was simple to remain still; knowing Tasma was well now she could go to sleep, not like before, not knowing anything.
She had learned in life there were different kinds of contentment, this was one of them. There she lay falling to sleep observing the night thin away as her eyelids shut. Thank God for little favors she hummed to herself.




Jill had left for work and Tasma sat back in the sofa chair, she was getting used to it, seemed like her little haven in the house when not in her room. She noticed a book by an author Colleen Grant, the title being: “Bustling.” Hence, she grabbed it and read it for about an hour. Then thinking: Tommy will be home soon, carefully enough she emerged with a comb from her purse, as if it was urgent, or just nervousness. She flung her hair back to give a more youthful exposed face to her pose, and continued in brushing it out with a rat-tailed brush and comb. If one had planned for her to create a pose, it would have been this, as she leaned forward, looking at the long and wide mirror on the back of the door from her chair, and from her own angle, looking into a smaller mirror in her freehand, put herself quickly together.

—There was a banging at the door, Tasma had fallen to sleep, and Tommy was simply making noise coming in, a bit awkward. He saw Tasma in the chair, said: “Don’t mind me,” his face looked surprised. “Studying can be frustrating,” he added.
Tasma had woken-up partially, but didn’t really understand if he was talking to her or someone else, so she slowly opened her eyes, bending forward a little, eyebrows up a little, “Me, are you talking to me?” she asked.
He now took notice, she had been sleeping (and with a perfectly head of hair combed), not just resting. “Sorry about my noisy entrance, I got to get ready to replace Jill at the bar, the Due-Drop-Inn; got little more than an hour.”
“I hope whosoever book this is they don’t mind if I read it?”
“It’s mine, I don’t mind,” said Tommy with a joyful smile. There were two more similar books on the cabinet where Tasma found this one by the same writer.
“I wrote it, I also wrote the two on the shelf over there (pointing).”
Tasma opened her eyes wider, “You’re kidding,” she said as she woke up more and leaned forward. “But the author’s name is a girl?” she added.
“Yes indeed it is, and do you think if I put my name on the book, girls would buy it?”
“I, I don’t know, but I suppose they’d think twice.”
”Yes, of course, that’s exactly what they’d do,” Tommy trying to be polite. “Do you like it?” asked Tommy.
“Well, it’s about a girl from San Francisco, a youthful one who falls in love with a man who seems to be a lot older than she, she’s also quite busy, it’s a fast paced book, and from what I see at this moment, there is a gender gap, I’ll have to read more to see if they can work out their differences.”
“Good girl, you summed it up pretty easy.”
“Well, I guess I’m a pretty simple girl, and that is how I see it.”
“Do you hope they can mend their differences, and put it together?”
“I know you’re majoring in psychology, so I’m not sure what the twist will be. But something tells me life for them will not be easy no matter how it ends.”
“And do you think life should be easy for them?” Tasma looked deep into his eyes, and wasn’t sure what to say, he had deep blue eyes.
“Should it be…? (she repeated his words)—that’s a tricky question. I think the shape of words on paper will never tell the whole story one way or the other, I mean, it should be to me straightforward,—uncomplicated; if their relationship is so hard, and difficult, then maybe it shouldn’t be. I mean, life seems to be hard enough, that if it’s hard in the beginning, how can one expect a happy ending.” Tommy smiled.
“That’s some good insight. It’s like love and God, they are words which can produce many questions and I have produced my own concerning these issues also—both words are choices I do believe.”
“I’ve only read some forty pages,” she commented.
“Women don’t quite think the same way men do, I had to ask a lot of women at the bar how they see things,” said Tommy.
“And did they surprise you with their comments?”
“I seem to have understood about one third of what they said, or should I say, told me, but I used as much insight as I could from them to perfect my story, feeling it has to come from their point of view, not mine (being a male); that is: how they think and feel, which is important.”


—Tommy came back down all ready for work, a white shirt, black trousers, a vest, and his coat was over his arm.
“I try to do all I can in life, while I’m able to do it,” he commented to Tasma as he approached the door. His parents—of which Tasma knew nothing about—had both passed away. His father had died of cancer and his mother of a heart-attack during her sleep, both within the past few years. They had left him some money and he had used it for school, it was what they’d have wanted. And so in his own way, he had to become all he could for them and himself, and for some reason it seemed it was the right moment to let Tasma know, even though she’d not know the whole of it.
Tasma smiled, and said, “Yes, it shows.” Privately in the back of her head she felt she needed to get started herself, but didn’t take the remark as he was implying that.
Tommy hesitated before he grabbed the handle of the door, “I know Tasma, you just arrived, no wisecrack meant.”
“Not taken as one…” said Tasma.
“You see Tasma, we’re like each other a little, you grabbed the moment—the opportunity, and came here, and it was very brave of you.” Tasma beamed on that remark.
“Do you like the name I picked out for my double, I mean author’s name?”
“It’s fitting.” She commented with a chuckle.



The conversation abruptly stopped, Tasma had no more to say, for the most part; and one must remember at this juncture of her life, she never did say much anyway, so it was a natural response for her. To Tommy, he kind of felt awkward, as if there was something left on the table—possible unsaid, his ego most likely. Hence, he was high, and wanted, her opinion of him, to be feed some more. Tommy just stood there, as if frozen, like a frozen fish waiting to be unthawed; like a kid that doesn’t want friends but people of his own mind, so they make themselves up figures in their brain. And here he stood, blank looking. Did she guess the course of his perturbation? Who could say? Nonetheless, she simply opened up his book, as if to continue to read it, as if unaffected with a flat affect for the moment, smiled at him then, it seemed to have the right effect for him, for he took off his unemotional, façade to his face, and put back on his cinematic charm with all its features.
In her own shy way, she was finding confidences that skeptically put her at ease; and for whatever reason: they both broke the repetitiveness of the dull and boring day. A sexual impulse was not present on both of their behalves, it demanded energies on both parties, and she was drained mentally, so not an iota appeared in her mine’s eye, or behavior, or his; likewise was his intrinsic view, warn unreceptively to the point of just moving in basic motions to get to the job.




13
The House


Tasma sat on the picnic table outside of the house, in the backyard, as Tommy went to work; the sun had come out with warm beams from its rays, was absorbing into the rich bony areas of her body. It felt good and fresh and youthful.
The house was huge, reminding her a little bit of Nathaniel Hawthorn’s story, “The House of the Seven Gables,” but this house had only five; a grayish-blue tone of paint covered its wooden seventy-year old structure, with trees in the front and backyards, and on the north side of the house, a nice picnic table rested in the green grass (the color of the table matched the house); hence, there she sat on the table, to placate the day.
Tasma still had her book in her hands, she had four hours invested into its reading thus far. She liked the characters, one was stubborn, probably like Tommy she thought, another was a sweetheart, and again like Tommy she concluded, his second part of his personality, if you could deduce a person having many sides. Hence, he had two sides of himself in the book she surmised, one playing off the other, how neat.

—Jill, now saw Tasma in the backyard, and with a pleasant smile kind of floated back to her in a girlish, nonchalant prance like way, reminiscent of how they, they used to do so, so many years back, back when she’d come and visit her in Minnesota in the summers during school break. Said Jill, Tasma looking up like a turtle coming up and out, out of its shell ready to listen (Jill thinking how cute, then starts to laugh): “My dear cousin, how did you like Tommy’s books?”
“Just swell, they are real cool, I like the characters.”
“I wonder if I’m one,” said Jill, “you are reading ‘Bustling,’ are you not?”’ with a high rustic boyish laugh.
“Yes,” replied Tasma.
“He’s working on a poetic epic I see now, and it is a fantastic story of the dark side of life; it should prove to be interesting. Not quite his previous style, but possibly it could be in the future.”
Then Tasma stood up and gave Jill a hug, saying, “I’m getting a little chilled, let’s go on in the house if you don’t mind.” But she was still thinking of Tommy.

[Tasma thinking.] It seems to me as I must have observed Tommy’s reaction to my reading his book, he was creatively satisfied, yet on the other hand, he is dogging it with his new book, as slow as molasses. He must be under pressure, maybe his publisher; after it’s done there will come relief. Once I got to Seattle that alone gave me relief. Dad once said, ‘To really love, is to discriminate, and select nothing but what would be tolerable, that would be the best.’ I can tolerate Tommy. But it doesn’t seem like Jill can. I think that is what dad meant: what can one tolerate [?]





[Two weeks later.] Tommy was finishing up a stanza and paragraph in his new book of which was short compared to his others books, writing it out in longhand, then he’d go upstairs and takeout his portable typewriter and type it, check for typos and go over it again. When Tommy was working like this, in a bustle, he’d climb the stairs in three, and the whole house could hear him, as a result, knowing it was him. But as I was saying, he was writing it out in pen and ink. It was Sunday; Jill had come in the front door, Tommy sitting down in the living-room now on the couch, he had just come back down. Somehow he was making it a habit to leave the sofa chair for Tasma. Mr. Belmont used to use it, but now he was in his room a lot more, or at the bar, seldom in the downstairs living area.
“How yah doing?” Tommy looked up, he was writing, she could see that, her eyes protruding.
“Oh,” said Tommy settling.
“Finish your doings and let’s talk a bit,” said Jill as she hesitated, then sat down by him as he tried to finish his middle stanza to a section of his epic poem and she commented impatiently, “It was a crazy afternoon at the bar. Tasma just took off for her first interview, she stopped on by the bar to let me know.”

(Tasma had stopped by the bar while Jill was working and had noticed most everyone of the patrons had glazed faces pitiful, made generalizations, with little white lies. The character of the people did not impress her, as she had thought to greet Jill and simply get out of the bar quickly.)


Said Tommy surprised, for he hadn’t seen Tasma this morning, thinking she was in her room, “Where can you find a job on Sunday?” his eyebrows shifting upwards, pushing into his forehead.
“That’s exactly what I said, until she said, it was at the Church, the Baptist one down [pause for thinking], oh somewhere, someplace, I can’t put my finger on it, but I think over by the window shop.”
“Fen-turns, you mean?”
“Something like that.”
“Doing what?”
“Gosh, I’m not sure, maybe bookkeeping, she’s pretty good with figures I guess, used to be.”
“Kill two birds with one stone ha; go to church and seek a job, I kind of like that.”
“She can work at the bar,” said Jill, as if to add: it’s good enough for both of us.
“Yes, I suppose she could,” he thought for a moment, wanting to finish his thoughts on the stanza, looked at Jill, “…what was it you wanted to talk about specifically?”
“I’m not sure, Tasma I suppose. I’m feeling a little resentment; I mean she needs to work.”
“She’ll find a job, don’t worry; and you know, she really thinks the world of you.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely…!”
“But I still feel the way I feel, but not as much now. I mean, I couldn’t ask her to go, she did a brave thing leaving her house, but I know you’re getting to like her.” She looked at Tommy for confirmation.
“No more than you, I mean, is that good or bad?” Tommy smiled, and put down his pen on top of his paper, it was jealousy he was sensing.
“Now how can you be jealous when you talk the way you do about Johnny in front of Tasma and me?”
She hesitated a bit, “I don’t know, but I know I do, and Johnny will never be around anyhow. He’s just old dreams.” The naming of Johnny did bring up a new face on Jill, so Tommy noticed.
“Life has always been sweet for her, not hard I mean, and now she comes two-thousand miles and expects everyone to jump (Jill having alcohol on her breath, Tommy tries to sway away a bit from her).”
“Believe it or not Jill, I think she conquered a number of fears in the process and you were her most supporting inspiration. Without you she’d have had to go back to Minnesota the same way she came, confused. You’ve been very good for her.” Then he tried to change the subject, “I should rake the autumn leaves soon, I love the hundreds of colors, and the silent trees as they shed them.”
“Yaw, yaw, stop being poetic and listen: I like her, I mean, I think I love her, she’s always been a light in kind of a vague way for me.”
“I suppose she’s not sure what she can do for work, at eighteen, who knows, but the bar seems fit for a few weeks or months. She can take on some shifts we don’t take,” said Tommy.



[The Doctor] “I talked to Doctor Patricia Sewell, she asked how you were with your gout Tommy, and gave me my medication, the tranquilizers, I get too wound up sometimes, mood swings, I had to see her.”
“So she asked about me, haw?”
“That’s what I said; you got a crush on her or what, all you guys always get crushes on doctors I hear?”
“Now it’s Doctor Patricia, before it was Tasma, and you—that makes three girlfriends, haw? Don’t girls get crushes on Counselors and Psychologists? I saw a movie where one did.”
“I’m just kidding, I think, I should entertain my cousin for a spell I suppose, and the damn movie you say was a man falling in love with the female Psychologist, I was with you when you saw the movie; Gregory Peck I think.” Tommy again was writing and Tasma was upstairs in her room. “Why don’t you go to a male doctor?” asked Jill.
“Because they assigned me to her, and I told you about how good of a doctor she was, and you asked for her, now we both have her.”
“Yes, I guess it was something like that.”
“Do you like her?” asked Tommy.
“Oh yes, matter of fact, if I was bisexual, I’d like her more.”
“You mean like your parents?” Jill just sat staring at Tommy, it was now getting into the danger area.
“Was that meant to be a slam on them, an insult?”
“No, but I gather that is what it is all about in their little sanctuary upstairs,” I mean, people going in and out all the time, strangers.”
“No, not quite strangers, they meet at the bar, and they get to know one another, and sometimes get a triangle going, you know. Anyhow, it’s none of our business, or yours that’s for sure.” Tommy took in a deep breath: it looked like he thought for a moment, then started writing again, thinking it wasn’t worth it, and often when Jill got some drinks in her she was jealous.
“I kind of thought that would come up sometime, sooner or later,” said Jill disappointedly.
“Yes, I suppose Tasma is too naive to know what is going on there: if even she has witnessed the parade of new faces going in and out of their bedroom.”
“I think you liked Mary at the hospital also, I’ve seen her there today, she’s Italian you know, and you like olive skin girls, like me.”
“You’re right on that, I do, or did like her once when I was in the hospital for a few weeks, before I knew you.”
“You’re too damn honest.” She leaned over and kissed Tommy on the cheek, “I missed you today.” Tommy smiled knowing she wanted to make love. It was her cat approach, licking on the face, then to the buttons, and then to the bedroom, and then the zipper.
“You always look her up and down when we go to the hospital together.”
“I think it is you, my dear that looks her up and down, I look at you that way.” She hit Tommy tenderly on the shoulder. “Maybe,” she said in a cunning voice. “I don’t really think like that, I just wander off and kind of dream, or feel like that, if that makes for any logic in your college head?”
“No, makes no sense to me, but then that is me.”
“Well, I’m glad you like girls,” Tommy smiled, her finger going up and down his thigh as a cat with its paw ready to scratch out the eyes.

—“How was Johnny,” asked Tommy.
“Do you really want to know?” Thought, Tommy: no man really does, but no man can stop thinking about it once it’s brought up, or somehow have it not integrated into one’s life setting.
“I suppose it bothers me a little that you opened up your legs to him.”
“And you,” she added.
“Let’s leave it alone, it’s going too far. Sometimes I think Tasma can hear us talking.”
“So what, maybe it would be good for her too.” Tommy didn’t look at Jill on that remark just stared into a black TV.
“Incidentally, she helped clean the house yesterday that was nice of her. I guess it will be ok for her to be here, she’s becoming kind of my, something, I don’t know what; lucky charm.”




