Feather Figure

Peacock Feather Bar. The corner of Wells and Ruskat Streets in the heart of the windy city. It was her favorite hangout, the place she went to forget things, be around the people she loved. Her name was Elra Voonique, 34 years of age and a bombshell with long wavy brown hair and a penchant towards the impure and vile. They had met on a wintry night in December of last year, knocked each other over accidentally as he was running around the corner, gun drawn in pursuit of a thief that had just knocked over the bodega a few blocks away. He had helped her up and gone to leave but then saw those eyes, auburn iris’, the most beautiful things he had ever seen and had decided right then and there that cops and robbers was no longer his game. Flowers, the cards, the dinners and drinks–he had tried it all. Day after day, he tried to get her attention, make her listen to his pleas to marry him but he didn’t know her and she sure as hell didn’t want to get to know him.

Those were months ago. The heartbreak of pursuing her through her personal trials and tribulations to no end was exhausting and made him feel empty. He knew she needed time to grow up, he needed distance but still, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. The drink only made things worse and, when a few months back, he awoke to find himself covered in garbage and living in the alley in the dumpster behind the Dragonfly Mandarin restaurant he knew she had almost killed him and needed to get away.

Two months later, back on his feet and working for a Mr. Thomas Young at the Yo-Yo Coin Laundromat mopping and sweeping, he had saved up enough to make a move and one morning, jumped on the train and headed south as far as a $75 one-way ticket would take him. It turned out to not be far enough.

For four months he was able to put her out of his mind. Found a gig working for a bar tender at the Pub Tavern on the outskirts of Scottsburg. It was a dive, the type of place that sentimental statues of lost individuals went to drink their memories away. Dark mahogany walls, red velvet booths, only a few yellow lights and then the long string of flashing white Christmas bulbs that became the annual decor. Smells of stale beer and dropped whiskey, cigarette butts and cheap, fatty beef became his source of palpable vitality. On his one off day, he would hike over to the Pigeon Roost Creek, watch the water pass gently through the stony maze of the creek bed, drink his coffee and his mind would wander back to her bronze skin, long slender legs and that pristine smile, the kind that warms your heart and makes you feel safe and at home. It was the only time he let himself remember. Pretty soon though, he wasn’t able to hold it back.

Wednesday and he was mopping up the slime of some winos last hurrah before being sent off to the recovery clinic. He felt the rimy, cross-grained mop handle in his palm, smelled the rancid remains of alcoholism and broken dreams, and knew that he had to get out, go back upstate and find her. Just to see her would be enough.

He had hit the road that night, thumbed in a few rides on a couple of semis delivering chickens and cheese to some of the big grocery chains in the city, and found a cheap place, the Abbott, in the dregs of battered cars and feculent garbage on Belmont Avenue. It was the kind of place that you would find hairs in the sheets, plugged up toilets and more cockroaches than carpet fibers but it would do for that night. He would be sleeping with the woman of his dreams tomorrow, wrapped tightly in the arms that he would never need to leave again. That next day, he had gone to the Peacock Feather Bar and waited outside in the freezing cold, pulled his jacket up tight against the back of his neck.

Four hours passed, he had lost feeling in both of his feet and was beginning to lose consciousness in the barbaric winds of ice and snow. He hadn’t eaten since the morning the day before, began to feel weak and tattered and slunk down to the frozen sidewalks below, leaned up against the metal dumpster to wait her out. His head was heavy, his shoulders sore. Death waited patiently in the embers of his frozen parlor of lust and fear. The squeaking of the bar doors and she had emerged, fish net stockings, silver sequin top, tightly-woven hair, makeup artistically curved around her auburn eyes, a long flowing black coat. She crosses the snow-lined street with long, careful strides on her stilettos, counts the money she holds in her hand, folds it neatly in half and stuffs it into her purse. She reaches up, takes the hairpins out, throws her head from left to right, pulls a hat out of her jacket pocket and pulls it down tightly over her ears. She’s ten feet from him, headed his way but his eyes are getting heavy, his heart is slowing down. He reaches down into his depths, yanks out the last strings of energy that he can muster to open his eyes one last time. She gallantly ambles down the sidewalk in front of him, reaches into her jacket pocket, grabs a quarter and flips it towards him. The cold cash hits his face, falls to the snow below. She continues walking. His heart snaps, his eyes begin to close. The rippling reverberations of her long black coat now ominous, she turns with a smile and leaves him to die.