Something Just Broke From The Second Floor Balcony


The out stretched fingers of the sun were reaching through the blinds leaving fresh fingerprints all over the morning yellow kitchen walls. My Parliament cigarette was nearing the end of its destiny as it was inches away from the gates of St. Peter when I heard the front door open. The “pretty girl” was home. I took one last drag and flicked the heaven bound cigarette out the kitchen window. It’s quite the fall from up here on the second floor.
I can’t help but smoke when “the Pretty Girl” doesn’t come home or call or answer her phone from the night before. I hate these mornings. I must have smoked like two packs since midnight. Cigarette buds were spilling over the ashtray like tears of a clown or a broken melody. She closed the front door slowly and softly without making a sound as if she was concerned over my shut eye. But as always, she tossed her keys on the table by the front door alarming me that she is home. She always does that too. If she wanted to be under the radar why not place the keys down quietly on the table? “Pretty Girl,” is a puzzling creature.
Her cold stroll sent polar chills through the hallway and into the kitchen. With her every step frosty chills nipped on the soles of my feet sending goose bumps all over my heart. Every time she came home from the morning after there was a sudden chill throughout the house, especially the bed got artic cold. “Cold-blooded” as Rick James would say. As often as she stressed me the fuck out with her frost bite antics, you would think by now that I would just row over and fall back to sleep. But that was not the case. Because I love her, I worry all night long. Sleeping was hard when she didn’t call. I like to sleep. I’m good at sleeping. I made a “B” in Sleeping at ACC, it was the Pinnacle campus.
For those who have been through the sleepless nights worrying about where the boyfriend/girlfriend were at and why they didn’t come home, as you can imagine my mind was all over the place. Its like eating glass. My emotions and fears were way up and then way down all night long. I found myself happy one minute and the next I was angry. Hot and cold. Then cold and then hot. Then I was too hot. And then I was too cold. I kept thinking that I was suffering from menopause, as funny as that sounds. Or that global warming was becoming all too real right in our apartment. Perhaps my girlfriend was the cause of the mysterious global warming.
I heard her step up to the entrance of the kitchen hallway. One look at her eyes and I could tell she was tired as her eyes spelled hangover. We locked eyes for just a second. And then she looked away. Our relationship or lack of relationship has been chronologically frozen for quite some time. We kinda just stop talking to each other. And now, we don’t even bother to look at each other for days or weeks on in. The relationship has gone bad like spoiled milk but neither one of us has the energy to move out.
“I made you some tea.” I softly suggested.
She leaned up against the fridge and took off her red hills. And she did so like she had some practice the night before. Shortly, after stepping out of her red hills she then strolled across the kitchen floor now leaning up against the sink counter. I knew she was going to be in a sedated mood when she got home, so I laid out her sugar, her lemon, and her favorite tea spoon with the dainty blue deer on the handle next to her tea cup. “I won’t ever love you.” She confidently stated.
“It is nice to see you too.”
I was only half paying attention when she expressed her frustrations. She has a habit of being cold and distant the morning after. You see, on the mornings like today she usually comes home with a crass attitude, usually a coke hangover from her night club haze. She enjoys pushing my buttons but I always refuse to play her word games. It’s the alcohol. Or the drugs. More than likely both. “So how is the tea?” I asked.
She whipped her hair around to one side exposing one of the prettiest things I have ever seen, her collar bone. She has the prettiest shoulders along with the prettiest back I’ve ever touched. With the teacup in hand she replied, “The tea is warm.” She paused. “Just how I like it.”
Warm. I wanted to laugh so bad because she said, warm. I had forgotten that she had the term in her vocabulary. There has been nothing warm about us for quite sometime. At night the bed was cold when we both whisper “good night”. That is if I sleep with her in bed because lately I feel so uncomfortable that I end up on the couch. Warm. This pass summer I shivered myself into a bad case of frost bite all over my body from the lack of warmth between us. Warm. The way she used to look at me every time she came home from school or work. That was warm. She has the warmest smile, yet now I feel her smiles were never meant for me.
“So have you eaten breakfast, yet?”
She sat down at the kitchen table opposite of me. “Yup." She responded short and icy like an ice cube. Despite the hangover she looked quite happy this glorious morning. Her skin tone was vibrant and alluring. As oppose to other mornings when she is often haggard and distant, fuming with vodka, and yes laced with cocaine dreams. And then there were the mornings when she came home from her night clubbing lookin’ worn out and sore as if she just finished a two week long road trip with one of those WNBA teams.
She placed her tea cup beside my cigarettes. I could see that the tea was working and soothing out the aches of her sins. The slight yellow haze in her eyes began to fade and I noticed a tiny smile growing on her beautiful face. As she grabbed one of my cigarettes she started humming her favorite Klaus Nomi, “Nomi Song.” It’s a very beautiful, tragic song. A lot like the situation my girlfriend and I find ourselves in. She reached out for one of the two lighters on the table unknowingly the one she grabbed is my trick lighter. She grinded the flits together with her tiny thumb and an erected veiny penis popped out just inches from her face. She gave me this eerie look but I’ve seen it before, in particularly, when she falls for the penis lighter trick. I’ve been getting her with that lighter for years even when we were just good friends in college. As always I laughed loudly. It’s funny to me. She put down the lighter and grabbed the other one, the right one. Finally, she took a drag and exhaled, “Ya. My friend and I had some breakfast earlier over at the Woodlands.”
