A Lack Thereof

The sidewalk scratches the bottom of Seuss' foot and he looks under his shoe. There's a hole in the middle of the sole. He finds it disgusting that his sock is more ragged than the rubber. A young couple passes by, jolly in conversation. The woman laughs at the man's witty remarks. Seuss focuses on their mouths as they disperse words for the other to hear. Seuss looks at his own lips in the reflection of a shop window next to him. They're neutral, in contact only with the cold air surrounding him. The street light above goes dim. He moves on, taking his hole with him.
Seuss arrives at his studio apartment. There's a pile of posters in one corner of the room. They're all face down in a heap. His white walls are bare except for small strips of tape, some with torn paper corners attached, and a vivid painting of a snowy mountain landscape above his bed. The bold green trees stand out from the pure white terrain and the light blue sky gives Seuss the feeling that he's breathing in the crisp mountain air again. Ashley, he thinks, we were there. His eyes drift from the art and survey his room. He spots various things: tables, a bookshelf, a stereo, clothes, a dresser, but not a single portion of Ashley. Seuss turns to the wall nearest to him and bashes his head into it. He staggers backward for a minute, and then stumbles onto the floor.

"It's none of your business where I am." Ashley spoke into her cell phone from inside the cabin. Her irritated tone prompted Seuss to wait outside on the porch. He sat and flipped through the pages of her sketchbook. The lead she had scratched across the pages left lines harmonized into shapes, figures and faces. Seuss looked at his own hands, unable to keep them steady for even a second. He wondered how a hand could create the shapes she did with such precision. He thought that if he had taken to drawing years ago, as she did, he might've had her skill.
"Everything's been said… no… I'm not, you are. That's the thing, you see your problem as mine… okay, I'm done. Don't call again." Ashley walked out onto the porch and sat in the seat beside Seuss.
"Everything okay?" Seuss asked.
"No, he won't let it be." Ashley wiped her eyes and then turned her face away.
"Fred?"
"Who else?"
"Is he still trying to- "
"I don't want to talk about it." Ashley took up a brush, dipped it into a cup of green paint, and continued her painting. She had most of the snowy mountain landscape completed. She was finishing work on a tree. "Every other boyfriend I've had knew when we were through and let it be, but Fred can't. He drags on about how he'll be different."
"Men can't be different. It's their genetic flaw."
"God made them all in his image, and he curses Eve for fucking things up. How typical."
Seuss looked out at the huge white slope of Show Low, Arizona. The forest surrounded Seuss and Ashley and seemed to recede into eternity. The sun shining off the snow's surface blinded him, but he refrained from putting on a pair of shades. He wanted to take in the scene's natural light without obstructions. There were a few cabins nearby, the inhabitants of which came out occasionally to smoke or chat. The cold air filled his lungs and expanded them granting him a chilly sensation of great freedom. Seuss' grandmother peeked her head out from inside.
"We're heading into town in an hour. There's an art shop we can take you to if you need supplies."
"Sure," Ashley responded. Grandma ducked back inside.
Seuss leaned over and looked at her work. "It's coming out really good. The greens are amazing."
"Thank you."
"It's more captivating than the real thing."
"I doubt that." Ashley said this with a chuckle.
"Thank you for coming, by the way. It's always impossible for me to get anyone to join me when I visit my grandparents."
"I'm glad I came. This is definitely a relief from the crap of the city."
Seuss took care to watch Ashley from the corner of his eye. He followed her hands as they seemed to glide over the painting with ease. Her long skinny fingers embraced the brush, and kept it steady to permit it to dash blotches of organized radiance onto the surface of the board.
"I wish I could do that," Seuss said.
"What's stopping you?"
"I haven't the skill."
"Nobody starts with the skill. I would doodle when I was younger and over time I got better."
"It's a little too late for me. I figure if you're going to succeed as an artist you need the talent down by your twenties."
"Bullshit. Start now, get some work going, and keep practicing. You can be selling art by your thirties."
