The Collectors

he Collectors

  By Mark Holtzclaw

  Copyright 2013 Mark Holtzclaw

  ISBN: 9781301213047

  If you happened to visit the Northland Shopping Mall during the week at five o'clock, you might catch a glimpse of an amazing sight. In a technique that took months to perfect, Salisbury Davis was able to maneuver his way through an ever-changing maze of people, in search of that elusive exit.

  “Hello,” a voice interrupted, “I'm doing a survey for Date-a-Mates. Would you have a moment?”

  His feet stopped, as his head started to turn. The voice became a young man, whose features were on the verge of feminine. He held a clipboard in his hand, and was taking some sort of poll: Questions, answered by more questions.

  Salisbury wondered what they did with all this useless information. Perhaps feed it into a huge computer to write tomorrow’s history books about today’s people. But as his thoughts were colliding he could hear the survey’s voice.

  “How old are you? Do you have a girlfriend? Are you loved?”

  Salisbury became embarrassed and turned to leave. Maybe the expression on the seat of his pants would tell that survey everything. Without even raising a hand, he would slap them across their senses, with silence and retreat. That was something no words could ever define ... nor should.

  The survey moved to another young man. This victim was seated alone.

  “Hello, I'm doing a survey for Date-a-Mates. Would you have a moment?”

  The man shook his head.

  “No thank you, sir. “

  The survey walked to a corner of the Mall near the closed Toy Shop. It was dark and quiet there. Here alone, the survey could cry swollen tears from red-puffy eyes. The words: 'No thank you, sir' ringing behind them, provoking more tears to evacuate.

  The survey was a girl. Not a boy and not a ‘sir’. And it was the fifth time that afternoon she had been called ‘mister’ or some other masculine title.

  Her hand moved to touch the tears as they trembled on her cheek. She reached into her trouser pocket. Fortunately she had remembered to bring the bottle of eye-drops with her.

  She took it out and held it in front of her eyes. The bottle was empty, but that was the way she needed it. She squeezed the air out of the white-plastic bottle; then running the nozzle up her face, she vacuumed every trace of tears away. The tiny container inhaled and swallowed every last bit of sorrow. Then clicking her pen, she wrote across the front of the bottle the word: Shame.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Tomorrow somehow became today, which was her day off. Now she could visit her favorite place in the world: Griffith's Memorial Garden. She always brought a book of poetry with her: Browning, Wordsworth, Hood, Shelley, and Emily Dickinson.

  She passed her first hour wandering among the names. People chiseled in marble, granite and alabaster. Then she sat to picnic on wax-paper sandwiches. After a short nap she would recite poetry to the tombstones. And then, just before she left, she would visit her favorite grave of all. For she had something in common with the woman buried there. It was her name.

  She sat down on the grass and stroked her fingers across the marble epitaph. It gave her a peculiar sensation to see her own name pronounced on a tombstone. But there it was just the same.

  In Loving Memory of Molly Hill

  Perhaps she could play the game, the one where she herself was buried there. And that another girl would come and visit her grave. Sometimes she would dream she was enshrined there. That she was the loving memory concealed in the dust-crib. Then the other girl watching over her grave would change before her dream-eyes into someone else. It would no longer be her face, but the dreaming face of a stranger. Eyes reading her tombstone: Molly Hill.

  It was dinner now and her parents would be searching for her. Her eyes waved goodbye to her name and she left. Tomorrow was Sunday. She would come back then. On her way down the path she noticed a youth digging a new grave. She paused for a moment to watch. His face and arms were shellacked with perspiration.

  People even work for you when you are dead. Yes, even when you are dead. And with that last thought, Molly turned down the hill, to return to the graves of the living, her home a crypt, her bed a coffin. One big grave, she thought. And today her grave smiled wider... for it was her birthday. Twenty-one years less on this green earth, and twenty-one years closer to Griffith's Memorial Garden.

  Molly had come to dread that familiar date when it surfaced on the calendar. She would gain the weight of one year overnight, three hundred and sixty-five days, pound upon pound, delivered at her doorstep with “Happy Birthday” shouts. Presents were given to recompense the years taken away from her. Those horrible gifts that littered the floor and walls like trophies. Awards presented for coming this far and outwitting death. And each year she told her parents to end the celebrations. Remove the salt from an already deep wound. So maybe then it could heal and she might forget.

  Molly thought on this and that as she paced from here to there. Her mother kissed her into the house.

  “Hey sweets, I was hoping you'd be home earlier. I cooked spaghetti with meatballs.”

  Samantha Hill ushered her daughter into the parlor. Then Molly's father came in and gave her a great birthday squeeze.

  “How old today, princess, huh?”

  Molly spotted her reflection across the hall. It revealed a short girl with hair the shade of flame. She had a nose that pointed north, and a constellation of freckles that swept the pale reaches of a moon face.

  Mr. Hill subtracted something from his pocket. It was an envelope. He handed it to Molly.

  “This is from your mother and me.” He nodded his head at the envelope. “Go ahead and open it.”

  Molly carefully ripped off the end. Inside was a card with a puppy and a kitten on the cover. A slip of paper fell out. Molly stooped to pick it up. It looked like a check. But she could see it was a questionnaire from Date-a-Mates: the place where she did her surveys. They matched people together - Any kinds - All kinds. Everyone needed to find their missing half.

  Molly wondered what was going through her parents minds. Did they really believe she would bounce aimlessly through life? Was this the answer to all the ugly misfits of the world: Date-a-Mates?

  That night as Molly dressed for bed, she slipped the white bottle out of her pocket. She had almost forgotten it. She took it to the secret drawer in her dresser. Behind stockings and underneath panties were scores of other eye-drop containers. She had collected them over a period of three years. This was the twelfth one.

  Each one had a different label like Midnight Sorrow, Tears of Joy, November Rage, Fear of Airplanes, and so on. She had collected her tears and stored them away for a rainy day. Then she would take one out and squeeze a few drops into a drink and toast an emotion gone by. All of her private feelings were bottled up and hidden away. Molly couldn't recall when she first got the idea for all this. Maybe it was her parents telling her not to keep her emotions bottled up inside her, or it could have been her father's favorite song, “Drink to Me with Thine Eyes”.

  Of course not all the containers had tears in them. She substituted sweat and even saliva when necessary. Molly reached in and selected a bottle, September Infatuation. She had collected this one in the dark reaches of a movie auditorium. The film had been a romance. This would be the perfect passion for a long Sunday afternoon, she thought.

  And so the post-morning sun found Molly at her familiar picnic area. She was seated on a patch of grass between a mother and a doctor. She brought out her book and flipped it open to the creased page.

  “The soul selects her own society,” she read. “Then shuts the door; on her divine majority- Obtrude no m
ore.”

  Molly's language rhythms were swept away by the cry of the wind. It stole her words and blew them to the four corners of the still courtyard.

  A digger paused to cock his head, and listen - then resume again. Molly realized it was the very same youth she had seen the day before. She waved at him, but he did not appear to notice. Her eyes focused him in. He was brilliantly tall, and moved in a manner that suggested a lover. The spade split the air, arching - to mate with the soil, entering the earth amorously. His clothes hung, flapping in the breeze; for he was surprisingly thin. The sinew of his muscles twisted and flexed in sweaty streams. He swung- injected... threw the soil and repeated. Molly was captivated. Entranced, she found herself romanticizing with the dark-haired youth. For he was indeed brooding; with almost sordid eyes or so she speculated. But the distance was great and her vision indistinct. So