Song of the Nightingale

It's been a while since I've posted a story. This was one of my few stories that actually had a weird following when I was in college. It was based on a dream that I had. I woke up and wrote it in three hours. Enjoy (Despite the fact that I sounded like a total douche bag just then)!

“Two bodies were found today in Bellevue, California. Officials say they were victims of an apparent murder-suicide. The bodies were identified as…” That’s how the TV reporters back in the City of Angels put it, comfortably sandwiched between the sports and the weather. But I know more of the truth than any anchorperson ever will. The story isn’t that simple and as I learned it never is. I was there when it happened.

The real story starts weeks before, in June, when classes had just ended for the semester. I was on my way out of the city just as summer was making its way into the year. I didn’t know exactly where I was headed, just to a place where ordering a simple cup of coffee didn’t require the ability to know a different language; where life was much simpler. To put it bluntly, my life sucked.

“The grass is always greener on the other side,” my mother always told me. How did she know? As far as I was concerned, that was an answer that I had to find out for myself. That’s what flung me out of college and onto the highway like a worthless scrap of paper carelessly flung in front of a speeding bus.

I had driven far enough out of L.A. so that the skyline had sunk deep beneath the horizon when it happened. Sputtering and struggling, my car finally gave up in the middle of nowhere. There was so much smoke coming from under the hood, I could have used it to signal for help. I had figured a cell phone would be hypocritical in my search for simplicity, rendering me stranded in the middle of the desert. At least I couldn’t see the city from where I was.

I sat there on the side of the road baking for about half an hour when, seemingly out of nowhere, a tow truck had pulled over. It looked like it wasn’t what it was supposed to be, like it wasn’t supposed to be a tow truck but here it was. The truck was old and worn down by the desert like the mighty sphinx of Egypt. Only it was cursed with the backbreaking task of escorting wounded cars to safety. The truck’s most prominent feature was the phrase “Al‘s Automotive” painted on either side in bright emerald paint.

“Ya need help there?” an aged, gruff voice cried from within. It belonged to a rather old, but incredibly large man. On a really good day it looked like he could have reached a height of six-feet-tall. He had wrinkles around his eyes that just over shadowed the bags under them. It looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. His shoulders were broad and flabby, but were masking a somewhat muscular physique. His gut was sloppily packed into his overalls.

“Uh… Um… Yeah, sure,” I stuttered. I was shocked to find anyone else on that abandoned highway.

“Well, hop on in, kid. I’ll take you down to the garage. It isn’t to far from here,” he said as he reached over to open the passenger side door of his truck. He jumped out and proceeded to hitch my car onto the back.

“By they way, my name’s Al,” he told me as he put his halfway smoked guitar back in his mouth to shake my hand.

“I’m Lenny.”

“Where ya headed, Lenny?”

“Actually, I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Ok then,” Al responded knowing not to take it any further, “Where’d ya come from?”

“A couple of miles east of here, in the middle of the city, L.A. I attend-,” I paused for a second, “-attended college there,” I said, sensing he was an honest man. He pulled the truck over, off of the main highway onto a dusty road. It was as if people who didn’t know if they were coming or going were the ones who built it.

“I used to live in the city myself, up in the hills. But I figured what would I want to live there for… with all the frustration of traffic, all the rude people, and for what? Just to make a decent buck or two?” There was a certain twinkle in his eye when he said that, one I hadn’t noticed before. What he said sounded familiar.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, “I mean I could have been a big shot and live the high life. I had the shot and chose not to take it. I could have been a king… Well at least like a duke in a penthouse suite, but I got married and I didn’t want to raise kids in a place like that. I grew up in a place like that and I don’t want my kids to be like me.”

Al paused after he said that and when he did the bags under his eyes seemed to swell. He then continued ranting on and on about the complications of city life for forty-five minutes. I hung on every word looking at Al the way the wandering Hebrews looked at Moses, the one who led me out of the desert and into a new life. However, the more I looked at Al, I knew that I had seen him before. He reminded me of my father, but he wasn’t my dad.

