The Art of Charlotte Parker

There isn’t a dating site that I haven’t been on. Even the ones for farmers, blacks, Jews and people above fifty – silver singles they call those, though I am of none of the before listed demographics. I’ve did the ones for free, paid for others, relied on their “complicated algorithms,” but always in the end I was matched with someone who wasn’t my match at all. Someone who has left me with the icky feeling that either my one true love doesn’t exist and so the little people in the algorithm just haphazardly paired me with anyone, or that I think too well of myself and the slightly overweight badger-like mother of five teacher who is “fluent in sarcasm,” has an ugly foot tattoo, is bitter towards men, has a face like a horse and an ass like a horse, is what Cupid intended for me. Seven times before on such dates I have sat across from such a person in a booth of some restaurant and blown my brains out as they went on and on about their ex-husband Rob and his new bitch wife.

I’ve been matched, unmatched, fished, catfished. I’ve had blind dates, hot dates, bad dates, no dates. Floods of sex. Droughts of abstinence. I’ve been speed dating, to singles bars, casinos, brothels, churches, even to Malaysia where an unsavory gentleman in a green tuxedo tried to sell me some lady with a glass eye who didn’t speak a word of English. She didn’t seem too enthused about me even after he slapped her. And since mutuality and consent has always been of some importance to me, I cringed and turned around.

“Asia wo-man nevah age!” he hollered frantically as I left. He could easily be selling Pontiacs in Des Moines. Then chasing me into the busy street of taxies and perverts, he screamed, “Haff off! Haff off!” so wildly I thought if he caught me he might stab me. I hate to think of what happened to the woman with the glass eye, but some things you just got to bury. I like to think she made it out okay. Perhaps, some rich and kind Turkish oligarch swept in and saved her like a Disney movie. Or maybe she killed the man in the green tuxedo and went back home, wherever home was. A happy place.

Last May I ordered a Russian bride who never came – arrived, I should say. I lost a $500 deposit, but I still have her picture and sometimes I wonder if she has just been delayed and if she might show up at any time. There may be a knock upon my door. Then I think about what our baby would look like and how a baby would say “dadda” in Russian. 

There is a Hopeless Romantic Guild somewhere with my picture in their hall of fame amongst others. We are kind of like the Lollipop Guild in Munchkin Land and we run around in overalls and tights, kicking our feet, and desperately waiting for a house to drop from Kansas and a girl to walk out. The right girl. Then we will do our song and dance bit to impress her, but she will go away nonetheless because we are not the Wizard, this is not Oz, and there is no place like home. I’ve been to every lonely hearts club bar the U.S. has ever puked up. They have a statue of me in front of the one in my hometown of Minneapolis. It is also a fountain. Water flows from my zinc eyeballs, always and forever, emblematic of my endless sorrow, and I stand in a puddle of my own tears where people cast pennies and wish to never be like me. It is truly an impressive sight to behold if you’re ever in Minneapolis.

My heart is not even a heart. It is more like an egg which has been broken so many times and swept up in a dustpan of therapy and glued back together, piece by piece, like an 100,000 piece colorless puzzle without an image. Blue, let’s say. Plain baby-boy blue is the color of that egg in my chest. I’ve put it back together so many times that I can do so by heart with a blindfold on, or in my sleep because it is either you choose to put it back together, or you replace it with the vacuum of nothingness, the black hole which sucks up love and goodness to fill that which cannot be filled. And you try to replace that which you lost with that which you cannot have. But in that sort of piracy, you shatter another’s the way yours was shattered and you will deny ever doing so, or at least of being culpable because of willful ignorance, or justifying it for that which happened to you. But you did. You always do. And you are guilty as sin of a terrible crime. 

