Marco & Me

Disclaimer: This story is fiction. No people in are being portrayed in truth in any way, shape or form.

Marco and I scan the parking lot of the Tri-Peaks strip mall, looking, looking for an open spot. There’s a promotion going on at Open Eye Gifts, a place that sells swords and stones and tarot shit for weird-ass people who believe in weird-ass shit like that.

Marco is one of those weird-ass people.

“Here’s what I’ll do,” Marco says.

“What?” I reply, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. The expensive gel polish, octopus purple, that I just put on the night before has a chip on the pinky. “What’re you gonna do?” I go on, annoyed. “Summon magic and open a spot?”

“Better,” he says, swirling the pointed end of his black-strap licorice beard in a circle at the scene. “I’ll ask my parking lot angel.”

“Parking lot angel?”

“Well, yeah, actually.”

“Oh my God. Yeah. Okay. Go for it, Marco. Parking lot angel. Jesus.” I say it, but the words burn like a hot iron against my throat.

He closes his eyes and opens his lips. His hair runs past his shoulders, longer than mine. He wears a shiny black feather inside–I guess because he thinks he’s a god, or maybe an angel.

Silent incantations pour from his mouth.

Marco points out that we’ve known each other forever, that we’re twin flames and destined to be together. The truth is, we’re just friends. I know this because people who meet while working at a by-the-slice pizza joint can’t possibly be twin flames. More like twin losers. But still, he insists we are.

While he summons an angel I troll past a Firebird, a Prius, a fire red Jeep Wrangler. In a few, a Britney Spears wannabee decked out in acid wash low-rise jeans walks up to the Wrangler, jangles her keys and stalls before getting in.

“Bingo,” Marco says, eyes wide.

“Coincidence.”

“Honey, there ain’t no coincidence, only synchronicity.”

“You digress.”

She gets in and applies a layer of lip gloss before checking herself out in the rear-view mirror.

“Your parking lot angel is slow,” I say.

“Stop being a bitch.”

“Impossible.”

When she pulls out, I swerve in and nearly scrape her back end.

“Bad karma,” Marco says.

“What do you mean? I didn’t hit her.”

“But you wanted to.”

“No. I--”

“That’s okay. I love it when you fight your demons.” Marco sweeps a warm hand up my arm.

“Don’t.”

One time he told me nirvana was achieved by tantric sex. That’s like perfect sex or something--impossible sex. Like the perfect orgasm or something. It reaches up through your spine, your brain explodes into ecstasy, and you know everything.

My ex thought he knew everything.

My ex was an asshole.

My ex wouldn’t know tantric sex if it came in a box labeled Tantric Sex.

When I met Marco a year ago, I was so vulnerable you could sneeze and I’d shake. My PTSD was so bad I slept in the closet. And now, I’m still waking up clutching a pistol. That’s what I know. That’s my reality.

I don’t trust anyone, or anything. Only me. And even then, it’s a hard pass.

Marco gets out and waits for me to come around to meet him. He’s six-foot-three and I’m five-foot-eleven. If we ever did the Tantric Tango thing, we’d produce Avatar babies. But we’re never going to do it. I’m a vestal virgin, born again. Ask my rusty hymen. He throws an arm around my shoulder and we hit Open Eye.

“Girl, you’d look good in this,” he says, holding a crystal pendant to my throat. The store is packed, and everyone smells like patchouli and curry. The pendant is cold and heavy and feels like ice. He brushes my red hair aside and sets the clasp behind my neck. His Marlboro breath raises goose pimples on my clavicle. “You should buy it,” he says. “Crystals open your chakras. You’ll be in the know, like me.”

“Can’t afford it,” I say. He’s set it too tight. My throat constricts, and now I can’t breathe.

“Let me buy it for you,” he says.

“But you’re broke,” I say, then wait for him to unclip the latch.

I don’t care if he has to rip it, I want the thing off.

“We’ll split the bill,” he says. “We’ll, you know, share it. We’ll both wear it,” he says.

“Fuck you,” I say.

When his back is turned, I unlatch the thing and stare at the perfectly placed gleaming glob of faux gem on a single leather rope. The floor swirls. In my faulty vision, the image of a million icy crystal pendants come at me like rabid sharks.

In another aisle, we look at oracle cards and pendulums. They’re expensive and wrapped in cellophane with security tabs stuck inside. I can tell Marco is thinking about slipping something into his jacket. Aka, shoplifting. I guess he remembers the time he got caught driving around in someone’s car, though, and all the mess with jail and lawyers and his parents. That was a lifetime ago. Eons. That wasn’t even me. Who was it? Some other dude. The old Marco.

But still, he eyes that shit forever.

I stole too once upon a sorry, pathetic me. As a teenager, I had a fancy filling my rayon pockets with all the dime store crap I could dream of. Daily, I plastered myself with millions of weak excuses: my mother was sick with Lymphoma and couldn’t get out of bed, my father had moved to Tacoma to start a bait shop out of a pickup truck. Like Robin Hood, I longed to show my expensively denim clad classmates Shanica, Barbara and Tisha without the La, that I too was a badass bitch. My heists started with silver tone trinkets and perfume, then I indulged in European candy bars, ruby red Revlon lipsticks, and furry lambswool sweaters that turned my skin into bumps of fire. I wanted to make them like me, hell, love me. My mother too. The night before Thanksgiving, I went all the way: I stuffed an entire frozen turkey into my coat. My nipples, erect, throbbed warnings of frostbite as I entered the front door of Mother’s apartment, and for all good intentions, I looked like a pregnant version of her seventeen years before.

