“Godspeed,” was the last thing Owen Turnstile had said to Chloe’s fiancé. Owen was sure he’d meant it, but then again it was only a spoken word.
Her fiancé had called and left a message on Owen’s voicemail while he was sleeping on a rainy Saturday, October afternoon. Owen was sleeping because he’d been up until the sun had risen that morning, with Chloe. He decided to take a nap after he saw to it that Chloe got into a gypsy cab that was to take her to La Guardia. From La Guardia a 747 was to take her directly back to Portland, Oregon, to a rain that would last longer than the one she’d leave in New York. It would rain so long and hard, off and on and on again, in Portland, that moss would grow on every exposed tree root.
It was evident that her plane left on time, and had no difficulty landing because she had sent Owen a text message, when he was taking a nap, that said, “I’m back in Portland.”
He noticed this at the same time that he read another text she’d sent him one hour after her first text letting him know of her whereabouts. The second text read, “I told him everything. You ruined the best thing I’ve ever had. I never want to see you again.”
Owen’s phone also indicated he had missed a call from Chloe, and a voicemail had been left. Owen listened to the message. It was the message left by Chloe’s fiancé. He had called from Chloe’s phone seemingly to trick Owen into thinking it was she who was calling. Little did her fiancé know that Owen was taking a nap and wouldn’t fall for his trick because he was not awake. Chloe’s fiancé insinuated on the message that he wanted to physically harm Owen, perhaps murder him.
His eyes still ached from having them open too long the previous day. He sat and thought and then he walked quietly into his kitchen, made some coffee, went back into his bedroom, sat down at his desk and dialed the number Chloe’s fiancé had suggested he call. Owen sat and listened to the phone ring. Hoping for voicemail.
“This is Owen. Someone who sounded very upset left a message on my voicemail and asked that I call this number,” there was a silence.
“You’re an indecent human being.” Her fiancé’s voice was gruff and he spoke with defiance.
“I am?” Owen asked in a drawl.
“A piece of shit.”
“Thanks. I’ve been trying to figure some things out. ‘Just who am I?’ has been a major question. Thanks for letting me see some light. So, excrement then,” again a silence.
“Didn’t you see that ring on her finger?”
“I noticed that ring on her finger, yes. I glanced at it. Are you asking me what I thought of it, because…”
“Don’t you know what it means?” he asked, but before Owen could answer he continued, “It means she belongs to me!” Chloe’s fiancé’s voice got distorted in the phone.
“Doesn’t it mean that the two of you are to be committed to one another?”
“Yes, exactly! You don’t seem to get it, you piece of shit,” the fiancé told Owen.
“But I do. I understand that. Are you trying not to understand?”
The day before, as was planned, Chloe had called Owen when she was done working. She was in town for a convention; she and her colleague had set up a booth for an organic cosmetic line they were representing.
After Owen had waited at the top of the stairs to the Franklin Ave. 4 stop for a half-hour, the rain dampening the shoulders of his thin coat, Chloe appeared. She moved slowly in a rushed crowd. At the foot of the stairs she looked confused, trying to find a signal for her cell phone to pick up. Owen walked down to her and gave her a hug. He carried her luggage up the stairs. They took one step at a time.
In the two years since they’d seen each other, she’d become a hairstylist. He expected her hair to be a bit much, and it was. It was cut short. She’d dyed it magenta, the bangs were cut high across at a slight angle, it was spiked in areas, and threads of hair danced before her ears like that of a pixie’s. As they started to walk to his apartment, she said she needed a quick drink. They stopped at a bar. In the dark of the bar light he took a good, close look at her. Her eyes were filled with subdued excitement.
It was then that Owen noticed Chloe’s ring. It had three small diamonds lined across it. He had hoped she’d broken her engagement. He also noticed she had gotten new tattoos. Her arms were covered with them, though most of them she had gotten before she and Owen had met. He wasn’t interested in tattoos, but he asked about the new ones for sake of conversation.
