Pheonix Rising 2

Pheonix

I’ve been watching her.  She comes to this bar every night after sitting in the book store or coffee shop all night. She always had a lap top that she transformed into some kind of note pad with a what looked like a magic incantation. The way she waved her hands around that thing was so fast that if you just weren’t looking closely, you’d swear she never actually touched it before it was flat. Add to the fact that the collection of little pens she used to write on it were designed to look like old fashioned writing quills and casting wands.

she had an expensive looking camera slug haphazardly over her shoulder. The lens on the thing was short and stubby and probably cost more than I’d make in a month working behind this bar.  I’ve never seen that accompany her in here.  Of course I Looked her up online. I know all the important stuff, Like that she’d sold her first novel fifteen years ago and that she’d been a highly sought after photographer for years prior. And that she’d left her long term fiancé and disappeared for nearly a year.

Sightings of her were online fodder. Gossips reporting that she had cancer or a drug problems or had just plan lost her mind. When she’d shown up in town her hair was longer and softly curling.

The storm was strange that night. I’ve never felt a wind like that in my 40 years. And running this bar on the back side of the mountain, I’ve seen some things. Mi Abuelita would say that it was witch’s wind. Now, most of my life I thought Abuelita was just a little crazy, you know how they say “daft”. But if any night ever made me think she might not be so “special” it was that one.  It had been completely clear before the wind screamed down main street , whipping the poplar trees into a frenzy and setting off car alarms. More than one person said the windows on they old abandoned storefronts, the ones that haven’t been bought and renovated, had been blown out. I was inclined to think it was just a few of the miscreants . That was until she steppe out of the alley and scared the dog shit out of me.

She hadn’t made a sound or if she had it was buried in the thunder, lighting and rain.

It was like a shadow had come to life. She’d been dressed in all black from the soft soled thigh high boots to the over sized  hooded cape that had to be meant for someone  three times her size.

The  light from the  lantern shown off her smooth skin when she’d stopped in front of me and pushed her hood back a bit from her face. Her full lips broke into a  smile and I didn’t hear a damn word she said over the storm, but I was entranced. Her brow furrowed and she repeated herself.  I shook off my stupor and leaned close, to anyone driving by we’d look like lovers about to embrace.

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you”

Her giggle was like windchimes and not those tiny annoying tinkling things. Melodic and deep. Soothing and sexy as hell. The hair on my neck and arms stood up and my jeans felt significantly tighter.

She placed her hand on my arm and repeat her self, her full lips grazing the shell of my ear as she spoke, but she no longer needed to talk over the storm its as if she had calmed it with her laughter.

“is the bar still open, I need a drink.”

I straightened up and studied her face. I didn’t know where she’d come from, and behind the first glint of approachableness in her eyes lay something that told me she had a story. Even if I didn’t hear it all tonight, It was one I wanted to here.

Leading her into the bar I learned that her name was Alex, not short for anything and she was from California.  A year later I’m still trying to convince myself that she ain’t bruja as fuck. Something about this woman is going to wreck me. I keep my distance, she keeps her’s but its pulling me and I don’t know how much longer I can resist it.

I made my way over to her table and spun a chair around backwards while before sitting and waiting for her to acknowledge me.

“ You know, most people wait until they are invited before they interrupt someone.” She said smoothly with out ever looking up from her work.

“Told you darlin’  no soy  may—”

She cut off my Spanish with a smirk. “ I know, I know” She adapted a bad  Ricky Ricardo accent “ you aren’t most people.” 

I smiled and gave her a shrug and my best puppy dog eyes.

“ Okay okay!” she feigned exasperation before putting her work down and focusing on me. “ What do you want Pheonix?”

“Your undivided attention and undying devotion.” I whispered truthfully, but quickly covered it the quip with an invitation to dinner when I saw the emotion flash in her eyes.  It was true that I wanted her, but something her past made sure that wasn’t going to happen easily. And the least indication that I was pressing for more always sent her to laying bricks faster than anything I’d ever seen in my life.

“You cooking or did you bring stuff from your mom’s?”

“I’m cooking, but Mama  envió tortillas frescas”  I say. I know she can’t resist my mom’s tortillas.

“mmmmm,” she licked her lips and moaned “ Tortillas. Sigh your mom wrecks my diet. I was there yesterday and she force fed me like fifty sopapillas.”

We laughed at the lie. My mom never had to force feed anyone let alone Alex. She just sat back and watched people commit a deadly sin with a smile.

“So that’s a yes.” I confirmed. I waited as she packed up her gear.  The phone she’d left sitting on the table vibrated and flashed a text.