The look on her face when I stumbled into the room.

She was sick, and coughing. That horrible hack, thick with phlegm. She died when the new year came to pass.

That was the last thing I ever stole.

It’s getting on three when Marco and I peruse incense. We hold it to our noses. Rain smells like rain. Grass smells like grass. There’s even one called Heaven, as if anyone could actually know.

“This guru would look great in my apartment,” he says, pondering, staring, wanting. “But it’s, like, one-hundred dollars.” He balances it in his large palm. The guru is a middle-aged man with dilated pupils. Like my ex. “Wouldn’t it look great in my apartment?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “And every day you can lick it for good luck.”

Marco sticks out a tongue and licks it right there in Open Eye. “Done.” He puts it back on the display counter. I shove it to the back.

In the sword department, a lady wearing a million beaded necklaces herds us to a card table. It’s covered in stones that match my nail polish. A deep, dark purple ink. “Tarot reading?” she asks.

Marco shrugs.

“Sure, why not?” he says. “How much?”

“Thirty dollars.”

Marco looks at me.

“The truth hurts,” I say, and hand him the money. He sits at the table.

With those icy, bony hands, she shuffles a deck of tarot cards and lays out an arrangement. Her eyes are ice too. “I see you’ve had trouble in life.”

I’m standing behind Marco–when he nods the feather flutters inside and out.

“Trouble in love?” she says.

Again, Marco nods.

“But it will get better. In time. Once this person sees that you two are meant to be, she’ll come around. Give it a few weeks, or more. Maybe a year.”

“A year?” Marco asks.

“Perhaps more,” she says.

“Okay, a year,” he says. “What else? Will I ever reach nirvana?” I can’t tell if he’s joking, but the woman looks indulgently at the cards.

“You’re already there. In your own way, you’ve ascended. You’ve let your past transform you. We need more of that on this planet, people who see. People who are awake. And about this person,” she says, “they’ve had trouble too, similar to yours. They do love you, but their heart has been broken, taken from them again and again. Instead of opening, they’ve gone into a coma. They’re afraid to trust you, afraid you’ll steal their love. Yes, yes, this person is terrified. You’ll just have to wait.”

She collects the cards in one big sweep and shoves them into a pouch, crusty and thick with Swarovski stones.

Marco gets up. The feather flutters. It falls, and I bend over to pick it up. It’s soft in my palm, still warm, and Marco looks different now without it.

“I can wait,” he says quietly to the woman. “Is that all?”

“No, not all,” she says. “I saw a new job in your future. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe culinary. Maybe retail? Maybe writing. I don’t know. You are a complicated man.”

Marco laughs. On the way out, he flashes her the peace sign.

In the parking lot, we watch the pitted pavement move beneath our unwashed sneakers. Flattened gum, oil slicks, tobacco stains. Marco lights up.

“She was flirting with you.”

“Nah. She was only being nice.”

“Do you really believe in all that shit?” I ask.

“Sure. Why not?”

“Because, it’s fake. She didn’t tell you anything really, just a bunch of crap knowledge that’s easy to guess. For instance, do you know that if someone asks you to pick a number between 1-10 people pick 7? We’re all so goddamned gullible.”

Marco hands me the cigarette. I take a drag. The slow burn in my chest erases the upset. He grabs it back. “Well, she told me I was awakening,” he says, “and no one knows that. Except you. No one knows how much I’ve gone through. Except you. And she told me about that girl. The one who hurts, the one who loves me. But doesn’t love me, yet.”

“Well, then, holy shit. We should have asked for lottery numbers.” I kick a wadded-up McDonald’s bag under a rusted, duct-taped truck. “Anyway, I bet she says the same stuff to everyone.”

“No, Marcie, not everyone.”

We get to the car.

“Aw, fuck,” I say. “Look at that!”

Someone’s fire red paint has thrashed itself into my car’s sparkly blue back bumper. 

“Karma,” Marco says, laughing, puffing. He gets in. “You should admit it,” he goes on through the open window, “this is a result of your fear. All the things you hold inside. Face it, you manifested this. If you were like me, you’d have good karma. You’d be awake.”

Reluctantly, I get in.

I think about the paint for a long time, then dig in my purse for the keys. The feather, fluttering between my fingers like a baby raven, is still there.

He’s laughing when I turn to him.

“I have something for you,” I say. “Close your eyes.”

“Really? Okay. Alright,” Marco says. He takes one last drag, tosses the cigarette out the window, and closes both his chocolate eyes.

“Now, open your hand,” I say. “Do you trust me?”

“Of course, I do. Exclusively. It’s you who doesn’t trust.”

“Well, maybe I should change that. Maybe it’s time.”

When he holds out his hand, I see it’s slightly trembling. “I’m all yours,” he says.

I hand him the pendant.