hat are you doing here at this hour, Ma’am? It’s not safe.”

He’s good-looking, about thirty-five, and wearing a snug blue uniform. The intense stare directed my way tells me that he’s curious; I suppose it’s not very often that a small town cop finds a woman alongside Dogwood Avenue alone at midnight.

“Why not, officer? It’s Tuesday at midnight and only the Vickeys are out.”

“Excuse me, Ma’am?”

“It’s Tuesday at midnight and only the Vickeys are out. There’s nothing to fear.”

“Do you have identification?”

I look down at my lap, wondering where I left my bag or if I had even thought to bring it along.

“I guess not.”

“Would you like me to walk you home?”

“No. I really would like just to sit here."

He fidgets, uncertainty wavering across his face. I shield my eyes from the full moon glare and inspect his name badge. Buchanan. Officer Buchanan. New to town, no doubt, and working the graveyard shift.

“They’re everywhere, Officer Buchanan. Everywhere.”

He squats down on his knee and shines a light into my eyes. I open them as wide as possible against the flash, and meet his gaze. I’ve nothing to hide.

“Yes…just everywhere. But they’re hard to notice sometimes. They can either slither and slide, or go for the in your face thing, you see. You just never know.”

Buchanan makes a decision and sits down, ignoring the crabgrass dampened by an early evening rain shower. The road glistens in the moonlight, tiny reflections flickering like diamond dust. I smell clean earth and feel strangely peaceful.

“What’s hard to notice?”

Confused, I look at him. “Huh?”

“You said they’re everywhere, but hard to notice. I just wondered what you meant.”

“Well, the Vickeys, of course.”

He’s quiet, but he’s staring at me, and the signs in his eyes are so easy to read. Pushing my fingers through the dirt, I draw thin straight lines and then intersect them with more lines until I have drawn a tangle of boxes. They’re scattered and unruly, some tiny, some bigger, but all empty.

“The Vickeys?” Buchanan persists, and I believe I can make out the color of his eyes in the moon glow. Blue. Or maybe light gray. I shake my head and continue drawing.

“Yes. Vickeys. You know the difference between the Vickeys and other women?”

“ No.”

“Well, Officer Buchanan—“

“You can call me Marcus…if you want to, I mean.” He even seems to blush a little.

“Marcus,” I say. “Mark. Is Mark okay?”

“Y-yes, I reckon so.”

I smile and wipe my eyes with a tissue; they’ve begun to leak, although I thought I was done crying.

“You’re nice, but then most men are. Once you get to their hearts, anyway. Staying in their hearts is the tricky part.”

I draw more boxes and Mark sits there, watching. He’s obviously a beat cop, relegated to traipsing the streets on foot at night while the more revered, or perhaps the more combative, policemen cruise around in their clean black and whites. No one wants to walk anymore and there’s little crime in this town.

Content with the night, we two sit, he watching me draw, and me just drawing. But, because he is a man, he soon wants entertained and so broaches the topic again.

“So, what’s the difference? And what’s your name?”

Lazily, I slide my fingers deeper into the earth until they’re coated with coolness. It feels nice in the summer warmth. Wiggling them, I loosen the dirt, shake it off, and raise my hands for inspection. I have dirty fingernails now and a rapid-fire image shoots through my head: dirty fingernails around—

“Ma’am?”

“The difference…yes.” I slap the dirt away and grin. “Sorry, I was woolgathering.”

“It’s okay,” he says.

“All girls, when they’re young, straddle a line until the day comes for them to make a decision about which way to go. Sometimes they don’t even know they’ve made the decision. Other times they make it with total awareness, but I assure you it’s all about choice.”

I start to cry again but my tissue is shredded and useless. Mark, being a well-reared and kind man, reaches into his breast pocket and offers me a handkerchief. His hand brushes mine as I accept.

The boxes draw my attention again; I spend a few seconds refining their edges, making them straight, and clearing the insides of pebbles and grass. They must be empty.

“Mark, do you think that the parts of our hearts that hold emotion are shaped like a box or a circle?” I ask.

He shrugs.

“I kind of think they might be shaped like a box and maybe that’s why emotion leaks out sometimes. Boxes hold stuff well, but if they get too full, they start to fall apart. ‘Specially at the corners.” I pause to sift more cool dirt through my warm fingers. “I think that sometimes you can spring a leak in your box and not know it, and then when you stop to look, whatever emotion that particular box held is all gone. I bet there’s tons of boxes in our hearts. Some empty and some full.”

Mark clears his throat, his hand moving toward my leg, but I flinch and he drops it into his lap.

“What’s your name?” he whispers.

It’s my turn to shrug now.

“Wonder why the boxes that hold stuff like guilt and remorse and sorrow never seem to leak? Wow, maybe the good emotions go into a box and the bad stuff goes into a circle, ‘cause you know…circles are way strong.”

I lower my eyes to the drawings again, picking out another tiny pebble, and then another.

“I’m sorry, Mark.”

“No, it’s okay,” he says in a quiet voice. “Tell me about the difference.”
“ Yes, the difference.”

I shift and face him, wanting to see his eyes. He has a kind face, and I notice again how good-looking he is.

“It’s the initial choice that makes the difference, though you don’t realize it at the time. One choice is to become a childbearing, god-fearing, church going, house cleaning, PTA-joining, fried-chicken-making wife, complete with a nice chain-link fence, two mortgages, a Volvo, and three good kids.”

