Writers -- P-Pd

Paul Gonzales is a writer and filmmaker. More about Paul at the end of this section.

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The Funeral Singer

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Thunder rumbled overhead as Noah looked up and down the street. He stood his guitar case up beside him and pulled out his phone. Just then a car pulled up and rolled down the passenger side window.

“You call an Uber?” the driver asked.

Noah nodded and slid inside the back with his guitar. The driver’s eyes focused on Noah’s cloud, which was just above his head.

“That thing gonna leak?”

The cloud was dark grey and rumbling, so Noah could see why the guy was worried. “No. Not here.”

The driver cleared his throat and shifted the car into drive.

Noah looked out the window as the monochrome buildings blurred by, not how he remembered them, but how he saw them now. He felt the worn edges of his old guitar case and thought about her favorite pair of jeans. The ones with soft white tufts of busted threads jutting from torn holes exposing slivers of her knees and thighs.

The club was nearly empty the night he met Sophie. It was an open mic night which were usually only filled with performers doing bad poetry readings, even worse stand-up comedy and every once in a while a decent singer plucking through new material. Noah showed up every Tuesday night, much to the chagrin of Mike who ran the show. To say Mike wasn’t a fan of Noah’s sorrowful renditions of pop tunes would be a major understatement as shown every time he made his way to the sign-up table.

“Can you play something a little upbeat this time? A little catchy? Know any Miley Cyrus or sumthin’?” Mike asked him that night.

“I’ll see what I got,” Noah replied as he signed his name on the form laying on the table where Mike sat.

“Yea. Right,” Mike said staring up at the light grey cloud bobbing over Noah’s head, illuminated with random white pulses. “You go on third.”

Noah nodded, the cloud mimicking his motion, and set the pencil down. He turned and smacked his guitar case into a girl standing behind him he hadn’t noticed.

Their clouds bumped, leaving a thin crackle of electricity between them.

“Damn, I’m sorry,” Noah said slowly, his eyes meeting hers. “I, um, didn’t see you there.”

Sophie tucked her head down and grinned. She looked up at the cloud hovering above his head through stands of blonde hair cascading from underneath her beanie.

“It’s ok,” she gushed. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

The cloud above Noah’s head inched towards hers as she made her way around him to the table to sign up. Noah shuffled to one side and then nervously walked away, wanting to say more, but his mind was a clean slate.

He found an empty table near the stage and sat down, leaning his guitar case against a stool. Noah watched in the distance as Sophie awkwardly looked around, nodded to a few people she obviously didn’t know, then darted off towards the bathroom, her cloud a few inches behind playing catch up.

When Noah got on stage he looked out into the small crowd and adjusted his guitar. Scanning the audience twice, he finally saw her. She was in the back of the room underneath the Exit sign, which bathed her and her cloud in a gorgeous red glow.

His cloud rumbled overhead.

“This one’s for Mike,” he uttered into the microphone as Mike, now standing by the stage, rolled his eyes and shook his head.

The slow, gentle twang of his fingers across the old strings of his guitar filled the room. Noah leaned in close to the microphone and closed his eyes. The opening lines of “Wrecking Ball” slowly escaped his lips. It was a solemn version of the pop song; it’s verses changing tone under the tutelage of Noah’s longing, sullen deep voice.

Sophie grinned, her eyes glistening with neon satisfaction.

Thunder rolled from her cloud softly as she passed him making her way to the stage lugging a bright pink keyboard that was nearly as tall as she was. Noah got up from his seat to help her, but bumped his guitar case and it slammed onto the floor, causing the few people in the room to stop and stare at him. By the time he leaned his case back against the stool she was on stage. After a few moments of setting up she sat and brushed the hair from her face, adjusted the mic and took a deep breath.

“This is an original,” she said gently into the mic not looking at the small crowd. “I call it, “Bethesda’s Nighttime Parade.”

