Humidity- P. I because this is a long-ass short story

Illinois sucks during the summer, and it sucks even more so when you’re attacked by poison ivy, insecurities and temptations. I hadn't meant to ever write these things out—I hadn't meant to ever explain the truth of things, or to admit to any sort of heavy sin—but I couldn't stop the words from releasing themselves from the dank cave that I had told them to occupy. They came out unexpectedly, and through them, I'm starting to understand my mistakes and beginning to hope for some sort of forgiveness from the better part of myself.

Humidity hazed the horizon and the clouds held a slow and empty threat of rain. Two hours away, luckier Illinois residents frolicked in the lake or hid away in businesses or public places that could keep cool against the haze. But in central Illinois, for those who could not afford air conditioning, there was no reprieve.

I was one of those magnificent sufferers, and my skin bore a heavy sheen of sweat, while that same salt water dripped from my partner’s face, slaving as he was over a hot stove. Though we were already well into the third week of July, this was the first day the temperatures and the humidity had convened to create an atmosphere more like the usual Illinois summer misery. So far, the state had been far kinder to its people and allowed us a cool summer. That had disappeared quickly and I missed it.

It wasn’t the sort of day to find a lover. In fact, I hadn’t meant to find any sort of reprieve from the sort of life I was living. I was content with my sweat, with my elevated position as a supervisor in the local factory, my status as a house renter and filer of tax forms marked single, though I had lived with my boyfriend for two frigid winters thus far. In essence, I was content to be a married and childless woman, though with the addition of my boyfriend’s brother, his dog, my cat and the inability of all of those persons to clean up after themselves, I often felt the sort of fulfillment a housewife deludes herself with when cleaning the shit and pee-stained toilet rims of a household. I had fallen into a sort of pleasant torpor I had often experienced when I would smoke marijuana during my younger, rowdier, college years, though this one was much more difficult to rebound from or quit. The heat and misery of the summer that day added to my contentedness and my wants barely exceeded the desire for a cooling breeze or any sort of comfort from my poisoned skin.

I escaped from the stifling indoors, where our rotating fan only moved the haze in sluggish tendrils that wrapped inside of our throats, causing the beer to catch and offering no release from our heated torture. Outside, the heat was no better; but if I was in my bikini and stood in the direct center of the cracked and aging asphalt street just behind our alleyway, I could catch the faintest memory of a cooling breeze by watching the arms of the trees reaching high above me sway in the changing air currents.

Earlier, I had doped myself with Benadryl and added to its effects with a tepid beer so that at the moment I was like a sleep-walker—idyll, wondering why she was not more discomforted by the strange atmosphere of the dream she wandered through. As I walked I could feel the way my clothes stuck to ivy-poisoned skin and sweat marked its path through my khaki shorts. I wished now that I had thought to put on a thong or some skimpier sort of under thing. As it was, the granny panties so abundantly covering my nether regions were slowly turning into a swamp that would rival any of those heated hells found in the different wretched parts of the southern states.

I can’t recall why it was I had left behind the stifling household, with its sweating members. Perhaps it was to pretend to find some sort of release from the heat within, though the atmosphere was just as uncomfortable outside. Or maybe there had been some sort of ingredient my significant other was lacking and I had been sent to the store less than a block away in order to fetch the thing.

Either way, I was wandering the street, soaking in the atmospheric discomfort that is Illinois no matter what the season, and barely aware of it.

The streets were quiet, as they usually are during Sunday evenings, everyone content to sip their beer at home, perhaps move enough to barbeque something. I didn’t doubt that most pleasured themselves with the dull and vague promises of a flickering screen showing them far more agreeable things than the endless cornfields or the wretched river that wound its way so very close to our backyards. The stench of that body of water filtered through the silence and heat and made the air a special sort of horrid, giving it a scent that only one who was more or less high could wander through without a fuss made over these unusual circumstances.