14
Thirty-Days



A month had passed and Tasma was becoming like one of the household fixtures one might say. Everyone seemed to adjust to her, although she was as quiet as a field mouse, and there wasn’t all that much to have to adjust to.

—Tasma had found out some secrets, although she didn’t fully understand them about Mr. and Mrs. Belmont at first; one thing being, was that she had a miscarriage some years back, as Jill had told Tasma one night after work while intoxicated, that is why she was an only child, like her; thus adding to her hysterectomy; and ever since that, her moods changed, and she became more mysterious, and thereabouts, some kind of love triangle had developed around her life style. Tasma listened with wide open ears, and made no judgments, something that Jill admired of her, thinking she’d be quite the opposite at first. Jill even explained they’d go to the bar, and even though they proclaimed to be in love with one another, they’d end up with other folks for pleasure only.
Up to this point, Tasma had not said anything to Jill, nor intended to, but her mother [her being: Jill] had looked at her several times with provocative eyes, and possibly that was why Jill was telling Tasma; that is, it would be too hard sober to say such things, to give a warning, and she needed to protect Tasma for some reason, or felt she had to, and at the same time not destroy her relationship or integrity with her parents. It was all new for Tasma, she had heard of such things (as sexual shades), but didn’t know how it worked; that sex could be used for highs and boredom, and stress release; for she was still caught into the romantic stage of love to be.
But she also understood, people were just not faces in the distance, they were a conglomeration of a multi-mixture of experiences and ills, and trials in life. Like Mr. Belmont had been to the WWII, and the Korean War, and had his problems with growing old, illnesses and so forth.
On another note, Tasma had noticed the crudeness of Mrs. Belmont on occasion, in her silent stares, and movements; an instinctive kind of humanity which she guessed released her sense of guilt for her vulgar lifestyle. But had Tasma known the full of it, she’d had never been able to stay on, for what it was worth, Jill knew, and what she knew was what her mother had asked: “I should imagine what a young virgin like Tasma would feel like.”
Jill’s reply was crude, but she felt a need to say it: “She’s from quite a different class—(thus, she had in a way cut herself down along with her mother, at of course their expense; but her anxiety over the matter needed some resolve, and she felt forced to take such a course, and take care of Tasma).


—Tasma had gotten the job Jill was telling Tommy about at the bar, on call, for the most part, filling in for Tommy or Jill, or on Saturdays, and would normally not work when there was a big crowd, but mostly during the afternoons when food was being served and drinks.

—Johnny had written Jill ‘I have left my wife, Sharon…’ and she told Tasma in private this, and that he was heading out west. Tommy was working, it was in the evening she came out with the news, and she read it to her in Tasma’s room: ‘May stop by Seattle for a short visit, hope you don’t mind.’ For some reason, Tasma seemed more earnest to confide in than Tommy. “He has the address, took it off the envelope,” said Jill.
Said Tasma in a solemn voice, “But I thought you’d like this, I mean I told him you were talking about him, and I told him about Tommy, and you kind of hinted it would be all right.” She looked worried now.
“Oh, yes, yes, it’s more than all right; I’m just not sure how to handle this with Tommy.”
“Oh he’ll understand, Tommy and Johnny, I mean he’s just stopping by for old time’s sake.” Jill looked at Tasma as if to say: you just don’t know.




15
Strange Meeting


At a café down by the pier—by the Pikes Market, overlooking the Puget-Sound, Tasma found a place to relax with a cup of coffee, a strong latte—second floor overlooking the busyness below: she had three shots in her latte, and a pastry (roll). The window she sat next to, with her legs crossed, allowed a cheerful sun to look in, she absorbed it as she continued for some moments. A light rain drizzled: sprinkled about the open marketplace—and it blurred her view somewhat looking out the window; her focus was soften a modest sum, yet she could still see all the colorful patterns life had to offer in the busy marketplace.
The remains of her roll [pastry] rested beside her hot latte, mostly uneaten, close by her left elbow. She was lost in the sun and rain, ‘what a mixture,’ she told herself. Had anyone seen her eyes, they were saying, ‘leave me be… (leave me be)’ for she had no other wish than to be alone at this moment, to regenerate. And this she felt as she sat by the window (removed from humanity), forlorn, untalkative. Although in general, her external countenance registered only a little minor discomfort with life.
‘Reality,’ she thought, ‘why don’t I think in retrospect? How are dad, and mom doing: but they are as they always are—fine!’ she answered herself. ‘Hence, what more could there be, it all comes to being, unsurprised.’
Now having put those thoughts aside, the young woman went back to gazing out the window. She was not irresolute about if she should have parted ways in Minnesota with her family, but possibly looking to see if there was any guilt (or should there be some guilt) and found none in the process; none that was crushing, only a speck of: I hope I didn’t cause you much worry. But she was unwilling to say it herself, to them. But she was glad in an awkward way, Jill had taken it upon herself to phone them: thinking, one can grow old fast with worry.
As she blinked her eyes back into focus, the sun was well up; it was turning out to be a humid day.

She had on a pretty red dress with a white blouse, Jill was lending her some of her cloths recently, until she had enough money to buy some, they seemed to fit, even though Tasma was an inch or so taller than her, a few pounds heavier perhaps. As she continued to sip her coffee, she kind of mulled over other thoughts as well: thoughts of where she was going, wanted to go and the miracle of actually doing what she did: it was becoming reality for her, she was in Seattle, working, at Jill’s house, and she was liking Tommy; not as a boyfriend (she convinced herself), but as a good person to talk to, a friend that was a boy. It wasn’t normal for her to have such a good relationship with boys without expecting them to bother her forever thereafter: wanting something in return: so she’d say what she’d have to say (sometimes whatever they wanted to hear), and look elsewhere, often pretending to be in outer space, not interested (and she wasn’t), save for the fact, if she needed information in school, and now at the bar.
Mr. Belmont, George, and his wife Ann both seemed to be taking a closer look at her recently, or so she concluded in her forenoon thoughts; hopefully with no wrong intentions, but they were taking a livelier interest in her nonetheless, it was obvious, and something to think about, she concluded and tucked it away in another department in her mind.
In addition, she applauded herself for helping around the house, and buying some groceries, adding them to the refrigerator so others in the household could have them. She simply looked at what she could afford, and saw what was missing and added the same amount that was previously there: and whispered to Jill, she had contributed.


Tasma had a more encircling built than Jill, not too thin, but healthy, and was wearing a light casual coat of Jill’s today. She had fixed her small purse with the long strap and held it tightly in front of her as if she had got used to it long ago, but added a second hand to harness it more securely, wherever she’d go now.
As she continued to drink her latte, and look out the window, it was starting to be a drably day.

—Came a princely looking lady, mostly in black, as if she was a business person, wearing a sharp looking hat, and black skirt, a white blouse, with a ash-black stripped suit coat to match the skirt; she had dark short hair, looked to be at least twenty-nine, thought Tasma. There was a womanly beauty about her, well traveled she presupposed, but also she had a strangeness she couldn’t put her finger on. Her eyes caught hers, and they seemed to be hypnotic. She looked quite polished and content with herself, too much so for her liking. “Hullo,” she said with a cigarette in her hand; then added with an out going smile, “Aren’t you just the cattiest little thing in Seattle?” Tasma was star-struck; her eyes were as big as owl’s. The lady in black stood in front of her table against the window like a melting pillar. “I’m all alone sweetheart, can I sit and talk to you a moment, I’m just plain bored.”

—There was a significant pause: the women in black spoke, with marked reserve to her insides (inside her mind and her body). She was right in believing (in her thinking) that this young female to be a young heart lost in the rain; she looked as if she was softly falling with the rain, as pretty as a sparrow, yet lost, so she told her cramping bowels. On the other hand, her heart was on the opposite side of the rainbow from hers in that she was seeking to make a web, for she had seen herself as the spider, and the young lady as the fly and her intestinal, emotional craving, were becoming over-stimulated. At this point, she had seen enough to sense the young woman had womanly needs—unmet, and was naïve on where they would come from. Yet the lady in black would not allow any misgivings, and went softly about weaving her web.
(Tasma’s surmises were based on her Christian belief, not to believe the worse in people.) As the lady gazed into Tasma’s eyes deeper, she produced a strangled silence in Tasma; almost a paranoia crossed her mind’s eye, then cramps in her stomach appeared, then a peaceful passing came about between the two women (yet she kept her mind thinking on the young lady: perfect tact is required, her own loneliness shows proof to me ((she said)) that discrimination to which: only the best is tolerable.) She felt Tasma was at present an open window, an enchanted land to be discovered.

Before she could say a word, she swallowed, as she continued sitting at her table with her pastry and latte in front of her. The Lady in Black seemed to lean forward a little, her breast slowly emerged out of her blouse, and a loose bra allowed a better focus to their fullness, all in Tasma’s direction. Tasma had never really seen another woman’s breasts so perniciously; she kind of wiped her brow after witnessing the curvature of her upper form, wiped her brow as if it was releasing sweat—but it wasn’t, it was just an automatic reaction: although she was feeling warm in the cafe, it was really cool; her body functions were out of control. You could see the lady was watching Tasma’s breasts go in and out as she breathed, she knew they were high mounted breasts, firm and so she kept her posture to their level.

‘What now,’ Tasma thought. It would seem by the looks of this, she had found this overbearing and confusing. On one hand she wanted to be polite, but was torn on how to get rid of her, thus, on the other hand she could just get up and leave, and that was that, which was going through her mind also.
Tasma had on a green woolen sweater over her red dress. It was tight on her, from being worn-out, with some shrinkage: Leonora could tell it was not by design. It gave her a slight provocative look that didn’t belong to her face. Leonora could plainly see the maturity of her developing form within her bosoms. (The café was playing music over it loud speakers: ‘Light My Fire,’ by the Doors and it seemed to be a help in arousing physical reactions from the two females.)

—They talked somewhere between five and ten minutes, not long, but long enough to acquire a bonding, when she said (after introducing herself as Ms Leonora London): “I have movies at my apartment, would you like to come over and watch them with me?” Tasma hesitated (looking at the gulls flying high outside the window over towards the sea; the winds breaking their patterns in flight); it actually sounded good, inviting, she was bored and maybe that was all to it. But there had to be more she thought, but she brushed that thought away as she had done on the train when she was half dreaming and someone had cut her strap on her purse (but that didn’t occur to her ((the replay of such an incident)), it is I who it occurred to).
“You can leave anytime you want no big deal, just company, a drink and whatever.”
Tasma thought: why not, she might help in interpreting Tommy and Jill for me. It could be a good afternoon; and so she nodded her head yes, “Sure,” came out of her mouth almost as jarred as she looked “But I got to get back to my cousin’s house before dark, or Tommy and the Belmont’s will be worried about me.” I think she added that in there because she wanted Ms London to know she was not alone in this worldly city, and should any harm come to her, there’d be a price to pay. But Leonora just smiled as if she won the Kentucky Derby, and within a moment’s time they were at her apartment.
It was a lovely place thought Tasma, as she got a grand tour of Ms London’s apartment; another lady was in the living room as she made the tour, and everything, and everywhere she looked was white, the sofa, the chairs, tables, a beautiful gold chess set that rested on a pedestal, that was also white along with the curtains, and the other woman, whom was not as handsome as Leonora, a little heavier formed, commented, after eyeing Tasma up, “I hate to go, but I got business to attended to, have fun girls…” and after an introduction she was gone.


—Ms London came in with tea, a small plate of crackers and cookies. She winked an eye at Tasma, with a fleeting concealment which had some conscience about it. She turned the movie on, in her private room, a screen a few feet away from where Tasma was sitting, 8mm-film going, and the movie started, it was a woman and a man making love, and slowly undressing (it was being used for stimulating the environment).
The chair was comfortable, not as soft as Jill’s but comfortable and wide for movement of her legs. It was an odd room thought Tasma, and everything so clean and white. It looked similar to a movie star’s apartment.
Tasma, she at present, smoothed the hem of her dress over her knees; she had opened her coat up, but not taken it off yet.
“Now I must hurry up,” she commented at Tasma’s palpable silence.
Tasma picked up her cup of tea, raised it to her lips, before becoming aware of Ms London’s cool hands opening up her legs by moving her thighs to the corners of the chair. She now was kneeling on the floor in front of Tasma, whom seem to be in a moment of darkness, if not a helpless sense of mortification. The movie was going and she caught herself watching it, trying to concentrate at the same time, detached with what was happening. Her skirt was moved up to her waist and two of her buttons were opened showing her bra and the shape of her high breasts. She felt a cramp in her spine and female negativism; this was the first defensive person she had ever encountered. Yet a part of her was interested. She now looked at the strange lady she had come to meet; she had a deep tan to her face, and an accelerated look about the eyes.
As London looked up at Tasma, she looked so guarded that even she thought this was too personal an intrusion, but she continued aloud she said, “Open your legs, and open up wider!”
Tasma was only thinking with one part of her mind. Her flesh was open to Leonora’s hands, she was lordly indifferent to her emotional state, she wanted pleasure, and wanted to produce it so she could watch Tasma quiver, if not get turned on herself. She pulled the secret of her imagination down to her knees.
-–Tasma spoke, unknowingly, something inaudibly; with a slight over-stressed courteous manner of hers, her inner nervousness of the moment was paralyzing in knots her stomach with a sexual drive she never knew she had, her hormones were jumping like crazy, she felt as if she needed to go to the bathroom, but it wasn’t it, she was discovering instinctively her cramps were from the bowels of her sex.
Seized by a pubescent uneasiness, she stood up, uncertain, fixed her nylons, and pulling herself together, unhappily she hurried out of the room to the door which led out of the apartment. Ms London did not follow, nor did Tasma look back.




16
Letters and Surprises


Tasma started writing another letter to Johnny, but didn’t add her encounter with the Lady in Black as any additional experiences in her life, she was too embarrassed, too ashamed. Yet, it proved something, and she didn’t need to seek out its judgment again, she liked boys—period. On the other matter of the letter, she just put down how her job was and that her short stories—which she hoped to publish someday, and poetry—where coming along well, although they were all in a diary sort of, and not translated into short-story form, not yet anyhow; and biographical in nature. She did mention in passing her walk by the Space Needle in downtown Seattle, the very one that was built for the Worlds Fair [l962-63], just like the Eiffel Tower was built for the Worlds Fair in and around the mid l880s. She wrote about Tommy and his working on his forth book also, a poetic Epic she mentioned.

“[Letter to Johnny from Tasma.]: …Tommy, he is sweat as candy and as handsome also, too bad he has Jill, and I like Jill. Jill’s a bit moody now and then and it seems to annoy Tommy. But she takes care of me so well, I love her dearly. She can’t seem to get you off her mind ever since I mentioned your name to her. I do hope this does not have an effect on her relationship with Tommy. Tommy also writes under what they call a ‘nom de plume,’ or false name. I like the secrecy of it, not sure if it is needed, but he thinks so; got to go. See you in the future; as always your friend, Tasma.”


