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Title: Die Sprache der Blinden 10b/?
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laguera25
Fandom: Rammstein
Rating FRM
Pairing: Richard Kruspe/OFC
Disclaimer: Richard Z. Kruspe is a real person, with family and friends who love him. I am not one of them. I do not know him. This is a work of complete fiction, and should be read as such. No defamation is intended. For entertainment only.
Part I Part IIa Part IIb Part III Part IVa Part IVb Part V Part VIa Part VIb Part VIIa Part VIIb Part VIII Part IX Part Xa
He hadn't wanted to think about it anymore, not after such a lovely, relaxed ride, so he'd swirled the dregs of his coffee in the murky bottom of his cup and said, "My son is a bit harder. He wants a BMW, but I'm aiming for something more practical." Like a carseat for my grandson.
"Not socks and underwear, I hope? Those are gifts of last resort."
"Not that impersonal, no. Though you sound like you speak from experience."
"Oh, I was a socks and underwear veteran. Not from my parents--they usually bought books or puzzles--but my paternal grandparents were champion socks and underwear givers. I can't really blame them given the number of grandchildren they had, but still, it was awkward getting lacy underpants from your grandparents and holding them up in front of your giggling, goggling brothers."
"What are you getting them this year? Your brothers and sisters?"
"Heaven knows. I'm going to have to hit Amazon and Woot and Overstock this year since I won't be there to brave the annual shopping crush and free-for-all in Midtown. Besides, it's the little ones that give me fits and put me on the ramen diet for two weeks after Christmas. Heaven forfend that they each get the same gift." She'd sighed and plucked idly at the paper she'd peeled from her muffin.
He'd caught a note of wistfulness in the gesture. "Are you sorry you won't be there for the holiday?" he'd asked quietly.
"I'll miss the clan, of course, but I won't miss the shrieking, screaming, thunder-footed, he-touched-me-first chaos. Besides, I'll have a wonderful adventure in Berlin."
"You are welcome to spend the holiday with my daughter and me," he'd offered. It had been pro forma, a matter of civility rather than a desire to share his time with Khira. The thought of her rattling around Berlin alone over the holiday while he ached and hobbled his way through an Alpine ski trip had inspired a ferocious twinge of guilt.
"Oh, I couldn't. I'm sure your daughter would rather have her father all to herself, if you please, not share him with yet another strange woman he's brought home."
It had been the refusal for which he had hoped, and yet, it had irritated him beyond all reason. The implication that he'd exposed his children to a parade of companions had sounded too much like Angela's shrill accusations of paternal incompetence in the early years after their falling out, and her later accusations of reluctance to support and care for his children to the bloodthirsty tabloids, who'd called him a deadbeat in sixty-point font and savagely speculated that he was a profligate womanizer who sired children indiscriminately and left them to fend for themselves. It had sounded too much like Merlin when he spit into the phone and told him that he hated him.
"I don't fucking subject my children to an endless parade of empty-headed floozies," he'd snapped. "Christ." It had been almost a shout, and Calliope had recoiled in her chair, her face a mask of dismay. Several heads had turned to stare, and the boy in the University of San Francisco sweatshirt had lowered his paper and peered at the brewing drama with greasy-lipped interest.
Too hard, too hard, his mind had warned as his heart had thudded heavily inside a chest gone small and hot. Calliope had been staring at him in open-mouthed shock, her palms on the edge of the table as though she were about to push back from the table and increase the distance between them.
Good going, Richard. Show her you're an asshole and a womanizer on the same day. That'll dampen those knickers.
Calliope had lowered her hands and leaned forward, gaze fixed on the tabletop.
"Calliope, I'm-," he'd begun, but she'd held up a silencing hand and pressed her knuckes to her mouth.
"I'm-I'm, uh, I'm going to get some air," she'd announced in a prim, strangled voice, and then she'd pushed back her chair and risen. She'd moved stiffly, as though bones ached beneath her skin, or bruises. "I'll be back," she'd said, but she hadn't looked at him. She'd squared her chin and marched out the door and kept on marching down the sidewalk, gaze fixed on a distant point he couldn't see. He'd watched her until she and her sensible white flats had clipped and clopped around the corner and out of sight, and then he'd slumped in his seat and let out a heavy breath.
"Shit," he'd said listlessly, and smothered the urge to hurl his coffee cup at the menu board that had leered smugly down at him. Instead, he'd picked at a loose scab of paint on the tabletop until he'd made it bleed iron.
What did you expect? Caron again, tired, almost pitying. You always did reach for the tactical nukes when a flyswatter would have sufficed, or don't you remember how you used to scream at me whenever I dared intrude upon your musical laboratory to ask if you wanted anything to eat? As if wanting to keep my husband fed and healthy were the ultimate act of selfishness and stupidity and not one of love.
