My Love Will Turn You On

“In the middle of the night,” he sings to her, waiting for her to sing the next line. She doesn’t. So he continues, “In a middle of the night I call your name.” She sits across from him at the Mexican restaurant with the neon lights and the concrete patio and the drinks that are always too strong. The vegetarian quesadilla is too good to order anything else. Her saddened face is as cold as the concrete and hazed in soft purple neon. “They hung piñatas from the rafters,” he says pointing up trying to make conversation. She doesn’t look. There are dozens of them, like lynched colorful creatures waiting to be humiliated with a stick. But their insides are hollow and they don’t care if they are beaten and burst open. It is their purpose. They smile indifferently with big eyes.

She doesn’t sing anymore. She barely smiles with him, unless she slips and forgets for a moment. He wipes his face with a napkin and smiles a hard smile for them both, apprehensive and nervous for the first time in a long time. He understands what he did. He had been found guilty years ago for the crime of his transgressions, and there had been a prolonged disposition in which competency was debated by both counsel. She sighs then looks at the carved caricatures on the table under a polyurethane glaze that is as clear as air. A vivid green cactus. An old Mexican farmer leading a burro by a rope. Three banditos on a distant hill. And an orange sunset. “I want you to move out,” she delivers her verdict at last. “It’s been years. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t forget.”

“I don’t want you to forget. I want you to know what we have overcome. The darkness you’ve saved me from,” he implores softly reaching for the hand she quickly withdraws. Mexican music blares on the scratchy PA. A man wailing over a Spanish guitar, heartbroken in any language. “They have a mariachi band in here on Fridays, I heard. We should come back next Friday for my birthday. I would like to come back.”

“No,” she says. “We can’t come back here or anywhere. I want to forget.”

“I wanted there to be a mariachi band at our wedding,” he admits looking down at those three banditos on their table. A waiter interrupts clumsily and takes away empty plates.

“There is not going to be a wedding. Stop talking about it.”   

He is still looking at those banditos. He wonders what they are going to do. Rob the farmer of his burro? Kill him? There is a well he hadn’t noticed before and a scraggly brown dog tailing the burro. He felt as though the banditos came off that table and robbed him of his heart, only he knows he had done that to himself years ago. And although his death was not immediate from the previous self-inflicted wound, it was here at last to confront him as he knew it would be someday. He sighed and looked up to the purple light as though for a reprieve, or an explanation from God, who he had turned to years before. She looked across at him, sure she was right in her decision. Her family supported her. Her friends. He had cheated, that was enough for them to throw it away. She was the matador on the wall next to them and he was the bull. And so, she thrust the final banderilla into his exposed neck with an “I don’t love you anymore.”

He closed his eyes and grinned oddly. It was a defensive look. On the backs of his eyelids there was the orange sunset from the table. His knees were in the sand and he was gasping for breath and bleeding profusely. A crowd cheered the inevitable death of another beast. The singer on the PA finished his song and the waiter brought the check and thanked them both in sloppy but coherent English, then disappeared again.

“I spent the last 5 years learning how to love myself so I could love you properly. I didn’t know how to love before I met you, which doesn’t excuse what I did, but which, if you care to, might make sense as to why I did it. There is no other explanation than that. I was dead when I met you. You gave me life. But I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t believe me about what?”

“I don’t believe you don’t love me. I can feel it in you.”

She shakes her head and exhales.

“In the middle of a bath…” he sings.

“I am not singing that goddamn song anymore.”

“In the middle of a bath I call your name,” he sings on.

She takes the check and gets up to leave, standing proud and upright like the matador beside her. She is all out of banderillos. She glares down indignantly at the dying carcass beside her. He notices the painting and feels sympathy for the bull, though it is only oil on canvas. The piñatas sway from the rafters like children just above their heads as they leave. Maybe the work of those unscrupulous banditos, he thinks. They were the farmer's children.