Not me. I am not guilty of such a crime against others, thieving or breaking eggs, only of crimes against myself in that I would stupidly allow myself and mine to be broken by the wretched and careless ones. My heart is my own and it is glass, not stone. How it is capable of holding blood and hope at this point is a mystery to myself and only myself for no one else truly cares about the matter of another’s heart. They may care of your health and sanity, of your safety and overall well-being, but your heart is entirely your own dilemma, regardless of what is said or so vowed. But after years of disappointment and being broken, even the most precisely placed pieces never exactly fit and no adhesive ever really holds despite what the little infomercial man inside you promises for just pennies a day.

Some time ago I began to dabble in the dangerous witchcraft of thought that no woman exists who is my match, rather more modestly stated, that is anything like me. And there was no hope for me to be able to pair in this life happy and contentedly without any distress of undoable measure. Mine is a life of woe, destined to be so. I am a matchless sock and my mate is lost in the drier or that invisible plain of existence where socks and people disappear. Or she hasn’t ever been at all. Died at birth. Was miscarried. Aborted. Lost at sea. And so I stopped searching the lint traps and dating sites. Brought in my bloodhounds and shut and barred the heavy oak door of my soul. And that glass egg of mine rested under the ageless hen of my good sense and morality, and those cracks fused inversely to the way they once broke. Then after a year or so it was like they never were at all and I was whole again. What delight I once got in searching for someone like a mad pirate for a lost treasure, of being a hopeless romantic of the most deplorable and sad sort, was gone. And the girl I would run into at the supermarket by the apples; the woman in the car next to me in traffic; the barista who smiled at me for a few seconds too long – they all vanished and were no more.

I dreamt this soon after though. I was at the dog shelter and was walking through the narrow halls, cages to my left and right. But there were no dogs in the cages. There were women. And I thought how lovely it is that this is the way we choose our mates. On the surface it seems crude, subjective and misogynistic, but in the dream it seemed logical and romantic that there was a building like so where women went and locked themselves up and waited for a man to come along and claim them. To pony up a small adoption fee and go home and live happily-ever-after. And not to be sexist, even in dreams, there is such a place for men too, just next door, where men of a certain type have resigned themselves and wait for the right woman to come along and adopt them.

And on the tags on the kennel door there is a description of what they like and don’t like; if they are aggressive or not; and how well they get along with children and other pets. I walked through and looked into those cages and put on my reading glasses to review those tags of names, and likes and dislikes, and allergies, for good measure. One that I recall distinctly:

Kelly is great with people and other pets. She is housebroken, heartbroken, and tame. Loves long walks and to play with balls, belly scratches, and car rides. Surrendered because she was too “hyperactive” for her aging owner. Spayed and wormed. Vaccinated. Take her home today! Bring this tag to the help desk.

You could spend a few minutes in the adoption room, cuddling on the couch, observing behavior and mannerisms, scratching bellies, giving treats, looking up the breed type – that sort of thing. Mutuality, if it interests you, can be established in the temperament of the pet, their reaction to you in general, the smell of your pant leg, so on and so forth. I looked into the adoption room and it appeared more like a champagne room with an abundance of purple velvet and black light. There was a basket of toys in the corner, which I wondered if they had been sanitized regularly. A cornucopia of rubber vibrating things, collars, whips and chains. If the adoptee did not like their prospective owner, they could easily growl or be impudent in some other more passive way. Scratch themselves excessively, perhaps. Lick their own privates to the point of gross neuroticism. But if they liked them, and it was a mutual match, they would act playful and appropriate. I didn’t choose anyone. I left empty handed. Then I woke up.

I’ve had such dreams that seem so bizarre when I wake up, but while in the dream they seem perfectly logical. And if someone had the ability to enter such a dream and challenge the veracity of it all, I would expel them with great satisfaction and watch them flush out of the dream like a miscarriage. And that too would seem perfectly normal. But when I wake, the absurdity of the dream is very evident, and with conscious reason I scrutinize it, though the redolence of that which it represents still very much lingers in its own defense. But still I know that it means much more and I search for the meaning of the dream like I am Indiana Jones and that meaning, however elusive, is the Ark of the Covenant.