Al took me to a place called Bellevue, nestled comfortably in the middle of the desert. It looked like a bunch of sandcastles too far for the tide to reach. It was a dusty town where the buildings looked like cubic sand dunes with windows and doors built into them. The roads within the town were jagged strips of weathered asphalt lightly coated with dust.

There was one building however that seemed to stand out. It wasn’t the city hall or the town courthouse or anything like that. It was a huge concrete building at least three times bigger than any of the other buildings I saw entering Bellevue. It looked like it could have been important at one pint in the town’s history but was worn away by time. It had dilapidated into a pale turquoise color with the newest thin on it being the big emerald sign that read “Al’s Automotive” the way it did on the tow truck. The only difference was that it had an arrow pointing to a caricature of the man himself. It just made him look even more familiar.

The rest of the background seemed to blend into the background like tumbleweed. As I looked around at the seeming ghost town around me, I noticed that its citizens were there but not exactly there. Occasionally, they scurried from one building to the next like lizards running in search of some shade. Their lethargic and quiet manner made it easy for them to be overlooked like the whispering winds of the desert.

I walked around the garage and found that there was one other building that didn’t look like it belonged. It was an incredibly large house. Evenly scattered all over the structure were areas where off-white paint should have been. The wood was aged and looked as if it were trying to rebuild itself from the ground up, almost as if it were trying to stand out. The roof was made of neatly arranged Spanish tiles, which were a dull but strangely beautiful red color. The porch was a dull gray and hiding behind several cacti, making the house looked like it was trapped in a green net. I grew curious and wanted to check out the house but Al called me back as I started to walk towards it.

“Do you need to get where you need to get going soon? ‘Cuz it ain’t gonna happen,” Al yelled out as he lifted the hood of my car. He scoffed and then chuckled in disbelief of whatever he found under there.

“No, I’m in no hurry,” I answered, more preoccupied with the rest of the town. I thought I had found my simple life.

As Al proceeded to put my car in his garage I saw how his hair stood on his head like a crown he had found in the trash. He moved with the strength and grace of an aging lion. His light blue jump suit had scattered stains of grease and dirt on it like the mat on a boxing ring after a bloody bout. The fat and expensive looking Cuban he was smoking and the shimmering golden ring on his pinky stuck out of his attire the way his shop did from the rest of the town.

I wanted to explore the town but as soon as I got up it had just occurred to me. I hadn’t been to the bathroom in over three hours; something I quickly became aware of as soon as I tried to move. I went and asked Al, who was already working diligently on my car, where the bathroom was. He waved his hand in some ambiguous direction. I guess I was on my own. There were two doors at the wall he was “pointing” to. I chose the one on the right and pushed the door open slowly. On the wall I saw a younger picture of Al dressed in a nice suit. He was with some other guy in the picture I didn’t know but they both were smiling and had their fists up as if they were ready to box each other.

“Hey, kid. It’s the other door,” he yelled out. Apparently that was not the bathroom. It still made me wonder, who is Al? Where have I seen him before?

I went out to see the rest of that town that I was thinking of making my new home. At the center of the town there was a small church with a tall, thin steeple. It looked like a giant hand trying to make its way out of the ground. Sand was blowing into the belfry, making small tinny noises almost as if it were raining aluminum foil. The building didn’t stand out like the garage or that large house, but it would catch your eye. From where I stood, it seemed that the church was the only spot in town where that house and Al’s garage looked like it belonged in Bellevue. From anywhere else, the structures looked out of place.

The roads spread outwardly from the church like spokes on a bicycle wheel. The business area circled the church while the residential lied just behind that. There were only five roads in Bellevue making the town look like a star from a bird’s eye view. The further down a road I went, the more mundane the houses became. Each one progressively more uniform than the last. Soon after, I didn’t know if I was walking down a straight line or in circles.

Just when I thought I had seen someone to meet, they would scamper into their houses and quickly close their curtains. Apparently, Al was not the only one in town with something to hide.