I made my way down the street, passing the lawns scattered with rabbits too heated to move much or give me much thought as a threat. Even the dogs I passed by, which were usually all too happy to make noise and alert of a possible intruder, only groaned in an half-assed effort to warn me against their power. I paid no attention to these things, my mind pleasantly empty and meandering aimlessly through the endless byways and alleys of its various thoughts. Slowly and without any conscious thought, I made my way to the grocery store. There were only a few cars in the lot, and somewhere deep within I registered them as belonging to specific cashiers I had come to know. Other than those vehicles, the lot was empty, and the store showed no promise of patrons within, save for myself.

I stepped in and felt a wisp of cool air as the store steadily pumped air conditioning within itself, though it still failed to make much difference against the humidity and lethargy which poisoned the atmosphere.

The cashier within was leaning idly against her register, her glazed eyes pretending to watch something outside the front windows of the store, where nothing moved. The cashier at the service desk gave me a slow nod as she watched me pass by, her gaze neither judging nor making any indication that she truly noticed I was there. We knew each other in that informal way cashiers and customers come to recognize one another after repeated experiences within the realm of shopping—that is to say, we knew each other well enough to have endless conversations about the weather and the tediousness of being a cashier, but not enough to bother remembering one another's names without the aid of a name tag or introductory reminder, things none of us were inclined to offer.

None of us spoke as the easy feeling of quietness followed me inside and spread over those two beings as well. Even the music within the store had been turned off. There was less than a half hour left in the business’ open time, though none within were quick to move or acknowledge this limiting effect on my shopping experience.

I moved past the front desk and back towards the frozen section, winning for my efforts a long-awaited break from the sucking heat which had surrounded me since my waking hour. This reprieve barely registered within my sluggish mind.
I opened the cooler’s door and swiftly plucked from its contents a small box of ice cream, unsure if this is what I had been sent to fetch, but willing to waste my money on it all the same. The door snapped shut after I had released it from my sweating grasp and the sudden noise seemed to shake off some of the dazedness I had adopted in response to the suffocating heat. My eyes opened to their full width and I suddenly noticed the glaring brightness of the fluorescent lights which shone down on me from the not-too distant ceiling of the store.

They seemed too bright. Accusatory in their lighting, daring me to commit some sort of infraction against their beloved collection of concrete, cement, freezers and packaged goods.

I rubbed my eyes, forgetting the ice cream, which had already begun to melt within its thin packaging. I heard the carton land on the floor with a resounding warning to the cashiers up front that now there would be a mess they would have to clean up, despite the nearness of their closing time.

Some of the melted cream that had melted onto my fist was now rubbed thoroughly into my eye, and the burning sugar which made up the majority of its contents caused a quick tearing sensation, increasing the glare of the lights and my sudden confusion.

I had woken up and I had done it too quickly. I was still trapped within the softer edges of a dream, but also forced to look at the harsher realities of the world that surrounded me. Through the burning tears clouding over my left eye I noticed the soft, glowering gaze of someone, someone who was not of the two cashiers up front. Someone I had never before seen within this store. Someone who seemed unaffected by the putrid haze which seeped into everyone’s psyche during the humid day.

I stopped rubbing my eye and blinked it furiously to make the quick-coming tears useful in washing away the sugared dairy. I could feel the salted water collect just beneath my lower lid and knew soon I would be sniffing violently in an effort to keep the ensuing snot from running freely down my face.

My vision cleared slightly and I looked more directly at this new face, which had so abruptly pulled me from my walking haze of Benadryl and humidity.

All that I noticed at first was a fierce and piercing blue that delved deep into my lethargy and shook my addled mind so violently that it forced the Benadryl to release its grip upon me and huddle deep in terror into the lesser regions of my mind. My senses sharpened in response to that brilliant blue. I felt heat rise to my already red and tearing face in a quick flash of anger that I usually responded with in order to hide my own feelings of embarrassment or to defend myself against any sort of accusation. I felt a sudden rise in my blood, the rush of it flowing through my veins freely and without check by the systems put in place to stop this sudden release. My mind churned and I saw a flash brighter and much more threatening than the fluorescent lights above cut across the colored part of my eyes and settle with a dazzling brilliance into my black pupils. I felt awakened and ready for the battle I had been longing for since I had begun my dulled style of living.

