When I Lay My Goodness Down
by Harrison Kim
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
Gwen pushed her hands against a bus stop sign, stretching her arms and legs. I kept pacing around. She pulled a gold-colored hair tie out of her purse and looped her hair behind her ears. “Everything goes bad for me.”
“I could help you,” I told her, as I paced back from across the street. “I could help make things go better.”
“That’s impossible,” she said. “There’s always a downturn, like when my ex slammed into the stop sign. The last thing he said was, “Take that, bitch!”
Her voice whooshed through the inside of my brain. My head opened like a tunnel taking in all her words and feelings. My responding voice arose from that tunnel and stated, “That was wrong.” I rubbed my forehead to close the tunnel. “What the hell was his problem with you? He didn’t have to say ‘bitch.’”
“I’d been one,” Gwen answered, and her mouth turned down. She looked me straight in the eye. Then she grinned and giggled and pushed my shoulder. “He was mad, mad, mad, I tell you!”
“Oh,” I said, and stood on one leg, against the railing that ran the length of the beachfront, holding my other leg behind me with my left hand. It took away my dizziness for a moment. I wondered how long I could balance. Judgment, caution and reason didn’t matter in this moment, on this day. Anything could become its opposite. Closeness and separateness, connection and disconnection, laughter and anger.
I stepped towards Gwen, reached over, and adjusted her black ponytail tie, so everything looked even, then moved the back of my hand down her arm. “Everyone makes mistakes,” I said.
“My landlord’s watching my every move.” She looked at me. “I told you already. He’s poking through my stuff when I’m away.” She examined the palm of her hand and traced her index finger along the lines. “My life’s been full of bad people, Jackson, and I’m one of them. I’ve done a lot of bad things.” She moved closer. “That so-called cheating, it was only emotional. But my ex was jealous. He didn’t like me being away from him for one second. What about you, Jackson?”
“I like it when you’re here with me,” I said.
“When people get too close, sometimes they go a bit crazy,” she told me. She reached out, stroked my face. Her fingers were long and their touch, light.
“I want to lay my goodness down.” I held her hand. “I would do that for you.”
“That’s kind,” she said and stepped back. “It wasn’t a car accident that caused that scar.”
“What was it?”
“Jealousy,” she said. “Didn’t you listen to me before?” She smiled. “Back there, you said I looked perfect. Did you mean it?”
“I always mean what I say,” I said.
She flipped her hair back and brushed her hand over her cheek. “That’s very sweet.”
She stepped away, and I followed.
We hiked up a rocky path straight up a hill, climbing towards the abandoned observatory at the summit, a small off-white dome amid a neighborhood of modern, flat roofed houses with massive windows and patios that faced over the sea.
“I live around here,” Gwen said. “My landlord’s a rich guy. He pays me to stay.”
“How is that?” I raced up to pass her. “Usually, the renter is the one who pays.”
“Oh, he gets something out of it,” she told me. “You shouldn’t come with me. My landlord doesn’t like strangers.”
“I’m full of energy,” I said. “Nothing can stop me.”
“You’re right. I can’t stop you,” she said.
I thought, Why does he pay her to stay?
She turned around without looking back and began to climb up the trail. I followed, looking back at the view across Juan de Fuca Strait to the blue mountains beyond. We reached the summit. The sun fell brilliant against the side of the old observatory. A tiny spotted lizard poked its head out from under a rotting plank. Just below lay a street, where the path ended. The front windows of all the houses along that street glared in the sun. That glare shone back through my eyes. I wanted to run back down the hill, to the seashore where the paraglider flew, to where Gwen and I stood kissing on the beach.
“Why did you come with me today?” I asked.
“You’re cute,” she said, “And funny. You make me feel good.”
“What does the landlord pay you for?” I asked again.
“I cook, I clean, take care of the place. He needs me to do all sorts of things.” She laughed softly all the time she talked.
I told her it didn’t seem right that he was snooping through her stuff. “I can have a talk with him.”
“I know you care about me,” she said. “You shouldn’t care so much.” She turned, touched my face as she did. “I have to go.”
We stood under the shadow of a huge white house with a large patio. A stocky, hollow-cheeked man with long black hair and sunglasses stood on that patio, smoking. The smoke dispersed fast in the afternoon breeze. He put the cigarette down, and leaned on the railing, staring at us. Then he turned. His hair cascaded all down his back.
“Do you know that guy on the patio?” I asked and pointed.
Gwen looked. The man turned toward us again and stared. Then he stepped into his house.
“You better get out of here,” Gwen said.
“But you led me,” I said. “Straight up the hill.”
“I’m sorry, Jackson.”
The stocky man pushed out of the tall wooden door of his house, jogging towards us in high top white runners, his mouth set. Gwen jumped aside as he rushed up to me, within a foot of my face.
“He means no harm,” she shouted. “He’s just a kid.”
“You better be her brother,” the stocky man said, and moved his face closer. His eyes bored into mine. I couldn’t see anything in them but blue around black.
“Just a friend,” I said, and I knew the “just” was wrong and he knew it was wrong. He reached up with his thick arm and patted my face with the palm of his hand, just as Gwen had done, a few moments before. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll be a gentleman. Take your shot.” He turned to Gwen. “I told you not to talk to guys in the street.”
“There’s nothing wrong with talking,” I said.
He pushed his mouth an inch from mine. His lips moved and curled as he whispered.
“I said take your shot. I’m gonna step back and you’re gonna take your shot.”
He stepped back. “Come on! Don’t be a coward, man, don’t be a worm. Take your shot!”