“your just mad that he is with me now. You couldn’t give him…”  I couldn’t see the rest of the text before the alert drew her attention. I had to look toward the door before she caught me staring at the screen. What the fuck was that about? The phone buzzed again, its face lighting up. It was a call this time. She picked it up and answered. The person didn’t even wait for her to say hello.

Her face changed, hardened.  I raised an eyebrow in askance and she lifted a single finger telling me silently to wait. She listened intently.

“Milla, I don’t understand why you’re calling me. Isn’t he what you wanted? It’s been a year. You have everything that was mine. The house  the man what is it that I can do for you?” She listened a while longer as the person on the end ranted in hysterics.

“So that’s my problem how? Let me tell you how this is going to go down, because obviously while you were fucking my man you didn’t  take time to consult those fucking tarot cards you carry around in your purse. Me, HIM, You… we are over. We were over the moment the two of you betrayed me. What he does or doesn’t have is no longer my concern. I don’t owe you forgiveness and I damn sure ain’t about to absolve you to ease your guilt. You want forgiveness, get your ass to church. Find a priest. Because If it were up to me you’d be roasting on a spit over the coals in hell. We aren’t family. We weren’t family when you left your panties in my bed. This…all of this is on you and I hope you suffer. I hope your clit falls the fuck off and your vagina festers with cum like a rotting corpse in the sun.”

I’ve never heard a curse go down so smooth. There was more but my heart stopped and my spirit absconded when she told the caller- Milla—that she’d rip off her head and shit down her neck. My body was there , but the rest of me checked the fuck out and ran for the hills. She might not be bruja, but the look in her face told me she ment every fucking word and she was damn ready to deliver.

What scared me more was the way she shifted gears.  She ended the call and hung her head. Eyes closed and deep breath. Then she squared her shoulders opened her eyes and gave me the sweetest smile. “I am sorry you had to hear that Nix”

“ Hey, we all have issues right?” I whispered calmly before standing and looping my arm over her shoulders and giving her a squeeze “ Just tell me what I have to do to NOT be on the receiving end of that violence”

“Your undying devotion and undivided attention” she threw my words back at me.

She didn't know yet, but she'd never need to ask where my loyalties lie.

Phoenix Rising

They say a woman’s intuition is the strongest “sense” on earth.  That’s probably true, whats truer still is that we ignore the fuck out that bitch until she slaps us in the head and they we complain that we “just never saw this thing coming”.  At least that was my reality before him. Now though, I listen to that tiny voice like its Jesus preach from the Mountain.

He taught me how to really listen to my gut and since then I’ve been a traditional Sagittarius in every sense of the word. I’d never again lay awake at night with my gut roiling with insecurities and doubts. Pretending to be asleep while my “lover” was sexting another. Crying over missed plans…getting the hair painfully ripped from my fucking ass crack for him come home, stick his finger in the dish I’d worked hours to prepare and an declare “oh that’s good save it I’ve got a “meeting/time with the fellas/ate on the way home/just too tired.”

Nawl, I’ve been there done that and got the fucking tattoo on the base of my skull to prove it. Not that anyone could see that lil’ act of defiance.  It was the seal on top of my “break up bald head bare foot earth mother” rebellion after leaving him.
In fact, it was in the top ten things that I didn’t regret but wouldn’t be doing again.
The days and weeks after leaving are almost surreal. Even now, I look back on the last year and I almost can’t believe it myself.

The night before I lay in bed feigning sleep while my intuition ate at my insides. The glow from his phone and the soft buzz of the notifications for each incoming message driving me insane. I kept my eyes closed and bit my tongue to keep from crying. Tears slid hotly down my face. I tossed and turned hoping somehow he’d read my distress and comfort me. He never did. I finally launched myself up from the bed as if shaking myself awake from a nightmare. He didn’t even phone away, just dropped it face down on his chest before offering me a barely faked “you okay”. The lack of real concern dripped from his voice like icicles falling from the roof. I shrugged and tossed a “bad dream” over my shoulder as I grabbed my phone and trudged to the hall bathroom.

It was the incoming text from him seconds later that galvanized me into action. “she’s awake. Some bad dream. I’ll call you in the morning sweetness. Goodnight love.”
I’ll never know if he truly sent it by accident or not. I shot of the toilet, heart racing and stared at myself in the mirror. WTF WAS I DOING? My reflection was yelling at me to move. React anything. I should have put that pillow over his head and pressed with all my anger. I should have hit him in the face with my phone and asked who she was. I should have done a million things. But what I did was crawl back in that bed and lay down next to him curled into myself until he left for work the next morning, his smooth baritone drifting back up the stairs. He hadn’t said goodbye to me, but he kept his promise to call her as he left for work.

