Chapter 4

Bob Dylan predicted her existence way back in the sixties with the great surrealist song, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues:"

Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the Goddess of gloom.
She speaks good English and she invites you up into her room.
And you're so kind and careful not to go to her too soon.
And she takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon

"Is that your car?" Melinda pointed at the green and dusty Range Rover parked in front of the diner. I nodded. "Of course. Can you drive?" I nodded. "Good. Wait a second. I'll get my Vespa. You follow me." I nodded.

Miles later over a small county highway and onto a dirt road for another mile, a quarter of the way around the lake, we reached a cabin. Well kept, its robin egg blue paint on the concrete masonry seemed to glow in the dark. Melinda skidded to a stop in front of it, jumped off and dashed to the back. I heard a big engine turn over and rumble. The front window lit up, glowing yellow. She opened the white door and the screen door and yelled. "Come in!"

Before I got out of my car, she vacated the doorway. When I stepped up to the door on solid concrete steps and entered, I looked onto a tidy home, small but bigger than the outside suggested.

"Sit anywhere," she yelled from one of the two bedrooms. The overstuffed leather sofa cushed when I sat on it, giving out air to make room for me I guess. It felt comfortable, like a gentle embrace for my butt.

She returned, my second novel in hand and sat beside me, her side pressed lightly against mine. My penis, like an uncouth adolescent, responded. Opening the back flap, she looked from the photo on the inner jacket to me and back. "You photograph different," she pronounced.

"I look better in photographs," I agreed.

It didn't bother me when she agreed. "But I like the way you look in real life."

"Really?"

"Yes. You look normal, kind of approachable."

"Is this... ?"

"Yeah. The Bellen residence. Isn't it pretty?"

I chuckled. "Yes. Somehow wanting a pretty home..."

Melinda shrugged. "I'm a dichotomy within a conundrum within a fallacy within a paradox."

"A fallacy?"

"Ask my daddies about that."

"How many daddies do you have?"

"Used to be six. Just three now." She looked sad. "Three died. They're all pretty old."

"Do you mind telling me about it?"

"You first. What are you doing here? You're not just passing through."

I heaved a sigh. "No. I wanted ... I had to get away just like your father did so many years ago. I figured what better place than where he escaped."

"I'm sorry."

"Why should you be sorry?"

"I'm sure he would have loved seeing you again. He ... just a second." She somehow popped off the sofa and dashed to her room. She returned with letters, placed them on the simple wooden coffee table and took one out. It just had her name on the envelope. "His suicide note."

"You don't have to..."

"Nonsense. I've read it like a million times."

"Would you read it to me?"

"I never read it out loud. It has the voice in my head of Father. I remember his voice: kind of deep and resonant like when he spoke the earth would shake like Zeus and his thunder."

"He had a wonderful voice. I like yours too." Hers had a deepness with sort of a subtle tremolo as if a higher tone somehow overlapped it. Slightly roughened, it could be cigarettes or singing. She didn't smoke.

She read the note.

"Sweet Melinda ("If he could see me now, he'd change that adjective," she said. I disagreed.)

"This part's about you," she said, smiling.

"I haven't got many friends. I've never been the friendly sort. But I know this town's pretty limited and, face it, kind of bleak, but I love it here. I can't predict if you'll share my opinion when you get older and become fearsome like I know you will. I left a stack of letters. Read them. Joe Solomon's a good man. A bit of a slave to ambition, but nevertheless a good soul. He's a true mensche. He's even Jewish. If this town gets to be too much, contact him. He'll be easy to find due to his unfortunate ambition. He leads a band called the Sin Drones and despite the unfortunate name (blame me, he stole it from one of my more antipathetic poems) I'm certain their first two hit albums won't be their last.

"Again, forgive me my sweet princess. I'd have you pray for my eternally damned soul, but I don't believe in that crap.

"I do love you. Dad."

"So you're okay here?" I asked.

"Yeah. I love freaking everyone out."

I chuckled. "But what about friends?"

"You don't think I have friends?"

"I don't know."

"I have my uncles of course and an aunt or two."

"But..."

"I'm teasing. Let me call Randy. He'd be thrilled to meet you. He used to tease me all the time that you had no connection to me whatsoever, that I made it up." She pulled out her cell phone and speed dialed her friend.

I looked at the stack of letters. Some post dated my mentor's death. They had been opened.

"You read my letters, I mean the ones..."

She raised a finger to silence me. "Can you come over? No I left early. I can't tell you why. It's a surprise. No, I'm fine. Hurry." She shut off the phone.

"What... ? Oh yeah. I read them. You got kind of whiny, but I liked them."

"I'd hit a wall."

"Well, you obviously busted through," she said gesturing at my bestseller.

"You could have answered, told me about your dad."

"Why would I bum you out like that? Besides, only my dad could have given you the advice you whined about."

"Maybe you're not so sweet," I jokingly complained.

"Told you. But you know those letters sort of fucked up my life."

"How... ?"

"I showed them to my friends, like proving you actually knew my dad and stuff, but they called me a liar and a bullshit artist and stuck up like my shit don't stink. I wanted nothing to do with them after that and the feeling was mutual. Except Randy of course and Mindy. We became the three lepers and proud of it. They didn't believe me either, but my weird fantasy sort of endeared me to them."

"So are they into the whole goth thing with piercing and so forth?" I asked.

"Bothers you, doesn't it?"

"Not really." I actually found it sexy, especially the tongue piercing. It reminded me of a particularly enjoyable blow job, the enhancement making it remarkable. At that moment with this young woman I thought best not to let her know.

She studied my face for disingenuousness and found something else.

With haughty smile she said, "You like them! But no, we're like proudly independent, our own unique selves. Randy did get his ear pierced but his dad nearly ripped it out. One thing we did which I guess came closest to sharing looks. We got tattooed discretely so their parents could never see it."

"Dare I ask where?"

She winked. "Maybe some day I'll show you if you're lucky."

Yes she was beautiful and interesting and had her father's eyes and probably his intelligence, which enhanced her attractiveness to me quite a bit, but at 17 or eighteen, my craving for her made me feel like a dirty old man, a lecher, or worse, a man with a middle age itch to be young and vibrant again. Except I always felt I was eternally eighteen despite both physical and experiential proof otherwise.

She giggled, but not because of my libido. "When we got the tattoos just after Randy lost his earring, he wanted his cock pierced. He said his parents would never see that either. I swear Mindy and I spent hours convincing him not to."

A sound I hadn't heard since my daughter became a teenager came from outside.

"Speak of the devil," said Melinda.

"Is that a bicycle bell?"

"Yeah. He got his sister's bike as a hand-me-down after she got pregnant and married. He loves that bell. The boy will never grow up. He's so cute."

Entering without knocking, he immediately embraced and kissed Melinda when she hopped into his arms. A weird jealous pang sprung from my heart, but quieted. The kiss contained nothing beyond deep friendship. And his softness and prettiness screamed gay.