At times Tasma thought there was a sort of camaraderie within the household of the many who lived there, yet at closer view there was danger in such judgments, in the sense of unguarded views into reality, for they existed at close-knit, a mini secret society within what seemed to be the allegiances. That said, let me explain: the Belmont’s had double lives, and possibly, maybe wanted to pull Tasma into their love triangle, it was future thoughts in the making, rash I agree but not unparallel; Jill’s unspoken relationship with her parents were unknown for the most part, yet possibly she had been connected at one time—and her growing thoughts on Johnny, and diminishing thoughts on Tommy (and possibly some back-biting). Where Tasma fit in was yet to be defined.
If anything was for certain, it would probably be that Tasma was the only one that had ongoing friendships, platonic relationships within the camp of hungry wolf-like humans at this house. And now she was not so innocent herself, since she had met the Lady in Black, as her mind named her. Yet Tasma seemed to remain objective about it, whereas, it would had been easy for her to be angry or mad, or even scornful for her to displace anger on the elder lady for taking advantage of her; or producing homophonic-gestures. But she did none of those things. She moralized nothing, nor put it into a category of hormones acting wild, which at her age was just what it was; for she was a Christian, and this was what they’d called backsliding. She called it by its name, an unguarded moment of sin.
Mr. and Mrs. Belmont seemed neurotic by all means to Tasma, but again, she kept her distance from making judgments, it would not be conducive for her stay, nor her mind. If anything she remained grateful for the lodging. In many circumstances she remembered what her father had said once, “What we hate we attach onto our character; as we do with love.”
It was noticeable that Mrs. Belmont, seldom seen, but when seen she’d make a few innuendoes toward Tasma, but Tasma was uncertain exactly what they were for, the full nature of them. And in some afternoons, Tommy could be caught reading copies of Mr. E. R. Burroghs: Jungle Tales of Tarzan, he liked them, it seemed to take him into a different world; they were not like his novels though, thought Tasma, this was evidently his escape; possibly it was for the naiveté or simplicity factor of them, so she concluded.




17
Sundays



[Two weeks after finishing the letter.] As usual, on Sundays, everyone but the elder Belmont’s met at noon in the kitchen for a hearty lunch. Tasma always seemed to follow Jill like a little duck, as if she was the Master of Ceremonies, likely something she picked up at home, thought Jill, yet she did not stop Tasma from the growing routine, it was to her liking, especially on Sundays. Tommy was always there at the kitchen table before them peeling potatoes and thawing out some meat: today it was tenderized ground steak. Jill being a good cook prepared most everything while Tasma set the table and Tommy continued with the preparation of the vegetables.
Accordingly, they all sat down for the meal. During the meal as always they talked lightly on the week’s doings, what took place; again, Tasma did not bring out the Lady in Black (Leonora London), which really took place three weeks prior, but rather just about her correspondence to Johnny: about her work, and the Space Needle.
Tasma was now on her second cup of hot chocolate, while Tommy and Jill had coffee, she got thinking staring into her cup half full of chocolate: when Jill drank the night before (which was like most nights) the spirit in her seemed to cease its vitality in answering the eyes; that is to say, the mind shrewdly had—with the heart—deadened everything in her, or maybe it was the lack of oxygen from her lungs, so—so promisingly it was the lungs that ultimately had the control when a person was trying to recover, not giving the brain what it needed, it was a good discovery she thought. This forenoon she had those very same eyes: at length she thought about it until Tommy woke her up, “Tasma!” He said loud, “Are you day dreaming again?”
She jumped a bit, and smiled, “Just thinking,” her tone was flat.
Jill could be defined as a thin youth, or woman, judging on first impressions; that is to say, Jill understood men widely indeed (in comparison to Tasma), but not deeply (possibly like much of her other learning). Even now, sitting at the table, Tasma felt her femininity was felt more by Tommy than Jill produced for Tommy; Jill being more boyish than feminine at times; yes she had her moments, which seemed to be even more destructive: more on impulse than on reality’s logical planning and thinking.



There was a knock at the door—Jill jumped a little (nervy like); she rose up about an inch before she sat back down—getting her wits back—as if they were lost for a moment—then the doorbell rang [!]. This time Jill got up naturally to answer the door and so did Tommy likewise, “D’you mind,” she said hazardable.
She started to move eagerly, too eagerly to the door, Tommy thought, and said, “I’ll get it.”
“No, that’s all right, I’ll get it!” answered Jill a little more forceful.
Unaided, Tasma stood up and gathered the dishes together to wash, while Tommy took the tablecloth out the backdoor to shake it clean, a ting puzzled on her abrupt behavior still.

—Tasma now was looking out the window at Tommy, while Jill was answering the door, she got to thinking on some things her father said, one being: “People were different long ago,” he’d tell her, “ …not like we are today.” She wasn’t sure how he knew but it seemed reasonable to believe him, “No,” he’d say, “…people didn’t pretend like they do today, which was more on the order of a slap in the face (pretending that is), because it is telling the other person you’re a fool. Or better yet: you can not trust me, but I want you to be fooled to do so.” So people nowadays just say what they want to say, not what they mean. Had Tasma been born a boy, and she was now thinking of that, the Lady in Black, if she was a man, and they lived long ago, maybe 3000-years ago, maybe, just maybe no one had to hide or pretend what they were doing. She was thinking about her not being able to tell anyone about her experience with the Lady in Black, and how the Belmont’s hid their behavior, and how Tommy went along with Jill’s behavior, and she really didn’t’ care for him other than sex, or at least that was how she was perceiving it.
She was no better she skillfully concluded. And in a way she’d had liked to be closer to Tommy.


“Johnny~!” said Jill as she opened the door, it was really him, she jumped on him like he was a horse already saddled, and ready to mount, and started kissing him, as if she was taken over by some mysterious power—an emergency sexual reaction. As they completed their greetings, she grabbed out at him, taking hold of his forearms, pulling him in the house, and then shaking herself back together, walked with Johnny back into the kitchen to do introductions, although Tasma already knew Johnny quite well.
Tasma turned about, as she was washing dishes, and Tommy stood up, he had sat down at the table just a moment before. As he stood up to accept the introduction, he noticed his hand shake was firm, Johnny had big hands, strong compared to his, and his neck muscles protruded as if at one time he was a weight lifter, or boxer. He was all of six feet tall, about 180-pounds. He hugged Jill again to kind of show some kind of proper etiquette, and then to Tasma; he was delighted to see her, especially in such lively spirits, saying: “This place has done you well, you’re not the same little girl I knew back in Minnesota; you look so grown.” Tasma blushed.
“I’ll take a beer,” said Johnny as he sat down at the table as if he was an expectant guest. He looked at Tommy, then at Jill, “Please!”
He said with a cough to clear his throat.
“Yes, yes, please Tommy, turn about and get two beers, one for me and one for Johnny, oh, you too if you want one Tommy.” Tommy did as he was told, with a diminishing look of gratitude on his face. Jill quickly sat down by Johnny, and Tasma just stood finishing the dishes, and Tommy sat at the end of the table kind of taking it all in.
“What a surprise,” said Tommy lucidly.
“Surprised,” said Johnny, “I told Jill a month ago I was coming down, or is it up here [?]” She just looked blank.



As they all sat around the table in the kitchen, a conversation started, Tommy seemed to be left out, not purposely, but being the only one who didn’t know Johnny, it was rude but not unexpected, and so Tommy took it, as less than an insult, just bad manners, which he was used to with Jill anyway, and he could see it would be no different with Johnny.
“I remember that day Johnny…” said Jill (and evidently so did Tasma because she started laughing before Jill could finish her sentence) “we went swimming and my top came off and all of a sudden up pops Johnny’s head out of the water, you had swam thirty feet under water so as not to alert me of your whereabouts, it was at Lake Come, right Tasma (Jill looked at Tasma for confirmation, and she nodded her head yes), and my top was off and here comes the head of Johnny, and Johnny saw my breasts, bare-breasts, then I hid in the water and he found my top. I think Johnny’s eyes were going to pop out of his head.”
“Humm!” murmured Tommy; he was at the moment feeling as if he was invisible. Everyone went quite, the moment was not long enough to be called a pause: then Tommy smiled, but he wanted to take the clean tablecloth, rip it out from under their elbows and was hoping all the beer and cigarettes would fall all over them, if not whip it into their faces. But he smiled a long and arduous smile, looked at Johnny and Jill, feeling out of place a little, and out of sorts, as if the house was caving in.

“It’s just a simple story, it was most embarrassing at the time, and we were all kids Tommy,” Tasma said with a soft smile. For some reason Tommy could accept it from her, but it was too annoying to listen to it from Jill. Johnny caught note of that with Tommy, kind of seeing more than an interest in Tasma, that is. In his mind he was still Tasma’s protector should she need him to be.
“Sure, I understand,” commented Tommy, “Sorry if I sounded bothered, I’m full of food and tired I suppose. I should go to sleep or for a walk.” Johnny was not one to show humility, and kind of looked in the air towards the ceiling and played dumb.
“Yes,” commented Johnny, “We had some good times in Minnesota. And talking about being tired, I traveled close to two-thousand miles, man I am tired, and thirsty, how about another beer there Tommy.” Tommy smiled, leaned back to the refrigerator, and pulled out another beer and handed it to Johnny.
“My 1957- Ford blew a piston in Montana, had to roll down a hill to Miles City and there I lost my billfold, had $240-bucks in it. I was at the Greyhound bus depot and I had to leave my car parked on the street. Anyhow a stranger picked it up—a woman stranger that is, and gave it back to me. I should have given her a five-spot, but I didn’t, figure I’d need it here. So here I am, no car, $220-bucks, spent twenty on eating;” his hazel eyes looking at each and everyone sitting at the table and Tasma leaning against the sink, looking at them as if sizing them up.
Johnny could talk, thought Tasma, and he was a player, a drinker, and could be a trouble maker. He was also a fighter and charmer, but he never tried to charm ‘me,’ Tasma told her inner-self, which was good, she liked him as a friend, brother, or half brother, no more than that.

Said Jill, after a calm seemed to settle over the group, “Johnny will be staying with us a while, I should have mentioned it, but I invited him down to stay in a letter I had sent him. He can stay in the spare room; the one Tommy stays in now and then.” She wasn’t asking, rather telling the group.




18
Johnny’s Job



During the following weeks, Johnny acquired a job at a window factory, and shortly afterwards, started giving Jill $15-dollars a week for rent, of which she gave to her parents; if anything he was not afraid of work or spending money on pleasure, he treated himself quite well, or better put—he pampered himself, as Tommy seemed to not do; both polar opposites.
One afternoon on Sunday, Tommy asked Tasma: “What does this guy, Johnny want?”
“Johnny’s kind of a drifter at heart I suppose, an adventurous person, or would like to be, a bully he can be also, careless likewise; he’s been in trouble ever since he’s been nine years old. I doubt he knows what he wants, he is just here to be here, because it’s a place to go, to be at, an adventure if you will, for him, no more, no less; in a like manner, he’s a little reckless, guarded I suppose but he means well; you have to remember he’s not educated like you, nor does he think so far ahead as you, he’s more on the line of the Neanderthal: the caveman type; kind of hidden and suffocating in this advancing world.”
It was all said with empathy, she seemed to be able to apply it without effort through Tommy for Johnny; and Tommy seemed to accept it: the logic and the emotional part, that is; Tasma had a good way of caretaking, which was a natural woman quality Tommy thought, yet she had somehow perfected it to a nurturing mode, thus, stepping into another’s shoes without walking for them, as it eased his mind.




19
Body of Voices


Tasma smiled dubiously as the house filled up with bodies and voices, contrary to her household she was brought up in, which was quiet for the most part, and no one was really invited into her home for more than a short period of time, other than family. The three summers Jill came over, one time she was with her parents and they stayed a month, the other two times was just Jill alone, and she stayed around two months. Other than that, no one was really invited into her home, or allowed to stay overnight. It was seldom she brought a guest over to the house; once she did, a girlfriend, and her mother asked her what her name was, where she lived, and why was she over here with her daughter in the first place, which was simply, to play, and hopefully stay overnight. She played that one time and never came back, and was not allowed to stay overnight. So this was all new for her. And it seemed Mr. and Mrs. Belmont welcomed Johnny just as well as she did Tasma, with a hesitant eye, and indifferent spirit, but it all added up to nothing; they just went about their way after they goggling. At the bar they were different though. Not so much when Tasma was there, but more when she wasn’t, yet, Tommy would inform her of their behavior. And sometimes when she got there early for work, and came out of the back dressing room, she’d witness them chumming up to others, buying drinks, talking about wanting something for something; exchanging partners she gathered. Young or old, it didn’t seem to matter to them, sometimes money was exchanged.

There was a second time when one night Jill had come home from work, a bit ‘tipsy,’ again, and told Tasma, “My parents are bisexual,” although it was obvious to everyone, she knew something was odd or different. Yet on the other hand, she had to ask Tommy later on, exactly what ‘bisexual,’ fully meant.
Said Tommy, later on that night, “It means a person can enjoy both sexes: male and female, although they could have a preference for one over the other.
“Are you bisexual?” asked Tasma.
“No, no, oh no, I, I like girls.” She smiled when she heard that. But it was as if Jill was reinforcing the fact her parents were not responsible for their behavior should they approach her, so fair warning.




20
Xmas


The season was upon them, it was to be 1968 soon, and Tasma’s first Christmas away from home was but a few days away. September, October and November flew by it seemed, she had been there little over three months.
Johnny kept odd hours working: that is, working during the day, and barhopping at night with a less desirable group of guys than Tasma would have like him to join; it bothered Jill as well. It was right around this time that Johnny was starting to sleep with Jill, when Tommy was at work, and Tasma had seen him go into her room, but said nothing. Johnny knew Tasma was aware of some of his activities but for some reason he seemed either not to care, or trusted she’d not tell; kind of like: let the cards fall where they may.

—It was a Saturday afternoon, both, Tasma and Tommy were in the living room, Tommy on the couch, and Tasma in her usually armchair; that sunk her body to soft depths.
“You’re a very interesting person,” commented Tasma, she really wanted to say, ‘likeable person,’ but knew it was not time for such talk, again nonchalance she stopped her reading, looked over at Tommy, completely over at him, leaning on the arm of the sofa-chair, Tommy sitting back into the couch a little more comfortable than usual, holding his manuscript in one hand, and a pen in the other. His heart seemed to beat at a fast pace, pounding. The longer she looked, the faster it beat, it nearly choked him—his comfort zone had left, his mouth dried up, and his lips shut. He couldn’t help but size her up, and remembering the day he saw her naked—his mind now was blank. He somewhat froze in his position.
Now feeling a little foggy, actually forgetting she was staring, and not talking, she absently and casually pushed out of her lap a lump in her stomach, and up it went to her lips and out her mouth, with a cracking voice (and a blush): “I shall always think of you with pride, you work so hard, and have accomplished so much in such a short life span.”
“And I,” said Tommy, “shall always love that part of you.” She wanted to ask what part he was talking about, but in fear she’d mess the moment up, she just smiled and said, “Thank you.” It was better than in the movies she thought. She had been paralyzed for a brief moment, as Tommy was; neither one of them knowing the other was the same as they. As Tommy, at present, turned to the curtains, the sun was creeping in, beams from the sun were highlighted on the walls and floor, blinding them a speck.
That night, Tommy worked late at the bar and Jill and Johnny came in late also, but before Tommy, and they both ended up in Jill’s bedroom, they were drunk and leaning against each another.