I began to think about what kind of life I could start in this humble town. I could always learn about cars and get a job at the garage with Al. After all, I had all the time in the world to learn the ins and outs of cars. I thought the town was perfect. It was barely there. It was vague, like a dream I once had as a child, a dream I could barely remember and had forgotten whether I wanted to or not.

It was so quiet in Bellevue you could actually hear the town aging. When I was heading towards the garage I heard the wind whistling in an odd fashion, very unnaturally. The whistling began to sound like weeping in the distance and it eventually coincided with a human voice.

It sounded like someone was humming Amazing Grace. Who was it? It sounded like it was directly behind me, so I turned around. Nobody was there. The humming still continued. It felt like I was interrupting someone’s funeral. I turned around again and still there was nothing there except the dust kicked up by the wind. Confused, I just turned around to go back to the garage. As soon as I turned back, a little old lady stood there as if she had been there all along.

She was a small, skinny woman with the face and hands of a skeleton. She wore black all over and even though we were in the desert she still seemed to be freezing. She slowly made her way towards me, and I stood there petrified, screaming without making a sound. She walked as if she were blind. The closer she came to me I saw that her eyes were of a pale gray and her hair an icy silver. The old lady placed her cold bony hands on my face. Just as I was about to run away, she opened her mouth and spoke an eerie message.

“Two stars have fallen from the sky into the sand,” she whispered in a tired raspy voice, “and you are here to bring them back to the heavens where they belong.”
I walked away slowly and couldn’t take my eyes off of her; the way people just have to look at a car accident. Just then another voice came from behind me, “Don’t scare the boy, Agnes.” I blinked and the old woman disappeared as quickly as she came.

I turned around and saw another woman, much younger than Agnes but still a little older than me. She was dressed in a beautiful off-white dress and looked like an angel who had been wandering the desert and found herself in the middle of Bellevue. She had long chocolate colored hair that came to just beneath her shoulders. She had a few wrinkles by her brown eyes, accented at that moment by her smile. It took the attention away from the hidden bulges beneath them. But all that was trivial compared to how here eyes twinkled and sparkled like the gold ring that Al had on his finger.

“You’re new here, aren’t you? I haven’t seen you around.”

“Well,” I admit I wasn’t as suave as I wanted to be, “my car broke down and this was the nearest place and…”

“Welcome to Bellevue,” she said, smiling softly, “ I apologize for Agnes. She claims to be the town soothsayer.”

I stood there unusually attracted to her, not paying attention to the words coming out of that mouth whose smile made me freeze the way my high school crushes did.

“A soothsayer… like a psychic,” she explained.

“Hmm? Oh yeah… I know, I knew that,” I said in my charming stutter.

“My name’s Sarah, Sarah Gale,” she said, extending her hand out to me.

“I’m Lenny, I kind of need a place to stay for the night. Do you happen to know where I can find one?”

“You can stay at my house. I live with my sister, but she’s in Baltimore right now visiting our mother.”

“I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“No trouble, I live in what used to be a boarding house. It was real famous until they moved the highway. It gets kind of scary all alone at night and it would be lovely to have a nice, young man like you to keep me company,” she said as she reached out to touch my arm flirtatiously. She seemed to be in her forties, a little more than twenty years older than I was. There was something about her that was incredibly, indescribably attractive. It wasn’t just the way she looked that made her beautiful, but something in her smile I couldn’t explain.

“Well, I guess I can stay there for now.”

Sarah took me straight to her house. It was the large one that didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the town. From the inside it looked twice as big. Sarah took me up into a cozy room on the second floor where I could practically see the entire town, but strangely Al’s shop was the first thing you could see from the living room window.

“My room is downstairs if you need anything,” she said. Sarah reminded me of an angel again as she glided outside of my room. She walked gracefully down the stairs as if she were a model posing for a photograph.

I began to unpack and could feel my arms getting heavier and heavier from lifting my bags up the flight of stairs. Unfortunately, my eyelids were not following suit.