Noah watched as her fingers skipped across the keys and listened as her lips slowly parted and released thoughtful, fantastic words into the air. The song was an upbeat, somber tune about a little girl who thought a nearby train was a parade at night. She wished she could join the parade, but it was always her bedtime when the train would pass, so night after night she missed out. Then, after her parents tucked her into bed on night, she snuck out of her bedroom and hopped on the train, which, as it turned out after all, really was a parade. There, she marched with elephants and bears and a big band where she played trombones and trumpets and danced with the jugglers and waved at the night watchman and lighthouse keepers.

The last verses told of the sun coming up and her telling the ring master that she needed to get home because she missed her folks. With a bright grin and a flick of his wrist, they were engulfed in a mist, and she opened her eyes and she was alone, but she was home.

She rubbed her hands nervously on her torn jeans as the small crowd applauded.

The cloud above Noah’s head grumbled loudly as the Uber driver turned to look nervously at Noah and his cloud.

“I should probably get out here,” Noah told the driver. “It’s not too far of a walk now anyway. Thanks.”

The car quickly pulled over and Noah got out, his dark cloud bumping the roof of the vehicle producing small strands of white lightning as it did.

Noah sighed and glanced up at his pulsing cloud in disappointment.

“I can’t take you anywhere,” he thought as he took a step down the sidewalk.

A passing car was blasting a familiar song and Noah’s attention snapped his neck to follow and saw Sophie behind him. Their clouds sparked a hello to one another.

“That song,” Sophie said. “I want that one playing at my funeral.” It was David Bowie’s “Modern Love” coming from the car, now fading away. “Do you know any Bowie?”

“Why are you asking me?” Noah asked, now walking backwards to face her.

“You’re the funeral singer.”

“So you think we’re going to live a long, loving life together? And then just assume I’ll outlive you?”

“I’ve lived a hard life, dude. I eat ice cream like crazy. You have no idea.”

“Wow. So hard.”

“So, what about it? I want that Bowie song.”

Noah stopped and their eyes dove into one another’s. Lighting zapped across the short distance between them.

“Sure.”

Sophie laughed and skipped ahead of him. As he turned to follow she was gone again and he was left standing alone with his guitar case underneath a rumbling cloud.

His phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it up to his ear.

“This is Noah.”

He talked as he walked down the empty sidewalk. It was bright, sunny day but the cloud, now larger than before he got into the car, provided some much needed shade. The call was from one of the funeral homes he worked with. They had requested a new video about the services he provides for their website and they had uploaded it a few days ago.

Noah was now walking into a small warehouse art space following Sophie. On one side there was a white backdrop with some cameras on tripods. On the opposite side was the same setup but with a green screen instead. A table with some computer monitors on it sat near the entrance.

“Well, what do you think?” she said, her arms outstretched as she twirled.

Noah spotted some boxes of children’s toys in the corner. “Impressive. What is it that you do here again?”

The corners of Sophie’s mouth curled upwards “I just make YouTube videos. For kids.” Noah nodded. “Remember, I was telling you I was hanging out with my sister and my niece was on her phone just watching these videos of toys dropping into buckets of soap. Toys talking. It’s sort of weird, but kids love it.”

“Right, right. And you and your band, the Bed Bugs, record songs. See, I pay attention.”

“I guess you do. But anyway, this is where the magic happens.”

“I can see. Awesome.”

“So let’s talk about this video of yours.”

Before Noah knew it he was playing some songs in front of the green screen as Sophie walked back and forth between two cameras watching the monitors. After a few hours he found his mouth pressed against hers, their clouds sending thin white streaks of lightning between one another.

Noah stopped. “Wait. Just so I know, you’re not going to put some weird stuff in the background are you?”

Sophie shot him a surprised glance. “Of course not, dummy.”

“Just checking.” he said as he leaned back in.

The funeral director on the phone said that while the video was definitely “unique,” the response the funeral home had received was phenomenal.

“I had some help,” Noah said. “I’ll look over the client list after I’m done here. I appreciate the call.”

Noah winced as a bolt of crooked lightning singed his hair followed by rolling thunder.

He could see the cemetery gate up the street from where he stood and reached out his hand, searching for hers.

Sophie took it and yanked him forward. She was wearing her favorite old jeans but with a new red pea coat he just bought her. She was grinning wildly and laughing.

Their clouds were now just small white puffs floating above their heads.