Yes, he had remembered, and those memories never failed to fill him with a deep, sour-mouthed shame. Caron had done many selfish things over the course of their turbulent marriage, but that hadn't been one of them. She had been a victim of his obsessive nature and the wounds that festered and smoldered with an unreachable, untreatable infection that devoured contentment and trust as others devoured muscle and bone. A victim of the unease and paranoia that never left him, never let him settle, gifts handed down by his father with every blow. He'd raged at her because he couldn't let himself believe he deserved such kindness, that he were worthy of it. If he believed it, then he might need it, might need her, and he had already needed so much. Needed, and been denied. Better to believe that she was sabotaging his work with her constant interruptions and rappings on his recording-studio door. Better to believe the worst than the best; there was less chance of being disappointed that way.
His anger had been his steadiest companion, the one who had never deserted him, never called him unworthy. It had kept him moving when even the drugs couldn't coax his leaden legs out of an unfamiliar hotel bed, had inspired some of his greatest creativity. It had insulated him from his stepfather's blows and his mother's studied indifference and the haughty dismissal of the girls who had laughed at his clumsy, adolescent overtures. His anger had been a cocoon that had kept him warm and alive when kinder sources of warmth had failed or fled, and part of him had cherished it, a security blanket to which he'd clung with a child's sweaty-fingered terror.
He'd hated it, too, been ashamed of it. It had protected him, yes, but it had demanded much for its favor. It had spread itself like contagion to those he loved best--Caron, Margeaux, Till, Christoph, and the others. It had spared his children, but only just, and even that boundary had been fraying by the time he'd begun to fear it and sought help from a therapist. It had cut him even as it had shielded him, had severed his human ties with its furious, needle-pointed teeth and left him adrift, alone and frightened and wishing for someone to hold his hand. Too often, he'd reached out and found nothing. Or, worse yet, the scabrous hand of the bogeyman, come to drag him into a nightmare from which he would never awaken.
He thought he'd made progress, that bit by bit, he'd begun to free himself from his anger and the lingering childhood fears upon which it so voraciuously fed. Apparently, he hadn't made as much headway as he'd thought; despite therapy's polish, he was still the same old Richard, a man of glass who cut those who sought to touch him and who shattered too easily in their well-intended grip. Calliope had meant neither harm nor insult with her ill-considered words, any more than she had meant to nettle him with her attempt to cheer him up when the topic had strayed too near the subject of his father. She had erred through simple ignorance, not malice, and yet he had bitten deeply, reacted like a frightened cur faced with a malicious, clubbing hand. And Calliope, his prudent witch of the wood, had fled from him.
He'd scrubbed his face with his palms and tap-tap-tapped upon the table, and then he'd gotten up and paced the length of the pastry case, tap-tap-tapping as he bent to inspect the wares as Calliope had done earlier. He'd pursed his lips and rubbed his nape and bought some white chocolate and raspberry truffles because he'd noticed Calliope eyeing them wistfully earlier, when she'd been happy and relaxed in his company. He'd stood at the counter, clutching his tiny bag of sweets, until the hair-netted cashier had pointedly asked him if he'd needed anything else, and then he'd retreated to the table with his peace offering and longed for a cigarette.
He'd been about to bolt when the bell above the door had jingled and anounced Calliope, who'd clutched a bag of her own, a doughy lump of plastic that had sagged with the weight of its contents. She'd sat across from him and dropped the bag into the center of the table, a hunter presenting her kill. The mouth of the bag had opened like a slack, dead gullet to reveal a book.
"I'm sorry, Richard," she'd said without preamble, and he'd stared at her, sure she was going to follow that up with, But I've decided I don't want to go to Berlin with you. Instead, she'd said, "That was an utterly moronic, thoughtless thing for me to say, and I didn't mean to hurt you."
He'd known he should say something, perhaps graciously accept her apology or at least acknowledge that he'd heard it, but he'd been too surprised to do anything but goggle. This had been the last thing he'd expected; this was not how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to yell and stomp and scream, call him an asshole and throw her cold chocolate dregs at him, perhaps even beat him with her book until her anger was spent or sated, though she might have considered the book too valuable to waste on him. He was the one who apologized, who showed his belly and said the magic words just to make the screaming stop.
"I've never done this before." She'd tugged fitfully on the fabric of her skirt and worried her bottom lip with her teeth. "Every relationship, whatever its stripe, is different. It's a dance, and I haven't learned the steps to this one yet. I was bound to step on toes. I just...well, I thought I was more graceful than that."