“So what did you have?”
She didn’t answer me right away. She just sat there calm and collected pulling back drag after drag of the cigarette. In between each drag she took baby sips of her morning after tea. Something was on her mind as she pondered away looking out the kitchen window. All I saw outside was a lively red cardinal eating Sunday brunch on a doomed cricket. But I doubt she was thinking about that doomed cricket or even the cardinal.
The sun was getting bigger and bolder, and showing more of its presence in the kitchen. The sun began to creep into her hair and bring life to those burgundy highlights yet again. Something about her pretty hair always brought a smile to my face, especially when she was just getting out of the shower or times like this morning when the sun was pumping life into her locks. I found myself some mornings smiling away as I combed my fingers through her hair like her favorite brush. But today was different. I didn’t smile. I didn’t feel anything. And before I could really figure out why today was different, my attention was shifted to the suicidal cigarette that was tossed from the kitchen window. Once again, I followed the cigarette all the way down from our second story window toward the rugged creekside that was our neighbor. The whole time I was thinking how far of a drop that must have been for that poor little cigarette.
“It’s not that important what I ate.” She replied.
I expected her to be crude and crass so I wasn’t to upset or shocked when she snapped at me. I figured she was lying to me anyways. She probably had morning after sex for breakfast. Furthermore, as of late she has been more vulgar toward me whenever she gets home in the morning. Her devilish behavior has been occurring so often that I have stopped paying attention to her at times. I feel like she gets off on belittling me, but at this point she was just making it harder on herself. She grabbed another cigarette and put a flame to the ass end of the cigarette. “So did you eat something?” She inquired.
“Well, I was kinda waiting on you as I always do when you come home in the morning.” It’s true. I do wait around for her to eat so that we can sustain some kind of a relationship or perhaps just a friendship.
“I think you should eat something.” She suggested.
“Oh. Thanks for being so concerned all of a sudden.”
She took another pull from the cigarette yet this time she blew the smoke in my face. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Ya right.”
“I really didn’t.” She confessed. “Don’t be such a pussy.” She got up from the kitchen table to get some more tea. “You want some tea?” She asked.
“No, thank you.”
She sat back down and took one more pull on the cigarette before she flicked it out the second story window. She tossed her hair to the side and asked, “I know its bad timing but do you have any weed?” She paused rubbing her sore neck. “I’m really tired and want to go to bed.”
“I think do.” I grabbed our stash box from behind the salt and pepper shakers and peaked inside. Sure enough I did and then immediately closed the box. “Before you start smoking, I have something I want to say to you.” I wasn’t surprise when she gave me a fuck yourself look, as if I was going to read to her another one of my poems. But today was different. I haven’t written a poem about her or us in a long time thanks to the coldness of her presence.
She took another drag from the cigarette and exhaled. “Are going to read one of your love poems to me? Because I much rather smoke some weed before you do.”
I grabbed cigarette and fired it up. “No, what I have to say is much more poetic.” I took a couple of quick drags. “I don’t know how else to say this but I’m just going to say it.”
“Alright already. You’re starting to fuckin’ bore me.” She interrupted.
“I’ve been seeing someone else for about five months now, ever since you began staying out late these past several months.”
“What do you mean by seeing someone else? She paused to inhale and exhale the poisons of the cigarette. “Do you mean…you have been watching crazy amounts of porn again or chatting it up on E Harmony? Because I can deal with the porn, but if it’s the E Harmony--we definitely got a problem. You know how I feel about that site. It creeps me out.”
“You got me all wrong, Pretty Girl. I’m done with the days of porn and E Harmony. I’ve been seeing someone really special, who respects me and appreciates every big or little thing I do. She understands me not like you. You have been taken advantage of me for far too long, and I got lonely. You’re never home anymore. You’re out late three or four times a week, and sometimes you never come home at all. So I started seeing this girl.”
She tossed her cigarette out the window and grabbed another one with a violent calm look to her eyes. “So you are having sex with her.”
“Yup.”
“You’re a dumbass, you know that right.” She paused to light her cigarette. “Do I know her?”
I looked out the window and saw a charcoal colored hawk ripping apart that red cardinal I saw earlier. I looked back up at my girlfriend and replied, “Yup.”
She took one monster pull back on the cigarette and exhaled with a silent anger, “Do you know why I have been coming home real late and sometimes not coming home at all? What do you think I’m doing? Do you think I’ve clubbing and fucking other people? If you think that, you’re a fucking idiot.”
“So why these late hours and why coming home smellin’ like vodka and sex all the time?”