It was then, that day, that I stumbled across the one dating site I had never explored – Caged Angels. And on the website were pictures of incarcerated women from across the country with a picture or two and a brief biography on the individual profiles. It explained what they had done and when they were expected to be released, if at all. So I registered and perused the site. 

Rarely does one receive such an epiphany. But her face was like a burning bush and I knew it immediately when I saw her. I had realized the meaning of my dream and discovered the very Ark of the Covenant I sought. She rose from the screen like a phoenix out of the ashes of my resignation. A beautiful, but modest face. A slight smile which still held on to some measure of hope, her freedom not completely faded from it. I didn’t want to read of her crime, but I knew that I must so I scrolled down slowly as though it would somehow help make it less than what it inevitably was. One count of first-degree murder, awaiting execution on death row in Texas. I was aghast with that which I read. What a contradictory crime to her pleasant appearance. Attached to the profile was a link to an obscure magazine/blog article about her crime.

Charlotte Dolby, 26, was convicted of murdering her husband, Dr. Thomas Dolby, on February 19, 2019. Dr. Dolby was a prominent plastic surgeon in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. The two Dolby children, Hanna, 4, and Charlie, 2, are in the custody of paternal grandparents, Dick and Sandra Dolby. Mrs. Dolby claimed an intruder broke into the home on the night of December 6, 2018 and attacked her husband before attempting to sexually assault her. She described the man as a short, stout, white male who smelled of mothballs and vinegar. She said she fought off her attacker and called 911 as he fled.

When police arrived they found Mrs. Dolby covered in the blood of her dead husband, naked and delirious, and painting with her hands and fingers a portrait of her family on the living room wall in her husband’s blood. The children told police they heard their mommy and daddy fighting before the incident. A bloody kitchen knife was determined to be the cause of death of Dr. Dolby, and there was no signs of forced entry, or forensic evidence of an intruder. Mrs. Dolby’s prints were discovered on the knife. Prosecutors learned of Dr. Dolby’s extra-marital affair and believe this was Mrs. Dolby’s motive in committing the homicide. The woman Dr. Dolby was having an affair with has been missing since November 29, 2018.

Trial lasted for eight days with Mrs. Dolby being found guilty by a jury of her peers and sentenced to death, a date to later be determined by the state of Texas. Mrs. Dolby maintains her innocence.

I wrote her at once. There was something in her eyes that compelled me and I wanted to let her know that it didn’t matter what happened, I believed her. It was just a feeling, I suppose, an irrepressible and instinctive feeling that Charlotte Dolby had not committed such a heinous crime, despite all evidence to the contrary. But regardless of her guilt or innocence, I was nuts about her anyway, and I sincerely hoped she would write me back if she found me to be so compelling.      

After sending that letter to the address listed on the profile, it was as though something was born in me that had been waiting to come alive. In my dreams, my vivid and wild dreams, I sat in the courtroom where she was being tried. She was in chains and an orange jumpsuit, hobbling through a shadowy courtroom where a grim-faced judge sat on the bench, and people in suits scrambled like overpaid cockroaches around her nervously as though to find their precarious places in the room, smiling, frowning, solemn-looking, whispering about something or other which I had to imagine pertained to the beautiful woman in orange.

She was gorgeous despite no makeup and her hair being pulled back in a simple ponytail. I sat there in my dream and watched her sitting next to a hapless defense attorney whose face was blurry and indistinct. A sketch artist sat next to me, drawing the drama on a large paper pad in pen and pastels, and the news cameras went back and forth between her and the prosecutor, and her and the judge who showed no sign of mercy. Nothing was louder than a whisper or the strokes of the artist’s pastels on the paper. They showed pictures of the painting she had painted on the living room wall as evidence, and both children smiled while their father stared with large eyes and a glib expression in his own blood.