21
Smoking


Johnny had to make it more spacious and found an armchair in the garage to use, an old standup ashtray, which he put alongside of the chair, and put several of Jill’s hunting magazines by the chair, lit a cigarette and started to read; it was an old copy, but he hadn’t read for a long spell.

—Another week had passed, he had gotten paid, and it was Saturday again. It was a heavy week, and he was exhausted. He had made a deal with the foreman at work that instead of him taking a fifteen minute break during the morning and one in the afternoon, he’d simply work through them if he was allowed to smoke. He agreed to it, and before the day was over, about ten other guys (about half the team) were signed up for the same privilege, thus, giving up their breaks for smoking while putting together the frames and windows glass together, which amounted to: inserting the glass into the frames, and screwing the frames in place, and making sure the double storm windows were able to shift up and down easily.
He walked to work everyday, it was less than three miles each way, but it was a good walk he felt, plus he could buy a hamburger on the way home if he liked, and the cool mornings were good for walking. He was doing some gambling with his gang friends after-hours, after the bars closed; some mornings he was really hung over at work and the cigarettes seem to give him lasting power, or some kind of stimulus, what he needed to make it through until after lunch, along with the free coffee at work. And so here he sat in the sofa chair, relaxed as if life was worth living—thinking, just thinking. By all observations, he looked a little spiral shaped (wound up)—as if his insides needed to unwind; consequently, he had gathered a few phone numbers from the bar, and a gal he was seeing now and then, he had her phone number also called: Lorie—he had a growing crush on her, in a light kind of way, but he never told the household group about it, she was the other group’s mascot, sort of; and they didn’t take a complete liking to it or to him for that matter, but she was fun to be with, and she provided him with sex he wanted, and she was laidback, and several years his senior, for he was now nineteen


[Indians Hill] His mind drifted back to Tasma’s graduation, and the neighborhood party that took place on Indians Hill

[Johnny in his thoughts, talking to himself] “Yes, I remember it quite well; she had on a red linen shirt and a black skirt; pleated, which seemed to sway with the movements of her walk. She was a dumb kid. The party started, oh, yah; it must have been 9:00 PM, somewhere around that time I suppose. It was the whole neighborhood. Several people from Washington High School graduated in that year from the neighborhood; I suppose that is why Tasma showed up, for she usually didn’t at drinking parties.
So we had a real reason to drink, start a fire on the hill and just get tight. (The area was a collection of some several lots, possible four-acres of land, with a hill to the back of the lots consisting of a forest almost, trees and bushes hiding most everything. The kids could drink there without being caught by the police, and on occasion when the police chased them, Larry would beat them up, along with a few of the older guys.)
So as I was saying, I took Tasma with me from her house to the party, it was about four blocks away. I remember when she first had seen the goings on: the fire, the twenty or so kids drinking, familiar faces, new faces, she asked: ‘Johnny, gosh, what’s going on.’ I told her it was nothing to worry about, just a bunch of kids getting drunk, some graduated like her and others just joined in because it was a party. Then I left her alone, I shouldn’t have done that, it was like leaving a baby-lamb with starving wolves around. But you can’t think of everything. So she met Leny Landsmen, and he was drunk and he found her between the pathway leading to the bonfire area, cornered by some isolated bushes, people walking about, around and in-between. And Leny well, he was a good kind of fella, spunky, nice looking, but a he got drunk and freaked out, pulled Tasma down to the ground and was ripping her pretty cloths off, or trying to. I heard her scream, and when I got there her skirt was up to her waist and Leny was trying to sip down his zipper.
‘Leny,’ I said to him, ‘stop, what the hell you doing, she’s yelling rape.’ And he told me to, ‘Fuck off,’ and I told him, ‘Not yet, not until you stop.’ I was a bit tight myself, and I had a beer bottle in my hands and the next thing I knew I was hitting him in the head and face with it. He flipped over like a broken balloon. I had to get Tasma out of there, in fear everyone was drunk and I’d start a war. He had a lot of relatives there. Well, Tasma’s parents called me up the next day and thanked me for my actions.
Leny had asked me after getting out of the hospital, and the loss of sight with his right eye, ‘why’d you have to hit me with a bottle,’ I didn’t really have the answer, but I told him the truth, ‘I didn’t realize I had the bottle in my hand, just like you raping a girl, what did you do that for?’ He had no answer either. Anyhow, she thanked me for a month, and that was the end to her party life. But you know I’m still glad I stopped the jerk; too bad he got hurt so bad though.”


but what was really troubling his mind was Jill, in two bedrooms from his. It was 9:00 AM, Jill was sleeping, Tasma in her room he suspected, and Tommy was gone. He pulled out a Playboy Magazine from under his pillow; opens it up and starts looking at the naked girls.
Where his disillusioned mood was coming from, was beyond him, but he convinced himself: when you know it is there for the taking (in his case, Jill): and no one there to stop you (so he repeated to himself) ‘why not take it?’ his mind was calculating. And he stood up, walked out into the hallway, walked up and down the hall, standing outside of her room like a hungry lion, then he walked halfway down the hall again, then back to doorway, stood there, listened to her breathing in her sleep. He told himself, she liked him: they had both fooled around with each other since he was there, and her bedroom was right here, she was half naked in her bed, if not all naked he told himself; peeking now through the slightly opened door he gazed upon her. He had only his shorts on. He looked back at the Belmont’s room, it was partially opened, but he saw no one looking. His underwear was stretched out. As he stood by the door, opening it a little wider, he noticed a strange woman leaving the Belmont’s bedroom, she was not as old as the Belmont’s but not as young as he or neither Lorie, possibly in her mid-thirties. A nice looking gal he thought. She saw him, smiled, and said not a word, just walked down the stairs, and then he hurried through the doorway, before someone else came out.
He knew they had something going on in their bedroom for she was counting money, it wasn’t one dollar bills either, but this was the first time he saw any proof of it. Now he looked into their bedroom again (thinking of the girl that came out of it): Lorie was younger than her, slimmer than her, he told himself, but then so what; they were both older than him, Lorie perhaps twenty-four or even twenty-seven, could be, and she liked him for whatever reasons, this gal he’d check out later also, he told himself. Now back to Lorie, his mind went, she: was a waitress in a bar and he had met her as he was drinking alone one night there. She introduced him to her crowd—which ended up being the same guys that went occasionally to the Due-Drop-Inn—and that had turned out to be a pleasant surprise; it didn’t take long for this relationship to start, the second time he saw her, he had gone to the ‘after-hours drinking houses,’ with her and normally he’d find a room to sleep his drunk off, or make love to her, or do both. He was even caught once by the group who really said nothing about it afterwards, but were doing some heavy thinking at the time: they had slipped into the house during an afternoon made love and fell to sleep, and here comes the gang with guns and all. Johnny could hear them walking to the door and then through the door, but he pretended to be sleeping, while she really was, and they were talking about hurting him, but felt if Lorie was ok with this guy, so be it, and left. Johnny then got Lorie up and they left—that was when he slowed up in seeing her and she was kind of hurt, but she started dating another guy soon after, thus, she was dating two, him and the other guy (I suppose she was creating a cushion incase Johnny dumped her, like Johnny was doing with Jill); for some reason they both seemed to be lost souls, and gave no hoot to what the other one did after they left each other, or pretended not to care anyhow. He never mentioned to her he was aware of this—or their presence and he figured he’d be leaving her sooner or later anyhow.
—As Johnny walked slowly up to Jill’s bed, her face becomes animated and prettier. She had only underwear on, no top, he remembered those same breasts from long ago, and they had filed out quite nicely now. He looked at her possessively, explaining to himself: she wished for him to be there, and doing what he was doing (creeping into her bedroom), could she have come right out and say it, she would, but no, she couldn’t, she was sleeping. Yet she was only a diversion, an experiment for the moment for him: a pause in his life if you will. Had this been in Minnesota, a like case, she’d be doing the same, so he convinced himself.
He now laid on the bed gently, pulling his body slowly across the bed to her backside, she was sleeping now on her side, she had moved from her back in the middle of the bed, to her side, on the right side of the bed. He held himself up by his left forearm, whispered softly in her ear, his mind was windless, and his voice scared her, as she opened her eyes he was staring down into hers like a panther. She went to scream, and then saw it was him, “Johnny,” she cried, “What are you doing?”
“No, not like this, not here, not now,” she bellowed. It was like she was talking to the wall, he continued with his movements, as if it was urgent, as if something was pending. Passion has no equal only fear and that sometimes does not stop the panther in a man. He pulled her torso up to him with one hand, “Open your legs,” he demanded, then entered her. There was no passion, only immediate gratification for him—pleasure. She wanted to enjoy it, she was hoping to enjoy it, but she was robbed this day.
“My god,” she said with a tear in her eyes, “I’m not thirteen years old anymore, not like this.” She didn’t scream and he didn’t’ threaten, but produced thick tears.




22
March, l968



As it turned out, Johnny would visit Jill’s room off and on during the following weeks. And that strange woman that left the Belmont’s room brought along another woman, and on occasion, he’d catch her on her way down the steps and invite her into his room, although she’d had preferred ‘Jill,’ so she said.
Tasma was not aware of most of this, but a little. Also, she had received at this time several letters from home by her parents, in particular her father, but she did not respond back. She was not certain what to say, she loved them, and Jill assured them she was fine, but it was too stressful for her to talk or write them. She did have a profound desire to please her father, and wishful thinking to please her mother, but it seemed she needed to learn how to please herself first, and to Jill, she did not blame them for anything, not anymore anyway. And had she started a communicational dialogue, they may have persuaded her to return, the one thing she did not want at this time.

—Jill was in the kitchen—the ironing board was pulled out from an inner-cabinet built into the wall, a wall-unite if you will, it was kept snugly in, in which there was a door attached to it; Jill was ironing Tommy and Johnny’s cloths, another lover circle had stared. Both were arranged in separate piles. Mrs. Belmont was sitting at the table talking seriously to her; it was most unusual thought Tasma, for seldom did she see Mrs. Belmont other than at the bar talking to Jill. As Tasma neared them to join them, the subject—whatever it was—changed, and what appeared on Mrs. Belmont’s face was an un-cheerful smile, not unusual, but quite sudden, and it was apparent. Consequently, feeling a little awkward she left the kitchen to work on her diary-novel (some poems), in the living room in her usual spot; in effect, she could overhear bits and pieces now of their conversation. It didn’t occur to her to get up and leave, rather the opposite; she actually pretended to be busy writing and was simply drawing a picture undiscernibly.

“It’s been going on for a while mom, I didn’t think it was, I mean it would end up like this.”
“Get rid of him, or all of them.”
“No, no, I don’t think Johnny will go so easy. He likes me, and thinks he can have me, and he has me of course.”
“What about Tommy?”
“I like him, I like him a lot, but that’s the problem, I don’t love him, I just like him.”
“He’s what you need though. He’s more anchored.”
[With scorn] “What the hell does anchored mean!” said Jill.
“Ok, ok, I could have used a better term, Tommy likes to work and go to school, he’ll be somebody someday.”
“Tommy doesn’t pay you a dime; Johnny does and Johnny works hard.”
“Yes, he works hard all right, hard at drinking, screwing you and god knows who else—smoking that weed.”
“So Tommy was screwing me and working.”
“You’re going to lose him to that cousin of yours if you don’t hang on to him.”
“Tasma,” she looked at Tasma reading, “you got to be kidding, she’s as naïve as a sparrow.”
“So you say: does a pineapple come from a pine tree?”
“No,” said Jill apprehensive, “now what does that mean?”
“She’s not the little girl she was three, four months ago, or is it five or more? She has a good shape, and pretty face, and if Tommy can’t see it, I can. And so can a lot of men at the bar. Anyhow, Tasma is not the issue, Johnny and Tommy are.”
(A long pause came, then with a cracking voice, and an almost whisper, she leaned over to her mother, and Tasma leaned over the arm of her chair): “I think I’m pregnant…”
“Ay caramba,” she said in a sigh that slurred all the way to Tasma’s ears, “…now what?”
“It’s Johnny’s, not Tommy’s, Tommy uses a rubber, and Johnny thinks it is not manly to do so.” It was momentarily hard for Jill to look her mother in the face; she was at this time, pacing the floor in a small circle as her mother followed her with her eyes.
“Listen Jill, Johnny’s drinking with all the gang members at the bar, and he’s gambling, it’s just a matter of time before he gets in trouble with them.” (Some of the gang members had motorcycles, others cars, it was somewhat an unofficial bunch of criminals, in that they were but twenty of them that hung out at a number of bars).




23
Shan’t be a Minute


Tasma found herself walking upstairs to her room, it was quieter in the kitchen, and figured, she had heard enough, a voice said, “Where are you going?” it was Jill, polite but to the point.
“Shan’t be a moment,” was her answer. She wanted to tuck away her diary-novel, she had written some exposing things in it. And so she tucked away, under her pillow, as if it was safe, and her place was off limits to others, which in presumption it seemed to be. For the most part, she did not want to leave it laying about for someone to pick up accidentally.
Life had seemed uncomplicated she thought, and now with Jill’s mother it seemed somewhat speculative, if not downright disjointed. It had now crossed her mind Tommy would find out the secret, the secret being Johnny’s behavior and her being pregnant, or so she said she was, and ‘I know about it,’ she felt as if she was a betrayer, be it to Jill or Tommy, or even Johnny. Down the stairway, into the living room she went. She looked outside through the bay-window and there was Mrs. Alice Whitehead getting into the car, she looked at Tasma, Tasma waved at her, she was a nice old lady, and it always seemed to her she had concern on her face for her.
As she turned around looking towards the kitchen she noticed Mrs. Belmont sorting out bills: ‘I suppose she’s done talking to Jill now,’ was her thinking.
“I talked to your mother a few days ago Tasma, she’s doing well and I told her likewise, you were doing well.” Tasma simply made a polite gesture, no verbal adjectives.
“I want to do something today, a surprise, come with me,” asked Tasma, for some odd reason something had popped into her head.
“What, may I ask, is on that devious mind of yours?” laughed Jill.


—Tasma and Jill were gone for several hours, and arrived back home at about 6:00 PM. Johnny and Tommy were sitting in the living room watching TV. As they both walked into the house, both the boys were somewhat taken back a bit at Tasma’s appearance—if not down right, star-struck. Her long reddish hair was cut to where it reached only the nape of her neck. And she was wearing more makeup than she had before, the result: she looked a little fresher and less school-girlish, than before. Thought Tommy, ‘…before she seemed more delicate and fragile..,’ as he glanced at the poise she displayed as she smiled and stood in the middle of the room awaiting the verdict of the two young throbbing hearts, the heart breakers themselves. Johnny noticed her slender bones, and her nicely shaped neck was more defined (front and back). Tommy for some reason noticed her neatly-set breasts, small as they were—just above her small waist they were a hand full no more. Yet her slyness somewhat removed, still left her with a harmless effect. Her nervousness was repressed for the most part.
Along with all that, with all the money she had saved up, she also purchased some bath salts, talcum powder and a small mirror, which she duplicated for Jill as a gift for allowing her to stay. She had spent her $100-dollars she had saved.
For some odd reason, Tasma had glanced back into the kitchen, expecting to see Mrs. Belmont, but of course was not surprised when she was not there, she usually would go to the bar around this time, either she had missed her, or she was in her room preparing to go. The boys looked at one another in jest, and laughed.
Said Johnny with his normal side joking way, “So now you’ve grown up, welcome to the real world kid, looks like you’re willing to join us.”
Tasma knew Johnny’s ways and knew that was better left alone.
“It makes you feel good,” commented Jill; meaning spending money on oneself for preservation purposes, or simply for a change in one’s life. But there was concern in Jill’s unseen eyes, in her cerebellum. She was no psychologist, like Skinner or Pavlov with his salivating dogs (who worked on association), but the boys were kind of salivating, restlessly slobbering might be a better way of putting it, if not downright uneasy, with this new Tasma look.