“I haven’t said anything because I wanted to surprise you. If you must know, cheater, I picked up a second job, stripping at the Palazio. I have been trying to make some extra money to get you a new car. Because as you and I know, your car is a piece of shit, and that dead horse cost us more money for repairs than a new car payment would.”
I flicked out the cigarette out the window and grabbed another one. This time I didn’t bother lighting it up right away. I was perplexed. Confused. She seemed so sincere as she confessed about her late night shenanigans, but how I can be so sure. We still have not had sex in about a year, and whenever I try to arrange a romantic evening she had a headache or was tired. Then I started questioning or perhaps doubting if I was not attractive enough for her. What’s wrong with me?
She held in her last drag for a long time. I could see the pain pulsating all through her pretty face. She then tossed her cigarette out the window perhaps for the last time in our apartment. The weird thing about that cigarette is that this time I could hear it screaming as if fell from grace. “So, who is this girl you’ve been seeing?”
I looked away again out through the window. The hawk was gone, but some how the branch where the hawk once perched had cradled the cigarette. And every time the wind blew the cigarette looked like it was being rocked to sleep. Then the funniest thing happened, the branch caught on fire. And I started thinking about the burning bush story of Moses from the Bible. But before I could finish that thought a strong gust of wind blew out the little fire and the cigarette continued its journey down to the earth with the other cigarette butts.
“Hello.” She snapped.
“Sorry. Where was I? Well, she is actually still here.”
“She’s here?”
“Yup. She is in the bedroom right now.” I took a puff on the cigarette, and exhaled, “Madison, come out.”
The bed room door opened slowly and closed very softly. The pity-patter of bare feet on the wooden floors echoed throughout the house. I’m sure Madison was scared so she took baby steps as she approached the entrance of the kitchen. Like the temperature in the room--fear began to rise melting all the cold tension that was lingering from earlier. I, too, was overwhelmed with fear. I think any human being in that position would be in a state of fear. Well, maybe except Fillmore Slim, the famous American Pimp, who infamously preached, “I don’t love them hoes.” He would probably would have slapped his bitch and then ask for his money when she walked into the door from her late night devilish antics. I heard Madison release a deep breath as she made her first step into the kitchen entrance.
“Madison!!!” My girlfriend cried. She then looked over at me. “You’re seeing my sister? What the…..”
Madison was the younger sister of my girlfriend. And she was extremely hot and sexy too. If we were playing the celebrity look-a-like game, I would say Madison looked like Miranda Kerr, especially her Tahiti ocean eyes. I know what you guys are saying, there was no excuse to be having sex with my girlfriend’s sister. But it wasn’t all me. She seduced me like the ghost scene with Dan Ankroyd in Ghostbusters. One night when Danielle, my girlfriend, was apparently working late making extra cash stripping, Madison and I were taking shots of tequila and snow skiing on record albums while listening to Doobie Brother and Steely Dan records. We locked eyes and had a moment. And then our animal instincts took over. That was like five or six months ago, and we have been seeing each other ever since.
There was a moment of silence in the room between the three of us. I sensed death in the room today. Madison cautiously stepped closer to the kitchen table and stood right next to me resting her hands on my shoulders.
“I’m so sorry, Danielle. I know you are my sister, but we are for real. We are really in love. I’ve been searching for someone like him all my life.” Madison paused for a second and took a deep breath. “I know it looks bad but it was all my fault. I initiated this affair. And besides you told me you were sleeping around too. Right?”
“I told you that in confidence.” Danielle replied. “I can’t believe this.”
Danielle lit up another cigarette and looked out the kitchen window. I didn’t know what to say, and when I looked at Madison she just shrugged her shoulders. I should feel disgusted too, as I just found out my girlfriend was cheating on me. I always trusted my instincts.
“So, how long you’ve been cheating, Danielle?” I inquired.
“That’s none of your business.”
“None of my business!!!”
“That doesn’t sound really fair, Danielle.”
She flicked the cigarette out the window and looked over at Madison and I. “There is nothing fair about this world. Nothing. And I really hate the both of you right now. I would really like for you two to get the fuck out of my face.”
“But Babe.”
“Don’t you ever call me Babe, again. You got that.” And she grabbed the picture of us vacationing in Colorado on our third year anniversary, and tossed the picture out the kitchen window. It was my favorite picture of us. I ran to the window and saw the picture fall two stories down onto the rocky creekside down below. The picture landed on a tiny patch of daisies that was surrounded by a huge area of gremlin like rocks and troll like foliage. The way the picture found the smallest patch of daisies to brake its fall was symbolic to me, I started thinking that perhaps the three of us would end up friends again. However, Danielle did something to grab my attention. I looked back at Danielle and I noticed she pulled out something shiny and chrome out of her purse. I zeroed in on her index finger, which was tapping on the cold steel trigger. The tapping sound reminded me of the grinding razor teeth of a great white shark.
“So…what is that for?”
Danielle took one last pull back on her cigarette, and exhaled “Well, I didn’t pull this out for nothing.”