In the Headlights of an '87 Buick

Hey everyone, long time since I used this thing, I've been working on stories and well I just thought that I'd show you one of em. This one is called In the Headlights of an '87 Buick. This isn't the complete story, though I'll post the rest of it maybe tomorrow, or the day after. I did submit this one to a mag, they said no, oh well, one of many rejections I'm apt to have it I want to be a writer. Enjoy ladies and gentlemen.

In the Headlights of an '87 Buick
By: Jason Inglis

It was twilight; the sun was a bold orb and washed the neighbourhood in a bright orange. Red, blue and purple clouds blanketed the sky and the shadows of trees wrapped around buildings like fingers, trying to grasp and hold the
city in darkness. This would be the perfect time to take her out into the country, he thought. The mid-July day had been so hot that it melted candles in the apartment, and it wasn’t going to get any cooler in the evening. Guy Lapointe’s t-shirt clung to the heavy layer of sweat on his back. He looked out of his living room window anxiously, checking his cell phone every five minutes, just in case he didn’t hear it chime and missed a text message from her.
The sweltering living room consisted of a chair that sat by the window with cigarette burns and beer stains on it. There was a couch in the middle of the room with a fat guy on it; three fans ran at the same time, trying to cool the temperature down to a bearable level. His roommate John sat on the couch wearing nothing but shorts; he said that it was too hot for a shirt today. John was big--he had a belly of rock and arms of stone--and his chest was covered in what looked to be dark coarse fur. Guy often told John that the reason he was so hairy was because he was the shunned offspring of some wookie tribe.
John had a white headset glued to his ear and a videogame controller in his hands. On the television screen in front of him he was playing a shooter game and killing anyone that stepped into his sniper’sscope. Guy saw someone running
across the screen and watched as John led the guy with his crosshairs. There was a bang and the guy fell to the ground in a spray of blood.
“Holy shit, dude!” he cried.
“Pshhh, that ain’t nothin’,” John said laughing.
It was true; Guy had seen John make some really good shots, mastering the controls and all the while slurping a Dr. Pepper and clumsily shoving Cheetos in his mouth. John was paid to play videogames. He was part of a team that competed in tournaments where he would stand on a platform covered in neon lights while slaughtering kids from different teams on 50-foot screens.
Guy checked his phone again and John looked over and snorted at him.
“Dude, relax. She said she’d text you before coming over, so she’ll fuckin’ text you,” John said.
“Yeah I know, but she hasn’t texted me all day. I sent her a message this morning and nothing. She always takes forever to respond.”
“Dude,” John said looking at the television set and picking off another unfortunate soul online. “Like I said,
relax. You’re acting like a lost little puppy right now.” He got onto his knees and brought his hands to his chest,
bent them downward at the wrists, and panted like a dog. “Hey, when are you coming back, huh? Huh? Can I come with you? HUH? HUH? Girls don’t want that shit man.”
Guy laughed. How would you know what girls want? All you do is play videogames all day long and smoke weed and drink every night, he thought, but would never say.
“Okay, I get it . . . but I think I’m starting to like her,” Guy said, not able to look his friend in the eye.
“You’ve only been out on one date, and that was to a movie, and she had to go home right after. Dude, I’m going to say it again: relax.” Then John’s nose wrinkled into a snarl. “FUCK ME!” he screamed as a little kid with shaggy hair somewhere in Edmonton, Alberta, picked him off.