“Come on, Noah!” she said. “It’s not going to be that bad I swear.”

Noah shuffled his feet in contempt. “Can we just do it some other day?”

“Uhg, you’re such a puss. My parents are super cool, you’ll see.”

Noah pulled her close.

“Can’t we grab a bite to eat? Maybe go catch a movie?”

“Baby Shark” erupted from Sophie’s vibrating pocket.

“Is that seriously your ring tone?” Noah laughed.

Sophie held her finger to her mouth and answered the phone. She stepped a few feet away and Noah watched her pacing back and forth. Her hair was blowing slowly in the breeze, her small puffy cloud swayed above her beanie back and forth like a feather refusing to fall. 

She nodded, said something into the phone, slid it back into her pocket and returned to him.

“You’re lucky, buster,” she said with a mock frown, bumping into his shoulder. “Dad had an emergency work thing.”

“Well, shoot,” he said sarcastically.

“Shut it,” she gently kicked his shin. “I just really want them to meet you.”

“I know, I know. I’ll meet them soon enough.”

Her hand slipped into his but he noticed it was hard and rigid. Noah glanced down and saw the guitar case in his grip. The cemetery gate was standing before him.

Walking up over the hill he could see a small gathering of people under a large green tent. He sighed, lowered his head and made his way towards them.

The priest nodded to him as he came up to the side of the podium. He set his guitar case in the grass and popped it open quietly, the sobs and sniffles the only sounds on that day. His cloud was larger than it had ever been and nearly black. As he pulled out his guitar and slid the strap over his shoulder, he could feel the drizzle against his face.

He saw Sophie’s band mates. Some of her friends he’d only met a handful of times. And, there, in the very front row, were her parents. The ones he never met. The ones that never met him.

Noah stood, took a deep breath and, underneath a pouring cloud, strummed his guitar and sang.

I catch a paper boy

But things don't really change

I'm standing in the wind

But I never wave bye-bye

But I try, I try

There's no sign of life

It's just the power to charm

I'm lying in the rain

But I never wave bye-bye

But I try, I try

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Transplants

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I heard the beeps first. Machines placed around me somewhere in the dark buzzed, whirled and wheezed. Then I felt the needles sticking out from my skin pumping fluids through my veins, all of them swollen. My skin was sore. My chest was separated under bandages and stitches and blood and exposed marrow and healing arteries and I wondered what color my blood was down in there. I imagined the highways of vessels crisscrossing under my chest plate turning the blue blood red as it was exposed underneath the still fresh wound splitting my chest in two even pieces, soaking up the stale hospital air. With eyes closed and hands still, I tried to feel around the room. Tried to sense someone or something. My ears listened. My nose sniffed. Eyelids twitched. Only machines and tubes that dripped and flowed and stabbed and the one that breathed for me. I had nothing else to do but sleep. But I didn’t do that.

****

I lay there staring out a window that faced another wing of the hospital. Dirty peach. That was the color I came up with. That was the color of the brick caked onto the ancient hospital. Nurse. Jell-O. New sheets. Dirty peach. For days that was it. I could hear the nurses whisper about my lack of visitors and how a bad heart at such a young age was such a shame. And I lay there thinking and looking out the window and listening to my new heart hammer on the inner walls of my chest.

When I got home I could see my neighbors peach tree from out of my bedroom window. Overgrown and filled with rotting peaches. He once asked me if I liked the fruit and I had told him no. So I watched the tree from my bed, my body still too weak to move about much, so alone in my house watching autumn transform the landscape, it was the same view. Rotting peach. That was the color I came up with.

****

There was a cake on the break room table already cut and missing pieces when I walked in. The boss and the other two employees leaned against the counter laughing and shouting, showering themselves with chocolate. They noticed me and offered some of my welcome back surprise cake. “Surprise!" I thought. “There’s still some left!”

