Page 33 of The Hangman's Rope
We sat across from each other in the dappled sunlight coming through a big magnolia tree at the corner of the house and I closed my eyes and just basked in the warmth and the heavenly scent of the large flowers that were easily the size of dinner plates on the tree.
“Even in my old ratty tee shirt and pair of my whore pants you look lovely when you do that,” he remarked and I blinked my eyes open and stared, fork suspended in my hand. What he’d said dumbfounded me.
“Whore pants?” I asked and he laughed out loud.
“Not on you,” he said. “When they’re on me.”
I looked down into my lap and back up at him, confused.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
He snickered and said, “I’m being a dirty old biker.”
I looked him over, and couldn’t help but smile as I said, “You’re not old,” following the statement up with a light wink.
He laughed then, genuinely and from the heart, shaking his head and pushing his bite of waffle he was going to take next around in a puddle of maple syrup.
“You had me going there for a second, you do innocent very well.”
I blushed lightly and stammered, “Actually, I really haven’t heard the term ‘whore pants’ before, but I have an imagination.”
He chuckled at that and I blushed furiously.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I’m not sure with how comfortable you are joking around like that. I don’t want to overstep.”
I chewed my bite of cantaloupe melon thoughtfully, the sweet, bright flavor bursting across my tongue and told the truth, “I don’t honestly know how I should feel – like, I don’t remember anything, but I’ve been having these dreams. Like it’s just beyond some thin veil in my mind and all I can do is watch in horror and hope that it honestly doesn’t all come through… I guess I can’t be too choosey, though. Either I’m going to remember all of it or nothing. Things are coming back, but it’s scary… you know?”
He looked somber and nodded his head slowly, putting down his fork and gripping one fist with his hand, propping his elbows on the table. He rested his chin on his knuckles and said, “Actually, Idoknow… and I wish I could say it gets better. I mean, itdoesafter a long while, but right now?”
“This is just the calm before another storm?” I asked quietly.
He nodded slowly and sighed.
“Hit the nail right on the head with that one,” he agreed.
I nodded.
“I guess I justfeelit, you know? It’s just like when the skies go dark and that smell comes up and you know you only have seconds before the sky opens up with a deluge and all the crashing thunder and lightning. It’s like this deep existential dread, knowing it’s coming but not knowing if it’s going to be so awful it sweeps you away…”
I had turned my face away from his, to look over the porch railing out over the cemetery. I felt chilled, despite the heat, despite the humidity and the perfectly bright and beautiful sunny morning around us. Big fat fluffy white cumulous clouds in a perfect blue sky, the Spanish Moss swaying lightly from thegnarled old oak trees. Pops of bright pinks and bits of salmon dotting among the graves as flowers bloomed in the grounds out there. It was perfect. Silent. Steady. The cemetery with its old stones a testament to endurance and withstanding the passage of time and here I sat, fragile as a willow sapling, knowing what was about to come with no way of knowing if I could stop it or withstand it and I was scared…
Hangman reached out a hand and covered mine where it rested on the sun warmed metal table. I blinked away tears I hadn’t realized were beginning to make my vision swim and turned from my blank staring reverie overlooking the gorgeous cemetery grounds and met his kind, green eyes with the star shot of gold around his pupils. They were striking, so alive and colorful as compared to my boring gray ones.
“Willows are flexible,” he reminded me, and I startled.
Had I said any of that out loud?
I felt myself color slightly with embarrassment.
“I have faith in you, Lorelai. You’ve already been bent past the point of breaking and you’ve sprung back. I think you’re capable of withstanding the next gust. In fact, I’m so confident that you are, I’d put even money on it.”
I stared at him from across the little breakfast table and only looked away when the tread of boot hit the stairs at the other end of the porch. I quickly took my hand back when a new man I didn’t know rounded the corner with a large, white paper shopping bag with the twisted handles, and a small stack of boxes under his other arm.
“Reck,” Hangman said, perking up. “What’s up, man?”
“Synister sent me around,” he said. “Wants me to install some security shit in and around your apartment. Wants everyone at the table tonight.”
Hangman looked uneasy, “You know I’m not down for any of that shit,” he said.