A car came around the corner, driving slowly. The man continued, his breath in my face. “I’m gonna find out who you are!”
I looked down at my shaking fingers. I wanted to lift out of myself, move into the sky and gaze down on the scene from above as my fists hit this guy. I knew that’s what he wanted from me, to get out of this crazy moment by starting something that couldn’t be stopped.
How far would you go, because I can go farther.
I clenched my hands instead. I clenched my hands and stayed in my body. The car came alongside us.
“Everyone on the street can see you,” I said, as my head cleared, and my mind moved to a different place.
I stepped off the sidewalk, startled as if I’d awakened from a trance, then danced around, waving my arms, jumping on and off the curb and onto the street. “Everyone can see us,” I yelled.
The more I jumped, the better I felt.
I pointed to the front windows of the other houses and shouted, “Check out our reflections in the glass!” The car stopped. Some middle-aged ladies peered out.
The stocky man glanced at the people in the car, then at Gwen, who held her hands over her face.
“Get the hell out of here,kk you dancing freak,” he told me. He rubbed his hands through his hair.
The car started moving again.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone, baby,” the stocky man turned to Gwen. “I know, he’s just some kid you picked up in the park.”
He touched her arm and she moved with him. The stocky man turned. “Get out of here, kid. Everything will be fine if you just leave.”
He placed his hand over the centre of Gwen’s back, and she went with him. She flipped her long black hair back over her shoulders, walked beside him into the house without looking back.
I didn’t stop, bouncing in my running shoes all along the street. Then I jogged down the hill, charged with energy, waving my arms like airplane wings as I ran, watching the sea shimmering all the way across to the mountains. I kept moving, all the way back through the cemetery to the park, and when I reached the top of Beacon Hill, I sat against a tree at the top and caught my breath.
I sat for a long time, watched the evening kite flyers. Their eyes scanned up; their hands committed to the strings; they didn’t let anything go.
“Maybe I am a coward, like that guy said,” I thought. “If I cared about Gwen, I would’ve hit him. I would not have cared about myself.”
That line “I would not have cared about myself,” ran through my head over and over.
The kites soared, high as their strings would let them, over the daffodil-covered hill as the sun descended. My mind cooled off too, like the day. I lay back to check the pink lined clouds. Any chemtrail patterns? I thought. There’s always something more behind.
The man flying a kite had only three fingers. Why? After Gwen kissed me, she told me about her brother’s suicide. How did she make that shift? I remembered the stocky man, his hot breath on my face, turning and walking away with his hand on Gwen’s back. Who was he? Did he own her? Why did she go with him so willingly?
This day was a paraglide ride: l was a man jumping off a cliff, soaring as the currents lifted, plunging into the ocean when they failed.
My body lay cushioned by the grass. I kept my gaze above, felt drawn into the dusk, the emerging constellations, and their imaginary shapes. I breathed slow, let myself float, the new leaves of the tree black above me, shimmering as the moon rose and became a small half circle.
Wow, here’s night already, I thought, darkness growing around me as I stared at the sky and watched for Orion’s belt.
I’d been up for over twenty-five hours. When I found Orion, I closed my eyes.
I awoke chilled by the ocean breeze, my phone vibrating in my pocket. I stood, rubbed my face and looked out at the lights far across the water, flickering under the distant mountains. I pulled out the phone to check the message.
“You’re soft, I hear it in your voice. You can touch a scar and make me kiss you,” Gwen wrote. “I told you not to come with me up that hill, but you did.” She paused, then continued: “Don’t worry about the Landlord. His bark’s worse than his bite.”
I thought of our run down through the daffodils that afternoon, so fast and immediate. We flew like the kites down that hill, no strings attached. I put the phone in my pocket and walked on along the slope.
In the parking lot by the beach, a woman crawled on the ground beside a car parked under a streetlight. There were flickers of white, her hands moving. A thin, distorted face looked up, a red-haired lady with her ponytail tied back.
“What seems to be the trouble?” I asked.
She pulled herself up, holding the car door handle, brushed off her skinny knees. She looked at me; her voice came out harsh or scared. “Well, when I came back to the car, I found I lost my keys. They must be somewhere around here.”
“Did you throw any garbage out?” I asked. “The keys could have gone with it by mistake. Or maybe they’re in some hidden receptacle of your purse.”
“Listen,” she said, “I know you’re being helpful, but I can figure it myself.”
Her face shone hollow under the streetlight.
“Sorry,” I said, and kept moving along the road.
The world was full of random stories. Everyone had their shadows. I had to choose one story to believe in and follow, and that was Gwen’s. This had been a day full of closeness and distance, of romance and jealousy.
“How did I fly so far?” I asked myself and said out loud, “Because I can run like the wind,” and because of Gwen, with her beautiful, marred face.
Why did she kiss me? She filled my mind like the constellations spread over the night sky. All I had to do was gain courage and wait for daylight reality.
“Maybe tomorrow,” I thought, “she’ll let me in.”
Tomorrow I’d hike up the Observatory Hill, to that house where Gwen lived with the so-called landlord. I’d knock on that door and then yes, then I’d show them who I was. I’d raise my voice to a commanding level, tell the evil one to let her go, and she’d tear out that door in a flash, into my arms, as she’d run down the side of Beacon Hill, long-legged through the daffodils.
If the Landlord wanted to fight, we’d fight. What would a smashed nose matter if I set Gwen free?
“I’m a lucky fellow walking these cliffs above the sea. It’s night, I’m in love, and nothing can go wrong.” That’s what I told myself, within my softest voice.
Copyright © 2024 by Harrison Kim