I dreamt of her on and off for the next two weeks. Her trial aired exclusively on the TV network in my head. Sometimes some blowhard would talk after the day’s trial and proclaim her obviously guilty and implore the public to demand justice and the needle. But I knew I had found my soulmate, though like any rational person I had reservations about that which she was accused. Still, I could not deny what flourished inside of my blue egg-shaped heart against my better judgment. And when the trial concluded in my mind, I had fantastic dreams of visiting her. Of being in a cell with her, of rescuing her in some dramatic way, through a drainage pipe or by some manner of deception I probably saw in some old A-Team episode when I was just a kid. I thought very seriously of moving to Dallas and becoming a correctional officer to plan on springing her, but I felt sincerely that if fate had brought me this far, it wouldn’t abandon me now. It would bring me further on its own, in its own time. But what drama that fantasy played in the television of my mind. Such a fantastic getaway! And Ms. Charlotte Dolby, widowed by fate, would be so appreciative of my efforts that she would fall as madly in love with me as I had with her as we escaped to Mexico.

It was weeks later after my first letter to Ms. Dolby, that I wrote another. This time, and in all letters to follow, I didn’t talk at all about her case. I only talked about her, and of life, and the beauty of hope. I wished to teleport her out of the misery of prison and to another place and time with my words. And being that she chose to paint a family portrait on the family room wall in her husband’s blood, I thought that maybe she had an interest in art, so I wrote of art and the many museums and great works that I had seen in my travels – none better than in Philadelphia. I didn’t get a reply from the first few letters, but nine letters later, I finally got a response. It read:


Dear Mr. Brown,

Thank you for your support. I am hopeful that something will come to pass and prove my innocence. Until then, I am at the mercy of God and fate, which both seem very much against me. Don’t stop believing in me, as your belief in me and your letters of love and support fortify my resolve, have been very inspiring, and give me hope. You are a beacon of light in an otherwise weary world.

Yours,
Charlotte Parker


I told her she may call me Abe, and in subsequent letters, she did just that. She explained that she chose to take her maiden name of Parker because of her husband’s infidelity. We exchanged dozens and dozens more letters and I fell in love a little more with each and every one. It got to the point that I was in love with my mailbox too, which was rather Freudian I realize, and I bought an expensive antique mailbox with a locking mechanism on it to replace the ordinary one so that no one could possibly purloin her letters from me, for such things some bastards like to filch. And every time I unlocked that iron door and pulled it open and saw the box stuffed with letters, hoping one of those was from my sweet Charlotte, I could practically hear angel wings flutter about and gentle harps being strummed from above and about, and arrows from Cupid himself strung in a bow and flying to assail me in the most wonderful and tender way a person can be assailed.

But the reality hit me that we would never meet in such a way, unless I did something terribly drastic after having spent an entire life doing nothing drastic in the least. There was, after all, nothing she could possibly do unless she could plan an escape that I didn’t dare write about in my letters, but that which I dreamed of. The knock on my door that wasn’t my long-lost Russian bride, but rather Charlotte after she busted loose and cut and dyed her hair in a truckstop in Texarkana, having taken a bus to Minnesota just to be with me. But having logged all of our letters to and from, it would be the first place they would look, so we would have to sell my house and move somewhere else far away. I would have to be someone other than Abraham J. Brown, just as she would have to be someone other than Charlotte L. Parker, and so at times, half asleep with her letters lying beside me like basking white seals lazily fearing no predator, I thought up names for us both with the zeal of an expectant mother thinking of names for her unborn child. And no less like that expectant mother, I floated upon a euphoric cloud and frolicked in my reveries of Charlotte and I as newborn people in an unfamiliar place and time. All of the past dead behind us. Taking our first steps together.