*

Often he found his thoughts wander to the night when they first met. He was out with John and a couple of friends at a bar doing a pub quiz, one where if you answer all the questions right you win a pitcher of beer. As they walked
into their drinking hole, a drunken girl staggered by with a pitcher and four pint glasses. She sat at a table with four other girls shrieking laughter. John looked over and tipped a chubby blonde girl a wink.
The bar was a maze of people, and Guy found himself doing crazy dance moves just to get by them all. He came upon a tall guy in front of him with tattoos all over his neck and arms. He tried shifting to the right but there was a girl with dreadlocks dancing to Boston’s More Than a Feeling as it rolled out of the speakers. He then tried the left but a bouncer was standing in front of a drunken dude who had a large wet stain down the front of his pants. John put a hand on Guy’s shoulder and stood behind the big guy with the tattoos.
He tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey man,” he said, patting the big guy on the back. “Mind if we get through?”
The big guy broke into a wide smile as soon as he saw that it was John and moved aside and let them through.
They walked out onto the patio; people were crammed into the tables that were sporadically placed around the spacious patio. There was only one seat left, right next to the back door, the door the bouncers threw people out of every once and a while. They grabbed a piece of paper and sat down.
Usually they only won a single pitcher of beer a night, but this night was going exceptionally well. They were three pitchers ahead by the time they decided to leave. John went back to the chubby blonde girl’s house and Guy headed off home.
Guy was walking down the street, his head swimming and his body vibrating. I’m drunk, he thought. No, I’m hammered. “No I jumped into a catapult and hurled myself way past hammered. I’m fucked up,” he said aloud as two girls walked by him giggling. He took his hat off as they passed him and he shouted “Merry Christmas!”.
He didn’t remember the walk being this long. He bobbed and weaved down the sidewalk, then stopped and wobbled at the curb. He made sure there were no cars coming and ran across in a jagged dash. There was a trail that Guy and John used to take home. When he came to the entrance, he stopped scared. He wasn’t scared of monsters or crazy people that might live in there during the night, rather he was afraid of the black that started as the orange of the street light faded. He looked down the path and at the end of the ink black trail he could see a faint orange glow of the street light that waited on the other side. Something inside him screamed this is fucking scary, dude. He laughed at himself for being childish and he entered the trail as darkness consumed him.
As he went deeper into the trail the light on the other end grew brighter and brighter. He raised his hand to his face and wiggled his fingers. He felt the tiny tufts of wind against his face but could see nothing. His heart started to quicken. He heard wind blowing and a twig snapping and jumped. Buddy it was probably just a squirrel or something. To which another replied, Squirrels come out in the day, jerk off, not at night!
“Oh man,” he cried and started to pick up his pace. At the halfway point, the trees grew thinner and the moonlight shone, brightening the path a little bit. Something in his stomach lurched and his mouth began to fill with iron-tasting water; he spat it out as he walked. He placed his hands on his head and tried to will the vomit that threatened to spew forth down. He thought he had it licked, and then he gagged and up came the Kraft Dinner he had for supper. The moonlight bounced off half digested wieners. He puked again, and just when he thought it was over he was
sick once more. He stood up and wiped his mouth with his forearm. As he raised his head, he noticed a shape in the middle of the path—a girl. She stopped in a patch of moonlight with a frown on her face.
“I puked,” he said.
“I saw,” she said, the moon illuminated her golden curls. Her lips were full and her eyes shimmered and twinkled silver in the moonlight. He had never seen silver eyes before. Must be contacts, he thought. He felt his knees unhinge and before he knew it he was looking up at her.
“Oh dear, you’re a mess. How far are you from home?” she asked.
“Five mishushts,” he slurred.
She bent over, grabbed him under the arm pit and hoisted him onto his feet. She was surprisingly strong for such a small girl.
“I won the three pitchers of beer tonight,” he said proudly.
“Yeah and you just puked two of em’ up in that ditch over there.”
“My name is Guy,” he said leaning on her shoulder.
“Gertrude,” she said.
“That’s different, idn’t it?” he asked
She laughed. “You’re wasted, Guy.” the rest was a blur. He remembered her standing with him at the front of the apartment, and he remembered hearing the fluttering of a moth’s wings against the street lamp above. He also remembered John’s voice in his head screaming at him to ask for her number, all that came out of Guy’s mouth was mumbling.
“Canihasf…number?”
She smiled and reached into her purse and produced a pad of paper and a pen, wrote down her digits, gave them to Guy and told him to call her any time.
Guy examined the number for a couple of seconds. “Well good night,” he said and turned around, opened up the apartment door and slipped inside. He was so drunk that he didn’t even notice the blood on her shirt.

*
That was a week ago, and now he waited in anticipation for her to get back to him. His heart was beating quickly in his chest, and he tried to do what John had told him. Relax. But it just wasn’t working; he didn’t like waiting so long to talk to her. His mind pictured her with another guy, kissing and stroking her sweaty body. Then another image emerged, one of her laying face down in a ditch,
pants around the ankles and blood covering her thighs. Maybe she is busy working, a voice inside his head said, blasting away the grotesque image in front of him. Maybe she has classes all day long, because she is working her ass off trying to get through med-school. His mind allowed him to think that was the case.
The sun was half way down. The shadow’s grasp of the city was tightening and still there was no reply from Gertrude. He stood up. The anticipation was like slowly driving a rusty nail into his skull. He grabbed a CD, threw it in the player and pumped up the volume. Robert Plant sang about a Stairway to Heaven out of the speakers of a sleek Sony CD player. The room filled with the sweet sounds of Led Zeppelin and Guy sat back down in his spot.
“Yeah, now we’re talkin’!” John said and began to sing, “When she gets there she knows if the stores are all closed with a word she can get what she came for.”


