There Is Blood In Our Sin, Pt. 1

The moonlight spilled across the frozen earth like a spotlight in the clearing illuminating the two men standing near the center. They stared out across the naked woods that lay beneath them on the steep icy slope towards the bundle of railroad tracks that stretched for miles across the flood plain. In the distance they merged at a red pinpoint – the first bridge across the River linking the Northland to Downtown and the industrial river bottoms that saturated the City’s flood plains.

The two men did not move except to pass a joint between them. When they inhaled, its red ember tip burned brighter than the moonlight and lit red their bearded faces. A cold wind blew across the clearing, across the crest of the bluff, driving high thin sheets of dark clouds across the sky towards the moon and the City. As if to beat the new incoming storm a train wound its way through the plain, between rows of silent standing trains, towards the far red pinpoint.

One of the men reached to his side where a case hung from his shoulder. He pulled out a camera and aimed down the slopes, past the woods, into the long narrow rail yard towards the slow but steady moving train.

“That’s it.”

“Good, it’s about to hit again.”

Both men looked back towards the dark crowding sky, their faces reddened by the sharp, biting teeth of the driving wind. They set off across the crest into the upper woods where a single dirt path led from the clearing to a lit parking lot. As they stepped into the man with the camera’s car he asked the other: “What are your plans for tomorrow night?”

“I’m not sure. It depends on the weather I guess. If it’s bad I’ll stay in and read with a hot toddy. Why, what’s up?”

“Kat and I thought that if you weren’t doing anything you might like to come over. We could drink some wine, play a game. Plus, there’s football on Sunday morning. I think Liverpool and Pompey. Maybe Tottenham.”

“Isaac, I wouldn’t mind, but sooner or later I need to grow up. You know, find my significant other instead of a significant couple.”

Isaac chuckled.

“I love you Jake, but this is no ménage a trios.”

Jake did not speak, but proceeded to roll another joint. Isaac drove slowly down the winding road enveloped by a canopy of naked tree limbs. The road reached the bottom where the billowing bluffs came to an end, washed away over millennium, and smoothed across for miles by the endless, meandering River. In the plains the road intersected with the highway that followed parallel to the rails. As he crossed the median and drove south towards Downtown Isaac spoke.

“You know if you weren’t so damn nihilistic, you might actually make some girl happy. Instead of shutting down on them, always expecting the worst, you should open up. A relationship involves two people.”

Jake took a drag from the joint and then handed it to Isaac before replying.

“I know all that. But how can you open up? Nobody is anybody else. I’m not them. I will never know who they really are because I didn’t go through their life experiences and the same is true for me to them. No matter how open I am, in the end it always comes down to them not knowing who I am because they can’t understand me.”

“Oh boo hoo. What a bunch of shit. You do need to grow up. You need to get your heart broken. You need to be in love with someone instead of always dating girls because it’s comfortable.”

“Well you know what I think of that.”

“Yeah yeah, yank yank, agnostic in love.”

Isaac took a drag then handed the joint back to Jake. They drove through sprawling Northtown that blanketed the northern flood plain. It began as an industrial town to compliment the City at the turn of the last century, and had grown from its working class roots to support students and young professionals, new Korean immigrants replacing the older Italians. Only the grain elevators beside the rail tracks and the tower of the airport in the bend of the River downstream from the mouth of the Kaw stood higher than one hundred feet. It was understood that the real reason no buildings were built higher was not because of the incoming personal and corporate flights but because it would obtrude the view from Downtown to the River and flood plains and bluffs.

And so they drove through Northtown with its two and three story brick warehouses, eight and nine story chemical stacks, with scattered four and five story loft apartments. The highway became a street, devoid of any traffic because of both the earlier and approaching storms. Only a police car idled in a side street, a steady stream of thin white exhaust emitting from its tail pipe. Jake took a drag, then rolled down the window and tossed out the roach.

“It’s just depressing that I can’t find one girl who understands me, who will let me breathe. Someone like Kat is to you.”

“Well, I hate to burst your bubble of our perfection, but we went through some shit to get where we are now. Remember we didn’t even date in the beginning. A drunken one night stand full of awkwardness was followed by a few years of friendship.”

“Yeah, and I said then you guys were perfect because she could take your shit and give a little back.”

“True, but there was a lot of petty fighting in private. Hell we still have stupid fights over stupid girl shit, but that’s part of a relationship. You should try it sometime instead of packing it in after two months and becoming passive aggressive until the girl breaks up with you.”

Jake looked out the window as they crossed the darkened gulf of the River. Below them, between the levies, the trees grew thick and wild, their dark naked limbs entangled in each other, in cataclysmic struggle as they reached higher and higher for more sunlight. And then beside this wild strip of land, carved into the earth, the River moved silently and thickly through, pushing further into the land. They stopped at a red light as tiny crystals of ice began to strike the car.

“You know, you should just fuck around for a while. You’ve never done that. It’s always been one short relationship followed by a long period of loneliness and then another short relationship. You should just try fucking a few girls instead of worrying about what they think of you, when they’re going to dump you, and why you can’t be in a relationship. Instead just sleep around.”

“Ha, yeah right. I have a hard enough time sleeping with the girls I’m dating. How the hell am I supposed to fuck some girl I don’t know?”

“You just do. You get drunk, go to her place, fuck her, and then never talk to her again. Out of sight, out of mind. I’m serious, try it. It might help.”

“Maybe.”

The light turned green and Isaac drove up the first bluff south of the River, through streets surrounded by towering buildings of dark reflecting glass and steel – the City’s Grand Canyon. The street descended into a valley of brick warehouses built during the City’s cowtown days now turned into artist studios and loft apartments. Near the bottom of the brick and concrete valley Isaac pulled the car aside and stopped near one of the lower warehouses.

“All right buddy, give me a call tomorrow if you want to come over.”

“Okay.”

“Or just come on over. Kat and I would like it.”

Jake nodded his head and stepped out of the car. The ice was biting as it began to blow thicker and harder. The sidewalk was already covered again, and though rough like sandpaper, had a slippery edge.

“Night Isaac. Be careful going home.”