"Never done what before? Apologized or been involved with a rock star?' he'd asked, and winced at how pig-headed that had sounded.
"Well, that either, but I meant been involved with a man who has children. It's usually an immediate deal-breaker."
That had brought him up short. "You've never?"
She'd shaken her head. "I've no desire to be a mother, not even a mother by proxy. My life is mine to share with whom I choose, and I choose to share it with only one. Children make too many relentless demands upon the finite resources of the human heart and too often kill the love that made them. They're parasites unaware of their malignancy. I'm not saying I wouldn't save them from a burning classroom if duty demanded it, but I refuse to relegate myself or my lover to second place in the emotional hierarchy of human need just so the little smirking ingrates can banish me to the nursing home once they've thoroughly used me up. I'm not so noble as that."
"So why didn't you walk away when you found out I had children?"
"If they'd been any younger, I would have done," she'd admitted flatly. "But at that age, they're champing at the bit to establish themselves, so I thought perhaps there might be a chance for me to know you, might be space in your life," she'd explained diffidently. She'd thought for a moment and turned the empty cup in slow, rolling circles between her palms. "It's-please don't take offense to this analogy, Richard, but...you're like a golden retriever."
He'd blinked and waited, utterly nonplussed by the comparision. "I've never heard that one before."
She'd flushed. "I know. It's-" She'd grimaced. "But you are. You might not know where you're going, but damn, do you love getting there. You jump into life and wallow in it. It's all over you." She'd eyed his hair and the black varnish on his nails. "You've got an opinion on everything, even if it changes with the hour, and you're not afraid to put it out there. You are who you are, even if you're not sure who that is. And you might not know everything, but what you know, you know." She'd thrown up her hands and huffed in frustration. "Gah. I probably sound like a gabbling lunatic or one of those patchouli-soaked waifs down in the Haight-Ashbury, but I know how I feel in your company..." She'd trailed off and sought refuge in her empty cup.
He had been, for one of the few moments in his life, speechless. Many had noted his mercurial nature, but none had painted it in such a positive light. It had been a foible to be tolerated grudgingly or suffered silently in exchange for his company or his money or a night in his bed, not a virtue to be celebrated and savored. He had been a bother and a pest and a nuisance and an evil necessary for the survival of Rammstein, that beloved patchwork child that had grown greater than the ragged sum of her parts. He had never been...a golden retriever.
How do you feel in my company? he'd wondered, but he'd said, "So you were attracted because you wanted a dog?" He'd grinned to put her at ease, but his belly had been fluttering anxiously, and he would have gladly given his right testicle for one drag on a cigarette.
"No, I was attracted by your eyes and your accent and your ass. I'm only human. I stayed because of what I found behind it. I never thought I'd see you again after that first meeting at the coffeehouse; I figured it was destined to be one of those chance meetings that make you say 'what if' for the rest of your life, like brushing against an angel's wings in your sleep. It made me a little wistful to think of it like that, but I was glad I took that risk. When you turned up again by the newsstand, I decided to walk with my eyes closed and see what happened."
"Do you regret it?"
"No. If I did, I wouldn't be here."
He'd nudged the bag of white chocolate and raspberry truffles toward her. "For you."
"Richard, really." She'd pulled the bag towards herself, opened the neatly-creased flap, and peered inside. "Was I that obvious?" she'd murmured into the bag, and her voice had been a sonorous muffle, as though she'd tumbled headlong into a well.
He'd chuckled. "Yes. And it's the least I can do for the woman who called me a dog and meant it as a compliment."
He'd reached across the table and captured her hand in his, interlaced her long, white fingers with his strong, callused ones. She'd given him a soft smile and squeezed his fingers, and there they'd sat, holding hands and watching the passersby scuttle past in sweatshirts and Birkenstocks and shades, bluejeans and baseball caps, stocking caps and frilled Oggs. Calliope had laughed at the Oggs and then reluctantly admitted that she owned a pair in faux velvet. No fringe, of course. She had standards, and anyway, she only wore them in Fishkill, when she trudged up the hilly, leaf-littered sidewak to the small corner store for a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. Sometimes comfort trumped fashion, she'd sniffed, and then squeezed his hand again.
Who knows how long they might have lingered there were it not for his addiction to nicotine, his black-lipped mistress? Need had driven him outside, where he'd smoked and sidled and stamped like an impatient dray horse and Calliope had waited beside him with her plastic bag in hand, dutifully ignoring the acrid stink of cigarette smoke that had drifted past.
