Junkyard Blues

Chapter Thirty-seven

147 C Chapter Thirty-seven as this what this was all about? Love? No, I don’t think so. But? Jude wanted to shake his head, no he did not really know if that was possible or if he could believe something like that. Love was not in play here, he did not think so. He was clear-headed and he could see this arrangement for what it was; a cheap means to get what he wanted, just a matter of simple convenience. And it was something that was both ways, he was a man looking for a place to lay his head and for a woman to have sex with, and she was a guilty whore looking for someone to hook up with just to feel she was not a whore (or probably to tell herself she was not one). That was what his cool head told him, that this was all happening because she was a cheap slot who was ready to accept anything that could fit in that hole. Yes, and all the other reasons. But was that it? He did not know, and his cool head was sounding more and more like Niba most of times and he was not totally in love with that cool clear head. It saw the world only in its own single color. For what was there to prove that she was cheap? Did the fact that she was a slot hole ready to accept money for a sex session mean she was cheap? And was he even paying her a coin? No, that was the answer. Then why did she bother with him? Even if she was a guilty whore as his cool head wanted to tell him, why had she not hooked up with somebody else? Why was she still ready to accept him even after all what had happened in the past? Even after… Love? What was that word really? I don’t… It was complicated, something he could not lay a finger on. It was just happening and there was nothing he could do about it. You can’t be telling me you love her or something like that. You can’t be telling me that she loves you, man. Jesus, can you even listen to yourself? Can you even hear yourself? No! Then why… W 148 I don’t know! But she had said that word to him, she had actually… “I love you,” she had suddenly said one day to him, not looking at him, the air in the room suddenly going still and heavy. It had been one of those days after that evening, that evening when he had crawled back into her lair and somehow had became not just a regular but a presence that was almost existing just to be there in her lair (and trying to prove to himself or to the world that what had almost happened to him in that hotel room had all been a dream from another dimension and nothing that could touch his world. It was like coming to her was going to wipe that page of already written history and make it all white as if it had never happened or just trying to tell himself that he was not that thing, that horrible thing that Eric and his friend wanted him to be, that horrible thing he did not want to think about that Eric had wanted him to be). He had just been appearing there at her door almost like a programmed robot every blessed evening before she would leave for her nighttime job. He would drop in and without a word or two they would shed their clothes and jump into bed, she simply satisfying the hunger in him and he accepting her duty wholeheartedly. It was a simple arrangement with the only problem being that constant after-the-act guilt that came when he was spent and trying to dress hastily and leave the murky room as if it was some dungeon that could completely lock and seal him in forever if he delayed another minute. But that day, she had changed the pattern with just three nervously spoken words, “I love you.” The word had felt like a heavy slap. Not a slap at his cheek, and not a painful slap, but a slap at his heart, a painless slap whose effect was to stop his heart in the middle of a beat. It was a slap that completely paralyzed...