Steve 1951—

a main character

the Crow and Quill Asheville, NC

Steve 1951—

Faye texts Mercy, or at least she thinks she does but instead accidentally texts the group chat from Christmas (they always text on Holidays). Ski trips. Cookie recipes. Jokes from the Christmas ‘84 when they all pulled doubles at O’Malleys because they were low-low on the totem pole.

She texts—I can’t sleep. Can you get me something? Or? Tell me where? In her bloaty post menopausal pre-demented bean—bean brain at the the bottom of a bottle of Nottingham Cellars Rose—she’s forgotten that Mercy lives 800 some miles away and can’t just bring her a baggie of valium like she used to.

LONG TIME NO HEAR booms Steve. He hates smart phones but is always the first and last to lob back a reply. Faye imagines he does an UMPH like when she backhands at doubles on Tuesdays at the clay court.

She sends a smiling-crying emoji with praying hands and oops! Shit-shit shit.

Steve doesn’t understand emojis and to send one as a shortcut brings on a WHAT’S YOUR BAG? boomer text which he thinks is funny but no one else does. Steve can’t let a text just rest in peace. He’s gotta follow up and say something.

So in general, all Holiday texts end with something from Steve because they all eventually let the string stop so they can get on with their lives.

The last text was a picture of Steve with his fifth and final wife (so far) Zsa-Zsa and her grandkids. Steve has the same pulled back barbed wire ponytail he’s always had.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MY FAVORITE GALS.

His grimace could be a promo for a Tarantino flick. Reservoir Dogs maybe? Definitely a movie where shootings go on and people quote bible verses off of the back seats of toilets.

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. Ezekial 25:17.

Teeth large and mostly straight, except for the the front two that hug and overlap and buck out a slight bit. Skin leathery from his fishing excursions. Requisite Tommy Bahama shirt—bright orange flowers. Peonies? Magnolias?

Eyes brown–almost black and hooded—sleepy. A Don Carlos cigar clamped between his bearded cheek. Zsa Zsa is perched on his knee dressed in Palm Beach Pastels. She’s a puff pastry confection of frosty platinum and Lily Pulitzer. Steve owns a decent slice of the Florida Keys. She sticks out like a sore thumb. Silk and satin. Leather and lace.

Shit shit shit. Faye is already short on time but now she’s launched a group chat. She gently closes the wedding planner-planner. Snaps the lid of her Mac-top. Scrubs at her eyes and thinks—well it is almost labor day and that’s a holiday isn’t it?

HAVE YOU TRIED GUMMIES?

The wishy washy boat tips and dips. Steve has never tried a gummy—he’s more of a spliff and rum man and he hasn’t slept a good nights sleep since ‘73 or was it ‘72? But his daughter from the first of the wives asked for an investment in her first Cannabis Dispensaries. And that’s paid off in spades. So now he touts pot gummies any chance he gets.

I want to live. I want to give.

Steve is texting from his berth in the charter boat he keeps as a getaway at Caloosa Bay Marina. It’s the first one he bought with ten years of saved up doubles at O’Malleys Beach Bar and also the Vet settlement his scrappy lawyer wrangled. He’s got Agent Orange skin shit and a crushed elbow that stiffs out in a side bend.

He came to the Neil Young not to sleep but to be rocked like a baby. And also to get away from the house where Zsa Zsa is changing out the curtains and fluffing up the pillows.

The tides ebb and flow. His blood feels thick and he tries to remember if he took his heart pills. He pops two children’s chewable aspirins just in case.

He’s been just shy of miserable for the past few months. Bored and creaky. Downright cranky. His knees are stiff and his elbow sometimes feels like he’s raw—dogging it in a sandpaper rubber.

Mercy pipes in with her two cents. Gummies take too long to digest. Faye nods and wonders if she took her Prilosec.

Well I can’t sleep so what the heck? She talks to Mercy year round but also Mercy gets on her last nerve when she’s drinking. Which she always is. And when she drinks she tends to man—splain.

DARN THE TORPEDOS!

Steve used to heckle Faye when she spilled a drink or dropped a tray of wings with a spew of flustered what the hecks and darn the lucks and what the FRICKs? Like most men. Every man. All men. He felt like a buffoon around her and turned into a fifth grader quipped with quotes that meant nothing.

But damn it all to heck. Faye was—is the most beautiful women he’s ever known in person or seen in real life. And he’s known a couple few.

Back in the day Declan only hired ratty girls from the bad side of the I-95 tracks. Heavy eyeliner and shorty shorts. But he couldn’t say no to Faye who was fresh out of her freshman year in her prim pedal pushers and Brigit Bardot lips with those slightly parted teeth. Swingy sun kissed hair. Marylyn Monroe voice raspy and washy and whispery and Mr Presidenty.

Heart of gold.

Sweet as a button with a sex kitten body. Straight laced with a buttoned up spine and not ready for the eff bombs and mothers of fuckers. Steve had wanted to protect her from the get-go.

Faye smiles. She misses Armand so bad her heart tweaks and twists instead of beating. She wants to live and die but mostly sleep. If she could just. Sleep.

She yawns and pours a double glass of Rose.

She thinks of Steve with his Louisville Slugger in the service well—slinging Miami Vices and Rum Runners for the wet tee shirt contest. And that one guy on her first shift with the string greased hair who held up his sausagy fingers in a Vee peace sign and said I’m gonna lick your pussy. And then mimed licking her pussy with his fat fuzzed tongue.

And Faye had frozen with her tray of frozen drinks. And then Steve without missing a beat filled a test tube with 151 rum and popped it in the red rum runner and slammed the scarred bat on the blue tiled bar. Hands gripping and itching to smash in a face or an ear drum.

And the way he hissed through his teeth like a mad rattler. How the greaser’s dick shrunk up into his belly when he saw the killer—killing things in those brown almost black hooded eyes.

Dak To. Tet Offensive.

She texts. Miss you. Love you for Steve. And for Liz and Diana. For the gang and how The Summer of ‘69 played in ‘85 and Faye got her sea legs and Mercy learnt how to not say mother-fuck every other sentence and how Diana practiced and sang Upside Down for Steve under the moony moon night after the late late close.

Boy you turn me. Round and round. Upside Down.

LOVE YINZ TOO. The spliff is spliffing and Steve is back in Pittsburgh. Before the war made him crave Palm Beach pastels. Shoveling sidewalks. Mowing postage stamp yards. Saving his money for malted milkshakes at Tastees Drive in. Diamonds are Forever. Miss Moneypenny.

The Neil Young rock-ah-bye baybeee-es Steve. Caloosa Bay slosh slosh slooshes. He holds a Milk Conch over his one good ear and roars.

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