Everyone had gone to bed now, it was Jill’s turn to sit downstairs in the sofa-chair for once, wondering, thinking, not sure of her next move. ‘I just don’t get it,’ she asked herself, ‘why am I so attracted to Johnny, and going with Tommy? Tasma wouldn’t have the answer even if I asked her, nor mom, facts are facts, feelings are feelings, I don’t sense they are neither right or wrong, they just are. Johnny makes love as if he was a mad man and seems almost barbaric, and I think of him when I make love to Tommy—it’s just unthinkable. I wonder how Tommy’s new book will turn out. Can you love two people at once, at one time? A good question; I think I do, or maybe it is lust, how do I know, I’m just…(pause) will be nineteen in a month. Mom said: love is a choice. I say love is a feeling. I wonder what Tasma would say. I know Tommy feels love through his penis, like Johnny, all men do, kind of, sort of—most of the time; but Tommy is more willing to be dedicated, I think. I have learned men are attracted by looking, but I like touch.’
On her way to her bedroom, she stopped at Tasma’s room, knocked lightly, “Can I come in just for a moment?” she asked.
“Why sure you can,” answered Tasma with a thoughtful voice.
“I had a great day with you today, and thanks again for the things you bought me (this was a good lead-in she thought to bait her for a question to be soon asked), but I have a question, somehow I think you’re going to oversimplify the answer but I’ll ask it anyhow. How do you know if you’re in love with a person?”
Surprisingly, Tasma answered Jill with foreknowledge, “You mean you are having a hard time trying to figure who you want, Tommy or Johnny?”
(A tight look went over Jill’s face.) “Yes, yes, that is where I’m coming from; I didn’t know it was so obvious.”
“It’s becoming obvious Jill, it was the first day Johnny came through the door, and it has progressively taken a greater shape to it. But in regards to your answer, I’ve never been in love so I might be the wrong person to ask, but I do know this, as simple as it may be: if I wanted to go out with Johnny, I couldn’t be in love with Tommy—that much. I mean, I’d think whoever you were in love with—you’d not want to go out with anyone else; you’d kind of want to stop shopping around for another person, or so I believe. If I was to get married, I’d not want to go out with anyone else: and if I did, I’d know that I was not ready for marriage, to him or anyone, if that makes any sense.”
But to Jill it made all the sense in the world. She was sleeping with Tommy at night, and wanted to be with Johnny.
“What do you think I should do?” asked Jill.
“I think you already know; I don’t think I need to say anymore. My heart is with you, no matter what the outcome is.” Then Tasma hugged her tightly.




24
Reset


As the next two weeks passed a kind of silence took over the house, people talked less to one another, I suppose you could say, Jill was the life of the house, and now she was deep in thought. Everyone tried to keep busy and pretend things were normal, but they of course knew they were not. The Belmont’s kept their normal schedule, and the pretense lingered.


Tasma had finished up with Tommy’s book on San Francisco, and had explained to him how she liked the ending of ‘Bustling,’ by his fake name Colleen Grant; she commented to Tommy: “The younger woman fell in love with the older man, but she had psychological issues, and she was too fragile for him to care for her emotional illness, and he was too sick biologically for her to care for him. It was a sad ending I thought, but had they married: love would not have been enough, as they wished, they’d both had ruined the life of the other. Yet they remained friends as they parted, matter of fact they remained friends until he died at the age of eighty-years old, and her, at eighty-two.” She then read a poem she was working on for him: “I haven’t put it in my book or diary yet, but here it is I’ll read it to you from the paper (Tommy sat inquisitively on the edge of her bed):



The Maiden from Seattle

When she walked into the light
The door to life, grew black as
Night,
And her earth began to swell
(This youthful beauty of Seattle);

At first glance—
Fell this youth from high
Aching to touch the morning sky.

Who dare take this maiden’s hand?
To help her though this silent land!
Ah! From hair, to heart, to breast:

Like faded flowers in the ground
Fleshless alms, could not be found,
And so she remains—bound!


Said Tommy in surprise, “I like it, I think a little or maybe a lot of you is in the poem; I think you’re going to be a Mrs. Plath, or Dickinson some day.”





—The following day Tommy had come into Tasma’s room unexpectantly, “Are you still writing your story?” he asked.
She looked at Tommy, “Just some poems, and dairy notes, really haven’t gotten into the plot or theme of anything in particular yet; not sure how to get it going.”
“Let me see, maybe I can help you” he said. Yet Tasma was still bewildered of his rudeness to just kind of enter at will; she liked him and didn’t want to scare him away, on the other hand, she was not going to join any love-circle.
She leaped quickly to her pillow, then it dawned on her, she had much information in it about Johnny, Jill, Tommy and, none other but the: The Lady in Black, as she referred to her in the diary. But had she not jumped, she thought afterwards, had she not jumped she’d had not given away her hiding place, although it was no vault for sure—I mean, a mouse could have found it had it looked for it.
“I, I have too many personal things in it, private things, I’d rather you not see,” said Tasma as she currently held the book in the middle of her chest; as she got off the bed with her one knee, fully turning about now, she tripped on her shoe and the book fell, Tommy quickly grabbed it and opened it. Tasma saw him reading it, and needed to do something quick, she grabbed it out of his hands and jumped on the bed, her dress flying above her waist showing her underwear and all.
Somehow Tommy found the child in him, and jumped on her bed trying to grab the diary from her as they rolled around in the bed; now Tommy hovering over her, his legs between hers.

“What are you two up to?” questioned a voice in the background, it was Jill: she had heard the ruckus.
“My fault, I was trying to get her diary from her, I started to read something quite interesting,” he looked at Jill halfheartedly. Had he gone back any farther, thought Tasma: The Lady in Black was there.
Jill looked at Tasma in an indefatigably way, “I see I wasn’t invited to the party—”and slipped off to her bedroom where she just looked out the window aimlessly. In a way it didn’t bother her about what she’d seen, but on the other hand, she was jealous. When Tommy left the bedroom to join Jill he didn’t know whose child it was; he had only read up to ‘I overheard her say to her mother she was pregnant today by….” He could not ask Tasma to betray Jill, it would be too much to ask, if anything, Jill might be betraying him, it was indicative of her.

—In the following days, Tasma noticed Tommy and Jill fought quite a lot; and Tommy was not a person to be irritated easily, it must be that she was leading Tommy to believe it could be his child, Tasma thought. Then one evening she noticed Tommy sleeping on the coach, and Johnny still remaining in his bedroom.
During this interval, Johnny entertained himself in his bedroom, hoping Tommy and Jill would sort things out—thus he remained in kind of a queue, waiting for Jill’s signal to return, somehow he had come to that conclusion she would. He found himself pacing the floor at night, saying, ‘I wish, whatsitsname, would…’ and never ended the sentence.

—I must make this awkward at this point, his mind broke off the subject of Jill and Tommy after the first week, his insides became external. He looked at himself, pretending he was not feeling this serge; he had not guessed at this until it engulfed him, there was stern on his face—and, toil in his hand. A cold shower might work he thought, but it was too far away. He felt he was on a fast run; he hardened his body like a weightlifter, a boxer ready to take a punch.

This lasted two weeks, finally an agreement came about, Jill would sleep with Johnny, and Tommy would sleep in Johnny’s room, and in due time Tommy would have to leave, approximately in a few months, considering once she started to show it would only provoke issues within the household, or so she felt. The real problem was that Johnny did not have the heart to tell Jill he liked the way things were, and he really liked Lorie to a higher degree. He wanted his sex, but could find it elsewhere if need be, now he’d have to resort to living in her bedroom, and his alone time would be altered. In addition, Lorie was somewhat out of the picture for he had not seen her in weeks as he waited for this all to settle, but he’d see her again is what he was planning. Again, everything seemed in the air now. But to resist the plan would be too premature at the moment he deliberated out.
In spite of the tension, things appeared to move about on a regular base for a few more weeks. However, Johnny was starting to hang out with the gang more often now, with their motorcycles, and customized old cars. He was doing a lot more drinking and gambling with the gang members. They had even stopped on a few occasions at Jill’s house looking for Johnny, taking pains to find him, going out of their way it would seem. It came to her attention; Johnny owed them money, how much it wasn’t said (but it was close to $6,000-dollars). They’d not go to his work; it was one thing the groups forbid: that being, to endanger a man’s livelihood was not being a man at all. They could do almost anything else, even kill you, but not jeopardize your job: that was considered a low blow.
Out of nervousness, Tasma started to keep her distance from the group at the bar, if she could, she would have vanished into thin air.




25
Dancing and Demise

In the days that followed, Tasma felt like hiding in corners when she saw Jill or Johnny nearby, but Tommy turned out to be an excellent friend, and listener, as to keep her company. During this period, Johnny and Jill settled down at night by the TV in the living room and drank beer and ate potato chips, popcorn, etcetera, as Tasma called them: the Coke days in her diary, for she drank a lot of coke. The problem was, as Tasma had seen it, if Jill didn’t drink with Johnny at home, he’d go out and drink. And she didn’t want to go to the bar anymore than what she had to; plus the gang was still looking for him; not looking hard, but looking, so it was a do-win situation, so she remained his drinking partner.
All in all, it came to be, Tasma and Tommy spent more time talking than Jill and Tasma; her shyness seemed to fade with him, as herself-confidence matured and blossomed like a rose. It was during these dozen or so days they started to play music together and dance in each others rooms; it was almost becoming routine. On a different note, during these same days, Johnny give the impression to be missing something, he was kind of wishy-washy. Tommy got to thinking, and expressing to Tasma he felt Johnny and Jill’s relationship was based on some mindless pride, or maybe they were just proud idiots. Tasma did not take his side she knew he was hurt, what man wouldn’t be after being cheated out of what he might think was his possessions, as men often do think.

—Johnny, hated Jill’s clinging on to him, but he accepted it with disquieting placidity. He didn’t mind pleasing, but hated responsibility. The child would simply be an interruption for him, an uncomfortable one at that. To be quite honest, Jill was not all that, entirely happy about her being with child. By all accounts, her child would be due the first week of November, she figured she got pregnant the first of March, and some five weeks now had passed.



Spring, l968


The days had clotted by, into weeks, then months and it would be not long before a year would be under Tasma’s belt for being gone. Spring had arrived. During this time, the following weeks of spring, Tasma continued doing some light housekeeping for Jill and the Belmont’s. Although Tasma’s life was not so hard, Jill’s in many ways being harder, yet it was difficult for her to repeat it by moving back home to Minnesota. And the longer she was gone, the more this became written in stone for her salvation; as she saw it anyway, and everything was changing, or had changed, and the gap widen between Minnesota and Seattle.


If anything moved these four young adults, it was youth and gravity, with crying hearts. All in their own way had a rigid appetite for life’s recklessness, surprises, emotional roller coaster, and sweets.





26
Drinking and Playing


And so Johnny and Jill drank theses days away watching TV, going to the bar, working, as Tommy and Tasma become better friends with playing records and dancing.
As Tasma was dancing with Tommy in her room, a Friday evening, she started to notice the rise and fall of his heart, its vibration, its beat; it was like a baritone at times and a fast beating drum; it lasted as long as she danced with him. She put Tommy’s hand on her heart, “Do you feel my heart beating fast, “she asked. Tommy unable to talk, his hand seemingly was paralyzed in-between her breasts, partly on the lower portion of her right breast.
[Finally he choked out] “Can’t say I can;” for some anomalous reason he felt there should be shame in his face, but there wasn’t any: as they say, ‘A face without blood,’ but I say again, he didn’t feel that way. Tasma had on an Elvis tune, “Love me Tender,” and it was playing over and over. Tommy’s hand felt her thin waist and hips, as if she was a ship, slowly moving them only inches in each direction. Tasma at the present was feeling a little strange, she wanted to tell Tommy to stop ironing her dress with his hands, but couldn’t figure on how to tell him to move them, she was speechless for the moment.
Suddenly Tommy said, “Let’s go for a walk, alright?”
“Yes, yes,” she babbled out in a free immolating manner.

The cool dark air seemed enchanting as they walked down the sidewalk by the many houses and trees on the boulevards. She broke into a silence as they walked past doors and streets and cars. She picked a top of a splinter from a support wall to a yard and put it in her mouth, her mother used to do that. Then with the splinter in her mouth she continued to walk the dark street. Tasma wanted to tell Tommy she was a little scared of walking in the dark like this, she would have liked to indicate this; although she liked the fresh and coolness of the night; but he suddenly turned around and they headed back as if he could read her emotions in the silence.

“I’ll be fine,” said Tasma, as Tommy looked at her, leaving her at her bedroom door.
“Of course you will,” she said with a smile, as he stood staring at her. Having said that, she moved her hands lightly over his shoulders, delightful that he had once seen her naked now, and no one else; these were all new feelings for her. As they stood there a moment longer, Jill’s cigarette smoke drifted up to her from the living room and made her cough a bit, distracting their gaze into each other’s eyes.
His gentile voice said something, but she didn’t make it out, her pulse was activated and she didn’t know why, and well, she pulled him to her mid-body section, against her body tightly, she felt something hard against her thigh, slightly astonished by what she felt and thinking to herself she looked down: “Oh well—(eyes wide open) it’s only you,” she felt it must be alright and now rested into and onto his shoulder area, she completely forgot the hardness upon her thigh, somehow the feeling was good. Her frock was a thick white; Tommy could see her long thin legs through it.

It was a good finish for a long day and night thought Tommy as he walked a ting awkward back to his room. For Tasma it was a trying day, she was mentally and physically worn out. They both fell into bed like a sack of potatoes, and dreamt of one another.


Sleeping

Tasma, tried to sleep, but in such cases like love, or so she was feeling she was in such a stage, a comatose state of love, or that it could be such a juncture, one has to departmentalize such things she computerized. Sort them out, kind of, and that is what she was doing, tossing and turning now in bed. [She thought]: ‘Tommy is trying to be nice to me, not out of feeling sorry for me, for he is, or seems to be emotionally attached, what I would want, but I don’t want my character broken, or running wild over some emotionally healing kick because of his loss with Jill, I don’t want a rebound; I want to keep my respect.’
In a way she found Tommy much like her, in regards to they both could be considered: separated from the herd and they both knew this. And night demanded less from each other, other than respect, fun and conversation, companionship, friendship. With Jill and Johnny, it was just Johnny who was not as much involved emotionally with Jill, for she was crazy about him. All of them wanted most of what life had to offer, in one way or another.