He is to spend five days on the sofa until the weekend when he is to move into an apartment. She lies in bed with an empty place next to her, her eyes on his pillow until they are heavy enough to close and to sleep. He looks up at the ceiling in the dark living room as though he can see her in the room above him. Sleep comes when exhaustion surmounts emotion. A few nights she came down through the dark dining room which adjoins the living room on her way to the kitchen for a glass of water. “In the middle of a dream…” he sings softly to her through the darkness.

She sighs heavily in frustration, gets her water, and as she walks back through, he sings, “In the middle of a dream I call your name.”

The days pass and he moves on a rainy Saturday while she is at work. He left her his key and said goodbye and good luck more than once through messages and texts, as though saying those things multiple times might make him able to feel like he can move on from the person who taught him how to love. His apartment is white and bland. Sterile as a surgery room. A repeated floorplan of the one next to it, and the one beside it, and the one behind it. His neighbors say have a good day coming and going and he says it back reflexively. His things are in garbage bags and boxes for a week and he lied in bed and slept and lost his job. He buys furniture piece by piece. Gets a new job. He puts her pictures by his bed, on his desk, and one on the wall. And he smiles because every day and every night he still gets to see her. And in those pictures, she smiles back as she once did.

The nights are the worst. He tries not think of what she is doing. What bar she is in getting drunk and what guy is hitting on her. He tries to go out and have a drink and talk to other people, but there is no peace in it. He stands around and checks his phone while he drinks a beer he doesn’t look at, but the phone doesn’t do anything to help him. Bars are a bath of salt to heal old wounds and cuts that come with every hour that passes. Every day, he tells himself, the odds of ever getting her back decrease exponentially. 

And then he gave up. He tried to talk to someone, to put into her what couldn’t ever be put. There is a light in people you meet, dim or bight, and it is not one you can simply replace, or flip on. It isn’t a bulb you can buy at Target. And people, he realizes, are not to be traded in like cellphones, or used cars no matter the miles, or the accident, or the stains on the upholstery, or all the technology of newness. After a week of despair, he decides that he is not going to give up. And in his living room he hangs a painting of a relentless bull fighting a matador for his life.

The bull, although unbridled and enraged, is a sentient being. And it is even more of a feeling animal when the banderillos go in, particularly the last. When its knees break down and it slumps to the hot hard earth to shed its lifeblood into a million grains of sand that look to be only solid earth from a distance. When he heaves his last few desperate breaths and its horns no longer serve a purpose and its anger is reduced to only sorrow. But the bull is not always killed and to suffer through such brutality makes one stronger. I am the bull, he says to himself, and the emotions came to me in the cuts of a sword I had never known.

He invites her over for dinner regularly. Makes extra in case she comes. Two glasses of wine. Her favorite wine. Two spots at a table. Candlelight. He sends her texts to which she does not reply. Makes calls to which she lets go to voicemail. He sends her tickets to plays, movies, and concerts, only to stand or sit next to an empty seat. He asked her to meet him in a bar for a drink, or the Mexican restaurant more than a hundred times. He makes dinner reservations in upscale restaurants and sends her the address and time, but he winds up at a table alone contemplating his next proposal. He buys her a plane ticket to New York and stands in the terminal waiting as though she is going to come, but is left with an empty seat for his carry-on bag. Regardless of how many times she doesn’t show, everywhere he goes, he is always looking around and expecting her to. Watching every door for her beautiful face.

And so, this is his regular routine for two and a half years. Not once in that time did he ever know if she moved on with someone else, or not. Logic would tell him she did, but he had divorced logic, and had given himself up entirely in his love for her. He is loyal to her, even in absence and the infrequent thought of another woman never becomes more than a thought. But still, no matter how much he prays, she simply never replies. Not to a single call or text. Not to a letter he mailed. Not to any invitation in all that time. Not even to say no.