He'd wanted to stroll along the beach, but the fickle San Francisco weather had turned, and a cutting wind had blown in from the west, too sharp for Calliope even with the help of a spare sportcoat he'd kept in the backseat. So they'd driven to a scenic overlook and parked instead, turned off the ignition and watched the surf pound the rocks. It had looked pristine from that vantage point, unsullied by dirty needles and used condoms and the severed tongue of hot-pink sandal thongs, He'd turned the radio on low, a low murmur that seeped into the bones like late-summer warmth, and rolled down the window to let the smoke from his cigarettes escape.
Calliope had retrieved his spare sportcoat from the backseat and swaddled herself in it. It had been tailored to him, and thus, had swallowed her up, with her head poking through the enormous collar and the hem brushing the tops of her thighs. It had been an absurd, surreal, and glorious sight that had knotted his throat and lightened his bones, and he'd had to grip the steering wheel and his smoldering cigarette to keep from leaning over the center console and kissing her like a witless sixteen-year-old boy.
They'd watched the ocean breathe, and he'd listened to the radio and the tourists parked on either side of them, and Calliope had reached into the yawping, slack mouth of her plastic bag and drawn out her book and the bag of sweets. She'd buried her head in the former before the cover was fully open, and she'd absently worried the ribbon of the latter with absent, dreaming fingers. He'd smoked and watched her read, watched her eyes narrow with concentration, the skin around her eyes giving beneath the skittering patter of crows' feet, watched her suck the tip of her index finger between her teeth while her eyes followed the tangled thread of words across the page. She'd been lovely there in the seat, snow and fire against the black expanse of the passenger seat, curled in on herself and temporarily lost to him as she'd ventured into the deep, dark heart of the forest in bare feet. The sun had slanted through the tinted window, dimmed but not defeated, and settled over her nape like a logy-eyed cat, all golden light and lazy impudence. He'd been tempted to reach out and stroke the soft flesh there, dip his fingertips into the warmth, but he hadn't wanted to spook her, so he'd settled back into his seat and let the salt air and peace settle over him.
The cars around them had come and gone with the tides, and when he'd bothered to focus on the movement beyond the windoes, he'd seen pot-bellied fathers in sweatshirts and flannels and khaki pants two sizes too small and mothers in floppy, wide-brimmed hats and drugstore shades and lipstick the color of a grandmother's kiss. Sometimes he'd seen sturdy-legged children scampering around the cars like restless pups, clambering onto bumpers and kicking sand-grimed tires and hanging from the pay-to-use binoculars, heretics in the thumbscrews. He'd caught glimpses of the occasional teenager hunkered in the backseat like the shameful family secret, head bent and ears plugged with earbuds and improbably dexterous thumbs flying over the minute keypad of their cellphone. None of them had noticed him, and he'd been glad of it, glad to be free of his stifling second skin.
A brush against his slack hand, and Calliope had handed him a square of white chocolate. He'd eaten it slowly, savoring the rich creaminess on his tongue, the sudden lave of raspberry on his nicotine-deadened tastebuds. He hadn't chewed it, but had simply let it melt on his tongue and teeth, had rolled it from cheek to cheek and scraped it from the roof of his mouth. He'd rolled his head on the loose stem of his neck to look at Calliope and seen that she was eating her square in thoughtful, chaste little nibbles. He'd wondered if her fingers would be smudged with white chocolate, and if they would taste of raspberries if he kissed them.
The thought had warmed his blood, but he hadn't acted on it. He'd relished the opportunity to simply be, without a tongue in his ear and a hand on his cock, without the expectation of wine and roses and sweat-slicked contortions atop silk sheets. He would not have denied Calliope these things had she asked for them--even then, his feet had been sliding inexorably towards the crumbling precipice and the churning black waters below--but that she had not asked for them had soothed something hot and sharp and gnawing inside his chest, silenced the feeble, quavering voice of doubt that insisted she saw only his car and his bulging billfold. He'd been at ease there in the car with Calliope's chocolate on his tongue, safe and torpid and settled, as though all the inhabitants of his head had quietly slipped away, returned to their masters or gone to torment another. He'd closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and a knot inside his chest had loosened. He'd felt the ebb and flow of the tides in his veins, felt the ocean slip inside to smooth his rumpled soul with its salt-kissed, kelp-stranded fingers.
Calliope had touched him, of course, but only to rest her cool fingers against his nape and tickle the fine hairs there, and to press a raspberry-scented kiss to the corner of his mouth. He'd turned into the kiss blindly, instinctively, eyes still closed and breathing deep and easy. There was nowhere and no one he needed to be, only Calliope and the car and the soothing rumble of the ocean. He'd pressed his forehead to her temple and slipped an arm around her neck, and them he'd breathed her in and lost himself to the unceasing rhythm of the waves.