The sun was a small crescent on the horizon when his cell phone started to chime and dance. He snatched it up off the table beside him, he opened up her text. It read:

I’LL BE TEHRE IN 5,
CAN’T W8 2 C U

“She’s on her way, man. Put a shirt on, put a shirt on dude,” Guy said.
“Why?” John said looking around.
“Because man, it’s her first time meeting you,” Guy said.
“So? Who the fuck cares?”
There was a knock on the door. Guy walked over and turned the handle. There stood Gertrude. She was wearing tight-fitting jeans that were rolled at the ankles revealing Canvas sneakers. The light in the hall glowed off of her golden locks and her eyes were still that striking silver.
“Hey,” he said. “Come on in and meet my roommate.”
She came in and saw John sitting shirtless on the couch, sweat gleaming beneath his chest and shoulder hair. His brow was sweaty and he was focused intently on the videogame he was playing.
“Hey,” she said nervously.
“What’s up?” He bellowed and offered his hand to her, belly swaying as he did so. She shook his sweaty hand and he went back to killing people online. “Die you fucker,
how’d you like that? Sniped you from across the map, biotch!”
”Well,” Guy said. “That’s our cue.”
“Ok, well it was nice meeting you, John,” she said.
“You too, eh!” he said, brow furrowed in concentration.
He led her to his car, an ’87 Buick. The wheels were worn bald, and rusty holes appeared sporadically around the wheel wells. The passenger side mirror was someone’s old personal bathroom one that was duct taped on top of the original broken one beneath. It coughed and protested as Guy turned the key and with a couple more sputters and farts, it started.
“Well I intended to take you out to the country and show you the sunset, it’s amazing out there. But it’s a little late for that,” he said.
“Yeah, class went long today, I’m sorry. We could still go out there if you wanted to,” she ventured shyly.
“Yeah sure, why not?” he drove through the city of Guelph. Darkness had finally taken over. The street lights were lit in protest and the moon shone its white light on the tops of the buildings they passed. He left the city limits and drove down a deserted road. There was a silence for a while; all that could be heard was the noisy engine ‘
of the Buick. As an attempt to distract from the sound he asked, “What are you taking in school?”
“Well I’m majoring in art history and as of late I’m working in the studio a lot,” she said. “I mean, my days are always spent in that studio examining my own work, trying to find out how to make it excellent. I have this show at this gallery coming up. Really nervous about it. They want to feature all of my work. The thing is I am a huge perfectionist. I’ll tear up my work if I think it’s a piece of shit, but yeah.
“Hey, you mind if I smoke?” she said.
“Not at all” he replied. “So an art show, eh? When is it?”
“The beginning of August,” she said, inhaling her cigarette and exhaling the smoke out of her nose, shuttering as her nose stung. “This guy name Michael Dowling who owns this art store saw some of my stuff one day when I was shopping for some paints. He asked if he could look at my portfolio and I told him sure. Long story short, he came to my studio and loved what he saw. He offered to talk to the man in the art gallery about my work and the next thing I knew the phone was ringing and he said I had a show. I didn’t know how to reply, it all happened so fast, and now I’m working my ass off in the studio every day to get it finished.”
“That’s so fucking cool.” The Buick came to a rattling, jolting stop. He parked the car, turned it off, but left the headlights running and got out. She followed suit and got out, as well. He opened the backseat door and picked up a picnic basket and blanket. He walked out into the field lit up by the car’s headlights, unfolded the blanket and laid it upon the fresh grass. Something blocked out the headlights and when he turned around, there she stood silhouetted in front of them. Her silver eyes were the only things that he could distinguish on her. She walked over to him and they both sprawled out on the blanket.
The sky was black velvet. As they lay there listening to the crickets singing in the background, purple and pink streaks of lightening forked across the sky illuminating the tree line and clouds surrounding them. “Well at least we get to see some sort of show from nature, eh?” he said.
“Are we going to be safe here?” She asked.
“I don’t see why not,” Guy said.
She smiled and leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips. His heart belly-flopped in his chest; his skin tightened and the hair on his arms stood on end. She brought a hand to his face. It felt as if it had been buried in snow for days. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. He could feel her cold skin through her clothes.
“Jesus, you’re freezing,” he said
“Well warm me up, Guy.” Her silver eyes screamed Come get me.
He kissed her again, this time hard, and ran a hand slowly up under her shirt to her breasts. His heart beat harder and harder with every inch of cold skin that he explored. He peeled off her shirt and kissed her neck, the icy skin melting with his every breath. She began to breath heavy and thrust her breasts into his face.
A soft rumbling sound of motorcycles echoed in the distance, but the two didn’t notice. They continued caressing under nature’s light show while two men on motorcycles approached them.