Perhaps, he once thought, she changed her number and he was messaging and leaving voicemails that someone else got and laughed at, but the thought dissipated and the lack of a protective order, he joked with himself, is a good indication that she is at least receptive. Regardless, he stays positive and always thinks there is something more he can do. Maybe, he considers, she thought of coming and it is simply a matter of finding something compelling enough to interest her. Or so these are his thoughts alone in a heart-shaped hot-air balloon with an unused ticket in his pocket.

Despite the jollity of the invitations, the romantic texts and stories, and the optimism of hope he has been drunk on since he realized he wasn’t going to give up on her, the nights still haunt him most. There is something abysmally sad about the darkness and lying in a cold bed looking up at a bland ceiling and wondering if any piece of her heart still holds a place for him. Or if she is with someone else now, as he lay alone. Saying to someone else how she has never felt this way before and how she loves him like she never loved anyone, as she had said to him many years ago. He feels like the flip phone in the junk drawer. The spare change never spent. The used car on the side-lot with four bald tires and a cash only price.  He wonders if the matador was ever kind to the bull and he realizes then that the bull’s inevitable purpose was to die. To bleed out into the hot sand to the applause of the family and friends of the matador. But the bull dies, as we all die, so that we might live again, reborn to a life without struggle. And he closes his eyes.

Funeral arrangements were made by his brother in a downtown funeral home. Invitations were sent out to friends and family. One especially to her, of course. Maybe she will come and say some kind words. Maybe she will not, but will keep the invitation in an underwear drawer where secret sentimental things are often kept. Inside the funeral invitation are lyrics to the song, “Oh, Yoko,” by John Lennon. His favorite song. The song he tried to compel her to sing by singing the first line. People file in slowly. Most didn’t know the song, but it was his song for her, just as it was John’s for Yoko.

Everyone meets strangers at funerals. People they didn’t know to exist in the life of the person in the casket and the room was full of such strangers. His parents were deceased and only one of four brothers is there and he doesn’t appear to be particularly sad or distraught. He is standing next to the pastor telling jokes as people file in and past the casket to see the deceased, commenting on how “good he looks.” They sometimes say “he looks at peace.” There is a kid with a video camera recording the whole thing, doing his best to blend in with the wallpaper.   

She wasn’t the last one to come in, but she was damn near. She hesitated in the parking lot. Had to consider it again. She wears a black dress and large black sunglasses, the lenses like two black ostrich eggs. Gently, she walks and looks around. She notices the flowers around the casket are of all varieties, but are all yellow, her favorite color. An usher gives her a funeral program that says something about a “celebration of life.” There is a picture inside of the two of them at a baseball game that makes her heart hurt.

She sits in the back next to a white-haired man with a thick wire-brush-kind-of-white-mustache that looks a bit coffee-stained. He is in a sloppy wool suit, has a noose for a tie, and smiles at her oddly. She wonders how he knows the deceased. That is the way they say it, she thinks, “the deceased.” The deceased forgo their names to become part of the collective. A few million dead bulls. A few million matadors. Like something in a Montgomery Ward catalog. That is what he is now. She exhales softly and regretfully. She thinks a million thoughts sitting there as the pastor speaks and the kid with the camera films him from the side. She spots her ex-boyfriend’s brother who smiles at her and waves. He stays where he is in the front row and turns back around to face the pastor respectfully.

All the texts and invitations toil in her mind. She thought of them as innocent flirtations and they were kind for what they were. They made her feel good, that she was so loved that someone would wait for her for so long. That she made that impression. She thought that one day she might show up and surprise him. It wasn’t a year later when the anger passed, but it was replaced with self-doubt and sorrow. Holes that are difficult to fill. Across the period of two years she had dated one man for about half that and it hadn’t worked out because after the first month he was cold and indifferent and she missed the warmth of someone who genuinely cared about her soul and who handled her heart very differently than he did her body.