My desk was almost bare except for my computer monitor and my pencil holder, which was the opposite of how I left it. Full. I was able to return to work as long as I took over Feather’s secretary position. She had gone into labor three days ago and still hadn’t blessed us with Rocko Firth Shapiro Warren. For some reason that’s what I figured its name would be, but I hadn’t paid attention enough to even know what the sex of the baby was. I just needed to get out of the house. My chest was still tight and sore so I couldn’t do any hard physical activities. Not that my former activities at the office could be anywhere near the realm of being called an activity much less be referred to as physical. So I sat and answered phones, took messages and from time to time I found myself staring out of the window facing the street. One minute I would be helping clients fill out forms, then the next I was watching the passersby scuttle across a cold, wet street through a foggy, ice covered window.

I blamed my lack of attention on the drugs I had long since stopped taking. And at night I felt like an old tin chamber in the shape of a man with warm coals glowing deep inside. It was a calming, lonely feeling. Then I began seeing places I hadn’t ever seen before play against the insides of my eyelids as I counted breaths in an effort to sleep. And they played on, even when I did manage to sleep. Street signs. Stores. People. All too real, familiar, yet alien. And when sleep eluded me and my eyes were open, images danced on the darkened ceiling and walls of my bedroom. 

The doctor’s office was cold. The hard white sheet of what must be butcher paper was pulled across the examination table and wrinkled underneath me, making a loud rustling sound that filled the empty room. A nurse walked in.

“Everything seems fine,” she said through pale, dry lips. “Your body’s taking to the transplant quite well. Just don’t do any strenuous activities and don’t exert yourself too much.” 

I nodded and began to button up my shirt. “Umm, excuse me nurse,” I said in a voice much lower than I had planned. She looked up from her clipboard. “Sometimes it feels like…well, my heart beats harder than I think it should.” 

She lowered the clipboard to her hip. “After what kind of activities?” 

I straightened up concerned. “When I’m just, like, driving or sitting at my desk at work. Even when I’m sleeping. It doesn’t hurt or anything, it’s just hard. Harder than usual. And sometimes loud. Is that normal?” 

The nurse smiled, causing the corners of her eyes to make crow’s feet. “Oh yes, that’s normal. You’re just not used to your new heart yet. Some hearts have more muscle than others. Like people. Some more, some less. You must have gotten a strong one. But don’t worry sugar, you’ll get used to it. Oh, and don’t forget to sign out at the front. Thank you and have a good day.” 

I got up to my feet and counted the thumps. Normal. It’s normal she said. But it felt hot and hollow down inside. Past the other parts that squeezed and pushed and filtered and breathed. The warm coals down inside the chamber pulsed like they were reaching and grasping out. I walked out with my fingers crawling across my chest trying to figure it. My thoughts rummaged through my innards like a lost explorer in a jungle. There was a voice. Louder and louder the closer I came to the exit.

I was called back in. I forgot to sign out.

The following day I found myself looking over city maps as they flashed on my computer screen from behind my secretary desk, studying the street names and memorizing the turns and landmarks. Some sounding strangely familiar, others completely new. Satellite images from space slid out of the printer and I poured over them as if I knew what it was I was looking for. I glanced up from the screen to the clock then back to the screen then back again as my fingers clacked away on the keys. 

My boss stepped in and said he had a doctor’s appointment and that I would be left in charge for the rest of the day. I watched from my secretary desk’s window and waited for him to pull away in his fancy car before sending the phone calls to the answering service and grabbing my bag. 

****

I began finding myself in places I hadn’t been before, but every step taken was increasingly familiar. I controlled only my eyes and mouth. My steps took themselves. Sometimes into alleys and back out again. Over sidewalks and across intersections. Sometimes surefooted, sometimes lost or confused. And after a day’s walk around foreign neighborhoods, following work usually, we’d mark our place and start from there the next day, my feet and I. Today our mark would be a street lamp.

I’d yank and curse like a mad man in the night until reluctantly my feet would give up control and we’d walk back to the car. Under highway lights and moonlit skies we’d drive back home. It had been a few days, almost a week now, but it was habitual. The relinquished control of bodily movements to uncover some meaning behind the walking and running and turning and pacing and stopping. Lungs pumping under my still newly imported muscle. That was it. The strings that pulled these marionette’s legs onward. It was the fist-sized core buried inside this cavity of bone and blood that drove my body through the streets. Wanting. Searching. Lost out there like myself.

