The compromise

The Compromise

I dig my toes through the sand. The cool tropical air playing symphonies in my white-silk shirt, though my long, dreaded hair. The setting sun smears the sky with colors of lust, and I slit my eyes and stare absently. I sway left and right in that lazy way to the rhythm of some far-off Caribbean steel drum.

The sea sways with me in it's polyrhythmic ebb and sway. The gulls with their keen eyes gaze down on me, expressing their awe with an occasional squawk or caw. Even in the absence of the ethereal sun, the tropical air remains warm and smooth.

After some time throwing shells into the sea, another poet comes along my way. In his hands are two Baccardi cream rums from the shack down the way, and he is glad to share. He sits by me and speaks of politics and poetry, of foreign pallets and forgotten prose. He even whispers of wicked villains and winding verse.

Hours pass and the stars blaze in all their interminable splendor across the nights plutonian shores. The poet draws me in close to keep me warm, and I drift off to sleep in his arms. His lips whispering Langston in my ears.

"I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers"

The sound of a car being robbed wakes Jazz Valentine out of his sound sleep. His eyes shoot open with cat-like alertness, a custom he'd come to adopt after being burglarized several times. Without moving his café-brown head, Jazz glances at the clock, 3am. He let's out a huge sigh, and tries to fall back asleep.

It occurs to him that he is being watched, he nervously turned his head and find himself eye to eye with a sun-ripened woman of her late thirties. He is shocked at first, but his memories soon surfaced from under the dull drug of his sleep.

"Morning baby" she chimes in a sweet, cool voice. Jazz replies with a grunt of no meaning even he could discern and turns the other way.. Mrs. Valentine slides her arm around Jazz's abdomen and tugs at his ear with her teeth. Jazz absent-mindedly swats her away and launches another grunt of complaint. Mrs. Valentine, furious with years of rejection grabs the lamp off of the night stand and smashes it over her husband's head.

When he awakes, Jazz is hung over with sleep and a throbbing headache. Mrs. Valentine is yelling at him, but because of his injury he can't make out her words. He puts his hand to his head, no blood. "Damn" he thinks. He vaguely makes out a figure in the door way. His daughter, age four, is staring blankly at the scene. His wife has begun throwing things, oblivious to the third presence in the room.

"Flow," he beckons to his only child. She totters over, pass the chaos, ho her father. He gives her father a hug, "Go next door to grandma's house today. Tell her I told you not to go to school today, understand?" Flow nods her head as a tear rolls own her face. Jazz wipes it away and gives her a kiss; she runs out of the house and slams the door. Mrs. Valentine is still yelling.

Jazz wobbles to his feet, paying her no mind, and stumbles to the bathroom. He gets in the shower and starts brushing his teeth. Mrs. Valentine stands by the tub, for she had ripped off the curtains long ago, yelling still. Jazz steppes out of the shower and starts shaving, not bothering to towel. Mrs. Valentine holds a switch blade threateningly to his neck, jazz applies aftershave and walks to his closet. His actions are automatic, spending no more than ninety seconds on any one task, short of showering. Soon he is dressed for work, slacks, tie and all, and headed out the door. Mrs. Valentine is crying, in the corner. Her hair all a mess with a bottle of Cavastie` that had been missing for some months in her shaking hand.

"Not once!" she exclaims in slurred speech, "not one tome since we had that f***ing kid. Why the hell did I marry you? What the hell is wrong with you?" Jazz blows her a kiss and walks out the door, completely automatic.

Thirty minutes later, Jazz is on the 6:15 train to Scarsdale Dr. beside a wino with glazed blue eyes and bags on his feet. A sharp pain surges though his head and he drifts off to sleep.

All of Paris is below me. I see the splendors of the city from a view fit for a king. All of it's dazzling splendor is cast before me from its flowing rivers to it's wondrous structures. Every structure that is, except for the Eiffel Tower, for I am at it's peak, in Eiffel Café.

The money from my last book had paid for this trip three fold, and I wasn't going to squander a moment of it. For the past two weeks I'd been roaming the countryside describing all I saw in poetic verse. Today, though, I am at a loss. I want to describe a kiss. Something so simple and yet so easy to muck up with cliché abstractions. I wracked my brain for what seemed like hours, taking out my frustration out on my laptop.

"A kiss looks like dark chocolate and whispers, it feels like shards of glass slipping through cool waters, it tastes like…"

A young busboy comes to my table. his skin is the color of wet sand and his hair is bleach blond. His accent is heavy, and he never forgets to smile. The boy looks over my shoulder and is taken back by my words.

When his shift is over he confronts me and offers to give me a tour of the city, I cannot refuse. He tells me about marvelous things, of salt water and gin and butterscotch. I talk of far away beaches and moonlight. The sun sets idly behind European mountain ranges and my company surprises me with a kiss. I fell in love with a man in sixty seconds flat, a man named Ebb Claude. Inspires I drew out a napkin from my pocket. "A kiss is like…

"Um, excuse me," a weak voice stirred Jazz from his dreams, " Your stop is coming up next". Jazz opened his eyes slow and groggily this time, remorseful to be brought back into this world. Twice he had awakened today to a strange women. This one he could only remember vaguely.