“How can I get to sleep?” I thought to myself. When I opened the closet, I saw an old transistor radio and thought that some music would be nice and soothing. I plugged in the radio and somehow found a station worth listening to. I wasn’t sure what the station was called. All I knew was that all it played was slow, soft music. I heard the song My Funny Valentine being played on it, and I turned it up a bit higher so that it filled the room with the melancholy melody. Eventually, I noticed that the music seemed to be in a bit more stereo than I thought this radio was capable of. I turned the radio off, and the singing still continued. The voice was familiar and it came from down the hall.

“Why did you turn that radio off? I don’t mind.” She looked at me with those wanton eyes and I stood there awe-struck.

“Y-Y-You’re the Nightingale,” I nervously uttered.

“I guess my little secret is out. How do you know about that?”

“My friends and I love all that old-time music. When we graduated from high school, we went down to the Cobalt Club. You were there that night, and you sang My Funny Valentine. And I’m a bit embarrassed to mention this but, I’ve had a crush on you ever since.”

“Well,” she softly replied, “I guess the tables have turned, handsome.”

She gave me a wink and invited me to come downstairs for a little supper by candlelight. Sarah told me that she was going to show me around the town the next day. I, of course, was not paying attention because her foot-play was a bit of a distraction.

“So, Sarah, how did a famous jazz singer land in a place like Bellevue?” I asked.

“I was being a good wife. You know, trusting my husband, not asking too many questions,” she said trying to tell me with her eyes to do the same.

“You’re married?” I asked.

“I’ve been meaning to get out of here but,” she continued obviously trying to avoid the question, “I’m stuck. I don’t have any money, and I don’t know how to drive. Even if I did, I wouldn’t have a car to drive away in.” Her leg continued to run slowly up the side of my leg.

I was about to ask her about her husband again, but I began to get a bit more involved with her aggressive advances. Sarah moved closer towards me and she put her hand on my leg. Nervously, I put my hand on her hip and looked deeply into her brown eyes. She took her hand away from my leg and touched my face gently. She put her other hand on my chest and she leaned in to kiss me softly on the lips. Sarah had begun to unbutton my shirt, and as I leaned in again for another kiss she turned her head to blow out the candle. Instead I began to kiss her neck and she took my hand and led me through the dark into her bedroom, a few feet away.

I woke up in the middle of the night and lied there beside Sarah. We were in each other’s arms and all I could focus on was how peaceful she looked, asleep next to me. Her heart beat next to mine and it was rhythmically accompanied by her breathing, which eventually put me back to sleep.

Early the next day, we started our official tour of Bellevue with the church in the center of town. It was practically in front of the house. Sarah began to walk solemnly and slowly around the church as if the pope was staying there for the night.

“I got married here,” she said in a deadpan voice. “I think of my husband every time I see this place. He’s died years ago, ” She then mumbled something to herself.

Sarah wrapped her arms around me as if she were anticipating falling off a cliff. She held my hand tight and I looked up at the tall structure. With one finger she tickled the side of my neck and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Not knowing what to do I returned the favor on her lips.
Then once more out of thin air Agnes, the blind woman, appeared in front of Sarah and me. Of course, I was scared out of my wits but I tried not to show it.

“Don’t play with fire, boy,” she said pointing her finger at me, “You’re going to get burned like the curious moth that drew too closely to the flame. The light may be pretty, but it’s not meant for you to go towards.”

She walked away slowly this time as if she had made the effort to come to the church just to tell me that. I still didn’t know what she was talking about. Sarah looked as if she had gone through this before with Agnes. Still, her eyebrows furrowed just a bit as if she were insulted by the words.

Sarah pulled my attention away from Agnes and showed me the rest of the town. Well, she tried to anyway. She showed me the local businesses and attempted to introduce me to the citizens of Bellevue. However, it seemed the locals didn’t take too kindly to strangers, and it even seemed as if they gave Sarah the cold shoulder. As soon as we entered a shop, the people would scurry like rats into some hiding place.