Author:
laguera25Fandom: Rammstein
Rating FRM
Pairing: Richard Kruspe/OFC
Disclaimer: Richard Z. Kruspe is a real person, with family and friends who love him. I am not one of them. I do not know him. This is a work of complete fiction, and should be read as such. No defamation is intended. For entertainment only.
Part I Part IIa Part IIb Part III Part IVa Part IVb Part V Part VIa Part VIb Part VIIa Part VIIb Part VIII Part IX Part Xa
He hadn't wanted to think about it anymore, not after such a lovely, relaxed ride, so he'd swirled the dregs of his coffee in the murky bottom of his cup and said, "My son is a bit harder. He wants a BMW, but I'm aiming for something more practical." Like a carseat for my grandson.
"Not socks and underwear, I hope? Those are gifts of last resort."
"Not that impersonal, no. Though you sound like you speak from experience."
"Oh, I was a socks and underwear veteran. Not from my parents--they usually bought books or puzzles--but my paternal grandparents were champion socks and underwear givers. I can't really blame them given the number of grandchildren they had, but still, it was awkward getting lacy underpants from your grandparents and holding them up in front of your giggling, goggling brothers."
"What are you getting them this year? Your brothers and sisters?"
"Heaven knows. I'm going to have to hit Amazon and Woot and Overstock this year since I won't be there to brave the annual shopping crush and free-for-all in Midtown. Besides, it's the little ones that give me fits and put me on the ramen diet for two weeks after Christmas. Heaven forfend that they each get the same gift." She'd sighed and plucked idly at the paper she'd peeled from her muffin.
He'd caught a note of wistfulness in the gesture. "Are you sorry you won't be there for the holiday?" he'd asked quietly.
"I'll miss the clan, of course, but I won't miss the shrieking, screaming, thunder-footed, he-touched-me-first chaos. Besides, I'll have a wonderful adventure in Berlin."
"You are welcome to spend the holiday with my daughter and me," he'd offered. It had been pro forma, a matter of civility rather than a desire to share his time with Khira. The thought of her rattling around Berlin alone over the holiday while he ached and hobbled his way through an Alpine ski trip had inspired a ferocious twinge of guilt.
"Oh, I couldn't. I'm sure your daughter would rather have her father all to herself, if you please, not share him with yet another strange woman he's brought home."
It had been the refusal for which he had hoped, and yet, it had irritated him beyond all reason. The implication that he'd exposed his children to a parade of companions had sounded too much like Angela's shrill accusations of paternal incompetence in the early years after their falling out, and her later accusations of reluctance to support and care for his children to the bloodthirsty tabloids, who'd called him a deadbeat in sixty-point font and savagely speculated that he was a profligate womanizer who sired children indiscriminately and left them to fend for themselves. It had sounded too much like Merlin when he spit into the phone and told him that he hated him.
"I don't fucking subject my children to an endless parade of empty-headed floozies," he'd snapped. "Christ." It had been almost a shout, and Calliope had recoiled in her chair, her face a mask of dismay. Several heads had turned to stare, and the boy in the University of San Francisco sweatshirt had lowered his paper and peered at the brewing drama with greasy-lipped interest.
Too hard, too hard, his mind had warned as his heart had thudded heavily inside a chest gone small and hot. Calliope had been staring at him in open-mouthed shock, her palms on the edge of the table as though she were about to push back from the table and increase the distance between them.
Good going, Richard. Show her you're an asshole and a womanizer on the same day. That'll dampen those knickers.
Calliope had lowered her hands and leaned forward, gaze fixed on the tabletop.
"Calliope, I'm-," he'd begun, but she'd held up a silencing hand and pressed her knuckes to her mouth.
"I'm-I'm, uh, I'm going to get some air," she'd announced in a prim, strangled voice, and then she'd pushed back her chair and risen. She'd moved stiffly, as though bones ached beneath her skin, or bruises. "I'll be back," she'd said, but she hadn't looked at him. She'd squared her chin and marched out the door and kept on marching down the sidewalk, gaze fixed on a distant point he couldn't see. He'd watched her until she and her sensible white flats had clipped and clopped around the corner and out of sight, and then he'd slumped in his seat and let out a heavy breath.
"Shit," he'd said listlessly, and smothered the urge to hurl his coffee cup at the menu board that had leered smugly down at him. Instead, he'd picked at a loose scab of paint on the tabletop until he'd made it bleed iron.
What did you expect? Caron again, tired, almost pitying. You always did reach for the tactical nukes when a flyswatter would have sufficed, or don't you remember how you used to scream at me whenever I dared intrude upon your musical laboratory to ask if you wanted anything to eat? As if wanting to keep my husband fed and healthy were the ultimate act of selfishness and stupidity and not one of love.