"Uuh, merci-bucoup" He says in response, after a mammoth yawn, before he'd realized what he'd said.

"Cava" she replies , with a laugh, "Mr. Valentine?"

"Yes, love?" he studies her small, pale face, with her paper-thin lips and elegant eyes, darkened through lack of sleep or who knows what else. 'How does she know my name?' he thought.

"What does a kiss smell like?" This takes him back a second.

"Excuse me?"

"You were talking in your sleep, and you said some beautiful things. I'm sorry I woke you up. But you trailed off a couple of times. What does a kiss smell like?" Jazz throws his head back and closes his eyes, something one must do in order to complete the difficult task of recalling a profound reverie.

"Sea salt, gin and butterscotch" he lies. A disembodied voice announces the stop and Jazz bids his adieu.

Mechanically he walks four blocks down Scarsdale and two up Grating St. He walks up seven flights of stairs, exactly 308 steps thirteen landings, because the elevators are broken. He passes the security guards, flashing his I.D. They weren't even paying attention. He unlocks the door to his 7"x7" "office". He starts up his computer and starts some meager calculations. An hour or so later a tremendous pain comes over his whole being and he falls unconscious…

The ballots had come in just a week ago. They'd been counted, and recounted, then counted again because nobody could believe the results. I had won. I was the first black and the first gay president the free states had ever had. Men were running about around me. Cameras were constantly flashing in my face. Reporters hounded me any time the could get the chance.

"How's it feel to be the most important man in America?" they'd often ask. To no avail. My darling Ebb supported me all the way, and was with me in every endeavor. I owe everything to him.

Two men who were appointed to my secret service escorted us to the Lincoln Memorial. There I was to give my inauguration speech. The helicopter landed near the back entrance, and men in black scattered around importantly. Ebb took me by the hand and we headed for the steps of the memorial, the same place King gave his "I have a dream" speech. The stood at the podium, in front of a crowd of over three million, thinking that I was the most loved and simultaneously hated man in all the county. Beeds of sweat rolled down my face.

I look back at my vice president, Mija Angelo. She gives me a nod. Ebb puts his hand on my shoulder, and I was calm.

"Proud people of the United States…

BANG! BANG! BANG! The door to Jazz's remote little cubicle swings wide open. An middle age man with a hairline that began "at the back side, but only on the left side, yeah that's the crip side" Burst into the room. He yells a strange slur of Irish and English and 99 proof gin that is only further disorientated by Jazz's injury. He tries to sprinkle in a "yes sir" or an "I'm sorry sir" when ever seems appropriate. Eventually, he just falls asleep. Thoughts of an award winning, first place short story by the name of Tom's Diner…

"Di ye fruken faul asleep ye li'all roach?!!" Jazz's boss is not happy. Jazz is promptly fired.

As he ambles out of the corporation he sees the woman who had woken him up on the train. A look of terror on her face. This puzzles Jazz. He flashed her a smile and throws up a peace sign.

Jazz wanders the streets of LA for hours, making frequent stops at liquor stores to grab his favorite whiskey. Eventually he just squats at a gas station and stares at the street, trying desperately to fall asleep. "I've got to end this story," he thinks aloud on more than one occasion More hours pass, nothing. Fed up Jazz purchases two gallons of gas in a can and a lighter.

Hours later his house is mysteriously on fire, wife inside. Firefighters were puzzled at how the fire could have dug a ditch and filled it with water. Rendering the other houses safe. Puzzled, but not concerned. Jazz is long gone, on the last train to Hollywood.

On the train there is talk of affairs at his work place. Apparently the young woman who'd seemed to have such interest in Jazz had pushed their boss down a flight of stairs soon after he'd been fired. Oddly, the man had severed every bone in his body, including his spine. The lady, one Ms. Frost, was found in a dumpster some time later. OD'd on heroin. A book of love letters written to "Valentine" clutched tightly to her bosoms.

Jazz gets off at the next stop and jumps into the river, or at least would have had he literally looked before he leaped and not landed head first into the smoke stack of a cruise ship, therefore incinerating him in the vessel's fiery furnace. Fortunately, though, there is a god, and Jazz Valentine was overcome by pain and fell unconscious, before he even fell off the bridge.

I am suddenly aware that I must be face down in water of some sort, for I am wet, and choking. I throw my head back and spit up what feels like a gallon of water. "Go get him you freaking idiot!" I hear. Voices are drowned out b the crashing waves.

I am on the beach. Two men in black suits and glasses rush to my aid. They help me up and apologize for their slothfulness. Ebb comes over, laughing, with two Baccardi cream rums. We sit by the water and watch the sun set. The waters wax and wane, and the gulls caw and steel drums play, but we pay them no mind. We share a kiss that smells like rum and furnace soot, under the dazzling stars.

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