I never tired of writing her and years passed and we exchanged so many letters that I got to know her better than I ever think I could have had we not been in such a strange condition. Her letters were personal and very longing, as were mine, but there was an airy feel to them, a certain surreal tone which made me think that she was writing me as though I did not exist at all, but simply to have some connection to someone who didn’t see her as a murderer. Who didn’t refer to her as a number rather than her Christian name. My existence, and our relationship therein, was her escape. She never wrote of the prison and what she would do or how she was treated. She never wrote about her husband or her kids and I never asked the question that seems most obvious, that of her guilt or innocence, because it didn’t matter to me. What should it? In some worlds it would be justified. Nothing else mattered than the fact that she was my true love and I would not forsake her, even when the day came that the state of Texas decided to kill her for that which she did or didn’t do.

Charlotte sent me pictures, drawings and paintings now and then. She was an artist and often I would get her art in large manila envelopes. She did an impressive self-portrait in menstrual blood, which I promptly took to Hobby Lobby and had them frame for me. It is apparently a thing they call “period art,” but I did not know of it prior to then. The lady who framed it was impressed and when she asked who the artist was and the medium used, as though I were keeping some great secret, I smiled coyly and said only, “A friend, and Kool-Aid.”

I hung that self-portrait above my writing desk where I write her letters. My desk has become a portal to another elusive world that dreadfully narrows a little each day. The walls around my desk soon became populated with the art of Charlotte Parker, and after another year or so there was not a square inch of empty space to be had. I thought how it was a wonderful metaphor for how she had filled my life and I wished for it never to end, but I knew that it must. Then after four years of correspondence, I got a final letter, which read as follows:

My dearest Abraham,

I have to confess that I was never Charlotte Dolby. I was in name, but I have always been Charlotte Parker pretending to be other people. Not that I didn’t want to be a Dolby once upon a time. I did. For Thomas and my kids. But I never was. I have given up hope they will ever catch the man who killed my husband and it is to the point that I am not sure if even I believe he exists. After all these years I have my own doubts about myself and sometimes I doubt that I was even assaulted and my husband killed by an intruder. I sometimes doubt that I have children in this world. Given another four years, I might doubt that I was married or had children at all. Given long enough in here, you doubt everything. Even that the sky is blue and the ocean wet. I can no longer hear the sound of their laughter. I can no longer feel them in my arms or the softness of their hair on my cheek. That has been taken from me.

I have resigned myself to the fate that awaits me in the death chamber. I can appeal, they say and prolong the inevitable. They also say if I can fake insanity I might live out my years in the great state of Texas, in this correctional facility, by the mercy of the governor. I could see officers begin and end their careers. Teachers and cooks come and go. Inmates in and out. I will see pictures of their babies age, but not mine. Ma and Pa Dolby have shut me out. I could have a seedy affair with an officer or two. Or become a lesbian. Or a nun. Or I can slip further and further from reality and live entirely in a world of make believe. Make believing that I am somewhere with you. It shall be. In another time and place, my love. This is goodbye.

Yours always,
Charlotte       


It was a long trip from Minnesota to Texas. For fear of flying, I drove. Even though Charlotte’s life hung in the balance, I felt, it was not enough to overcome my fear of flying. So all the way down the highway I doubted the sincerity of my love for her so critically that it made me cringe and practically sick. I had no idea what I would do when I got to the prison where she was, I simply knew that I must be there and relay my concerns to the staff that Charlotte Parker was at her breaking point and they must do something to save her. All down the highway my mind toiled and I fantasized about busting her out, or somehow getting to see her. She had told me long ago that they do not allow her to have visitors except for family and I wondered if I could pretend that I was a brother. I hadn’t a phone number to call, only an address, so I kept looking down at my phone and watching the time and miles elapse until at last I was in Texas and I was only a few hours away from my caged angel.

I was sleepy and thought to rest a little but I knew time was of the essence, so I kept on. What could I really do anyway, I considered, doubting myself the way I doubted myself so often in my life. One person can make the difference, I challenged. Surely I could speak to the warden. I could pretend I was a congressman or someone of some great importance. A reporter for 60 Minutes or Dateline, perhaps.

