Belinda

I've never put anything but poetry up here, but I've been working on this for a while now and wanted to share it.

Belinda, by now fully drunk, stood on the balcony and lit a cigarette. The balcony was crusted with ice and snow – she could see a frozen parking lot below and could hear the harbor although she could not see it for the thick white fog that began fifty yards ahead and ended God only knew where.
Inside the hotel room, her daughter was cocooned in the scratchy covers watching cartoons and eating butterscotch pudding from a plastic cup. Although she certainly must have known that something was wrong, she was a game little person and seemed to see their flight from the house as a sort of holiday. She should have been grateful for her daughter’s pluck, but Belinda could only feel a watery numbness punctuated by flashes of rage so fierce she scared herself.
She stayed on the balcony until the last bitter dregs of her cigarette. When she went inside, she saw that her daughter had fallen asleep but had taken care to turn off the television. Belinda looked at her face all rosy at the cheeks, and heard the faint whistle that belied a cold she had only recently gotten over, and felt suddenly as though some sort of escape was imminent. Looking back out into the harbor through the flimsy sliding glass door, she saw that a slight shade of darkness had fallen, as though the fog was the beginning of the end of the world, an end that would be accomplished by nightfall.
Belinda watched her hands putting paint on her face. They trembled slightly – she remarked as if from a far distance that her hands shook when she was excited, and wondered if and why she felt that way. The face in the mirror was still beautiful, even young-looking, despite all the crying she had done at her mother’s house. She finished and appraised her work, her eyes weaving back and forth on their own image. She put on the aqua earrings, picked up her purse and left the room, locking it on the way out.
The hotel bar smelled of the thousands of lonely cigarettes that had been smoked there but its dutifully nautical décor looked better in the murky darkness of winter than it did in the tourist season. It was still close enough to Christmas for the little twinkling lights to be appropriate, but the truth was that they were never taken down, only turned off. There were only two people in the hotel bar, and they were both men. They eyed her as she sat down and ordered a glass of white wine, and she was almost bold enough to return their looks. From their clothes and demeanors, they didn’t seem to be from around there – both wore rumpled-looking suits and recently shined shoes. One had a grizzled look and could have been any age from fifty to seventy; the other was younger, lacking a chin but with a great beak of a nose. They were talking together and had only briefly stopped their conversation when Belinda came in. She sat quietly by herself, taking measured sips of white wine that just barely disguised the fact that she was on a drunk. There was nothing to do with her hands except smoke, and of course the two suited men took the opportunity to offer her a light.
“This here’s Wayne,” the grizzled man said, “and I’m Bill.”
Belinda unleashed her smile, which dazzled them as she knew it would, and extended her small hand. “Belinda,” she said. The men silently noted her wedding ring.
“That’s a mighty pretty name,” Wayne answered. “What are you doing in these parts?”
Belinda noted with a touch of panic that she had no story prepared beyond the truth, and the truth was not something she was ready to tell. “Moving,” she said. “I’m – We’re moving.” The men waited several seconds for more information and when none came graciously accepted the lie.
“Well, you could do plenty worse than this place,” Bill said, and laughed in an overfriendly, barking sort of way. His laugh ended abruptly in hacking; he spluttered and spat something into a handkerchief. “Coffin nails,” he said pleasantly, and smiled at Belinda as if nothing had happened.
“Can I refresh that?” Wayne asked, gesturing with his nonexistent chin toward her empty wine glass.
“Oh, I shouldn’t,” she automatically demurred, but he had already gestured to the bartender, a squat barnacle of a woman who was reading an outdated Reader’s Digest on a stool behind the register. The glass came back full and Belinda held it out before her.
“Cheers,” she said quietly, and they all clinked glasses without making eye contact.

Upstairs, Belinda’s daughter stirred under the comforter, coughing. She opened her eyes to the darkness, could not remember whether she was in Grandma’s old four-poster bed or in the bottom bunk of her old bedroom. She had dreamed of huge birds with round black eyes, eyes that could swallow people right up like pools of water.
“Mama?” she called, and hearing no response, cried softly into the lumpy pillow before lapsing back into sleep, into her dreams of being swallowed alive.

There had been a tacit agreement between the two of them, some vague nodding and meaningful eye contact that had taken place on one of Belinda’s trips to the bathroom. Wayne was the acknowledged victor, Bill out of the running as he was lately stricken with evermore dire bouts of coughing.
“Well, partners,” Bill said, laying his hands over his knees and exhaling into a standing position, “think it’s about time I turned in. All that driving, you know, wears on the eyes.” He winked at Belinda. “You all have a pleasant night, y’hear?”
Belinda and Wayne wished him a good night and then sat in the near darkness without saying anything. Belinda’s glass swam in her eyes, and she remembered the little girl upstairs as if she were on another planet, somewhere altogether outside of the realm of her concern. Suddenly she laid her hand on Wayne’s, found it warm and slightly moist.
Their eyes met, and she giggled in a way that crinkled the corners of her eyes like a girl’s.
“Sorry,” she said, but he had already closed her hand up between his own.
“Moving, huh? Where you moving from?”
Then her lie unspooled itself, easily omitting her daughter. She murmured about losing her job in Bangor after her boss had “thrown himself” at her.
“Hardly can blame a man, now, couldja,” he said at length. “You, uh, you said we?”
“We. Oh, yah.” She held out another cigarette like a little scepter, and Wayne lit it. His long nose threw a brief, birdlike shadow across his face. “Well, my broth- my brother’s helping me. He’s from there, but looking for another job himself.”
“What you say we, uh, retire?” he said then in a low voice. His whole face was pink and glistening in the twinkling lights, his eyes telegraphing beery desire. He reached for her face, closed his eyes and leaned his beaked nose closer to hers, an unplanted kiss puckering his lips.
Belinda’s scream startled the bartender into uttering a short caw. “WELL, IT’S CERTAIN’Y ABOUT TIME TO CLOSE, HERE,” she said hoarsely after composing herself. Eying Wayne and then Belinda, who had begun to cry softly, she turned and left. “BE SURE’N TURN OFF THEM LIGHTS,” she called over her shoulder, as if she were their mother.
Belinda’s crying turned into sobs, and Wayne tried vainly to wrap his arms around her. “There, there,” he whispered. “What’s all this about? Huh?” She just swung her head to and fro, saying, “No, no, no,” over and over again.

The little girl woke and, after some sleepy effort, read the red pointed digital numbers: 6:34. Darkness feathered off into faint light near the sliding glass door, and she threw the little metal lever that held it locked. It was freezing out on the balcony, and she was quickly cold through the pink nubbly fabric of her pyjamas. Fog still reigned, damp and unbidden all around her, and it was only after she heard the far-off voice of the foghorn did she feel a surge of fright and rush back into the hotel room.
“Mama? Mama?” she called.
“Close the door, baby,” Belinda said. She hugged her daughter’s body to her, feeling her little feet like icicles against her legs.