As my tour of Bellevue came to an end, I realized Sarah had not given me the scoop on Al’s garage. There were still questions I needed answered. Sarah stopped when the turquoise building came into sight. She stopped and stared deeply at the building as if she had been hypnotized.

“You know what Lenny? I have to go and call my sister in Baltimore and see how she’s doing,” she hastily said as she scurried away from the garage, “I’ll meet you back there okay?”

I responded by smiling and waving my hand as I started to walk towards Al’s place. I wanted to see how my car was doing, not that I was planning to leave Bellevue anytime soon. Al wasn’t working on my car when I got there. Instead, I found the door to that other room opened. The light was on. I walked in and I saw him inside drinking a beer. From the look of the empty bottles on the floor, he had drunk a few.

“Hey kid, come on in. I wanna show you somethin’,” he said as he wiped away the obvious tears in his eyes. I stepped inside and he shut the door and on the back of it were frames of several newspaper clippings, each of which had to do with something about a “sandman” and his accomplishments.

“Al ‘the Sandman’ Santino… the boxer? You’re him?” I asked.

“The one and only, Lenny,” he said to me in a broken voice. The smell of alcohol and tobacco filled the room every time he spoke.

“Weren’t you supposed to get a title shot against LaMotta?”

“Yea, but somethin’ came up.”

“Like what?”

“I fell in love, kid. It figures that cupid was the only guy to ever knock me off of my feet,” he took another swig of beer to his lips and he continued to talk about what could have been. I took a crate from the garage and brought it inside to sit on. I slouched down in front of him like a little leaguer about to get a pep talk from the coach.

“I wanted to live my life with this beautiful girl, so I gave up a shot at a belt. It was a $50,000 purse, the largest I ever got offered. I was so cocky then and so young, I could have been great. Who knows though, right? After all, I did make Sugar Ray Robinson look like a bum before he was called ‘Sugar.’ I don’t know if I would have gotten past round 2, now that I look at it,” he put his hand on my shoulder and stuck his chin out. His other arm was in front of him and he looked into space. With his best attempt at an impression of Brando he uttered, “I coulda been a contender. I coulda been a somebody.”

“But you got married? So what? Why couldn’t you have it all?” I asked. He just answered with a nod and I could tell he was trying desperately to hold back tears, but the alcohol wouldn’t let him.

“When I was 20, I got offered a $400 purse, which was a lot of money in those days,” he said as he took another swig of beer, “There was this girl I had been in love with since we was in kindergarten. All of a sudden, I caught her attention when she heard how much I was offered.”

“Did she take your money?”

“Not exactly. I, being the idiot I was, spent it all on her. I bought her this beautiful fur stole. It was mink. When she found out I was out of money and wasn’t being offered anything anytime soon…”

“She left you because you didn’t have any money?”

“I had money, but I guess it wasn’t enough for her. I eventually got over her and met an angel a few years later. She was still in high school and I was in my thirties. She was barely eighteen when we got married. We had a birthday party and wedding reception on the same night. Anyway, I didn’t want to go through that pain again, so I moved here to lead simple life.”

“So what’s wrong? Shouldn’t you be happy with this life, no worries, no grieves?”

“That’s what I thought. Then she just up and left me. I mean she’s still here with me but not with me. But who am I kidding? It’s all my fault.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t her fault that I don’t have any pictures of her around here. It wasn’t her fault that I have to be drunk to tell her how much I love her. And it was definitely not her fault that I hit her that one time… God, I felt-- feel horrible,” Al explained. Now, he didn’t even try to hold back the tears.

“Take it from me, kid. The words ‘simple’ and ‘life’ are like putting you and a heavyweight in the same ring. It seems tempting to put your money on, but you’re going to lose every time. A simple life don’t exist, Lenny.”

I stood there silently as I saw him break down as easily as my car had done a few days ago. The room smelled of tobacco and alcohol, musty from the cigars in the ashtray in the corner. I didn’t know how to react. It was like watching Superman run away at the sight of danger. It didn’t make any sense. Al stopped crying long enough to pull something out of his overalls. It looked like a picture, and when he looked at it, he smiled and chuckled as if he were holding a newborn baby.