The awesome power that thrilled through me went unrecognized by the blue which had inspired it, and instead of noticing the sudden straightening within my body or the deafening beating of my heart’s war drum, his brows were narrowed over that livid blue and a threatening line straightened across the lips, warning me with a glare.

“What the fuck?”

The blood increased its roar and my stupidity gave way to anger.

“It slipped.” I said, challenging those blue eyes and harshly lined face.

We stood like that for several moments, each second passing with a thunderous heartbeat, each person staring intently at the another, challenging and unforgiving in our sudden and inexplicable hatred. At last the blue eyes gave way, giving in to the unavoidable fact that I was the customer and they the employee.

“Fucking A,” was all that at last escaped from the mouth that had drawn so tightly together, the words fighting their way through the lips and bitten out quickly to prove the anger which was reflected within the eyes.

I felt a shamed flood of pride.

“It’s just ice cream,” I said by way of a weak consolation.

The eyes flicked a quick and withering glance at me and then rolled in a circle against their binding skin, dismissing my words, seeing me only as a spoiled customer.

A static crackling filled the store as the service desk woman’s voice filled the place, her words tumbling and sloughing out from the heat of her breath as it scraped across the sensitive microphone.

“Closing time in fifteen minutes, please gather all items and make your purchases. Closing time in fifteen minutes.”

“Figures,” came a deep grumble from below me.

While I had been distracted by the noise within the air of the store, my nemesis had crouched down in order to retrieve the broken box, which had landed upside down. As he lifted the box, the contents slumped out, landing with a promising, slick noise against the linoleum floor. I watched, shamed again, as the sugary heap melted slowly and steadily against the waxed sheen of the floor.

“I can help-“

“Just get your shit and get out. Some of us want to leave here.”

“You want to be fired, you said?”

The words slipped out before I could stop the challenge, the degrading insinuation from slapping across Blue Eyes. He slowly unfolded from the floor, the ice cream slipping out from its box and smacking against the floor, cream running down the length of his hand in tendrils of cool deliciousness.

I crossed my arms, pretending some sort of defiance against the anger which resumed its hold upon his irises.

“Listen, MA’AM. I’ve had a long-ass day. I don’t need this shit. You want to fucking clean it up, here-“

He shoved the box against my chest, the quick slap of cold soaking through my shirt and dripping sluggishly down to my khaki shorts. My face flamed.

“Have a fucking blast.”

He took off the bright red smock which had covered his front and threw it on top of the sticky mess spreading across the floor. He turned away from me then, his knobby shoulders clenching up against his head, his steps quick and loud as they moved away from me into the lights that had begun to flicker as the store shut down.

“Fucker,” I muttered lightly to myself, letting the now-empty box fall from my grip back onto the floor, adding to the mess I would now purposefully leave.

I made my way toward the front of the store, noticing that the other cashiers had already left their posts and realizing that I could have stolen the ice cream. I ignored the temptation to turn back into the dimmed depths of the store and instead pushed my way against the doors, back into the mind-numbing heat of the falling night.

Once free from the slightly cooler air of the store, I was forced to pause. I had to concentrate to work the air into my lungs, to fill them with the needed oxygen and force them to separate the heavy humidity from the life-giving element. The ice cream clung closer to my skin, making the stick of the weather worse and changing the sugar into a definite grit against my pores.

It had dripped down against my leg, working its way slowly down my thigh and more surely into my shoe with the aid of the heat. Though the sun had dropped nearly completely, the air hadn’t cooled and neither had the threat of rain disappeared. Nothing disturbed that stagnant feeling except the sweat and melting cream against my too-tight skin. The haze began to settle once again in my mind, the anger from my encounter too demanding of fuel to be supplied in such weather.

