Austin Nights
Herocious
AUSTIN NIGHTS
By
herocious .
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
herocious .
Austin Nights
Copyright © 2010 by herocious .
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Adult Reading Material
*****
{for bridget}
*****
AUSTIN NIGHTS
*****
3.
Today is April 1st, and I just finished recording a 4:01 video to celebrate the moment. Bridget is driving the white Silverado packed to the hilt with the stuff we couldn’t do without: our home.
We’re driving a long way. Miami Beach was death defying, but we have to leave now, leave the giant ocean with its therapeutic sands and salts for no less than five years.
Austin will be our new stomping ground. We’re driving there as I write. Bridget has both hands on the wheel. Sometimes there’s a large iced latte between her legs.
I find the mixture of caffeine and inner thighs more stimulating than just caffeine. Goosebumps from the iciness of her refreshment riddle her flesh. I reach over and grab the cup without asking for a sip. She doesn’t make a sarcastic remark.
“Thanks,” I say, lingering when I put the iced latte back between her legs.
She raises her eyebrows high above her Tri-Rail sunglasses and says, “Good, isn’t it?”
“Very.”
I slide her iPhone into the passenger door pocket and look at the familiar I-95 North scenery. Nothing has changed really, not in the four years I’ve lived in South Florida at least.
“What a beautiful day,” says Bridget, her window rolled down.
The highway and air sound loud outside. She has to shout everything to be heard. But if we roll the windows up and crank the AC, mpg in the Chevy plummets from 20 to a little less than fifteen, and we’re on a budget.
1
Off in the distance, a train speaks in Austin. I listen to the whistle and wonder where it’s going. If it has a long way yet or if it has already arrived.
We’re exploring the South Lamar area on our way to Half-Price Books. We walk over railroad tracks as the whistle blows again. It sounds closer. Will we see the train?
I think I can speak for both of us when I say we’re feeling full of life these days.
Suddenly, I fancy walking along these railroad tracks.
Dear Lord, where would we be without the railroad?
I say to Bridget, “We need to walk along these tracks soon.”
She says, “We can do that.”
I look north down the tracks. Their graceful curve through the trees and over the creeks toward downtown is different than anything I’ve ever seen.
“Austin is so photogenic,” I say. “We need to get a real camera.”
“Right?” Bridget collates some reddish gold hair behind her ear. “It’s such a beautiful place.”
We hug each other around the waist and face north, wildflowers growing all around us, trees growing taller than the wildflowers, and glassy skyscrapers growing taller than the trees, and we understand why so many people love it here.
Austin, you seem to have it all.
4
Close to Winter Garden, a Florida Orange Center billboard lures us off the turnpike. The center promises free orange juice samples at exit 304.
Bridget sees the billboard and parks the Silverado in a mostly vacant parking lot.
I take a picture of the Florida Orange Center Seminoles. Bridget wanders off to what turns out to be a fifteen-foot, mummified Florida gator behind thick glass.
“It’s rotting,” says Bridget.
She’s right. There are cobwebs festooned along its teeth, and from the tip of its nose to a plastic tree stump.
I take a couple photos with her iPhone. In the first, she’s acting a bit sexy. In the second, she’s terrified of the gator. Her mouth is open and her fingers are fanned out next to hollowed cheeks.
Inside the Orange Center, we get a noseful of honey and citrus. There’s a shelf of one-quart orange juice bottles for $2.99. They look like miniature plastic gallon jugs of water, except they’re orange.
We go to the back of the store for free samples. A lady with her arm stabilized in a cast and sling asks if I can push the lever while she holds plastic cups under the spout. I oblige. The generous samples she pours are fresh enough that we buy a quart of goodness for the road.
As the cashier rings up our purchase, I grab a hexagonal mesh of honeycomb for sale on the counter and shake my head. Bridget knows what I’m thinking. One sting from a bee (or wasp) and I go straight into anaphylactic shock.
This honeycomb is my frailty. This honeycomb is my Darwinian soft spot.
1
I don’t know exactly how to start. Michael is the writer. I’m the graduate student. He gave me his computer and asked me to start writing about Austin. He told me to just go ahead and write. He’ll find a way to use whatever I write.
I’ve only read bits and pieces of what he has written, and I only vaguely have an idea of what he wants this memory to achieve. I assume writers want to give readers an experience. Writers want to affect readers. But Michael never talks about this.
I feel like I have to help him out. I have to give this memory some effect. Readers are all about the effect. But the snippets I’ve scanned are like a journal. At least that’s the impression I get. I don’t think people want to read some stranger’s journal.
Who is Michael, after all? I mean, I love the guy with all my heart, but not everyone loves Michael.
He has no readers.
To get readers he needs to throw in some effect. I think that’s why he asked me to add to this memory. I’m the effect, which is quite flattering. But, honestly, I can’t promise him much. I’ve never written anything like this, at least not as an adult.
He did give me a clue as to why he wants me to write with him. He said a good way to make a song catchy is to make it a duet.
I know he’s on to something here. Think about Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn, or Beyoncé and Jay-Z.
Then think about Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
5
Not only are public libraries a celebration of everything true and noble, but they are also the meeting grounds for vagabonds and the mentally ill.
Vagabonds are harmless. They tidily keep to themselves. But they also stink to high heaven, and this holds true for vagabonds in all time zones. Sometimes I’ll be sitting on a nice library couch, working on my memory away from the stench of vagabonds on the computer terminals and desks, and this black swan will walk through the door with a plastic grocery bag hanging from his fingers. Without really thinking, he’ll snatch a magazine or newspaper and plant right next to me.
A matter of survival, of adapting to my surroundings. My gut wrenches, my nostrils constrict. The smell of iron, layers of dried sweat, grease, bad breath, pee, feces, feet, and cultures of bacteria in their armpits all mix into one revolting scent that kills my appetite.
I begin to worry if this horrid stink will stick to me. Taint me. This stink is enough to keep me off the street. I don’t ever w
ant to smell like vagabonds.
A life of hard labor leaves a person smelling differently than a life on the street.
Is it all right if I change seats, I always wonder when this happens, would it be hurtful if I moved to another spot, far away from this rotting potato? Or is tolerance proper? Is this not what being human smells like, after all? Take away the soap, the shampoo and the conditioner, take away the perfume and cologne, take away all these manufactured fragrances, and isn’t everyone a rotting potato at heart?
But, when all is said and done, I’d rather be in the company of rotting potatoes than the mentally ill. The mentally ill are imbalanced. They may smell decent sometimes, but they are batty and unpredictable.
They can also be unabashedly lecherous. I’m thinking of one guy in particular. He’s somewhere in his 20s, a regular patron of the Twin Oaks Library here in the South Congress area. I’m not sure what his issue is, but his mind is off kilter. I don’t know this at first. In fact, my first impression is just that he looks strange, like a leprechaun.
He screws his eyes on Bridget. I try not to notice his conspicuous ogling and go about writing my memory. Bridget is sitting next to me on the garish couch, combing the web on her laptop. She wants to find one of her favorite TV shows.
The leprechaun runs off toward a pot of gold, which happens to be a 30 minute time slot on one of the computer terminals. When his time ends, he takes his spiral notebook and walks right by us. His