My hands got clammy gripping the steering wheel the closer I got, and at about one mile away things began to unravel. Rather than some lonely stretch of back road where I expected to see the enormous Texas State Prison for Women sprawling, I found myself in an upscale suburban neighborhood. The closer I got to the address, the smaller and smaller the possibility of the prison became until it was not a possibility at all. And when the navigation lady said I had arrived, I looked to the right and a large stone pillar by a solid oak front door with ornate glass confirmed that I had in fact arrived at my destination. I parked my car in front along the curb and sat there baffled for a few minutes until a black Mercedes SUV pulled into the driveway and a beautiful woman in big black sunglasses got out toting two well-dressed children. Then I knew.

There was a reason she once asked me not to address the envelopes to Texas State Prison for Women, but to simply write Charlotte Parker #377388 and the address below. She had said she didn’t want the reminder of her unfortunate residence on our letters that she held so dear. I knew I needn’t even have written the number, but she didn’t absolve me of that detail to allay suspicion. I watched her carrying a few bags of groceries inside the house and thought to leave, but I didn’t leave, I just sat there with her last five letters in my hands, mortified. I was in another world, a world of my own that she had just abandoned and I don’t ever remember a more empty feeling or lonely place that I have ever been.

In the blink of an eye, she went from being on the brink of suicide in dire straits on death row to alive and apparently well in the affluence of suburbia. Back with her children and husband, I reasonably presumed, who she never had murdered at all. It was clear that she had written the article of her imaginary crime and posted it on a blog, a work of complete fantasy. Then she had registered herself for Caged Angels as though she had committed the crime and went to prison and was on death row. As unbelievable as it was, it all made sense now and it was the absolute worst exhibit of attention-seeking behavior I had ever witnessed. I was duped for four years by the warped delusions of a bored and unstable Texas housewife.

I had come too far not to see her, I resolved, so I walked up to the door and knocked, perhaps only for the satisfaction to let her know that I know. My anger and pride completely overwhelmed my embarrassment and sadness. She opened the door and knew immediately who I was and why I was there, but she didn't seem at all bothered.

“I expected you,” she smiled casually.

“I didn’t expect you,” I replied.

“No. I guess you didn’t. Would you like to have lunch? The children are with their nanny. I was just heading out to have lunch with a friend, but I can cancel that if you’d like. I’d like to cancel that,” she added, smiling, gazing at me.

She navigated as I drove us to a nearby restaurant. We didn’t say much on the way and she could tell I was angry that I had been so deceived, but patiently she waited to explain herself. Perhaps, she was artfully composing her words on the way, her explanation. I began to feel more stupid than angry. The restaurant was an upscale yuppy gastropub and we sat in a quaint, shadowy corner like a couple having an affair. That we were, I reasoned then, but an affair of a much different sort. The waitress smiled and greeted her cordially by name and then politely smiled at me complimenting me and my good fortune of company and taste with her eyes. It was a clear endorsement of Ms. Parker that I could not mistake. Charlotte ordered a martini and smiled a lot, apparently happy to see me.

“Am I what you expected,” she asked excitedly, forgetting to preface it all with an overdue explanation. “Do I disappoint?”

“You do not disappoint. But I expected you to be in orange and on death row,” I admitted somberly sipping a beer. “And, in fact, I expected not to see you at all, but to see a warden who I would plea with to improve your conditions or monitor you more closely. So, this is in one way a wonderful shocking improvement of my expectations, but in another, a terrible disappointment of the presumed reality. I have been deceived, clearly, but I am pleased you are not dead.”

“But art is deception! The greatest of art deceives the eye or the ear, and even greater art deceives the mind. But art is love and it never deceives the heart. I became a character and drew us both into an alternate reality where we needed to live to survive and be together.”

“At my expense,” I countered.

“No! No! I wish you wouldn’t see it that way! It could not have been any other way!”

“There is no other way to see it, Charlotte.”