She commented on the few gray hairs he had grown. His dark brown hair was slicked back from the rain; it looked charcoal. The wetness made it glimmer, and he’d hoped it would camouflage his graying temples. Locks of hair fell and lazily curled in front of his forehead. His eyes weren’t as innocent as he’d once kept them, he knew. He’d given up and his eyes showed it. Giving up can be alluring––it’s the liberating air it gives off.
She asked if he liked New York, and he said he didn’t, but that he never really liked anywhere he lived. She said she was mostly happy in her life, but she too wanted to live somewhere other than Portland. So many people there are intentionally aloof, she said. Her fiancé had a daughter and he was a good father, Chloe continued. If she was to stay in a relationship with him, they were not going to be able to move anywhere in the near future, because her fiancé had agreed with the mother of his child that they would stay put, in Portland. There was some vexation in Chloe’s voice that Owen could tell she wanted him to recognize, and he was glad to.
Later they met up with the colleague she was in town with, for dinner. He was staying with his brother’s friend in Williamsburg. Owen and Chloe took a car up into the shallow cesspool of Williamsburg so her colleague wouldn’t get lost trying to navigate his way down into Crown Heights, where Owen lived. Her colleague’s name was Phineas. When Owen heard this he said, “How’s your frontal lobe feeling?” But Phineas somehow didn’t seem to get the joke. He just looked at his cell phone. He had long, sandy-blond hair, and wore a goatee. He made it obvious that grunge was retro.
The three of them waited for a table. They sat at the restaurant’s bar and talked about essential oils, balms, and lotions, as they drank beer on Chloe and Phineas’ per diem.
After they had sat and placed their orders with their server, Phineas went outside to make a phone call. Chloe and Owen sat next to each other and looked at the candle in the middle of the table. The sound of the raindrops on the tent covering the outdoor patio that they sat in, was quelling. The heat lamps that the restaurant had turned on made the temperature like that of a warm summer night. It smelled of wet cedar.
“When I got off the train and met you at the subway stop, I felt something instantly. I didn’t expect there to still be…” Chloe said. Her words seemed to lie. They seemed rehearsed. He himself had not prepared any words.
“Strange isn’t it, after all these years?” Owen wanted to laugh at himself for having said such.
They looked at each other’s eyes and it was evident that, contrary to her words, there were no strong feelings between them. Chloe spread her hands on the table, looked at them, then looked back to Owen. “Would it seem strange if I said I want to sleep in your bed tonight?” she asked.
“No. I was hoping you’d want to. But I’ll warn you, if you do, I’ll try to control myself and I’ll fail.” To this a sly smile spread across her face.
They first met at the library while they were both searching for Plato’s Symposium. She’d recently moved to Portland then, into the same neighborhood as Owen. In the following week they’d run into each other while getting their morning coffee, and shortly after had begun dating. Despite good sex, they didn’t last long. She had had too much leftover teenage angst, and tried too hard to act like someone who wasn’t acting. Owen would try to get her to act less, become more her own. Him calling her out on her acting would sometimes make her cry. It got to a point where she was most often either acting or crying, likely sometimes both. It became very confusing, then, because she was on occasion probably still acting, but acting as though she wasn’t acting how Owen had originally called her out on acting like she wasn’t acting, and therefore still acting but in a very adverse kind of way. Owen hoped that somewhere within all of it she was being herself, but when and where was rather difficult to identify, all things considered.
Owen didn’t want to be around someone who was only acting poorly or crying all the time. If she cried a lot, that would have been fine with him––if her melancholy was real. It was a relationship based mostly on sex and physical attraction, anyway. They’d certainly never learned each other’s names without words by looking into each other’s eyes, nothing beyond their facades. Chloe taught Owen how far good looks go—about a couple of months, maybe three if the sex is something to moan about.
After a year they became friends again. Privileges were soon added. In time Chloe revealed she was dating someone. She and Owen stopped for a few weeks, but then, it seemed every time Chloe and her boyfriend had a fight she’d show up at Owen’s place for a few days. Owen knew, from Chloe telling him, that she took pleasure from making her boyfriends jealous. Her staying at Owen’s likely did a number on her then boyfriend.