27
Le Coup de Foudre
[Love at first Sight]



Tommy was now writing everyday between seven-hundred and two-thousand words a day; and working at the bar still; he had finished up his schooling completely, so that was out of the way (although he’d have to take an internship in the near future). Tasma notice his profound love for the word, and his endless energy he put into everything; it reminded her of F. Scott Fitzgerald who lived not far from her uncle’s home in St. Paul, Minnesota, at 599 Summit Ave. She especially liked his short stories in the book called, “Floppers and Philosophers,” they were most entertaining. She remembered that his family had provided him with a room to write his stories in, in particular, “This Side of Paradise,” which was his first book, and some say his most promising. This of course, allowed him the quiet time he needed to do his story, and to get involved with it. She kind of felt like Zelda, his wife, she had to do the same, or would like to do the same for Tommy; yet she recalled, Zelda was a little ill and demanding if not demented, so she took Zelda’s body, and his mother’s kind interest, and pretended she was a part of them in Tommy’s writing career. She knew that at first glance, when she had met him in the bar upon arrival, she liked him, and even more when he was introduced to her as Jill’s boyfriend. Oh she questioned his loyalty and intentions, but it was, ‘love at first sight,’ so she felt now.
She then turned her thoughts to her diary, and how it was getting along as Tommy was finishing up a draft to his book in the living room.
“I got to send it off to some publishers tomorrow,” he said with satisfaction. On another matter as she sat in the armchair, she was not cupid’s daughter she told herself, nor a mischievous mortal like Jill, yet her human nature was working overtime with her youth and it would seem to a lesser degree she was being—or had been—smitten, had been I think was more the truth of the matter.
This new experience of love for Tasma was a new and biological one, with a drive that filtered into ‘the lust,’ area so she claimed to herself, her second-self. She was now, somehow feeling it was ok to go ahead, so she told her second-self within her body; she was not in the hunt for mate in particular, she didn’t think so anyhow, but her focus and energy was going in that direction (toward Tommy), nonetheless; her neurological, and endorphin level was for sure—and they were high.
She was asking herself, ‘…was this the inside stage of what people call romantic love?’ love inside her body, ‘Le Coup de Foudre [love at first sight]’ as she told herself (feeling as though a lightening bold had struck her; with a delayed reaction); some people call it, ‘love sickness,’ although I’d call Jill’s more into that category than Tasma’s, now that I think of it; and Tasma’s more at finding out she was struck with lightening a while back.
In a way, Tasma was still living in a bygone era, the Victorian idylls, contrary to Jill’s which was a new world, a fast-paced jungle, a hippy era and free love, and free it was for every male, for the price was to be paid by the female for the most part. For Tasma, there was not a lot of flexibility, which this new hippy-era demanded, her upbringing, as harsh as it may have been, like a watch-dog on the lookout for any and every possible intruder, it helped her high-sensory perception in the love system one might conclude. She was part of an era, but only the part she wanted to be part of, not the free love part. Physical love meant, mental responsibility, either with or without a mate. She felt compete either way (with or without a mate), for she had found out much about herself; she was not a pleasure or sensation seeker, for itself, yet she could be vulnerable, human nature was constructed that way. Yet the distinction was not always obvious, it was all a novelty for her, and possibly for all four of the youths experimenting in life’s forbidden fruits.
For Johnny, sex had become routine; for Jill it was an attachment; for Tommy it was at first a disposition; for Tasma a fruit yet to be picked completely, but it was becoming a drive, and it was hard to escape its surmounting echoes.



28
Looks Promising


Tasma, was now looking at many variables, night after night, Tommy became the cornerstone to her humanity, in a good way; she admired compatibility in a person, for another person, and she seemed compatible for Tommy, so this was her thinking. But all the same, Mr. and Mrs. Belmont were compatible, yet their sensitivity to one another was like a wasp to a fly, they had a lot to be desired as far as mates and parents go. Thus, she could not use them as bases for any good examples, other than allowing freedom for Jill to grow, and potentially that was not in her best interest, she went to extremes she felt.
She was now on another thought: I will not make Tommy fit into my family or anything, it isn’t my job to, plus, who could please her parents, they are good in many ways, but over powering, suffocating, not willing to let go, and let me grow. They would have to earn each others respect, glide, if you will, into each others worlds she concluded, and could they, I mean, could they deal with the differences, in time maybe. Was this not what life is all about in a nutshell? Working out differences in a relationship, be it friend or family, or wife or lover, country and nations, the world at large. So she told herself, for this is what her parents was lacking, and on the other hand it was what Jill’s parents had, but spoiled it somehow. She finished by thinking, relationships need testing. The heart is too easily led and the body is too hungry for lust at such an age. But it was a beginning she told herself, a good and honest beginning between them.
—As Tasma sat in her room hoping Tommy would visit her, she was reminiscing over all the romance books she had read in the past. I suppose in a way what she wanted didn’t exist, for it was all in the books she had read, for each book had their moments; hence, what she wanted was a fairytale romance in essence. But it is better to be hurt in youth, she told herself, than in old age, so she had read someplace—and this was kind of a fairytale romance in the making she believed. I mean, out of Minnesota to Seattle, who would ever think this would have developed a year ago. It was raining again as she looked out the window, it did seem to rain a good deal more in Seattle, than in Minnesota, she pondered on for the moment, looking at the cars hit the water in the streets, splashing people while walking with their umbrellas, the traffic lights up the corner were blinking wild, had broke down somehow, it was what life was all about, it was her time on earth, it wouldn’t last she speculated, but youth was only a short period in each person’s life, and had to be used wisely. Everyone is given but a cup of time, a cup of youth, how one uses it, well, that is how it is.

Tommy didn’t show up that evening so she looked at twilight, put out the light, started to close the curtain,—saw Mrs. Whitehead next door on the porch below, she was rocking in her chair, knitting something, she was always doing something with her hands, creative things: possibly if she could grow like her—should she be so lucky, and creative—she’d be quite happy.
The moon’s light, the stars’ light: both seemed to validate for her that the day was sufficient, or so she thought in her mind; thus, she drank a cold drink of milk—then setting it down on the bed stand, she curled up in her bed, and fell asleep. She knew Tommy somehow had a shade of shyness in him, but also a shade of fire, Tommy was a good catch in a all, and she looked for a good dream to put him into.





29
Johnny and the Gang


Johnny was what you might call a clumsy bad-boy, that is to say, he wasn’t like the motorcycle gang who committed grisly crimes, but he wasn’t innocent either. And he owed a few members $6000-dollars in gambling depths. Harvey, the leader of the bunch of criminals—with their monstrous chrome motorcycles—had hung a man in Alaska for owing less, for what they considered less than this crime of owing money anyhow. This monstrously strong and obsessed man manipulated, rapped and lured young girls to their doom. Johnny had overheard a lot of his crimes, just drinking and playing cards with them; they’d take him to what they called their ‘After-hours-bar,’ at someone’s house. He had also witnessed unspeakable sexual abuses, and during a few occasions barely escaped having to commit crimes with them. On the other hand, he dated a waitress from another bar, one the gang hung out at, more so than the ‘Due-Drop-Inn,’ while Jill worked. And Tasma reluctantly continued to work part time at the Due-Drop-Inn, in lack of no other job.
Harvey’s friend, Randall was given the job to collect the money, or take his girl Jill and put her fingers and hands through a ringer-washing machine, which would brake them all up, leaving them disfigured for the rest of her life; this was an old way of maiming someone, but still allowing them to be functional with the other hand, and yet feeling the pain
Randall at one time was a gifted athlete until he got mixed up with the gang; he was drafted by a pro football team. Chosen by a known magazine as a centerfold, and worked in bars occasionally as a bouncer.
—In consequence, he lusted for unspeakable submission and violent vengeance, it was his high in life, and if it was women, men or beast, he was after—it was all the same to him.
And so, on one prearranged night they met and he told Johnny:
“My list of victims grows, and the police can’t catch me, and convict me, if they could, they would. And no matter how ugly my crimes may be in the future, I will not be a suspect very long, so I suggest you pay within ten days.”
Not many people could put fear into Johnny’s heart, but he did, in a horrified kind of way. It was but twenty-four hours after that meeting Johnny left for Minnesota in fear of this killing machine.


—It happened to be, Jill knew nothing of this meeting only a ting about owing money, but she did not connect that to his leaving; or Johnny’s fear of Randall; she knew only that he wanted to go back to Minnesota, perhaps because of the tension in the house, and she was to follow thereafter. In the meantime, Randall was apprehended on another conviction in which he made a detailed confession for less time to serve, and shocked the police department of what he had to say.




Johnny grabbed his check, $255-dollars, told Jill he’d send for her and caught the first bus to Minnesota, quicker than a heart beat. No, he did not explain, or really even tell her he owed the sum of over $6000-dollars to the gang members, he felt a bit unsafe to, escape was his only passion for the moment, nothing else.

[St. Paul, Minnesota] —Johnny, was riding his friend’s car, Jeff’s, by the Old Washington High School, when he unexpectedly saw his ex-wife at a playground with his son, sliding with him down a slope; he stopped the car and hurriedly went over to the fence and gazed at her some twenty feet away. She also was somewhat taken back by his abrupt presence. It was a chilly day, but not so chilly as not to play. For some odd reason they both seemed a little unemotional looking at one another, or at least that was Johnny’s perception of Sharon. He gave kind of a stumpy dumb wave, as a clown would, as she neared the fence, now to be used as a divider between them.

“I do hope you don’t mind, but where have you been all this time, and why did you simply get up and disappear?” said Sharon with some kind of a look that said—you should never have stopped by today.
“Out of town, Washington State,” he said pointedly, and with little emotion, but for some reason, caution mixed with it all. The kind that says should I even be here. She gave a deadly smile, or a happy jeer, not sure which one it was. As they exchanged a few more words, she seemed to smile a little more, and Johnny became less guarded and smiled back (like a spider to fly).
She commented, with a luring voice: “I live right up the street on Woodbridge, in that duplex, the blue one,” Johnny looked in the direction she pointed her extended hand to, and her finger snug in a glove at it. “Do you see it?” Johnny nodded yes. “Come down tonight, maybe we can have some fun, like we used to, no strings attached if you don’t want them.” She sounded sincere thought Johnny, and so forgiving. It kind of left him confused if not down right stumbling for lost words.
“Sure,” he said with a little meditation, “what time?”
“Oh, let’s say, 10:00 PM, sounds good, the kid will be in bed, no reason to wake him up; I can stop and pick up some beer at the store, I know you like your beer; ok then.”
“Sure, why not.” He said and then quickly took off to see Jeff, an old friend from the neighborhood, who lived on the East Side of St. Paul now; as they both were living together.


[The Transformation] It was 9:45 PM, and Johnny showed up, quite attractive, and smelling like a French whore. He had a few drinks already, but not too many, just enough to insure he’d get drunk, if she only had a few beers around the house. Up the twenty stairs he walked—two at a time, kicked the snow off his feet on the second to last step. You could hear him climbing the stairs slowly, touching the wooden railing of the old wooden house; he made a lot of noise.
She opened the door automatically as if she had known before hand he was there, or in motion, on the premises. His facial expression was disclosure, as he saw her in a thin see-through-robe, with no bra on, and just panties made of white silk, her hair long and combed fluffy, her rosy cheeks with a smiling glow, her breasts showing and bare, as if she was going to eat him up. There he stood with his leather jacket on and black sweatshirt, black trousers, as if he was the blackknight.
As she invited him in, there was a wall behind her, and about two feet from her was Johnny in the hallway ready to step in—forward, she stepped back, her back against the wall now, her breasts now fully exposed, and her legs open, for some reason he hesitated, and she broke the silence (feeling she’d have to quickly implement her plan or not at all, feeling she’d had liked to had gotten him into the house more) then she grabbed Johnny pulling him against her, and slamming her back against the wall loudly so the neighbors could hear (it was a duplex and people lived downstairs), then she ripped her cloths as she grabbed Johnny, but he quickly saw it was a set up, and threw her back against the wall, jumping backwards out of her apartment, away from her reach, as she was screaming ‘Rape!’ as loud as a mad-hatter.
As he turned himself around, not thinking of who might be at the bottom of the stairs—if anybody, still confused, and in disbelief, as he hit the fifth stair from the bottom, behind the stairway came a man with a steel pipe, he jumped around the corner, hit him in the forehead, knocking Johnny flat on his back. He laid on the steps a moment, the huge man then started to hit him in the face with his fists, and somehow he got his right foot up, kicked him in the stomach, he went backwards, and then the stranger’s wife, the one who had just hit him, came out of the downstairs apartment asking: “What is going on?”
“Sharon was hollering for help,” said the man to his wife holding on to his pipe.
Then Johnny comes out with (directing it to the assailant’s wife now standing by the door of her apartment): “It was a set up, she invited me over and they set me up; your husband was part of it.” She looked at the blood coming from his forehead then asked her husband to take him to the hospital (trying to figure out why he was holding a pipe in his hands; possible he was having an affair with the divorcee upstairs, this was a possibility, that went through her mind for she looked unsatisfied with her husband’s answers). But Johnny knew if that was the case, the stranger would get it for assault, and Sharon would provide enough material for rape, to put him away in prison. It was a no win situation, and a hard learned lesson if anything. And the wife would have to go along with it, or see her husband thrown in jail (but what Johnny didn’t know at the time that in a year’s time, he’d meet him again in the Army, and he’d be divorced).

“No,” said Johnny, “I’m going to a bar,” the stranger got a bit scared wondering if there’d be trouble this evening, but Johnny left it at that. At the bar a few of his friends wanted to visit the house, burn it down if necessary, but Johnny said no, it would just provoke Sharon to call the cops on him, again, it was a no win situation.