Yes, he had remembered, and those memories never failed to fill him with a deep, sour-mouthed shame. Caron had done many selfish things over the course of their turbulent marriage, but that hadn't been one of them. She had been a victim of his obsessive nature and the wounds that festered and smoldered with an unreachable, untreatable infection that devoured contentment and trust as others devoured muscle and bone. A victim of the unease and paranoia that never left him, never let him settle, gifts handed down by his father with every blow. He'd raged at her because he couldn't let himself believe he deserved such kindness, that he were worthy of it. If he believed it, then he might need it, might need her, and he had already needed so much. Needed, and been denied. Better to believe that she was sabotaging his work with her constant interruptions and rappings on his recording-studio door. Better to believe the worst than the best; there was less chance of being disappointed that way.
His anger had been his steadiest companion, the one who had never deserted him, never called him unworthy. It had kept him moving when even the drugs couldn't coax his leaden legs out of an unfamiliar hotel bed, had inspired some of his greatest creativity. It had insulated him from his stepfather's blows and his mother's studied indifference and the haughty dismissal of the girls who had laughed at his clumsy, adolescent overtures. His anger had been a cocoon that had kept him warm and alive when kinder sources of warmth had failed or fled, and part of him had cherished it, a security blanket to which he'd clung with a child's sweaty-fingered terror.
He'd hated it, too, been ashamed of it. It had protected him, yes, but it had demanded much for its favor. It had spread itself like contagion to those he loved best--Caron, Margeaux, Till, Christoph, and the others. It had spared his children, but only just, and even that boundary had been fraying by the time he'd begun to fear it and sought help from a therapist. It had cut him even as it had shielded him, had severed his human ties with its furious, needle-pointed teeth and left him adrift, alone and frightened and wishing for someone to hold his hand. Too often, he'd reached out and found nothing. Or, worse yet, the scabrous hand of the bogeyman, come to drag him into a nightmare from which he would never awaken.
He thought he'd made progress, that bit by bit, he'd begun to free himself from his anger and the lingering childhood fears upon which it so voraciuously fed. Apparently, he hadn't made as much headway as he'd thought; despite therapy's polish, he was still the same old Richard, a man of glass who cut those who sought to touch him and who shattered too easily in their well-intended grip. Calliope had meant neither harm nor insult with her ill-considered words, any more than she had meant to nettle him with her attempt to cheer him up when the topic had strayed too near the subject of his father. She had erred through simple ignorance, not malice, and yet he had bitten deeply, reacted like a frightened cur faced with a malicious, clubbing hand. And Calliope, his prudent witch of the wood, had fled from him.
He'd scrubbed his face with his palms and tap-tap-tapped upon the table, and then he'd gotten up and paced the length of the pastry case, tap-tap-tapping as he bent to inspect the wares as Calliope had done earlier. He'd pursed his lips and rubbed his nape and bought some white chocolate and raspberry truffles because he'd noticed Calliope eyeing them wistfully earlier, when she'd been happy and relaxed in his company. He'd stood at the counter, clutching his tiny bag of sweets, until the hair-netted cashier had pointedly asked him if he'd needed anything else, and then he'd retreated to the table with his peace offering and longed for a cigarette.
He'd been about to bolt when the bell above the door had jingled and anounced Calliope, who'd clutched a bag of her own, a doughy lump of plastic that had sagged with the weight of its contents. She'd sat across from him and dropped the bag into the center of the table, a hunter presenting her kill. The mouth of the bag had opened like a slack, dead gullet to reveal a book.
"I'm sorry, Richard," she'd said without preamble, and he'd stared at her, sure she was going to follow that up with, But I've decided I don't want to go to Berlin with you. Instead, she'd said, "That was an utterly moronic, thoughtless thing for me to say, and I didn't mean to hurt you."
He'd known he should say something, perhaps graciously accept her apology or at least acknowledge that he'd heard it, but he'd been too surprised to do anything but goggle. This had been the last thing he'd expected; this was not how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to yell and stomp and scream, call him an asshole and throw her cold chocolate dregs at him, perhaps even beat him with her book until her anger was spent or sated, though she might have considered the book too valuable to waste on him. He was the one who apologized, who showed his belly and said the magic words just to make the screaming stop.
"I've never done this before." She'd tugged fitfully on the fabric of her skirt and worried her bottom lip with her teeth. "Every relationship, whatever its stripe, is different. It's a dance, and I haven't learned the steps to this one yet. I was bound to step on toes. I just...well, I thought I was more graceful than that."