The server arrived with appetizers and Phineas came back to the table. The three of them talked about how delicious the grilled octopus salad was.
After dinner they went out for a nightcap. Chloe order three Sambuca’s. The bartender floated three coffee beans in each drink. After Owen swallowed the licorice liquor he picked off the beans that were stuck to the side of his glass and crushed them between his teeth. They said goodnight to Phineas. The car ride back to Owen’s went by fast and the lights looked cinematic though the rain streamed windows.
When they got back to Owen’s home, he offered the couch or an air mattress to Chloe. Maybe the sultry conversation they’d had was only words, he thought. She said his bed would be fine. Only a small desk lamp lit his bedroom. They stood in the dim light and knew what was soon to happen.
They rolled around in their underwear for a while and then Owen went down on her. He thought it common knowledge that, if you want to set things in motion, give head.
Once they smelt like sex, they talked.
“So, you still love evoking jealously, then,” he asked.
“It’s so easy,” she laughed as she spoke.
“It destroys things, though. Don’t you think?”
“You could say that. It pulls things back together, too, or it masks things. It bleaches stains. It’s like cement….”
“I get it. Christ. What are you gonna say next, ‘It chaulks cracks’? He must enjoy being jealous, then. He likes suffering.”
“I think so, yes. I’ve never asked him.”
They fell asleep holding each other due to a cold, damp breeze that crept through the thin opening at the top of Owen’s window. When Owen woke, Chloe was looking directly at him, inches from his face. There was fear and anger in her eyes.
“Why you watching me sleep?” he asked. The light was harsh from the overcast sky. Her arms were folded in front of her. Her legs were still locked with his, it seemed only for warmth.
“I was looking at your crows feet. Counting your blemishes.”
“They’re adding up. That’s what happens,” he said as he closed his eyes.
“Yeah,” she paused. “I didn’t know this would happen. I just thought we’d fall asleep. Just pass out.”
“You’re sure you weren’t hoping for a last hurrah? You want me to believe none of it was premeditated?” he said with his eyes still shut. “You’re aware you could’ve stayed the few days that your work paid for you to stay in the city. I could have met you for dinner somewhere, then gone home by myself. I think you at least assumed you might find yourself in a similar predicament.”
“Yeah. No use bullshitting. Goddamn it, I fucked-up,” she rolled and faced the other direction.
“I’ll say.”
“Fuck you. What am I supposed to say to him?”
“That I seduced you and there was no possible way that you could ever resist me. He doesn’t know me.” Owen was confident that Chloe and her fiancé were intelligent enough to understand who was at fault. They would find a way to resolve their dilemma. But Owen did have a way of ending up a scapegoat, which at a time affected him deeply, but he’d grown blasé and expected it.
“Are you yourself a ring, of a very malleable sort?” Owen asked Chloe’s fiancé.
“What?”
“Are you wrapped around her finger? I’ve been there before. It sounds like you are…At least she told you, and right away at that. She could’ve been both disloyal and dishonest. I’ve dated someone who held both, virtues…or vices? I can’t decide.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I didn’t think you’d really call back,” his voice grew softer. Almost broke.
“I’m really good at returning calls.”
“Can’t you just say you’re sorry?”
“I’m sorry this happened to you, that you are in this situation,” Owen waited for Chloe’s fiancé to speak, but he could hear only fragments of what he said. Their connection was fizzling out, and there was really nothing more to say. There was nothing to be said to begin with. Owen wished Chloe’s fiancé well, though Owen wasn’t sure his words were heard. Then he hung up.
After Owen no longer felt comfortable consoling Chloe in his bed, with her warm legs wrapped around his, he got up and sat at his desk in his underwear. A draft still blew through the thin gap were the window wouldn’t close all the way. He looked at her. Was it better to be warm with her, or cold without her?
She used to quote Marx and Nietzsche but now all she wanted to talk about was aromatherapy and different methods of exfoliating. Her right arm and leg peaked out from the comforter. Her tattoos showed. They looked no more than ornate bruises. That’s how all marks look if you give them time.