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margie 1
margie 2
margie 3
margie 4
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| *The Heart of Marjorie* |
| Page 3 |
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| I sat up at the edge of the bed. Margie's exam at T-minus three hours and counting. I pictured her sleeping, dreaming her mysterious girly-dreams, her heart in a low-amplitude stir mode of one thump per second, her mouth partly open, her lashes long and still. Sweet Jesus... I went to the bathroom. An inflamed urethra made urination an ordeal; the pain a scorching, excruciating heat that would take twenty minutes to cool. Self-inflicted friction chafing. Not the first case I've had of it by any stretch- but a particularly bad one. And I was still go for launch, God help me, which added a trajectory problem (but neither was this out of the ordinary)... And I noticed that since I'd been spending time with Margie, my beard growth seemed to accelerate. The sink stubble looked like what I'd normally expect after two days. She stirred up the juices in me. What can I say? I stared uncomprehendingly at the TV until it was time to leave. Lots of sighing, smoking, and watch checking. Finally it was time to go. As I drove to work I hoped that somehow Margie wouldn't look too appealing to me on this particular day. Unlikely. And that's not what happened. Breathtaking. Literally breathtaking. Sucked the air out of me. Hard to even speak. She'd restyled her hair- as she'd been talking about doing since the day I met her. Picked a hell of a day for it as they say in the bad movies. "Hi, Margie... Wow! You look like Judy Jetson..." I almost ran out of air just saying that. She laughed, then wrinkled her nose and pulled the fountain of shining hair through both hands- a high-mount ponytail and side-swept bangs. "It looks queer (pronounced "kwee-ah", Maine-style), don't it?" I assured her that Judy Jetson is a babe. We both blushed. I wanted her to put her arms down. It was more than I could take. "No, really, it's...nice" I wanted to say beautiful. This was going to be worse than I imagined. I felt dizzy and distracted. I need to sit down and smoke. Or lie down and die... I notice that Margie has delicate ears- till now hidden by her hair. I imagine the black funnel of the chrome otoscope that will illuminate this hallowed corridor to her brain in about one hour from now, and then the opthalmoscope that will plumb the vermilion depths of her pupils- a passage to her soul. The notion makes make me queasy with desire and envy. I might as well face it- I'm allergic to love. And she was dressed, she was. Margie, the ideal employee, was blowing her entire take-home pay and more on clothing purchased at the store- cheerfully going broke on bargains. Today she wore a very loose-fitting cantaloupe blouse with black pre-wash jeans- which accentuated that lovely heart-shaped backside of hers. Bright new Reeboks. It occurred to me this was selected to reflect the black and orange school colors- this being day one of girls cross-country. We hauled out the tables and racks. Margie was clearly excited about the start of cross-country and was even more animated than usual- which I somehow construed as a slap in the face, though I was not sure why. I tried not to sneak peeks and failed utterly. She had on that friggin' demitasse bra or whatever you call it. I tried not to imagine her standing in her bra, jeans and sneakers in the girls locker room amidst other similarly-clad maidens as she waited her turn, fingers tucked demurely in her armpits, joking as always, and I failed at that, too. My eyes welled up and my throat ached. We worked for about forty-five minutes. Steamy and overcast. She glistened with sweat and fanned herself and blew her hair around with exhaled updrafts. Everything she did was a turn-on. I loved her. Would she be sweaty during her physical? Ouch, stop... "Well, I guess that's all the big stuff. Time is it?" "Nine-forty." "I gotta get going. But I'll be back before it gets crazy. I promise." "Yup." I couldn't even look up. I sensed she was looking at me. "You're not mad at me are you?" She said this quietly, seriously. She knew something was bothering me. I shook my head. "Nope". I couldn't look at her. "Is Howard being an asshole?" " Yeah. What else is new? Long story... No, I'm fine. Just go." "Jeez, I hate doing this- taking off in the middle of work." "It's not that. I'll be fine. Go." "We'll