"Never done what before? Apologized or been involved with a rock star?' he'd asked, and winced at how pig-headed that had sounded.
"Well, that either, but I meant been involved with a man who has children. It's usually an immediate deal-breaker."
That had brought him up short. "You've never?"
She'd shaken her head. "I've no desire to be a mother, not even a mother by proxy. My life is mine to share with whom I choose, and I choose to share it with only one. Children make too many relentless demands upon the finite resources of the human heart and too often kill the love that made them. They're parasites unaware of their malignancy. I'm not saying I wouldn't save them from a burning classroom if duty demanded it, but I refuse to relegate myself or my lover to second place in the emotional hierarchy of human need just so the little smirking ingrates can banish me to the nursing home once they've thoroughly used me up. I'm not so noble as that."
"So why didn't you walk away when you found out I had children?"
"If they'd been any younger, I would have done," she'd admitted flatly. "But at that age, they're champing at the bit to establish themselves, so I thought perhaps there might be a chance for me to know you, might be space in your life," she'd explained diffidently. She'd thought for a moment and turned the empty cup in slow, rolling circles between her palms. "It's-please don't take offense to this analogy, Richard, but...you're like a golden retriever."
He'd blinked and waited, utterly nonplussed by the comparision. "I've never heard that one before."
She'd flushed. "I know. It's-" She'd grimaced. "But you are. You might not know where you're going, but damn, do you love getting there. You jump into life and wallow in it. It's all over you." She'd eyed his hair and the black varnish on his nails. "You've got an opinion on everything, even if it changes with the hour, and you're not afraid to put it out there. You are who you are, even if you're not sure who that is. And you might not know everything, but what you know, you know." She'd thrown up her hands and huffed in frustration. "Gah. I probably sound like a gabbling lunatic or one of those patchouli-soaked waifs down in the Haight-Ashbury, but I know how I feel in your company..." She'd trailed off and sought refuge in her empty cup.
He had been, for one of the few moments in his life, speechless. Many had noted his mercurial nature, but none had painted it in such a positive light. It had been a foible to be tolerated grudgingly or suffered silently in exchange for his company or his money or a night in his bed, not a virtue to be celebrated and savored. He had been a bother and a pest and a nuisance and an evil necessary for the survival of Rammstein, that beloved patchwork child that had grown greater than the ragged sum of her parts. He had never been...a golden retriever.
How do you feel in my company? he'd wondered, but he'd said, "So you were attracted because you wanted a dog?" He'd grinned to put her at ease, but his belly had been fluttering anxiously, and he would have gladly given his right testicle for one drag on a cigarette.
"No, I was attracted by your eyes and your accent and your ass. I'm only human. I stayed because of what I found behind it. I never thought I'd see you again after that first meeting at the coffeehouse; I figured it was destined to be one of those chance meetings that make you say 'what if' for the rest of your life, like brushing against an angel's wings in your sleep. It made me a little wistful to think of it like that, but I was glad I took that risk. When you turned up again by the newsstand, I decided to walk with my eyes closed and see what happened."
"Do you regret it?"
"No. If I did, I wouldn't be here."
He'd nudged the bag of white chocolate and raspberry truffles toward her. "For you."
"Richard, really." She'd pulled the bag towards herself, opened the neatly-creased flap, and peered inside. "Was I that obvious?" she'd murmured into the bag, and her voice had been a sonorous muffle, as though she'd tumbled headlong into a well.
He'd chuckled. "Yes. And it's the least I can do for the woman who called me a dog and meant it as a compliment."
He'd reached across the table and captured her hand in his, interlaced her long, white fingers with his strong, callused ones. She'd given him a soft smile and squeezed his fingers, and there they'd sat, holding hands and watching the passersby scuttle past in sweatshirts and Birkenstocks and shades, bluejeans and baseball caps, stocking caps and frilled Oggs. Calliope had laughed at the Oggs and then reluctantly admitted that she owned a pair in faux velvet. No fringe, of course. She had standards, and anyway, she only wore them in Fishkill, when she trudged up the hilly, leaf-littered sidewak to the small corner store for a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. Sometimes comfort trumped fashion, she'd sniffed, and then squeezed his hand again.
Who knows how long they might have lingered there were it not for his addiction to nicotine, his black-lipped mistress? Need had driven him outside, where he'd smoked and sidled and stamped like an impatient dray horse and Calliope had waited beside him with her plastic bag in hand, dutifully ignoring the acrid stink of cigarette smoke that had drifted past.