My foot pressed down on the accelerator firmly. The street lamp marker flew by. My hands turned the steering wheel to the left and to the right. I managed to slow down the car a bit to at least maintain some sense of control over the situation before we killed ourselves, my heart and I. The maps and streets and blue colored roads and pixilated treetops passed before my eyes as my hands flipped blinkers on and turned corners and my feet pumped the gas and brake simultaneously, skipping and lunging in front of houses and apartment buildings and laundromats and record shops.

I just stared out the windshield, shrugging my shoulders, as crowded sidewalks stared back in confusion. Then my car veered into a parking space and screeched to a halt next to a meter with a brown bag placed over it. My chest felt as if was about to burst. Shotgun blast thumps pounded the insides of my chest plate. I tried to get out but my hands had fully turned against me and refused to release the wheel. My feet remained planted to the floorboard of the car. I watched out of the window as people continued to pass. I studied and browsed and stared as my chest exploded beneath the long vertical scar that ran down my torso. Something was here. This was my destination, but where was the X that marked the spot? What is it that brought me here? Seconds ticked past as my eyes bounced back and forth through the crowds. Was it a boy? A girl? A pet? A house? A car? A store? What?! My eyes refused to blink and began to burn red. Fingers gripped the wheel and sweat trickled down my brow. My pupils dilated. 

Across the street, a girl holding a shopping bag with a large, crooked red X printed over some sickly models wearing barely anything, slid into view. My chest froze. My new heart was silent. My hands reached for the door handle. My eyes, engulfed in flames, studied her every move. Her walk. Her flowing hair. Her hands. Clothes. Nothing was familiar about her but her.

My feet stumbled over themselves and over the asphalt. My chest bounded me forward in unyielding steady pounds after the girl marked with an X. Cars honked and drivers yelled as I stumbled towards her like a drunk chasing booze, a bullet chasing its target. I had never seen her before but I could feel a connection bursting from within. So hot and boiling and bubbling and shifting. Waves were washing over inside me causing my skin to burn hot. She was on her steps now fishing for her keys with the bag sliding down her forearm. My eyes were focused beams. I bumped and shoved my way through the people littering the sidewalk, excusing myself without looking away from her. Their curses grew silent. Violent gestures blurred and faded. My hand reached out. My heart made its ways through the bones and tissue and pressed firmly against my skin. My feet stopped. I stood behind her as she opened her building’s door. My shoulders pumped forward viciously.

My hand reached out further and fingernails scraped old paint. The door had closed behind her. 

My upper body stopped. My mouth open, yet silent. My eyes welled-up from the steam bellowing inside, searching for release. My breath came back rigid, thick and quick. My hand twisted the doorknob frantically. It didn’t turn.

But, from the other side of the door, a heavy thumping sound could be heard. Muffled but still audible. And my chest cavity lashed out a cry of hope. Blood rushed through my body at breakneck speeds causing color to leave my skin for a moment. I became a washed-out ghost pressed against a stranger’s door. A stranger who shared the same heartbeat I could now hear clearly as the pounding grew louder. Closer. Closer. Closer. And my eyes watched a blurred figure grow larger through the decorated glass.

Cautiously she drew herself closer. The explosions grew louder. And slowly the sounds fell into time with one another as the door creaked open. First a face. Eyes. Nose. Lips. Her deep red hair framing gorgeous features. Her torso pumped her forth, out of the doorframe onto mine like amazing magnets and our chambers connected beneath our sweaters. Smashing chests and meeting scars. A beautiful collision. Fire was everywhere. 

And our lips met. She clawed my waist with wanting fingers. My hands gently cradled her face. The threads of our sweaters intertwined and knitted themselves into one. Their belts unbuckled and leather whipped about. Their shoelaces twirled below them like snake lovers crazy with lust. And her lips called and mine answered. Our beats finely tuned instruments in this two-piece orchestra bathed in flames and burnt foliage. Strangers here underneath the falling leaves of autumn.

I could feel her lips curl at their ends as they pressed against mine. Her chest kicking hard and violent against my own. Exchanging beats and thumps and pounds and pushes and pulls and explosions and pumps and pulses.

Our hearts meet once again.