He met her on a Tuesday, the kind of Tuesday that feels like a leftover Monday, stale and gray and hungover from the weekend’s sins.
Her name was Lita, or maybe Rita, or maybe she just said that to keep things simple.
She had a cigarette halo, a ring of smoke that followed her like an entity, and she wore a leather jacket two sizes too big, sleeves swallowed her hands like she was trying to disappear.
He was fifty-seven, give or take. Name was Cal. Used to be a jazz pianist in the '80s, back when synth was king and cocaine was communion.
Now he lived in a one-bedroom above a laundromat that never closed, the hum of dryers his lullaby. He drank instant coffee and read poems like scripture.
He had a limp from a motorcycle crash that never quite healed and a heart that beat like a broken metronome.
She was twenty-three. Maybe. Maybe younger. Maybe older. Time didn’t stick to her the way it stuck to him. She moved like a flicker, like a neon sign half-lit in a motel window. She talked in riddles and laughed like she didn’t believe in joy but liked the sound of it anyway.
They met outside the 7-Eleven on the main road, where the pigeons were mean and the clerks were indifferent.
She asked him for a light. He gave her a matchbook from a jazz bar that had closed ten years ago. She looked at it like it was a relic, like he’d handed her a piece of the moon.
“You play?” she asked, flipping the matchbook open.
“Used to,” he said. “Now I mostly remember.”
She smiled, slow and sideways. “Memory’s a kind of music.”
He didn’t know what that meant, but it stuck to him like gum on a shoe.
They started seeing each other. Not dating. Not loving. Just seeing. She’d show up at his place with bruises like constellations and stories that didn’t add up. He never asked. She never explained. They drank cheap wine and listened to old records. She liked Coltrane. Said it made her feel like she was floating in a bathtub full of stars.
He started writing again. Little things. Lines. Fragments.
“Her eyes are two broken clocks that still tell the truth twice a day.” “She walks like she’s late for a dream.” “I think I love her, but I’m afraid she’s just a metaphor.”
She never stayed the night. Said she didn’t sleep in places with clocks. Said time was a thief and she didn’t want to wake up robbed.
One night, she came in bleeding. Not bad. Just a cut on her lip and a look in her eyes like she’d seen something she couldn’t unsee.
" Bad client?” he asked, handing her a towel.
She shrugged. “Bad world.”
He made her tea. Chamomile. She hated it. Said it tasted like flowers and shit, but she drank it anyway.
They sat on the floor, backs against the wall, silence between them like a third person.
“Have you ever thought about dying?” she asked.
“Only when I’m living,” he said.
She laughed. Real this time. Full and loud and reckless.
“I like you, old man,” she said.
“I like you too, kid.”
She kissed him. Soft. Like a whisper. Like a secret. And for a moment, he felt young again. Not in his bones, but in his soul. Like maybe the world hadn’t passed him by. Like maybe he still had a song left to play.
They didn’t make love. They made something else. Something quieter. Something sadder. Like two ghosts trying to remember how to be human.
After that, she started staying longer. Not overnight. But longer. She’d bring him little things. A broken watch. A feather. A Polaroid of a dog she found on the street. He kept them all in a shoebox labeled “Proof.”
One day, she didn’t show up.
He waited. Made coffee. Played Coltrane. Wrote a line: “She’s the silence between two notes.”
Two days passed. Then three. Then a week.
He went to the 7-Eleven. Asked the clerk if he’d seen her.
“Which one?” the clerk asked.
“The girl with the cigarette halo.”
The clerk nodded. “She OD’d. Alley behind the pawn shop.”
Cal didn’t cry. He just walked. Past the pawn shop. Past the alley. Past the world.
He found the spot. There was a stain. Could’ve been anything. Could’ve been her.
He sat down. Lit a cigarette. I watched the smoke curl into a halo.
He wrote one last line: “She was a song I only got to hear once.”
Then he went home. I played the piano. Just one note. Over and over. Until it sounded like her laugh
Bio:
L Christopher Hennessy lives in Coffs Harbour NSW, Australia, He is the author of poetry, short stories, and novels, and has been published since the 1990s. his writing covers many genres.