He'd wanted to stroll along the beach, but the fickle San Francisco weather had turned, and a cutting wind had blown in from the west, too sharp for Calliope even with the help of a spare sportcoat he'd kept in the backseat. So they'd driven to a scenic overlook and parked instead, turned off the ignition and watched the surf pound the rocks. It had looked pristine from that vantage point, unsullied by dirty needles and used condoms and the severed tongue of hot-pink sandal thongs, He'd turned the radio on low, a low murmur that seeped into the bones like late-summer warmth, and rolled down the window to let the smoke from his cigarettes escape.
Calliope had retrieved his spare sportcoat from the backseat and swaddled herself in it. It had been tailored to him, and thus, had swallowed her up, with her head poking through the enormous collar and the hem brushing the tops of her thighs. It had been an absurd, surreal, and glorious sight that had knotted his throat and lightened his bones, and he'd had to grip the steering wheel and his smoldering cigarette to keep from leaning over the center console and kissing her like a witless sixteen-year-old boy.
They'd watched the ocean breathe, and he'd listened to the radio and the tourists parked on either side of them, and Calliope had reached into the yawping, slack mouth of her plastic bag and drawn out her book and the bag of sweets. She'd buried her head in the former before the cover was fully open, and she'd absently worried the ribbon of the latter with absent, dreaming fingers. He'd smoked and watched her read, watched her eyes narrow with concentration, the skin around her eyes giving beneath the skittering patter of crows' feet, watched her suck the tip of her index finger between her teeth while her eyes followed the tangled thread of words across the page. She'd been lovely there in the seat, snow and fire against the black expanse of the passenger seat, curled in on herself and temporarily lost to him as she'd ventured into the deep, dark heart of the forest in bare feet. The sun had slanted through the tinted window, dimmed but not defeated, and settled over her nape like a logy-eyed cat, all golden light and lazy impudence. He'd been tempted to reach out and stroke the soft flesh there, dip his fingertips into the warmth, but he hadn't wanted to spook her, so he'd settled back into his seat and let the salt air and peace settle over him.
The cars around them had come and gone with the tides, and when he'd bothered to focus on the movement beyond the windoes, he'd seen pot-bellied fathers in sweatshirts and flannels and khaki pants two sizes too small and mothers in floppy, wide-brimmed hats and drugstore shades and lipstick the color of a grandmother's kiss. Sometimes he'd seen sturdy-legged children scampering around the cars like restless pups, clambering onto bumpers and kicking sand-grimed tires and hanging from the pay-to-use binoculars, heretics in the thumbscrews. He'd caught glimpses of the occasional teenager hunkered in the backseat like the shameful family secret, head bent and ears plugged with earbuds and improbably dexterous thumbs flying over the minute keypad of their cellphone. None of them had noticed him, and he'd been glad of it, glad to be free of his stifling second skin.
A brush against his slack hand, and Calliope had handed him a square of white chocolate. He'd eaten it slowly, savoring the rich creaminess on his tongue, the sudden lave of raspberry on his nicotine-deadened tastebuds. He hadn't chewed it, but had simply let it melt on his tongue and teeth, had rolled it from cheek to cheek and scraped it from the roof of his mouth. He'd rolled his head on the loose stem of his neck to look at Calliope and seen that she was eating her square in thoughtful, chaste little nibbles. He'd wondered if her fingers would be smudged with white chocolate, and if they would taste of raspberries if he kissed them.
The thought had warmed his blood, but he hadn't acted on it. He'd relished the opportunity to simply be, without a tongue in his ear and a hand on his cock, without the expectation of wine and roses and sweat-slicked contortions atop silk sheets. He would not have denied Calliope these things had she asked for them--even then, his feet had been sliding inexorably towards the crumbling precipice and the churning black waters below--but that she had not asked for them had soothed something hot and sharp and gnawing inside his chest, silenced the feeble, quavering voice of doubt that insisted she saw only his car and his bulging billfold. He'd been at ease there in the car with Calliope's chocolate on his tongue, safe and torpid and settled, as though all the inhabitants of his head had quietly slipped away, returned to their masters or gone to torment another. He'd closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and a knot inside his chest had loosened. He'd felt the ebb and flow of the tides in his veins, felt the ocean slip inside to smooth his rumpled soul with its salt-kissed, kelp-stranded fingers.
Calliope had touched him, of course, but only to rest her cool fingers against his nape and tickle the fine hairs there, and to press a raspberry-scented kiss to the corner of his mouth. He'd turned into the kiss blindly, instinctively, eyes still closed and breathing deep and easy. There was nowhere and no one he needed to be, only Calliope and the car and the soothing rumble of the ocean. He'd pressed his forehead to her temple and slipped an arm around her neck, and them he'd breathed her in and lost himself to the unceasing rhythm of the waves.