“Would you like to see a picture of my wife?” he asked. I nodded as he handed me the crumpled piece of paper.

As I held that piece of paper in my hand I saw two familiar faces staring happily back at me. One of them was a handsome, young man who had the face of a fighter. It was Al, and neatly packed underneath a tuxedo was the genesis of what was to become his gut. The other face in the picture was that of a beautiful, much younger woman dressed in a white gown. She smiled like an angel, just the way she had when I’d met her a few days ago. I stared in disbelief to find out that Sarah was his wife.

“Um, Al? How long is it going to be for my car to be fixed,” I asked awkwardly interrupting the silence. I wanted to get off the subject, but he didn’t answer. Al was too lost in the picture, practically unaware of the posters and newspaper clippings around him, unaware of the rest of the world.

“Maybe we can resume this conversation tomorrow? I have to go check something, okay?” I still got no answer, just his heavy breathing that was steadily working its way into another crying fit.

I went back to the boarding house and just stayed there until I could figure out what to do. I didn’t know whether I was going to stay or leave. And if I left, then what would become of this couple? If I stayed, I’d just be another wedge driving them further apart. The next day, I spent the whole day in the bedroom trying to make my decision. It was raining lightly outside and I can hear the droplets make there way into the belfry. This time it sounded like chimes from heaven. By sunset, I had packed all my things and made my decision. I was going to leave town and go back to the city. I didn’t belong in Bellevue, but first I had something to do.

“Sarah, can I talk to you for a second?” I asked as I knocked on her bedroom door. I walked in and there she was, wearing white as usual, and lying on one side of her bed, inviting me to sit by her.

“Lenny, Why are you all dressed up?” she said as if she had no care in the world.

“Sarah, I got to go. I got to get out of this town.”

“But I thought you liked it here,” she said as she sprang out of her bed.

“I do, but… I know about Al… your husband,” I said. She reacted by turning around and saying nothing. She looked out the window. “I thought you told me your husband was dead.”

“He is dead… to me… He might as well be.”

“I know the whole story between you two. He told me everything.”

“Al told you everything? Bet he told you that he doesn’t even know why I left him there in that garage. I suppose he said it was my fault.”

“Actually he said everything was his fault.”

“He was drunk wasn’t he? You’re the only guy I know that can’t see through a mechanic’s smile,” she commented, “Al never cared for me, or for what I wanted. He thought he did, but… I wanted to stay in the city. I wanted to be around our friends and family. I wanted him to realize his dreams and work for it. He at least could have said the words ‘I love you’ without the smell of brandy or scotch or beer on his breath. Just like him to runaway when things get the least bit complicated.”

She turned around and the smile on her face had melted away.

“Do you know what it was like living with him?” Anger masked her face filled with pain and anguish. She looked as if she had been punched in the stomach. “He couldn’t please a woman if he had a gun to his head. Sex to Al was like money in a bank. He stuck it in, took it out, and over time he’d lost interest.”

She chuckled a fake chuckle and walked towards me. I didn’t know what to do, I was helpless again, and trying to help a crumbling soul get its pieces back together.

“Everything’s going to be okay between you two. It has to. I mean why else haven’t either of you left Bellevue?” I asked her. She just came over and hugged me. Sarah began to hum My Funny Valentine and we danced slowly as we embraced each other. I was hesitant, but I felt obligated to stay for them even for just a little while more.

“I have a secret,” she whispered in my ear, “The reason I don’t leave is because I still love Al. I don’t want to leave him. You know what? I wanted to sleep in this room because of the view.” She pointed out of the window and the only two structures you could see were Al’s garage and the church. I gave her a kiss on the cheek and then on the lips, because I knew that this relationship, this fling was over as it was meant to be. It was a goodbye kiss. She leaned her head on my shoulder and I could feel a warm tear roll down her cheek onto my neck.