I sniff and blow my nose into Mark’s handkerchief. He moves a little and puts his hand on my knee, patting gently.

We share a moment of eyes-lock-hearts-race recognition. Blue eyes flicker, or are they light gray? He shrugs again and asks, “What’s the other choice?”

“Don’t you want to know what you lose if you make the first choice?”

“I reckon so.”

“You lose free will, mostly. You become trapped behind that fence, suddenly aware one day that everyone’s watching you. Even the man who once entered your body so wildly—like he might a two-bit whore made only for pleasure—is inspecting every detail of your life. He’s not touching you anymore, either.”

I continue staring into Mark’s eyes without flinching. In turn, he maintains the gaze a scant few seconds before breaking away but he keeps his hand on my knee.

“You lose passion,” I continue. “And even though you look every bit the well-manicured, vibrant, sexy woman that you once felt you were, you’ve lost the ability to act on your impulses and are destined to suffer a certain fate: denial of self and pleasure and individuality, and you can’t make your man happy in the ways that matter anymore.” I rest my hands on my thighs and keep my eyes on his face. “Those women would never be out at midnight on a Tuesday, Mark. Never.”

He sits quietly, and I’m grateful. Grateful that he doesn’t pester me to shut up, or try to hustle me off to my house. Sometimes, a girl just wants to sit by the road and watch the pavement sparkle in moonlight. Sometimes midnight is a good time to think.

“But, men want those kinds of women. They want to marry them and take them home to Mama. They want to reproduce with them and have them make hot wings for Friday night poker games. Those women, in the minds of the men who want them, are the answers to immortality and respectability in the community. Not to mention in the eyes of their Mamas. You gotta wonder why it usually goes so horribly wrong.”

Mark nods, shifting a little closer, his hand traveling up to mid-thigh. The questions in his eyes are all too clear, which choice did you make? What kind of woman are you? I decide to answer later should an answer be needed at all. He doesn’t push.

“The other choice?” he asks.

“Well, maybe you already know about that. I figure you do but like most men, you don’t ever really see it very clearly. The other choice is to go for impulse and pure life, keeping your precious passion through the problems you might face. When you’re a young girl, early teens, maybe even early twenties, you’re an individual if you make the second choice. You’re sought after, fun, sexy, a nice decoration with an easy laugh. That your legs part pretty quickly is just a bonus.”

I pause and shake my head again.

“Those are the Vickeys. It starts out so innocent. You’re just living life, having fun, and being true to yourself. Your heart is so full, Mark. It’s full of joy and even wisdom, and my god, the passion. Everyone wants a piece and you feel benevolent and happy to pass it out freely. Life is good. It feels like a good choice. It seems like it would be the best choice.”

“Is it?”

I laugh.

“I don’t know. But what I do know is that the Vickeys always win…they just don’t know it. Men will always seek them out. They can be overweight, unattractive, and have bad skin. They can have faded roots and ugly bags under their eyes and not give a shit if they live or die. They can have four kids by different men, and sleep around constantly. They can be on welfare and food stamps and live in a hovel.”

I sigh, and Mark’s hand begins to stroke my leg. He thinks he knows who I am. He is nice though, and so good-looking.

“Anyway, men always turn to the Vickeys. Do you know why?”

He shakes his head.

“Because they’re everywhere and they’re always out, or awake. At midnight on a Tuesday when a man’s headed home and thinking about how his either be asleep or pissed about how late it is. The Vickeys’ lights’ll be on and the man will remember how the last time he visited, she had beer or drugs or whatever he wanted, and she always laughed at his jokes, and was always ready for whatever brand of kink he was into. It doesn’t matter if the Vickeys have limited conversation, a messy house, or squalling babies. What matters is that she is still an individual who will do anything…be anything…take anything…and have a great time doing it. She’ll laugh and just have plain old fun, and he’ll feel like a man again because he can’t anymore with the wife trapped behind the fence.”

I look at the ground and feel changes in my heart rate; its cadence is off, its beat unfamiliar.

“Also, the boxes in the Vickeys’ hearts aren’t quite empty. They might even be full, Mark. Maybe,” I whisper.

Angry now, I scratch the drawings into dust and start to cry again. Mark slips his arm around my shoulder. It doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t. I smell his cologne and let my head fall against his body, but I keep on talking.

“But one day, the other kind of woman decides to take a walk close to midnight on a Tuesday. She might be lonely, or bored, or having an attack of sixth sense. Whatever the reason, she takes to the streets, walking, and spots her man’s car beside a mailbox. The name on the box is Vickey. The woman can’t help it, she has to look, so she peeks in the window. He’s sitting in a chair and Vickey kneels at his feet. She has her hand wrapped around him and all the woman watching through the window can see is a blur of movement…dirty nails wrapped around hard flesh, and jerking. But the look on her man’s face is the real clincher. The true dagger in the heart.”

“What then?”

“What else? The woman leaves quietly, thinking it could be worse. At least she still has the Volvo, and the house, and the three good kids.”

Mark’s other arm is around me. He’s pulling me close and kissing my neck, and oh God, it feels so good. My own dirty fingernails stand out in moonlit relief against his navy trousers. He unzips his fly and I reach for him.

“What’s your name?” he asks one more time.

I look at his face; I study it.

“Tonight, my name is Vickey.”

 

[END]

© 2006 Stacy Taylor - Contributor's Bio

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