30
Jill in Minnesota



Jill had never been to/in Minnesota during a winter—but she was determined to go find Johnny, he was living with a friend named Jeff at 135 Constitution Street. Tasma begged her to buy warm socks, mittens, overcoats, a scarf and hat, but she simply told her not to worry she was tough, and she could make it without any of that garb; she had $150, plus a ticket in her pocket for St. Paul, Minnesota on the Gray Hound bus; Tasma had heard it was an early and extremely cold winter, and extremely cold in Minnesota means cold like the Arctic parts of Alaska, if not worse.
—She arrived in St Paul, December 31, 1968, 7:30 PM. She knew it was cold but what was cold to her wasn’t registering what was cold to people in Minnesota, and did she really know what cold was [?] She heard Tasma talk about it, and the bus driver said it was nineteen below zero with a wind chill factor of 42-below; she was not sure what all that meant. All the same, Jill didn’t have boots on, rather tennis shoes, and a light wind breaker with a sweater under it, a pair of jeans, no hat but a light scarf and no mittens. She was going to surprise Johnny; he had sent letters saying he was living with a guy named Jeff that he was going to send for her as soon as he got a job. But she was impatient. The lining in her jacket was already getting stiff from the cold as she stepped onto the asphalt driveway of the Gray Hound depot.
It was going to be l969 in a few hours; she had talked about many things on her bus ride with a lady she met, Linda Macalley. She was from Minnesota, St. Paul, and liked Jill (the bus driver was concerned about her as he looked at how she was dressed). Linda enjoyed their conversations; they talked about the year, like most people do just before it starts. It was one where Bobby Kennedy was killed, and the Olympics in Mexico took place, and Nixon in November won the presidency, and just last month in December the first astronaut orbited the moon. What was in store for 1969, Jill thought, thought maybe Johnny and her, and her baby would be together; she had left her baby with her mother, in Seattle, it was born on November 2, 1968. Tasma had ventured out and seemed to have done well, why not her she figured. Johnny had become—for some odd reason, her obsession and she had told Johnny of the birth, but had put the child’s name under her name: Belmont, not wanting anyone to know until things were settled with them; as not to cause any hardship on Johnny. Thus, in essence, Johnny had no legal beneficiary at present. In-between her conversations she had a subtle gloom that filled her face. She tried not to show it but it was there nonetheless. The ride was 36-hours, as she crossed almost the whole country.
The voice of the bus driver, bellowed out again as Jill had already disembarked the bus, but what she heard was: “You got to get some cloths young lady, it’s thirty-below out there, I just heard it on the radio, and those little toes will freeze right off.” She turned round and waved at him as if to say, ‘sure,’ with no intention of adhering to his male egoism.
Inside the warm depot she pulled out her address book to insure she had the right address: ‘yup,’ she muttered as she took in a deep breath. She had pulled it out a dozen times during the trip, memorized it I think, but it was her life-line to Johnny, so she treated as such. Jeff, the guy he was living with, had no phone, so it was finding a city bus and simply jumping on it and heading out to their address, so she told herself. But it was not as easy as it was in Seattle; things were different, as she would soon find out.
“Say mister,” she bellowed out at a stranger with long hippie like hair, “Where is the Phylon Lake on the map here; I’m trying to get to this address (pointing to Prosperity Street)?”
He eyed her up and down, and then looked back onto the map. She noticed.
“Haw, here’s what you do little lady; take the bus over here on Wabasha Street, and go to Rice street, take any bus going North to Maryland Ave, get off and go East on Maryland, it will stop at around Arcade Street. From there I don’t know, but your address is about a mile and a half from there; I can take you there for a price, but it is not dollars” She nodded no, and he left abruptly after seeing her last nod.
She saw a television mounted on the wall; it showed the temperature at 28-below, wind-chill at 62. She thought she had conquered the Midwest, saying in her mind, ‘…this isn’t all that bad Jill—what a baby.’

—Jill, at this moment had made it to a gas station on Arcade Street (the Eastside of St. Paul), now she’d have to walk the mile and a half, but she went into the gas station on the corner, it was almost 9:00 PM, and it was closing. She pulled her paper with the address on it again out, making it visible to her onlooker, not quite feeling the cold, but feeling its little bites here and there—its numbness. But she was really going from one warm place to another, and although her face would start to get a bit numb, it thawed out quick as she jumped on the next bus. Her fingers kept going into her pockets as she sat down at the bus stops waiting for the buses, never having time to freeze completely; yet she was feeling the tingling that the cold produced in her flesh, bone and fingers as they got numb; by all means, she was feeling the reality of the cold now, yet she did not take full consciousness to its revalorization of how cold it was.
“Is this about a mile and a half from here?” she asked a young man in the gas station—looking at her piece of paper with the address on it, pointing it out as if it was a road map, as he started to turn off the lights. He looked at her strangely, and then looked outside for a car, he didn’t notice her walking, or if she had just gotten off the bus. But instead of answering her question, he said, “Ma’am, it is 35 below out there with a wind-chill of god knows what, possible 60 to 80, you don’t have a thing on.”
She gave him a grin (it was a statement-question to her knowledge, and one she didn’t feel she had time to answer) and repeated, “Where is this address?”
“Well, just go down this street, Maryland Avenue for about a mile, and it’s about three blocks to the North, once you get by the McDonalds restaurant on the south side of the street. At that point, the street will cross Maryland. A bus will be coming by in fifteen minutes, but I got to close in five,” kind of an offer if she wanted to wait. She looked at the mittens for sale by the cash register.
“I’d advise you to buy a pair; it’s really cold out there.”
“Na, no real need, it’s only a quick walk, no need to wait for a bus for fifteen minutes, I’ll be there by then.”
“The last bus leaves here at 12:00 midnight, just in case you need to know.” She looked at the bench outside, and across the street, a bench for waiting for the bus.

She could wait no longer, she now started to walk the mile and a half, slipping on the pavement, fell a few times; the small suitcase was starting to get into her way, as she shifted hands from her pocket to carry the case and back again several times. After a few blocks she no longer could carry the case in her hands, they got too cold too fast. She checked her pocket to see if she still had her $150-dollars, she was not going to lose it like Tasma did coming down to Seattle. It was there she told herself with a satisfactory smile.
She walked, at present, about a half mile, slipped again, as snow covered her hands; she quickly brushed it off on her light jacket. And now the mittens in the gas station appeared in her memory. But again she blocked it out saying: it’s only a few more blocks. She noticed the cold weather drew on her energy source, she was getting tired and her legs were starting to sting a little—clear through to the bones. Her hands were cold, very cold. She kept them in her jacket pockets now—hugging her sweater underneath for warmth, moving her fingers readily to keep the blood going, to feel the warm blood moving. She had hid her suitcase under snow a few blocks back, that came to her mind, wondering whom may have saw her doing it, covering it with snow. She’d pick it up on the way back; or have Johnny pick it up for her.




She noticed a dog following her, a mutt of some kind, but she smiled at it, she figured she could use the company. But why was it following her she didn’t know, just a stray. Had she asked Tasma, she might have told her, dogs know about the cold in Minnesota, and they know humans in winter provide warm shelters, or can if they wish to. Oh they can’t say it, but they sense it, instinct. Thus, the dog would follow in hope that when she got to her destination the human would give her shelter also. On the other hand, the dog was not a foolish animal, it knew enough to keep moving to keep its circulation going, its blood warm and in a constant flow.
In the course of the next hour she found the street she was looking for, she had actually passed it up and had to backtrack a few blocks. Each block brought more numbness to her face, her toes, her cheeks, nose and hands. She was but three blocks, at this instant, from her destination, it was taking an awful long time to walk these blocks she thought.
She lit a cigarette, but she could not hold it in her hands she had to leave it in her mouth, and put her hands back into her pockets, it was too cold to leave them out. She was now just starting to under- stand what cold was. Her nose, cheeks and ears were red and numb. Her toes tingled and she was loosing sensitivity in her fingers. She stomped up and down so she could feel her feet and toes, create some kind of warmth back into her limbs.
The dog kept moving, and watching her from a distance. He [he being: the dog] was white with brown speckles. Jill’s eyes were now blurry from the cold. The dogs ears started to go back, and then frontward. Jill’s eyes when the wind caught them, seemed to freeze her eye-lids shut for a moment, she was trying to squint without shutting them now.

—“Aw, there,” she said to the dog, “There it is the address 135, 135, that’s it.” It was a two story building, with basement apartments. She went into the glass enclosure, some heat was seeping from under the inner glass door that lead to the hallway apartments, but it was a security building so she had to stay in the glass enclosure and find the right buzzer. She looked about, there were six apartments, but Johnny’s name was not on any, but Jeff Landsman was. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, looking at the dog hugging the door and all the heat that was trying to escape.
She hurriedly pressed the buzzer that read ‘Jeff Landsman,’ and hoped she’d hear Johnny’s voice; it was possible he might be out celebrating the New Year though, she thought, it would be his style. She rang it again; a voice came over the speaker this time,
“Yaw, whose there?” said the voice.
“Is Johnny there,” said Jill in an excited manner, still shivering from the cold, trying to rub out the numbness so as it to leave her body quicker, and it was becoming normal again, the little heat she needed was like a bonfire to her flesh. The dog was curled up with his tail flapping. Her blood somehow recoiled in her body, it was circulating in full force now, her lungs and voice was now clear.
“I’mmmum, Jill, Jo-johnny’s girlfriend from Seattle.”
“This is Jeff,” said a voice.
“I want Johnny, is he there, tell him it’s me.” The voice over the speaker paused for a long moment, as if he may have went looking for Johnny, and so Jill just waited looking at the dog.
Then with a broken and hesitant voice, Jeff said, “Well, he, he, I hate to let you know like this: he should have told you, he was drafted in the, the Army, he’s at Fort Bragg, North Carolina now; left about a week or so ago. I’m sorry he didn’t let you know, I thought he did.”
There was a dreadful silence now between the two speakers, the dog moved a bit, as if he could read danger on Jill’s face, and she started kicking the door and slammed the phone speaker down, and every other word that came out of her mouth was swearing. The voice on the other side disappeared. She tried to phone Jeff back but he wouldn’t answer.
“Hell with them all,” she said, “Let’s go…” she told the dog, but the dog didn’t want to move, and she screamed,
“I said let’s goOOO!” And he heeded her command.




It was her own fault she thought now, as she left the warm enclosure, ‘…I did not inform Johnny I was coming.’ she told herself, ‘and he did not inform me because he didn’t know how to; it’s just like Johnny; and Jeff, shit, I scared the shit out of him I suppose, who would answer the phone after such a display of anger, and I wouldn’t listen to Tasma or the bus driver or even the boy at the gas station about the cold. Damn, what’s the matter with me?’
Now she had to find her aunt’s house, Tasma’s house, she told herself. Or just go back to the bus station. She’d think about that on the bus, once she got back down to Arcade Street. It was—she had estimated, for her watch had stopped, it must be she figured, about 10:45 PM, she had an hour and fifteen minutes before the bus would come. Enough time to walk back the mile and a half, pick up her suitcase. She had warmed up in the glass enclosure for about twenty-minutes she estimated, long enough to last to get on a warm bus.
Jeff had no idea she was unprepared for Minnesota, everything was happening so fast, she was like a sailor in the middle of a hurricane without a life jacket, or even a ship.
As she walked several blocks in a rush, she had to stop and rest, her energy was zapped, her toes started to tingle, signals of sensation to parts of her face were felt, and her fingers started to numb up again. The dog was walking in circles.
‘God, it’s cold,’ she told the dog, and had started to resent the dog for having a coat of fur, a homemade jacket on, one with no pours so it wouldn’t absorb the cold so much—the wind so fast. The dog caught her jeer and kept her distance. Maybe Tasma was right she told herself, this Minnesota winter was bad, real bad. Could the dog talk, he would have told her to stay put in the glass cage they were in, it was better than out in the cold. It was all of 35 below, and the wind-chill was unthinkable. Her ears were frozen; she couldn’t feel them anymore. She looked for taxies, but couldn’t see even a car. She didn’t realize in St. Paul, you had to call a taxi to a location by phone, you never flagged them down, it wasn’t like Seattle, or a big city like New York City.
—She had found where she had laid her suitcase, but her body was not reacting properly and she had to leave it there, it was stiff and cold and had no feeling in her fingers, hands (she couldn’t pick it up): she had to look to see if they—her fingers—were still on her, attached to her, as the snow and wind slapped her in the face making her cheeks and nose and ears raw. She hit her hands against the tree to wake them up from their numbness, then left the bag alone and started back walking to the bus stop again. Her jaw was tightening up, and her upper arm muscles were losing sensations, as if a large piece of meat was being frozen. But now she could see the bus stop, and she tried to walk faster, but she couldn’t, she looked at her watch, but it had stopped. The dog was several feet from her, she looked at his fur—thus, she stopped for a moment: ‘She-sheeee ggoottt a lot of fur,’ she murmured in protest, in a shivering manner. But the dog kept his distance.
“Come, come, come here doggie….” she cried; but the dog only moved when she moved. She moved toward the dog, the dog moved away from her. Then she stomped her feet, it felt good, and so she did it again, she couldn’t feel a thing, all the way up to her ankles.


She now had arrived at the bus stop, ‘At last,’ she mumbled to the dog, with a little jeering laugh: “No bus ride for you,” she bellowed out from the bottom of her lungs deep in her chest, but it was not loud, it was hardly even heard by her, she had lost her energy, and her lungs were being frozen, she was being frozen alive. She sat down on the bus bench, and just shivered, and trembled.
The sight of the dog started to bother her, how content he seemed, warm in a cold way, warmer than her anyway. I mean, he wasn’t shivering like her. The gas station was black inside, she almost felt like throwing a brick through the window and warming up as she stared half frozen at the gas station, but where was a brick? She’d waited a few more minutes for the bus; it should be close to midnight, so she told herself. The dog seemed always moving, she was just staring at it, and then lights caught her eyes they were from a truck she figured, west of her, about two blocks down. It had stopped. She turned her head, squinted her almost frozen eyelids:
“Damn!” she said in a horse’s voice, “That’s the bus,” her lips couldn’t move, the words just slurred out as she had seen the taillights, the break lights, lit up. She tried to stand back up, but she couldn’t feel her feet, it was all of 40-below, with a wind-chill of at least double that if not more. She was now thinking Tasma was right, they were all right. Her hands were frozen in her pockets, the only thing moving now was her thoughts, and they were on Johnny; but she told herself not to panic: still looking at the tail lights of the bus, stopped, headed the opposite way, two blocks away. So close she thought, but so damn far, under these circumstances.

Jill thinking. (She was silent now, but had time to remember, even though bleak and half frozen were her thoughts). I have looked-after Tasma, as I had promised myself. (With a generosity so self-concealing that at the time only instinct or intuition, or scent of some kind had or could make it aware to her, but inside her frozen body now she smiled, for she couldn’t move her lips. She then released her last breath. Unfortunately, Tasma could not offer her a hug a kiss or kind gesture, she was too far away, but it wasn’t necessary.


—The dog now approached Jill, she was a picture of a frozen human, he could smell death, and jerked himself backward: remained there a moment, and then ran back to the apartment she was at before to see if he could get into the glass cage.



31
Clap of an Eye


[Seattle] Tasma had concluded she was in love, quicker than a clap of an eye, it came upon here; now that it had come: she wanted to kiss Tommy, felt it a reality; a reality that carried a disadvantage in the sense of: she felt hopeless and helpless of it all, but the cramps were there and she loved the feelings even though she was vulnerable, and what other test can there be, you have to allow it, she thought, allow it to happen, to be vulnerable to be able to find your soul mate; though her body, her spirit was melting into his secretly now. If anything they did click, and that was possibly the main thing, for who can judge simply by compatibility if one is right for the other, so she demised: for one day you are fine the next day you are ill, and will your sidekick, your husband, your half life be with you? So compatibility was not all it was made out to be, yet it was a fraction of a relationship; you had to click, that was the secret of love, and it clicked now, like a clap of an eye movement for her. And once you know, she finished: you know.

Tasma sat silent in her bedroom; Johnny had now gone, and Jill had taken off running after him to Minnesota, thus, she and Tommy were left with the Belmont’s. (In Minnesota, officials were trying to identify a frozen body found on a bus-bench. And in Seattle no one really knew what was happening concerning Jill or Johnny.)

Tasma had learned more about herself, that being, once she took the first step, it normally was the decisive one, the rest would fall in place; although it took planning, will and courage (in particular in leaving home). At all events, it worked out. Had she stayed at home, she concluded (and had not taken, ‘The Road Less Traveled,’ as Robert Frost had wrote in his poem), she’d had never found that out. Habit, sentiment and convention would have lulled her into mediocre-unmet dreams. Nonetheless, the strings were now cut, and cut for good; yet still, Tasma retained that child’s sixth sense of something wrong, which would help her in life’s endeavors.

She didn’t blame Jill for going, Johnny was gone, and it was hard for her (her being: Jill) to bridge the gulf of his absence. She missed Jill, and Jill had missed Johnny: that was why when Johnny left, she never made any critical statements about Him—she just missed him too much.