Just then, a window shattered, startling the two of us. A hand black with grease reached into the room to open the window. It was Al, whose eyes were red with tears and alcohol and green with jealously. He staggered as he climbed through the window, a shadow of a man who really wasn’t there.

“Sarah, why don’t you stop this foolishness?” he slurred.

“Al, you’re drunk. I’ll talk to you when you sober up in the morning,” she said as if they had gone through this before.

“And you…” he yelled as he was pointing in my direction. Al looked surprised to find me in that room and yet I can tell that I was the one he was looking for. He ran over to me and started throwing punches. Al was still pretty powerful for a boxer who had been out of the ring since the 60’s. Finally, one actually landed on my chin and another on my gut. I landed with a thud onto the floor, stumbling to the other side of the room. I could barely get up, but I could still see what was going on. I was powerless and horrified at the same time.

Al began crying. He fell to his knees and resembled a lost child trying to find his mother. His bawling echoed through the house. Al turned around and saw Sarah, who looked like an angel again, standing by the window. Her arms were outstretched towards Al, who crawled to her and gave her a tight embrace around the hips as he cried his tears on her dress. Sarah began to sing a soft lullaby. I could barely see tears rolling down her cheeks. The song Heaven calmed the Sandman like a little child. Al turned towards me, his back towards Sarah, and uttered something I couldn’t understand. His eyes seemed to say that he was sorry for what he did and something he was about to do.

Al started crying harder trying to keep up with the pitter-patter of raindrops outside, which started to fall harder. I still lay on the floor like a wounded rabbit doing nothing but watching in disbelief. To my horror, Al took out a single shot .22 pistol that Sarah could not see. I tried to shout to her but I couldn’t even grunt in pain. He turned around, kneeling on the floor so that he faced me. Sarah stood behind him placing her hands on his shoulders sliding them down trying to hug him.

Al’s tears cascaded downs his face like the rain off a clean window. He began blabbering drunkenly in a language that only broken hearts could understand.

“Ahhh! Baww Blloodd Ooaww!” Al yelled out.

He then practically swallowed the entire pistol, holding it with his shivering hand. As if in slow motion, Al pulled the trigger and the blast drilled a hole right through his head. Sarah stood there shocked, her white dress, covered in Al’s blood. Al’s body hit the floor, and Sarah’s shortly followed. I couldn’t see what happened, I crawled over to the both of them and discovered that the barrel was so deep in Al’s mouth that it went right through Al and Sarah.

I sat there in shock at the whole ordeal, but noticed an eerie calm. The sky began to clear just enough for some sunlight to come in. Raindrops from the cross on the steeple sparkled, and the reflection of the sun shone like stars in the heavens. And the green sign on Al’s garage was dulled, overshadowed by the sunset. And as I looked at the couple lying down besides me, they seemed happy. The way they’d fallen into each other’s arms they looked as if they were smiling and, for the first time in a long time, happy. I could still strangely hear Sarah’s melodic singing. I don’t remember much of what happened after that (what with all the press and police) until I went to the garage the next day and found my car as good as new. A familiar voice came to me.

“Did you do what you came to do?” Agnes the soothsayer asked me.

“I think so, Agnes… I think so,” I answered with a half-smile on my face.

I came back the next summer to visit Al and Sarah at the Bellevue cemetery. The people in the town were a lot more outgoing than they used to be. They had grown to be that way since the murder of two celebrities had brought them so much publicity. I think I liked it better when they scurried like rats and not when they dealt like lawyers.

I brought two roses, one for the each of them. I always put one in the shop and one in the boarding house. Agnes, however, was waiting there to remind me that both roses belong in front of the church, to remember them when they were both happy together. Agnes and I had lunch at the diner together and she walked towards the jukebox. She dropped in a dime and played My Funny Valentine.

“You have found what you have been looking for young man?” Agnes asked me, “Have you found your simple life?”

“There’s no such thing, Agnes,” I said as I smiled at her, “but I found a new life back in the city, which is more than I could have asked for.”

The End