Tuned to Static (Fucking Tragic) : D&M

[Noir City]

The roads out here never seem to give.
Boring and straight and endless.

"How about Tennessee?"

He sucks the Coke dry through the straw,
tosses it out the window at seventy mph.

"And do what? Be gardeners at Graceland?"

She didn't feel like wearing a seatbelt anymore.
Legs crossed, elbow propped again the door,
the back of her hand soaking in rays that her face
was sick of.

"That'd be romantic."

They make eye contact.

"Oh, yeah, Declan..."

They laughed.

"South Dakota."

A scoff.

"Excuse me?"

"Connecticut."

He didn't miss a beat.

"Are you just pulling this out of your ass?"

"Quebec."

She sighed.

"I don't know if Canada is ready for me."

He reaches over and fucks up her hair,
she counteracts by swatting at his arm.

"No city is ready for you, honey."

He turned off the radio.

"I can't listen to this shit anymore."

"I've got Chelsea's Incubus CD somewhere..."

"Please."

[nearby]

That big ball of twine really isn't all that special. Look at her, she walks like a model. Hey little girl, do you wanna come sit on my lap? DECLAN, NO! Just drive. Crank the radio. Yellow dashes and miles a blur. <u>Ma'am, did you know its against the law to hang your feet out the window?</u> Stumbling drunk, driving hung over in the chevelle. Fingertips through my hair at night when he thinks I'm asleep.

Stop. Breathe.

California rest in peace. We're so far away I can't even smell the salt in the air anymore. State cops still give me the creeps. Wanna give your man a show? What did that bruise come from? A faucet? You can't be serious! Want a hit? Who are you and why are you parked on my property? Oh, don't worry about him, sweetie. He just hates seeing girls with lights like you get snuffed out.

Declan. Breathe.

Welcome to wherever, population many. I used to play jumprope when I was a kid. This is the thirtieth time we've heard this song today. You have a real nice shape. Want a hotdog. Want a coke? Want some coke? Want to go back to my hotel room? Matilda Howes! I haven't seen you since you were this big! Get in the car. Get in the car. Get in the fucking car. She's old enough to be your mother, and she knows mine.

Stop. Rewind.

The sky was so starry, so clear. Two silhouettes laid on the hood of a car, much like lovers from those old movies or romantic books, but they weren't lovers. They were far, far from it, but in a single moment, when they both caught each other's gaze, it crossed both their minds at the same time.

"Hey, Matilda." He said, using a gentle tone that made her tense.

"I know, I know, time to get back in the car."

They both knew that wasn't what he had to say at all.

Stop. Fast Forward.

<u>Welcome to North Carolina.</u>

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ July 25, 2006 05:49 PM: Message edited by: good morning, i'd die for you ]</font>

[Noir City]

"Can we stop for sweet tea?"

Declan couldn't hear her. It was if the land itself was speaking complete madness. He saw it all in fierce lines, as a topographic map, life long lost in the grass. The grass, it's? yellow languor was almost deafening. He knew where he was before they crossed over statelines. <u>Welcome to North Carolina.</u> If they knew it was him speeding through, they would've struck him with lightning. GO BACK TO LIBERAL CALIFORNIA, where all the criminal smiles are unseen in the untainted sunshine. GO BACK, a whisper with a heavy baseline effect, sticky at the bedrock of his spine, in each nuerotic knot in his brain, in each twitch of his fingers on the steering wheel.

Go fucking back.

His head was a smatter of broken thoughts that kept him busy for the time he served til you could, once again, just like in California, smell the salt in the air, of cars rusting. They never stopped for sweet tea like he had promised one hundred and fifty miles back. There was no juncture between radio songs, no breath, no single mile that could give just an inch for anything but driving. Just drive. Drive until his feet can no longer feel the pedals, and that hungry misery needs more fuel.

"I don't know why I couldn't just run into the store..." she murmured, and he was decaying, a corpse licking it's parched lips before lighting up.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he sounded dry of emotion, staring straight through the windshield.

And it went on, him fumbling with a small piece of paper, like his life depended on it.

"You don't look fine." It was making Matilda nervous, the swallowtail in a jar; nearly beating herself against the window with that narrow sense of both sympathy and paranoia.

He gave her a look. One of those, FUCK OFF looks. The Chevelle hummed to the curb, and left the key in the ignition.

"Just give me a few minutes, okay."

He closed the door carefully, as if Linda and the baby would hear him coming.

He held his breath, didn't bother glancing back at Matilda.