I lay there until I heard the garage door open and then close. I lay there until I was sure he was more than a few blocks from home. And then I moved. I grabbed my phone and deleted all of my social media. Downloaded important contacts and downloaded files I thought I needed before creating new email addresses. Online bank accounts being fabulous I closed and reopened those as well. We only shared one account and in moments I’d separated those. A few minutes at the on the lap top we shared in the office and I’d printed out enough of his messages to satisfy my self and tossed them on the bed. I pulled all my clothes from the closet and drawers and tossed what I was taking with me in a duffle and the rest…toiletries, hand bags, shoes everything else in garbage bags that I took next door. Miss Jenkins looked at me with tears in her eyes and a soft smile before patting my cheek and squeezing my hand. She wished me well and promised to make sure that the clothes made it to some lucky woman in need. I doubted he would go so far but I made her swear that if he tried to report me missing, she’d tell the cops that I wasn’t. No way he could miss me now anymore than he should have been missing me over the last few months.

The house was in his name. A lease that he’d been promising me he’d buy when we got married. Ha, not likely. Not with his finances. The money was always mostly mine, I just went out of my way to make sure he felt like the head of our home, including down playing that fact that while he worked a traditional 9-5 in an office, I was the one rolling in cash. My glorified and yet unfinished ‘arts” degree was actually quite lucrative.  Early on, He liked to tell people he was my agent/manager whatever, but even that was a blow to his ego. It meant he was still living off my success.

I laughed at the incredulous memories staring at beard trimmer and the hair he’d left all over our sink. Whats that they say about a getting a new hair style after a break up? Whatever it is, must be true, let out a caveman grunt and lifted my chin in defiance as the first pass of the clippers tingled my scalp. Five years of natural fluffly fro fell around me like tufts of black cotton from a pillow until there was nothing left but baby soft stubble and pale sun deprived skin. Who knew one’s head would need a tan? I cried like a bitch in the shower though. The spray was too much. It felt to raw and to exposed. To sexual in this moment when I should be distraught. I stood there in the hot water lamenting the loss of my hair, but more so the loss of my dignity.

How could I, have let myself be so neglected. How could I have been the woman who wasn’t enough? Wasn’t I giving him everything he asked for? I had been taking stock of my culpability for months. Trying so hard to make sure I was crossing all my t’s and dotting my i’s where our relationship was concerned.  And still I just wasn’t enough.
There in that shower, the last time either of us would use that 500-dollar rain head, because I ripped that bitch from the ceiling, I decided it still wasn’t my fault. Not me alone. This was on him. The only thing I was responsible for was taking it for so long.  For staying when I should have given up and left a long time ago.

A few minutes at a local dealership and a I had traded my new fully loaded SUV for a newer fully loaded Porsche in hot hoe red and hours after he’d left from work, I was speeding down the highway. In a new car, no hair and money and the bank and no fucking man to answer to meant that I could do what ever the fuck I wanted, when I wanted, where I wanted for however long I fucking wanted to.

I took me four weeks to work my way from California to North Carolina. Mostly because I spent a few days wasting money in Vegas on booze, weed and sex. The anonymity of being a writer/photographer that was famous but not FAMOUS meant that I could party like a rock star but not end up in any tabloids.
The best way to get over a man is under a new one. And I got under a few.  A few chics, too. I got high and got fucked. And the got drunk and high again and again. Until I just couldn’t fuck anymore. I text my sister to let her know what the deal was and true to her form she only said “condoms and checkups, safe words and check in soon or I’ll come get your ass myself. oh, and bring me some kush …Atlanta is whack right now”.
With no one expecting me and not a care for what he was going through I left Vegas and made it to Arizona. I needed to sober up before continuing east or talking to my real agents. They needed more than the swift emails I’d fired off letting them know I was going off grid due to a break up. In Tuscan is where the grief hit. Where I couldn’t fucking get out of bed until the smell of my own breath was driving me insane. Where I ordered wigs online because I couldn’t believe I fucking shaved my fucking head and I wanted my God damn hair back. Where I fucking called him at his office and then hung up when he whispered my name. Tuscan is we the memories of the life we’d lost demanded I pay homage, where my heart fucking tried un-rot and crawl out of my chest. Where I wrapped the Porsche around a street light and crushed a two-thousand-dollar camera lens. Tuscan is where I left the ring, he’d given me from his mom’s mother to a nurse with three kids whose husband was fucking her best friend. She needed it and he’d dishonored it. Tuscan is where I thought I died. Fuck him and fuck Tuscan fucking Arizona.