The sun was a burnt orange hint on the horizon as the crows screeched from the trees. To the east the mountain loomed an imposing black. I walked hands in pockets dodging white stains of excrement from the birds, wondering when the harbingers of ill times would shit on me.
It was cold; the type of cold that bit through the layers and found its home deep within the bones. I relished it and despised myself for needing it.
I knew she hated it. She pretended to tolerate it, but I knew. She would tell everyone I had dragged her over here against her will with promises of mild temperatures and no snow, but the reality was she was desperate to join me. She needed me and the security I could provide.
Put another way, she needed my money. She wasn’t broke by any stretch of the imagination, but when I’d met her in the bar in Boise, she’d been on her last legs. Down to the last couple of free drinks her smile would buy and three days short of the start of the month and the next allowance payment from home.
I should have known better then – I do now – but I was raw in the moment. I was coming off the death of my dreams: it was the end of a ten-year marriage, and a fifteen-year career, both ended by a fifty-something with an axe to grind and great legs. I was empty and looking for something I couldn’t put my finger on until she smiled at me.
She had emerald eyes that looked right through you, but caught enough to hold your attention, even as hers drifted. Her smile brought you in and had you feeling like you were all she needed, despite her wandering eyes. She was a dream.
I told her I was easing my way west, looking to end up in Alaska. She said that sounded nice and I should tell her over a drink, so I bought her a drink and told her.
That was on Monday. I saw her at the bar Tuesday and Wednesday, but she was dancing with other partners. I felt the old jealous rage rise up in me.
She came to me on Thursday. Her allowance had come through and she’d paid off most of the debts her smile couldn’t cover, and was after another drink, wanted to hear more about my trip west.
I bought her a drink and I told her, and by the time I was on the train Monday morning, heading west to Oregon, she was sitting next to me, staring out the window taking it all in.
Every rotation of the train’s wheels brought each of us further west than we’d ever been. We loved it, ate it up, as we told each other more about what we were hoping to find. Her youth energized me. I don’t know what I did for her. We were both young enough to mistake this lust for love.
I’d like to say we were able to ride the wings of lust, or love, for a year or two, but we lasted three months before an unseasonable snow rolled through Portland in mid-December. This was on the heels of the coldest November in the last 50 years.
The bloom fell off the rose then and she couldn’t keep her mouth shut about how I’d lied to her about what it was going to be like. She couldn’t help but nag at me about it. I see that now, that she couldn’t help it.
It got to be like the sound of these damn crows: a piercing screech, echoing about my head as it echoed about the buildings. It hurt, and I had to stop it.
You know what does warm me: that all these big cities have dirty rivers running through them where you can dump stuff you don’t want. So it goes with dreams.