Pause. He flicked the ash on the green green lawn.

Pause.

He made it halfway to the door.

Pause. Cigarette thrown in the tulips.

He looked pissed at himself.

Leaned into Matilda's open window.

Hold my hand, his eyes begged.

Matilda, like the good friend she is, got out of the car, and did just that.

She even rang the bell.

Linda answered the door.

"You're late."

"I drove across the country, Linda."

"Yeah, well, you have ten minutes."

"Fine. Lets get on with it then..."

"So, are you going to introduce me to your..."

"Girlfriend? Yeah. Linda, this is Matilda."

Declan put his arm around Tilda's waist.

"She's a model." He tacked on, and Linda raised her brows.

[Noir City]

So long. Farewell. Fuck off. Linda's eyes seemed to say it all at the same time. She had an accent that Matilda wanted to imitate, but she didn't. At least not yet. She slid into the car after a hurried goodbye and thrust the keys she'd fished from Declan's pocket into the ignition. It was time to go. The time to go was right -now-. What the hell was taking him so long? "Declan, we have that reservation for lunch." She called out the driver's window before relaxing in a huff into her seat. The pressure in her head was building. Matilda was reaching that point, the one where she was about to blow up, and the sooner he drove away from his ex's house, the better it would be for the both of them.

"I've got to go."

Declan seemed apologetic to Linda, and it wasn't just for this moment. It was for everything, and she wasn't taking it. "Alan will be home. Just go," Linda muttered, baby held against her hip. Declan nodded, and jumped all three stairs off the porch. He looked over at his shoulder, at the baby's blinking eyes. And he was gone; roaring off towards the horizon. There was nothing to say. Nothing. Time lapsed, three stoplights, at least a mile between him and the memory he was running away from for over a year. Fourth stoplight: Declan rested his head against the steering wheel, as if in deep pain.

"I'm sorry, Tilda." He glanced over at her, sun blaring through both of them, fucking toxic light. "I'm so sorry. I should've never gone there. I should've never..."

She was fuming. Was there smoke leaking out of her ears? In comparison, her anger was quite small compared to what Declan must have been going through, and though Matilda knew that, she was angry all the same. She unfastened her seatbelt. She hated that damn thing. Its absence made it more comfortable to cross her arms tightly over her chest.

"Shoulda never, shoulda never, shoulda never said I was your girlfriend, for starters. Shoulda never kissed me in Vegas." She shook her head. "Shoulda never let you." She muttered that bit to herself. "What are you tryin' to prove, Declan? If you think for a minute that I'll go back there and visit with her again, you are so wrong."

"Well, then maybe we should've never bothered becoming friends. Driving across the fucking country," he muttered, rolling down his window, attempting to find his cigarettes in the door panel and failing. Of course that only seemed to piss him off. "You think it matters if I said you were my girlfriend? I could've told her we were cousins and she still would've thought you were my girlfriend! Look where we are, Tilda. Look where the fuck we are. I'm a piece of shit on this side of the country. I'm the liar. The enemy. The epitome of a fuck-up. I know this. You can be just like the rest of them, okay? If this is all such a damn mistake, I'll buy you a ticket and you can go right back to Los Angeles."

He seemed to blow-up for a moment, speeding through the green light, shifting to third before he knew it. Wasn't it a forty-five zone? "Then you can get as far away from me as you like."

She closed her eyes, and suddenly the voice wasn't Declan. No, it wasn't Declan at all. The words warped, targeted her, and she seemed to shrink back into the car seats. If only upholstery could consume her. Matilda lifted her rear off the seat while pressing her feet into the floor to straighten her body as she slid her hand into her pocket, and then presented Declan with what was left of his cigarettes.

"I'm sorry."

She felt like a speck. A firefly, no, a plain fly. Buzzing around, irritating an already uncomfortable situation more. "Please don't do that. I can't go back there. Just pull the car over if you want me to get out and I'll go. I guess this was a really bad idea after all."

It was North Carolina that was boiling inside of him, as he shook a cigarette out of the pack, trying to stop himself from setting himself on fire.

"I'm sorry too."

He seemed to soften around the edges, taking long cancerous drags of his cigarette. He pulled over almost immediately, and it wasn't to kick her out. He undid his seatbelt, grabbed her hand and held it tightly. "Tilda. Look at me. I would never make you go back there." He paused, taking another hit, looking out the window and then back at her. "Listen. You're the one good thing in my life. You're the one thing that's going to keep in sane around here, okay?" He eased into the seat, releasing her hand so he wouldn't hurt her. "I don't know what... is wrong with me. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I'll never call you my girlfriend again. I'll never kiss you again. Can things just be the same as before? Please."