talk when I get back, okay?" I nodded. And when she got out of hearing range, I sniffed. She was cheating on me and I was supposed to be okay with it. There was still some stuff to be put out, so I busied myself with that. I left a large box of rain gear on the floor for a moment as I opened the door ahead of me. Nathan, a pasty, whiny teen who was somehow related to Howard gave me some crap. He was one of those androgynous, overprivileged kids who tried to be so articulate that he couldn't make the simplest statement with out halting as he tired to force-fit a new SAT word into the declaration. Painter pants, alligator shirt, tossing the hair out of his eyes every ten seconds- you know the type. His job seemed to consist of playing nonstop pocket pool and stealing honor snacks. And I know he felt that anyone my age that was working the sidewalk sale must be pretty stupid and should be treated as such. It's how he was raised. "Um? So, you know, man, you can't like just- um - like, set the merchandise in the aisle, because it's -um- like hazardous to the cust-" "Look you little twit, I'm not in the mood for your bullshit today. Understand?" "Hey, man, I'm just saying-" "Well, save it. I'm not in the fucking mood." I figured he'd whine to Howard about this. Fine; I was in the mood to kick some ass anyhow and Howard seemed a good place to start. The tension was turning to anger. Unspent lust goes sour if kept too long. But Nathan seemed to take my outburst in stride. Quickly resumed tossing his hair and shooting pool as though nothing had happened. He was used to being disliked, I guess. Never gave me crap again, in any case. Margie was gone for forty of the most intense minutes I've ever endured. That a mortal should be granted such a sublimely transcendent privilege just because he went to med school- well, it was unfair. All the riches in the world seem trifling in comparison to what to him was a routine little task that he was called on to do a couple of times a year. He says "Next..." and Margie's heart- the succulent fist-sized strawberry immersed beneath the skim milk surface of her chest- belongs to him... At some point during this period, perhaps at 10:09 AM, the doctor's bulky rubber and chromium Sprauge sampled the sounds of Margie's semi-lunar valves, both pulmonary and aortic, thumping beneath the silky soft skin of the sternal borders; then it moved downward toward the xiphoid process at the terminus of the sternum to absorb the workings of the young woman's tricuspid valve; and finally on to the Holy Grail of the apical impulse at the fifth intercostal just southwest of the left nipple to plumb the closing snap of the mitral valve; the doctor must have gotten an earful with her, thin-chested as she was. I wonder if he looked her in the eyes during the auscultation. How could he not? Margie, of Scottish ancestry, had that magically translucent peach-blushed skin that MICIO wrote of so evocatively which would surely retain, for a delicious moment, the white ghost of the meandering disk as it sounded each of her heart's four chambers; I noticed when Margie scratched her thin forearms, her nails left brief contrails against her pink skin. This tasty little detail didn't occur to me at the time- mercifully. It would not have helped matters... I wondered: will the doctor hear ventricular ejection with that fancy scope? Does my Margie have an aortic whoosh? Physiological splitting of the S1 sound, perhaps? And what's her heart rate? BP in mms of Hg? I want to know... Air filling the lungs sounds like a breeze passing through the trees- in a way that's what it is- a wind in the branches. The doctor would be privileged to this intimacy also... I've watched my friend's pale chest rise and fall during those precious moments of unblinking reverie that she is prone to- lips parted, her subtle overbite fetching in profile- and I watched her pulsing carotid one time when the light was right. A cherished gift, but not enough. Not with this girl. I want to hear her life force and hold it in my memory forever- and if I can't, then no one else should... Making babies laugh, singing misheard lyrics and skipping across the parking lot to her car at night- thrilled to be alive- that was Margie. Too much. Way too much. I was shivering in the heat. Overloaded. God, these thoughts were killing me and I couldn't leave them alone. NEXT PAGE: http://maxpages.com/margie/margie_4 |
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