She was getting a bit heavy. The little work that she had done in the kitchen in the last half an hour had worn her out . She sat down in front of the old gas oven , wiping her forehead with a dirty rag as she did . Maybe , it wasn’t really working out . And maybe , she thought angrily , that small town hick practitioner she was going to would stop this herbal crap , and just give her an Aspirin .
The kettle on the oven in front of her gave a small gentle whistle, shaking her out of her reverie . Muttering to herself , she got up .Take your medicines on time . As if this tea she was taking was a medicine. The name always made her smile though ... 'Pennyroyal Tea' ... Sit and drink Pennyroyal tea, distill the life that's inside of me , she mumbled , suddenly feeling nostalgic about those Grunge days back in the Bronx .Endless freedom . The hash just a call away . And now, I’m holed up here trying to make this freaking kettle to work ,she grumbled , taking the first bitter sip .
This life wasn’t really meant for her . She had been made for the Casino circle from day one . The rich asses and their punk pimps . The big boys who played rough . And them . The scum of the Bronx . The small fish . And it was all swell . The circle fed them . It wasn’t really a Casino though . More of a big bordello with hell lot of gambling going on . But then , as Jimmy said , it was a refuge . And Casino means refuge in Italian , he would mention in his deep accented voice .Well , he would have known . He was the college kid . He was the youngest in the gang except for her . But he said a lot of stuff that they never understood . Crazy kid . Wanted to travel to stars and stuff . But he was cute when he wasn’t acting all loony.
They had been sleeping together for an year when the big boys started making noises . Loud noises about the percentage. Word was they had made huge losses up in white market . Jimmy was in the middle of one of his freedom talks . Being someone . ‘Transcend’ from the ordinary . Hell , those were big words . Freedom talk was shorter . But it was good enough to bring him all the way up into the big boy’s radar . One day they picked him up . She cried a lot . Couple of days later , he was found hanging in the Alley . He looked like he had been chewed up by steel toothed alligators . It was the special treat of the mob . The Iron Maiden . It was said the Boss brought it back from Europe way back . It was a pretty nice ‘transcending’ session for the kid though . Rising up all of two feet from the rest with a steel hook pierced through his neck .
She had lost it when she had seen it . It had taken three people to keep her from it . A couple of days later she went to Jimmy’s uncle and squealed . He was a sheriff with the State Patrol . That created some noise with reporters and other random people shouting and coming down to the Bronx . He took it all in and had told her to lay low in this town while he figured it all out. She had protested , but he had nearly packed her off forcefully . That was three months back. Before she knew that she was carrying Jimmy’s kid .
She patted her belly . Jimmy junior would be with her forever . She would keep him decent . Educate him and stuff . Make him what his daddy wanted to be . She choked as she drunk down the now cold tea . Maybe one more cup wouldn’t hurt . The evening was becoming cold . She put some more water to boil .
She really missed him a lot . He was the part of her that was there for only the one year they had been together . Like a hallucination . Wake up and its not there anymore . Often after a night together , he would just sit and look blankly into the night sky . If she asked , he would say that he was looking on at his journey trough hyperspace . Another of his words that she would never understand . But back then she never tried . She had better things to do to him.
She was feeling surprisingly dizzy . The room seemed to be revolving all around her . She tried to hold on to the oven but her hands snatched at only air ….
A few blocks away a fake herbalist received an envelope from the Bronx that he was eagerly waiting for . He whistled softly when he read the amount . Enough to pay for an year’s rent …
New bets were placed on old whirring Roulette wheels …
Some hundred’s of miles away ,a man woke up from a nightmare of a young man’s corpse crying out to him , blaming him … Jimmy’s uncle shakily lighted a cigarette .. it would be another sleepless night …
A dead girl lay on the floor of a room …
The kettle gave its second soft whistle of the night .
.
No comments:
Post a Comment