She cries sitting there and the old man next to her looks up, astonished by her sudden flood of tears. He leans over and says in a raspy whisper so not to disturb the pastor, “You’re really good. What agency are you from?” She shoots him an angry glower then looks back at the pastor who is going on about the glory of Christ and the grace of forgiveness. “One must forgive himself before another can forgive him. Just as one must love himself before another can love him. It’s not that hard to understand, people,” he says. “Love is all you need.”

And everyone in the room, as though on cue like an inverse set of forty or fifty dominoes, each stand up and one by one say, “All you need is love.” Even the children. It spreads all the way to the back row and the old man in the sloppy wool suit, his mouth sheltered by that bushy-white thatch says, “All you need is love.” And she stands up, feeling obligated. Everyone in the rooms eyes are upon her and she says softly, “All you need is love,” before adding, “Love is all you need.”

The deceased’s brother smiles and nods looking back at her as she sits down. She takes off her sunglasses and her eyes are full of tears. What has been lost in years of hesitation, of anger, and doubt? she considers. She exhales softly and then the pastor says a few more words and invites everyone to pray. And when he invites people to say their personal prayers and to make any request of God they want to make, there is a long lull of silence, disturbed by only an occasional cough. Then that silence breaks when someone sings out, “In the middle of a shave,” and it hangs there. That one line. She looks up and around, but everyone’s heads are still bowed and it is as though she is the only one who heard it.

And then as clear as the first, the second line, “In the middle of a shave I call your name.” She stands up and looks around, but everyone’s heads are still bowed and the room is again silent. The kid is still recording, and the eye of the camera turns to her. Slowly, she walks up the aisle towards the casket. She didn’t want to see him because she knew it would be hard, nor did she want to remember him in wax. But she thinks she is going crazy and imagining things. She imagined someone singing his song. And she gets to the casket and there he lay, peaceful in sleep, but not snoring. She always remembered him snoring. She stares at him and is lost in a trance. The people behind her raise their heads and open their eyes like morning glories as she stands there.

“In the middle of a cloud,” she sings softly. “In the middle of a cloud I call your name.”

And his eyes suddenly open and he sings back to her, “Ohhh, Yoko. Ohhhh, Yoko. My loooooooove-willllllllllll-turrrrrrrrrrrn-youuuuuuuuuuuuu-on!”

She jumps and he sits straight up. The pastor smiles after he realizes the woman is not in too much shock and helps the deceased out of the casket. Then everyone applauds and bow to each other. The white mustachio bowls up the aisle and shakes the formerly deceased man’s hand. His ex-girlfriend covers her mouth and everyone smiles and gathers around for the affirmation of being told how they all did. The white mustachio says, “She deserved some extra money because she really turned on the waterworks back there. Never seen such actin’ in my life!”

“It wasn’t acting. What the hell is this?” she cries.

“It was my funeral,” her ex-boyfriend says. “Thank you for coming. These are all actors I hired to play a part. I rented the funeral home and told them it was going to be a movie. The kid with the camera is my nephew. And you know my brother.” His brother shakes her trembling clammy hand and smiles warmly at her. “I had to know if you would come. And I had to see you again. One way or another.”

“You know where I live.”

“That wasn’t the right way. When I left the key, I told you I would respect your privacy.”

“I was mad.”

“I was hoping that you would have come to one of the thousand invites I sent you, but you never did. So, I was desperate.  And I thought about the matador and the bull and either I died and just died, or I died metaphorically and was reborn. So, I chose the latter.”

The white mustachio groans, “So there is no movie?”

“No,” the formerly deceased says. “But you will get paid. You will all get paid and you earned every cent of it.” Everyone claps. “And dinner is on me!”

“Where will we go?” she asks smiling, giving him a warm hug.

“To the Mexican place,” he smiles. He adjusts the ring in his pocket and takes a breath. 

She smiles back, relieved.

And as they walk out to their cars, the white mustachio says, “I think they have a mariachi band over there.”