"But the money to get that kind of schooling…"
Ashley stopped and turned to face him. "Would you get out of your own way?"
Seuss rested in her blue eyes before he glanced down at her small pink lips. Ashley resumed her work. A few hours later they went into the city. Show Low was a small and quiet town. Most of its inhabitants were elderly and took much comfort in their elderly companions. Seuss had lived here with his grandparents when he was much younger. Silence had been his most common companion. The trees and snow never talked much, and neither did the dirt pile that he was lord of in his grandparent's backyard. They crumbled his kingdom of one and barked at him to be more like the surroundings: quiet and complacent. He had spent most of his weekends with them at the local Wal-Mart. They found it dazzling and exciting to obtain new objects to compliment their lives. Seuss could never take comfort in things. The art supply store had survived beside the huge market monolith for years. His grandparents had restricted him from going inside to prevent the growth of any ideas that might make a mess.
Seuss stepped inside the art shop for the first time with Ashley. She was quick to get what she needed, but they took the time to stroll down the aisles. Seuss marveled at the items, all of which he couldn't use, each with the capability of being more than a mere object, but a tool used toward something beyond things: creation, art, becoming. They went to check out. Seuss observed Ashley's one empty hand hanging freely at her side. Seuss frowned.
That night, Seuss and Ashley enjoyed a meal with Seuss' grandparents and afterwards, watched a movie by themselves. The wind had picked up and brushed against the windows of the cabin. Ashley shivered and abruptly turned off the television.
"What's wrong?"
"Could we start a fire?" She nodded at the fireplace beside them.
Seuss complied and they sat on the floor watching the tips of the flames weave a sporadic dance. Seuss glanced over and saw Ashley's watery eyes.
"He couldn't leave me alone. He couldn't accept that I was away doing something without him. Instead he had to call and make his presence known. When I first met Fred, he said such charming things and was a completely different guy. Then his words changed."
Seuss had not a word to offer. Ashley sat Indian style and Seuss placed his hand on her bare foot that poked out from under her leg.
"I'm here," Seuss said.
"And I'm afraid for you." She kept her head down and looked at his hand caressing her foot. "I'm tired." She got up. "I'll take the couch tonight."
"No, you sleep in the bedroom."
"I thought we were going to trade off."
"It's all right, I can- "
"You know the bed can fit us both, and I don't bite, too hard."
Seuss' heart began taking extra beats. Moments later he laid in the guest bed. Ashley entered the room and slid over to him. She turned her back to him and pulled his hand over her stomach. "You don't mind cuddling do you?"
"I fear for my life if I say no." He answered. He brought himself as close to her as he could. Her skin would've been as white as the snow if it weren't for a pink hue that was delicately mixed in.
"I would too if I were in your shoes."
Midway through the night, Seuss was awakened when Ashley turned around toward him. Her face rested comfortably in the pillow, and she didn't react at all when he shifted around slightly to take his arm off of her. He let his hand hover so close to her face that he could feel the warmth from her cheek. Just as his fingertips were about to touch her skin, she opened her eyes. Seuss stopped breathing as though something had clenched his heart. She grabbed the back of his head and pulled him into a kiss. They sat up, their lips still locked and their arms around each other. Ashley slipped off her shirt under which there was no bra. Seuss rolled his tongue around her nipple then moved his kisses down her stomach and then down further. They each moaned, and at the end of their last gasps fell into each other.

Seuss awakes to the sound of pounding at his studio door. His legs fail him at first and he reaches for a chair nearby. He pulls himself up and sits for a moment, running his hand through his thick black hair. The pounding continues.
"I'll be right there," he shouts. He feels a wet spot on his head, then looks up and sees the hole in his wall. There's a small puddle of blood on the floor in front of him. He rushes over and grabs a couple of posters from the corner of his room and lays them over the red pool. He opens to the door. Ashley's waiting outside.
