The streets were filled with the noise of fights about bills and too many late nights. I stood in the front of the white stucco project building, taking a deep breath before opening the door. Women doing laundry on porches with children begging at their feet shot down their confused and unwelcoming glances. They knew I didn’t belong here.


From the hallway you could follow your nose to the apartment, smells of smoke and deep fried love permeating through her door. Building G, fourth floor, fifth door on the left: Diana.
The woman in my mind was the one who’d followed me to Dairy Queen on the corner of Main and Elm, the one who I’d watched walk down the edge of water and sand, looking back at me as if she knew everything I’d planned on telling her. She had stars in her eyes and that look that brought me closer every time. But that was five years ago.
I knocked on the door three times, paused for three seconds, and then knocked three times once more. The door handle shifted and was pulled open with great force, the lock sticking for a moment.
She stood there like some Pacific temptress as I was pulled straight into her reality. Her long brown hair had long ago been neglected and pulled into dreads and was clamped in a knot at the top of her head. Her eyes were noticeably bleak as if the smoke had wandered in somehow, staring at me nonchalantly through the few stray hairs she pushed away with her black painted fingernails.
“Yeah?” she asked, her hand on the door frame, the other holding a fresh cigarette. She took a drag, sucking in deeply and holding it there for what seemed like forever. She’d changed.
“Can I come in?” I asked, my voice cracking with nerves. She nodded, walking into the darkness.
Her lair was filled with smoke. Empty boxes of cigarettes and evidence of other fateful encounters with the devil littered the floor and coffee table. She slumped down on the faded blue futon that sat under the heavily blinded window, letting in only cracks of light along with the dots created by the several lit candles around the room. She took another drag, adding to the already unbearable haze. She sat quietly, staring straight through both me and the darkness, her mind obviously still on its way back from the cloud she’d been hitchhiking on. She didn’t remember me.
“I got a deal on dragons,” she said in a mumble, pointing with her cigarette hand to a box on the floor, a smoke worm following her motion.
“Diana, it’s me, Charlie,” I said, my hands folded on my lap. She stared for a moment, rolling her eyes as if to seem like she hadn’t forgotten about me.
“Yeah I know who you are. Are you here to buy or not?” she asked me with a sigh.
“Well, I came to say good bye,” I said. I looked around the dark room, wondering how long she’d been in here.
“Why?” she crossed her arms. Her white tank top crept upwards exposing the lower part of her stomach and the silver belly button ring I’d gotten for her six years ago.
“I’m leaving. I joined the army. I get deployed in two days. I hadn’t seen you in months so I figured I’d stop by.” Maybe this had been a bad idea.
She stared at me, the haze seemingly clearing. I saw every emotion from anger to confusion to sadness pass by on her face like cars on the freeway.
“You know that’s how Henry died, Charlie. Came back like a dead man walking and shot himself in the head three days later… You know what you’re getting yourself into, right?” she said. By the end of her question the cement blocks of words slipped from her and crashed on the floor.
I didn’t say anything, couldn’t think of words that were good enough to fill the eight month void. I could see the hurt in her eyes. I was one of the only ones left that had lived through her mucked up five years of fun.
She walked over to the fridge, opened the door and hung there like it was a tomb she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to enter.
“You want something to drink?” she asked. Her voice was shaky and her words dripped from her mouth like used motor oil. Diana wasn’t thinking now, wasn’t holding back.
We’d all waited for the moment she crashed and burned. Our whole world had been waiting, tasting this moment when she finally let go, finally tell us why she’d run away at seventeen, finally tell us why she’d been using and abusing for way too long, finally tell us what was locked up inside her behind vines and metal doors.
I didn’t answer. With her hand on the refrigerator door she sank, barely breathing. I ran to her, wrapped my arms around her and carried her to the futon. She put her head between her knees, her hand missing the cigarette that had fallen to the floor, still smoking. I pulled it from the ground, being the first one to extinguish the fire. She leaned her weight on me, choosing for once to give in.
The flashback reel ran through my mind once again. She was sitting there at the train station all alone with bubble gum in her mouth and an independence any mother should have been afraid of. She was younger then, head clear and feet driven. She was a cool cat gambling her life on a two thirty train because she had nothing better to do.
“It’s ok,” I whispered, holding her like I’m sure no one had in awhile. “When I get back, we can take my Chevy up to WestPoint, walk on the beach the way we used to.” She didn’t say anything, seeing as that trip would only bring back bad memories of friends lost along the way. Amidst the smoke and ash, dreads and sweat, there she lay, crying in my arms like I’d always wanted her to.
Suddenly, the doorbell rang with the sinking of my stomach. Walk in slow, I’d told them. She’s in no state to go easy. I know at least that much.