CAROLINE LACKEY

Caroline Lackey was born and raised in South Carolina. She has lived in the Bay Area off and on for a total of 4 years. Caroline writes fiction and poetry and has begun working on her first novel. She currently lives in San Francisco.

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THE SOURCE

Karel could smell the pungence of his sweat. "Why am
I sweating?"
"I found poems that remind me of you. I should let
you read them."
Josie lay on his bed talking fast and hard, thinking
him to death.
Look at me and hold that look - a woman of delicate
torture. Karel moved around her, picking up, avoiding
her.

Again he wants to touch her. Almost like the night in
Copley Square, when she broke down over her mother and
he told her he wasn't a poet. Karel had wanted to curl
up with her that night, watch the stars and tell her,
finally, with all the relief he deserved- how he felt.
But he knew that she would hate him for it. Not so
much for feeling but for admitting. Was it admission?
Or the loud and proud declaration that she seemed to
let it all drop for? Could he have told her, if he
loathed himself for being like all the others? What
set Karel apart may have been that theirs was a
declaration, but his was a tearful, apologetic
confession. Or would've been.

Jumping off the bed, he runs into the kitchen and
begins putting the groceries away.

News addicted and overly caffeinated, he is trying to
clean up for a date. Out of practice, low on
enthusiasm, it's just time. Or so said Josie. The
volume is up so he could hear NPR over the running
water as he cleans the kitchen and bathroom. In the
bathroom there are lots of little hairs from shaving
his beard. They are stubborn straight little hairs
like wire.

Once the place was clean, he could start dinner. He
isn't hungry but he isn't used to having a woman over
for dinner, so he feels like he should get things on a
little early. He's preparing roasted chicken,
asparagus and a cucumber & tomato salad with feta,
olives and olive oil & balsamic vinegar. She is a
hottie.

Shouting backward over his shoulder, "Tell me a
story," and release this incredible burden. Karel
pauses in front of his door to look at Josie,
re-posing on the bed. "Come. Tell me one of your
stories while I make dinner, but don't let me know if
it's true." He had his theories on truth.

Josie lifts her head and as she does the muscles in
her stomach tighten. The light in her face goes on.
Tiptoeing into the kitchen, Karel takes off his shirt
and stands in front of the fan.

When the food prep is done, he showers. For minutes
he leans on the cold tile wall letting the steam
almost choke him. Lindsay's memory was haunting. It
goes down on him as his grief extends. He puts
product in his hair and tries against hope to make
himself appear confident, well-put-together, healthy.
He dresses well but not too well. Stepping out to
collect accolades, Karel finds that Josie has left.
She turned off NPR, which she loathed, and put on
Ella. Classic.

So, he sits and has a drink.

In time his date arrives. She'd been at work all day
but looks no worse for the wear. They had known each
other for years. He doesn't kiss her as he lets her
in. But he wanted to press himself against her.
Karel pours a glass of wine for her and makes himself
a drink in a fresh glass. Then he serves her.

As they eat, the conversation plays about them like a
roomful of butterflies, shy and not really touching on
quite anything. They equally manage not to actually
exchange information, and Karel struggles to keep his
mind from letting Lindsay in.

As a distraction, he consciously focuses his keen
attention on his date. He observes that he can see
through her linen blouse. Eyes traveling up the crisp
parting, flower-like and inviting, to the softer
collar and on. She doesn't overtly notice him
looking. He offers her seconds. She declines, with
compliments. He offers coffee, she accepts. With
some orchestration they move into the living room and
take their coffee by candlelight, as Karel had set out
for them. But he could feel her in the room, in his
clothes, in his skin. He wants to tell stories of
them and how broken he is. He longs to gush but he
disgusts himself.

Karel suffers, as if everything he wants to say has
been said before and there is no way to make it fresh
for her, to make it new again, or original. He's read
all the wrong authors, learned the wrong languages to
render anything new.

She would never be here if she had any idea of all
that lurks beneath the surface. Pain, addictions, the
monsters that rattle Karel's bed. Her eyes are moist.
He realizes she thinks he is a catch and he's
emboldened by this and moves for her, feeling at that
moment that all could be cleansed if he could just go
inside of her and be wrapped in her arms and legs.

Lately, he drank whiskey alone at a wooden table from
a glass with functional form and no decoration. He
wore plain clothes, though they were in fair shape and
he ate bread and meat separately. The thick dirt was
visible on his face but not as much on his shoes. And
his tenderness poured out of him in the form of
letters to one woman who is not capable of wanting him
and another with whom it was over before it started.

She has been here before. Many times. The come-to-me
aching, pulling against their will people who had
better intentions before she came along. Married men
most of them, they needed something and thought they
saw it in her. In her they saw an end to the
complacency - she, who pushed her chest against them
and opened her mouth to theirs. Karel knows this about
her because she has been so frank. She had no way to
know how topsy-turvy the tables would become.

He goes through it, part like a memory. Memory
becomes premonition and what comes to warn serves only
to whet his appetite.

The last time he felt this way Karel was living with
Josie, then a belly-dance student. Because he was in a
relationship then, he could not be free with himself
around her. Josie was well aware and played the game
fully. It was fun, all in fun. But it had a cool,
sharp edge to it, too. Josie did not know what a manic
episode was like - nor did she know the wide wide
limits of imagination Karel possessed. She thought,
rather, that he fancied her. But the truth be known,
as she practiced her belly-dancing after class in her
room with the door closed to the other housemates,
Karel found himself on Josie's floor, his back
sweating against the cold, pebbly outer limits of his
sanity.

It was most intense when they were in her car. It
steeped there, humid, muggy. Josie looked at him less
frequently so he was free to steal glimpses, eyes on
her neck, jaw, he drank in her profile. With his
sunglasses on it's the same. He studied her
countenance head-on, casually nodding mmhmms, in
agreement with whatever she was saying.

Like a flicker-movie, a "talkie", and his mind's eye
a zoom lens, he sees her in the drizzle, frowning on
his new bad habits or laughing at crude humor. She
looks away often, whether as gift to him or refuge for
her own predicament, he could only fancy. But he used
that coy turn to his advantage - to plunge momentarily
into a super-saturated image of Josie on her back,
propped up on her elbows, head all the way back,
unbuttoned, open to him.

Turning now, even with stones on his flesh, Karel
looks into the eyes of his date. He knows the
vampire's guilt.