"I got raped."

The words fell from her lips before she knew what she was saying, before she could stop them. Had that not happened, Matilda knew she would have been game for that kiss, for the lies they'd been spreading across the country by just giving the impression they were, well, anything they weren't. She was tugging her hand away before she even realized he'd let it go, and it joined the other to cover her face as she crumpled forward in the seat. Why? Why couldn't she just get past the fact? She knew that was the only advice she'd get from her family, most certainly from Chelsea. How much sympathy could you have for someone you'd condemned to hell, though? Surely, the cop had been sent by God. She knew everything they'd say, but she had no idea what Declan would say, which gave her the freedom to fall apart.

"What?"

He wasn't Declan anymore. Eyebrows furrowed, he seemed to turn a violent red for a moment. "Who is he? Who the fuck is he? I'm going to castrate him..." Declan was making a sharp u-turn, speeding towards the highway. Back to... god only knows where. "I'm going to kill that motherfucker." This was probably exactly what she didn't need, but Declan was a boy. Just a boy of twenty-nine. "He's going to be so sorry that he laid a hand on you. He's going to be begging for your forgiveness." The Chevelle seemed to cry beneath his control, shaking and hissing until it completely gave. Dials went haywire, and it sounded like some kind of explosion under the hood.

Declan swore under his breath, forced to pull over into dry grass. "Shit!" He slammed his palms into the steering wheel, the horn screamed. "Fuck." He turned and his gaze bled all over Tilda. "Come here..." He didn't wait, he wrapped his arms tightly around her, buried his face into her hair. "I would never hurt you like that. I promise."

It seemed the heat in North Carolina was determined to consume them. She didn't say anything through his words, Matilda simply let him get them off his chest. They were words she'd dreamt her father would say, and a strange comfort came from hearing them from Declan. His arms were around her before she managed to climb across the emptiness between them and spill into his lap. "I know." She whispered against the skin of his shoulder as her arms wound around his torso. Matilda wasn't lying, she knew he never would. She knew that he would have played his cards long before North Carolina if he'd ever had any intention to.

"I have to call my sister." The whimper broke through to drag a bit of reality in. "There's probably an APB out by now."

The Chevelle was powerless, a sober wreck that cradled the two, huddled and intertwined like desperate lovers. It was her words that seemed to snap him out of it. "Wha..." He blinked, trying to rub North Carolina heat out of his stare, out of his mind. He felt crazed, trying to grasp onto his piece of insanity, but he released her like he was afraid to free the bird. "Okay. Call her. I don't want to have charges against me for kidnapping you or anything..." The first normal smile of the day appeared.

But the anger was still surging beneath it all. He wondered what this man looked like. He would punch the sneer right off his face, Declan was sure of this. He would kill this man, whoever he was. If it cost him his life.


( log 07.27.06 )

[nearby]

Matilda came alive in a house. They both came alive in a house. They fell into a routine that was almost too comfortable within a matter of days after moving in. They'd share early morning coffee while browsing the newspaper for jobs and then head out on foot to the local businesses in Beaufort, South Carolina to turn in applications.

It took Matilda two days. They both knew it was something about her face that made people soften about her. She fell with ease into the role of a sales clerk at a local jewelry store. The owner liked to decorate her wrist with his diamonds and never protested when she slipped his rings on her fingers. He did make sure they were back in the case before she left, though.

She kept flowers on the front porch, delivered the misdelivered mail to their neighbor, who was also their landlord. He'd cut them a deal because he had a soft spot for fresh looking young couples.

It didn't take long for everything to change. It was obvious that things had changed just by the clatter of her heels in the foyer.

"My Dad is in town."

Her voice was tight. Declan lowered the classifies and gave his full attention.

"I need you to pretend we're lovers."

[Noir City]

"Pretend we're lovers?" He scoffed, lifting the Classified back up. His bagel and cream cheese was getting cold fast. Eyes scanning the pages, but not really reading at all. He sighed, setting the paper down, taking a bite and chewing down his breakfast, gazing at Matilda with a suspicious curiosity.

"I'm not going to ask why, although I wouldn't mind you telling me the reason why we're doing exactly what you got pretty pissed about at Linda's house." He swallowed, slowly leaning back in his seat. "But whatever you want, I'll do." And without another word, he got up and went to the garage to work on his Chevelle.