I heard a door slam shut from the far end of the parking lot and the quick steps of a familiar being moving sluggishly across the lot toward me, echoing slightly in the too-still night.
It was Blue Eyes. His work shirt was now removed to reveal a t-shirt that had been cut down to reveal some of his body’s physique. In the dark I squinted my left eye tightly, surveying the man who moved across the lot towards a piece of shit truck that I hadn’t noticed before.

His arms were strong, but in a useful way, not in that over-inflated way that body builders seem to develop after years of habitually ripping apart muscles and stabbing their buttocks. They were like a dancer’s arms, long and graceful with a hint of muscle that was more than enough to convince the viewer of the inherent strength beneath the skin. They were dark too, not the pasty pale hue I had been expecting to glow out in the darkness. Across the lengths of arms were tattoos, long and lingering over the various pieces of skin they touched, originating at the shoulder and ending at the point where the elbow folds in half to allow the joint beneath flexibility. They were all words, words that I had never seen before, in a different language I was unable to decipher until I came closer to the wearer of those tattoos, something my ice-cream encrusted legs had done without my command, until I was near enough to be a threat.

Blue Eyes swerved around at the noise of my nearness and bunched his fists and shapely arms tightly against his body, all of him tensing at once with the perceived realization of a threat. He recognized me and his body tightened even more in that recognition, his eyes narrowing even further and nearly extinguishing that blaze of blue beneath the angered lids.
I stopped suddenly, my body trying to retrace its steps or retreat inside of itself perhaps—I wasn’t quite sure what it was trying to accomplish. My mind was doing the opposite: within myself, I was preparing for battle, verbal and physical, imaging all of the various things either of us would say or do, not fully comprehending the fact that I was prepared to come to blows over accidently-spilled ice cream against someone who could easily defeat me.

I didn’t catch the way he glanced over me but noticed a quick change come over his features as his limbs loosened slightly and he stepped ever so slightly away from me.

“What’s that shit all over you?”

I looked down to see what he was referring to and then suddenly recalled the reason for my Benadryl.
The feeling of an ant crawling along my skin, whispering flies just barely contacting the surface of my body, resurfaced as I recognized the familiar pattern of the poison ivy which had been haunting my entire being for the past three days. I fought against itching the red and raised patches of my skin and instead flashed my eyes back onto his face, which was still entranced in helpless confusion over the condition of my skin.

“What’s do your tattoos mean?” I countered with an unintended bite to my words.

I had meant to remind him that we were in a stand-off and no skin disease could undo our stances against one another. He considered me for a moment, most likely assessing the threat I could bring against him in any sort of war, and again, most likely, realized I posed almost no danger to him. His stance relaxed quickly and his pose straightened into a looser configuration of itself.

“It’s a lot to explain,” he said in a sort of hazed drawl, the heat finally imposing itself against his frame and anger.

I folded my arms against my chest, keeping them tight against one another, nearly allowing them to meld into one another, though carefully and subtly rubbing them against each other for that sweet and addicting feeling of soothing the ivy which plagued my skin so wretchedly.

“I’ve got to go home,” I said suddenly, remember that there was a home to be gotten to. I looked ahead of me, at the same life, at my boyfriend, the humidity, the small house with slowly moving fans and beer that could cool nothing inside of me, the dull job which led me into this slumber, the cat, the dog and the brother, the meal which needed something, but what, I couldn’t recall. The surprising sweetness of the ice cream due to my failure in memory.
A car door opened then slammed.

“I’ll give you a ride.”

I shifted from one foot to the other, debating.

His eyes narrowed as I dallied. I had pissed him off. This was the kind of situation that all of our mothers and teachers warned us about. He could kill me if he wanted to.

“Yeah, only I don’t want to go back,” I said as I climbed into the truck.