"Took long enough," she says, walking past him. She stops just before the two posters covering his blood. "Wow, your walls are so white without posters, kinda like a madhouse."
"You ever been to a madhouse?"
"No."
"Then you wouldn't know what its like."
"We've all been in the madhouse so to speak."
"My pictures were making me sick. There's too much of me in them."
"Why's that one still up?" She points to her painting of the mountain.
"It's not me, its not even my world, it’s yours and I was never a part of it." Ashley lets out a long sigh. "So, what brings you here, finally?"
"Nobody's heard from you in weeks. I got scared when someone joked that you might've died. Your friends say they've called but you don't pick up your phone. Where have you been?"
He shrugs, "I've been here." He sits down at the end of his bed.
"You are a part of my world, but you're mistaken if you think you're the only one." A line of blood trails down from his head. She stops, "Shit, Seuss, you're bleeding!" She picks up some napkins on the table next to her and sits beside him. She looks through his hair. "You have a cut up here. Did you hit your head on something?"
He looks away, "Not that I can remember."
Ashley moves closer to wipe the blood from his forehead. He notices her blue jeans sparkling in some spots. Her leg is pressing against his.
"I like your pants."
"Thanks, although you have seen me in them about a couple hundred times." She discards a napkin and replaces it. Her lips are nearly at the tips of his eyelashes. In one quick motion he leans over and kisses her. She lets her eyelids drop and for a second the tips of their tongues touch, but she pulls away.
"Fred's waiting outside." She looks at him for a second before blinking away. Seuss simply stares at her.
"Why," he asks.
"You know why. I told him I was letting you borrow something and asked if we could stop by before heading home."
"Does he- "
"No."
Seuss shoves off the mattress and walks to the window next to the head of his bed. He sees Fred sitting inside his green Cadillac.
"I told him I'd only be a second, so…" she stands up and looks at him, her eyes trail away with her words.
"So I guess he's charming again?"
"Some people deserve a second chance."
"Don't I deserve a first?"
"I care for you, Seuss, just not in the way you want me to."
"Then why- "
"I was distraught and I'm sorry it happened. Besides you had to have known we were going to get back together. Everybody else did."
"How could I have known? Were you choosing him while kissing me? You were so angry with him on the phone, you sounded so adamant about being done with him, and then you changed face. You're right, this is a madhouse, and I'm in it because of you."
"Nobody forced you to think they way you do about me. You look and see me however you want and I don't really have any control over that. But whatever you might see the truth is I love Fred. I'm not sure if you know, but it's not easy to walk away from somebody you love. Especially when deep down inside you know you don't want to."
Seuss' eyes catch a group of people leaving a coffee shop across the street. He follows them as they speak jovially and turn the corner. They're happy. He's not among them. In the shop there is life. He isn't there. He looks up at the wall and stares at her painting.
"I can't be the object of your world. I've made my choice and I have many more to make. I can't deal with being your problem."
"You're not. I am. I thought we really shared something." Seuss removes her painting from the wall and hands it to her. "But I guess we didn't."
"What are you doing," she asks. "I gave this to you. It's yours."
"No it's not. You should display it in a gallery. It's an amazing painting." Seuss puts his coat on. "I've got to take care of my head."
They walk downstairs and stop just before Fred's car parked in front of the liquor store under Seuss' studio.
"You sure you don't want a ride to the hospital?" Ashley asks. He looks at Fred in the driver's seat.
"Yeah," Seuss says. "It's only a few blocks down. I can manage."
She stares at him for a moment before she leans forward and kisses his forehead. "Take care."
He nods his head yes. Ashley gets into the car and the Cadillac pulls away. Seuss watches it for a second and then starts in the opposite direction. Every few steps he gets dizzy, but he presses forward. It's midnight in the city of angels. All the shops along the sidewalk are dark inside, and a few bums are wandering about. After a few blocks, he spots a glow coming from a taller building. He turns into it and passes under a sign reading "hospital".