“Sure there is! You should see it like this. You fell in love with me and I fell in love with you. You thought our predicament was completely hopeless, yet you loved me just the same. You were loyal and loving and cared, expecting absolutely nothing in return from me. You sent me gifts for Christmas, cards for my birthday, wrote me poems near daily and stories that I read and loved all the same as though I were on death row. And I was at that time in a prison indeed. The prison of a dead marriage. I had found out my husband was having an affair and I killed him in my mind the way I killed him in our story. I did! I am guilty of that, sure as I am guilty of breathing. But for the children I lived with him for four years and tolerated him and knew what he was doing when he was late and when he said he was golfing on weekends, though he never knew that I knew. And so during that time I compiled evidence against him, insurmountable evidence against him, and I set up accounts for the children and myself so that when at last the time came, it would be a clean break, as much as it could be. I hired a lawyer and the lawyer handled my affairs and I went back to school and became a nurse so that I could go wherever I wanted to go when I had the chance. When at last I was set free by the divorce which was like a governor’s pardon in our story.

“I could live off the alimony. Without apology, I got more than half of everything, even the house. But I wanted my freedom more than anything, and free I am. I also wanted a love story to give me my life and soul back, that part of me that was broken so recklessly, and you gave that to me. I am sorry that I mislead you. Dearly, I am. But I was never more free and in love than when I was on death row exchanging letters with you and writing of a future that I could see clearly before me when the day finally came. I couldn’t tell you the truth through a letter. I was going to fly to you in Minnesota next week and surprise you with a final letter in hand, having been pardoned by the governor himself. Deliver it myself to your house. I had already asked the nanny to stay with the children and she agreed. Charlie likes to ice skate and Hanna loves the snow. She dreams of making a snowman. We would be at home in Minneapolis. You would love them, Abe. You just would.”

I sat back in my chair, befuddled by the sudden turn-of-events, conscripted still in the service of the fiction of the four years prior, but paroled I was to a new reality that was overwhelming and surreal like one of those dreams I left in my sleep. I had a few more drinks and ate a full lunch. It was our first date. A beautiful first date. A bizarre way to meet, but I knew I would be telling the story for many years to come, unless there was yet another twist I couldn’t foresee that would thwart what felt more like destiny than anything I had ever experienced. I stayed that night in Texas at a hotel and we had breakfast the next morning at a touristy place on the interstate with a giant smiling cowboy on top of it. At dusk he lights up in neon, she mentioned proudly. You can see him for ten miles. His name is Cowboy Pete.

She asked me when I left to pretend that I hadn’t came, and to pretend that she had murdered her husband and that she was still on death row because she loved me for loving her that way. She was a kook just as I was a kook. I held and kissed her standing in that hot gravel parking lot along the interstate, imagining Cowboy Pete as the sky purpled and the neon tubes of his silhouette flickered on burning bright against a darkening Texas sky. I might never see him that way, but maybe I will in a dream.

I must have smiled the whole way home, completely absolved of any anger or bitterness for her deception. I suppose I should have been mad about something of it, but I couldn’t be. In fact, odd as it may seem, I think I loved her more because of it. The extraordinary length she went to find love and to be free. She wasn’t ordinary or boring in the least, and her ability to think abstractly and live wildly within herself rivaled that of my own.

A week later, there was a knock on my door. I half expected it to be my long-lost Russian bride, or a Jehovah’s Witness, or some other letdown. But when I opened it, there stood Charlotte Parker, pardoned by the governor himself, and free to love for the rest of her life. So I invited her in and we carried on where we left off beneath Cowboy Pete. In a few months she relocated to Minneapolis, to save on postage, she joked. Soon after, they tore down my statue of eternal tears outside of the lonely hearts club downtown. I was expelled from the club. I suppose as a responsible consumer I should sit down and write a good review of the Caged Angels website. But I don’t think I’ll ever get around to it. 

Artwork by Jutta Koether