—As Tasma looked out her bedroom door, opening it up a foot or more, to her surprise Tommy was looking out his door silently also, a foot or so; thus, both in the flesh neither one self-assured. As she remained in her pose, her hands grew cold, the beat of her heart shook her diaphragm; in a like manner, Tommy’s legs felt like lead, and he couldn’t move or breathe properly—love was producing these cramps, and mysterious body functions in both individuals, and other trying ailments. She took some old thoughts she had of him, and gazed with them as if she was close to him, yet they were only twenty some feet away. She now noticed behind Tommy’s door, was Mr. Belmont’s door open a pinch, and was watching them two, watching with the minimum of effort, passively. It was as if both were absorbing each other, like sunbathing.
Asked Tommy with a smile, “Can I be domesticated?”
“I’m already—” was her answer.
For some strange reason, she became all of a sudden self-conscious of her lipstick color shade being the right one, and her powder being properly put on her face: again was it a normal shade as he stared at her from his room, or was it too corpse like [?] She wanted to check the mirror but she dare not lose the moment.
“Oh, hell,” she said, and waved Tommy over. His shirt was off, he looked handsome with a nice physical-ness about him; not as physical or strong looking as Johnny, but then, she never did like all his muscles, they scared her.

As he, at this instant, stood in front of her, she lightly brushed her fingertips across his chest, there was smoothness to it, vitality within it; she whispered, incoherently something.
HE had on an old pair of faded slacks, and his hair was all combed back, she glanced over his shoulder to see if the old man was still watching—he wasn’t, then looked in back of her out the window to see if anyone was looking, and oddly enough, she saw Mrs. Whitehead smiling out her second story window with a broom in her hands, she smiled back, and even waved, as she shut her curtain.
Tommy asked: “Do you love me?”
“Yes,” was her answer, it seemed she thought, so easy to say that, unbelievable.
“I’ve saved $2000-dollars, no one knows about it, and will you marry me—?” asked Tommy. Tasma, did not move, she stood gazing at him, stone-still, then it burped out of her mouth: “If you love me.”
“Oh yes, oh yes, very much, I love you very much.”


‘Tasma Thinking. It is important to see things as they are, not to arrange them around you, that way at the end of the day one can keep the moment, as it was meant to be, like now, for a good end. With Jill, Johnny, Mrs. Whitehead, the Belmont’s, Tommy, I had taken a step from safe ground to the unknown, I’m happy to be here, and look at all the days that may lay ahead.’


She had learned from Jill and Tommy, or better put: discovered through them, during her visit in Seattle, how to accept the dark and odd side of life, as well as the bright side; for even in her she had found darkness with her instincts, not inbred morbidly, but rather difficult to resist at weak times of a person life. Again she had learned from dark comes light. In her diary she wrote:


Light from Darkness

A canopy of light and blue
Translucent dew:—
From darkness comes light!

Tasma Autumn Stanley




“Then I’ll marry you,” said Tasma, as Tommy looked in shock; he didn’t know what to say for once, as if he was lost for words; somehow I think she liked this, and finalized it by saying, “Let’s get going, how about New Orleans or San Francisco?”


“It is the world’s one crime its young grow
old…”
— V. Lindsey




32
“The Age of Light”


He said ‘yes,’ to her request, ‘Let’s get going,’ but added, “How about you reading my story on the way, my epic poem?” And so as they caught the train to New Orleans, he read her, his story: his epic poetic poem, the one he had been working on during her stay at the Belmont’s house: “The Age of Light,” and now they are on the train, and he is reading it for her—for the first time, and he got it published soon after their arrival in New Orleans,…(and they lived happily ever after; with a few minor adjustments, and differences on the way; she became an accountant, and he, well, how about a counselor as he had planned, and a real estate tycoon which he didn’t’ plan on, and author which was a childhood dream, as you already know ((they had one child, one dog, one fish, one cat ,one God, one love, and one life all together—and no turtles)).






The End



Note: Picture on back cover of the Author at Minnehaha Falls [Minnesota]

Dedicated: to Rosa

◊


Books by D.L. Siluk; check at your local books stores, and at: www.amazon.com and www.bn.com http://dennissiluk.triopd.com

Out of Print

The Other Door, Volume I [1980]
Two Modern Short Stories of Immigrant life [1984]
The Tale of Willie the Humpback Whale [1981]
The Safe Child/the Unsafe Child [1985]

Presently In Print

The Last Trumpet and the Woodbridge Demon

Angelic Renegades & Rephaim Giants


Tales of the Tiamat [not released]
Can be purchased individually [trilogy]

Tiamat, Mother of Demon I
Gwyllion, Daughter of the Tiamat II
Revenge of the Tiamat III


Mantic ore: Day of the Beast

Chasing the Sun
[Travels of D.L Siluk]

Islam, In Search of Satan’s Rib


The Addiction Books of D.L. Siluk:

A Path to Sobriety,
A Path to Relapse Prevention
Aftercare: Chemical Dependency Recovery


Trilogy of Chick Evens:

A Romance in Augsburg
Romancing San Francisco
Where the Birds Don’t Sing
Stay Down, Old Abram


The Suspense short stories of D.L. Siluk:

Death on Demand
[Seven Suspenseful Short Stories]

Dracula’s Ghost
[And other Peculiar stories]

The Mumbler [psychological]

Sirens
[Poems-Volume II, 2003]

The Macabre Poems [Volume III, 2004]

After Eve [a prehistoric adventure]

Who Said Love is Always Fair [Le Coup de Foudre]



Love and Butterflies
[For Elsie T. Siluk my mother]

She fought a good battle,
The last of many—
Until there was nothing left; --
Where once, there was plenty.

And so, poised and dignified—
She said, farewell in her own way; --
And left behind,
A grand old time,
Room for another: --

Love and Butterflies…
That was my mother.


By Dennis L. Siluk © 7/03



About the Author’s Books

Notes:

The Lost Tales of the Tiamat Notes:

Recently discovered was the short book called “The King and the Tiamat,” (one of the last short tales of the Tiamat) which was considered to be a 4th book, but ended up being a short story instead. It was completed in 2000-2001, but never published, and in rough draft, than misplaced a few times, and now put into order, bringing the conclusion of the Tiamat series to an end. To be published soon.

But also, on 11/17/04, the author found two other stories of the Tiamat in sections of his computer he didn’t know he had done, he had evidently outlined them, and wrote them out in a kind of draft; and forgot he did them (having MS, he often writes his 8 to 12 hours a day (to include his reading), between 2000 and 2500 words a day (plus an article for a magazine, another 600-to 1200 words), and forgets where he puts things.) He had done a short story called: “The Invincible Tiamat,” 9/18/2002 the date on his computer for it, unfinished, which he will be finishing in the near future. Also, “The Ghost of the Tiamat,” a small vignette, completed in early 2003. Both are not include in any books, but with be in a forth coming book for those interested in the Tiamat series. He is rewriting the first three books of the Tiamat in-between all this (slowly).







A new and different book on the menu: “After Eve,” will be published soon; if not already. Says the author: “This story will bring you deep into it: make you live it…” it transcends Evolution and Creationism to form a unique relationship with humanity. Beyond the myths of this world, resides pieces of truth, thus, forming this story, where boundaries are marked by no one. The author conjures up a gallant saga—science-fiction: where the ‘Garden of Eve,’ is in decay, and the inhabitants of the world are forming a New World Order.

[From the book, ‘Death on Demand,’ by Mr. Siluk]: says author E.J. Soltermann—Healing from Terrorism, Fear and Global War, “The Dead Vault: A gripping tale that sucks you deep through human emotions and spits you out at the end as something better.” In a like manner, “After Eve,” holds the same truths.

Mr. Siluk, being a world traveler, a lover of the mysteries around the world, has visited many World Heritage Sites; recently, he visited the most remote island in the world, ‘Easter Island,’ where Kevin Costner made his movie: “Rapa Nui,” there he met with Charlie Love, Geologist, Archeologist; and Grant McColl, Anthropologist, June, 2002.

Tales of the Tiamat: This is a trilogy, consisting of “The Tiamat, Mother of Demon,” the second book, “Gwyllion, Daughter of the Tiamat,” and the third, “Revenge of the Tiamat”. All three are full of adventures and travels by Sinned, the main character of the three novels, as is the Tiamat involved, yet we see many other antagonists along side of her. The series takes you to Malta, Easter Island, ancient England, and Avalon, where the Tor is being built, Asia Minor, where Yort is, Sinned’s home, and a half dozen other places. In addition to the main story of each of these three books, which is being put into one, in the “Tales of the Tiamat,” a fourth book was added, called “The Tiamat and the King,” on which is the “Short book,” added into the series, it is really the conclusion to the trilogy never put into the book. It was, for the most part, written during the same period of time the three were, and revised recently. The forth book of the Tiamat, was put into the book of short stories called, “The Eldritch Tombs,” just in case the Tales of the Tiamat, never appears in print. But the conclusion of the trilogy is in this short wondrous story.

The Chick Evens Sketches: In this trilogy, we have sketches of life that incorporate the late 60’s to the early 70’s; the hippie generation, the new era, the awakening of Aquarius, the peace era, it has been called many things. In his first book, his sketches, take you on a romance of a city and era, the book being called: “Romancing San Francisco” [l968-69], he introduces us to karate’s famous Yamaguchi family, to include Gosei, and his father Gogen “The Cat”; along with the famous Adolph Shuman, the once owner of the line of Lilli Ann cloths, along with other sketches. In the other two books, “A Romance in Augsburg,” and “Where the Birds don’t Sing,” the sketches start where the first book left off, from l969 to l970 and to Vietnam in l971. Here you go to Europe for a Romance with a Jewish German girl, and on to Vietnam where there is a war going on. Mr. Evens will also end up in Sydney, for one week of some great adventures, what the Army called back then R&R; Mr. Siluk spent 11-years in the Army, being a Staff Sergeant when he was discharged, and has lived all three books. Another volume has been added to this collection: “Stay Down Old Abram,” Volume IV, dealing with Christopher Wright [and Chick Evens].

Short Story Collection [s]: these two books, of which [Volume one and two] are similar, being out Suspense beyond its normal doors: to the thriller platform: “Death on Demand,” of which there are seven stories, and “Dracula’s Ghost” of which are nine stories. A Third collection of short stories are in the making, “The Eldritch Tombs.”

Spiritual: The Author has some strong religious and spiritual views. Having studied and done graduate work in theology, and missionary work in the mountains of Haiti, and being at an earlier age an Ordained Minister, his two books, “The Last Trumpet and the Woodbridge Demon,” being his first book in this genre, talks about experiences of the early eighties, where he had visions concerning end time events that are coming to pass right this very moment. In his second book, “Islam, In Search of Satan’s Rib,” he talks about the ongoing subject of terrorism on America, and the world as a whole, but in a different manner; instead of trying to figure out the mind of the Islamic-Arab, he looks at this god, enmeshed with Islam today.

In the book, “The Age of Light,” spiritual or religious, in a sense, also is poetic. Dennis L. Siluk tells the reader of the forth coming (what the author calls), ‘The Age of Light,” biblically prophesied in the book of Revelation, where there will be peace and tranquility on earth after the last battle, which is called Armageddon. He explains, and with expression shows the reader the chaining of Satan in a chamber within the bowls of the earth, for a one-thousand year region of Christ on earth; and Satan’s [also know as the: Adversary, Lucifer, Azaz’el, in the poem] resurrection and ascension thereafter, thus, first leading him back to hell to gather his horde, and then to his earthly home, his seat of power on earth, his throne in Pergamun in Asia Minor; a most fascinating book, story: illustrated by the author and done in a number of poetic forms to enhance the emotional stems of the revelation.

Addiction: As of this writing [August, 2003], Mr. Siluk is still a licensed Counselor in good standing with the State of Minnesota. He has also held international licenses in Drug’s and Alcohol, and has worked for hospitals and clinics in dual disorder facilities. In his book, “A Path to Sobriety, the Inside Passage,” which is a common sense book on understanding alcoholism and addiction, the book is an ultimate guide to substance abuse, a powerhouse for preventing relapse and curing the disease. This book, out of 7,683 Addiction book at Barnes and Nobel, was #28, on 13 October, 2003. The book you are now holding in your hands called “Prevention…” is his follow up book [companion] to his “Path to Sobriety…” on addictions. Which he was not going to release depending on the need for it; but after the death of his mother, who helped him during his early stages of recovery, has chosen to finish it, and now release it. As in everything in life, school, the Army, training etc, you need a book to learn from, and one to practice with. This is the practice book, the hands on book you might call it, “A Path to Relapse Prevention.” He is also, half way done with a book on “Aftercare…” which if published, would be his final book in the Chemical Dependency area, and series.

Travels: Mr. Siluk has travel, or has been traveling I should say for some 37-years out of his 55 ½ years of his life to this date. He has traveled 24 ½ times around the world. And in most of his books you can see, and feel and almost taste this [to be more exact, he has 613,000-air miles, not to include ground miles]. In his book, “Chasing the Sun,” he takes you to a variety of places, by showing you some forty-pictures, --giving you an overall view of his story on how he got started. Each picture has its own caption, and is read for ‘a want to be traveler’, or one who would like to reminisce.

The Beast Books: I wasn’t sure what to call these three next separated books, so I named them, the “The Beast Books”. For in their own way, they all have their own beast. The first book being, “Mantic ore: Day of the Beasts,” which is the author’s favorite of the three, you step into the demonic underworld. A lot of him is in this book it seems. A touch of Vietnam, a touch of his home town, St. Paul, Minnesota, and the invisible shadows that change shapes into animals and human forms; visions upon visions. In the second book, the “The Rape of Angelina of Glastonbury, 1199 AD,” which is also in a revised version, in the book “Death by Demand,” you are involved with a suspenseful story of revenge, and at the end of the book is a nice surprise, another story. And for the third beastly book, “Angelic renegades & Rephaim Giants,” you get just that, no more, no less. It is a book on the ancient dictators of the world, the ones who have cursed God, to have man worship them; for the most part is it sketches, impressions, and glimpses of this world.

Out of Print book: For the curious reader; although they are out of print, the author has a few left in storage. “The Other Door,” was his first book published, in l981, a book on poetry. It is a Volume one, of which he is working on volume two, yes, 22-years in the making. This book is so scarce that only 25-copies are left, at a price you most likely you would not want to pay. Second, is the authors 2nd book, “The Tale of: Willie the Humpback Whale,” which got much attention in the year, l982, although it did not get a Pulitzer Prize, it was an entry, and considered. At present the author is considering a 4th printing, and revised edition. He does have a number of copies available for interested people [a limited number]. And the book “Two Modern Short Stories of Immigrant Life,” that is more of a chap book that came out in l984 as a trial run. Only 100-copies were ever printed, of which one of the stories were printed in the, “Little Peoples Press,” and then the book was pulled back for personal reasons, and off the market by the author. This very limited book of which there are possible 30-copies left can also be acquired, but again, this overview is more for the inquisitive than for selling these very rare and hard to find books.


The forthcoming book, “The Macabre Poems,” of Dennis L. Siluk is a strange with fascination, a book of poetry seldom done, on the dark side of life, will compliment this side of his genre of writing.


Visit my web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com You can also order the books directly by/on: www.amazon.com www.bn.com www.SciFan.com www.netstoreUSA.com along with any of your notable book dealers