Kristin Prevallet

A DREAM OF FINANCIAL RUIN

End of the line. Wanting to sleep with a stockbroker coolly. He 
whipped and tallied, I did not protest. What is the fun of outrage? We 
went darkly, not without warning. I had desire, but could not find the 
connection, much less the plug. I claim all who desire me. That would 
be tricky.

A suburban hussy. My destination chained to a rock. We ate doughnuts 
as if like roaches they would be around forever. Surviving revolutions 
in countries that stockbrokers prevent from uprising. Selfish deceit. 
My stomach was always full. His intentions were less replenished. I 
snooked him anyway.

Jars and jars of pennies sent crashing to the ground. The world made 
of money, lightened up. Heavy in my heart, he began with a matter of 
small coincidence. Because I was from Denver so did I know so-and-so? 
I'd say not. Rather, I would have been in high-school then. I didn't 
know about such things as death in bars. He sought my heart and I bled. 
Not the last drop which was my own, stopping by, to see him again and 
again.

The mahogany furniture shined and tarnished. Sitting, as in hardly 
touched. I sat enfolded in my image, between the shiny legs of the 
desk. He sought out coincidences in me, as if time were calling in for 
messages. Nothing is that perfect. I did not answer, I was not there. 
I had not known the story and all who died there, just because it was 
in Denver.

Staying swanky New York, alone on a Saturday night. The city wasn't 
big enough to indulge his uncertainty, he said, but he sought out fun 
anyhow. Uncertainly, how was it, finding a small hole-in-the-wall, 
talking with all the patrons, a time passed just in the passing of it, 
all night long. Two walked in, they knew the ropes. They chatted a bit, 
after all, in the night we are all young.

It comes about that the city is a small place after all, and they had 
known her, in Denver. Strange coincidence, to find the dead in strange 
places, to know those who knew every detail. The lack of which was his 
haunting, always wondering. And his knowing now makes it all more 
pained. Seeking coincidences in everyone. A permanent connection of 
time and place. That it be repeated. That it will not happen again.

I had no drink, but was located with the girl, with the couple, and 
with he behind the desk. We thought but never said, to cast it all 
away, but then I remembered that his body was ashen. He had torn it 
all away in car wrecks, and now time was settling in with the dents. 
After it all, I had not wanted redemption for the time that passed. 
Only that in sitting with him there for three hours as I did, as my 
heart fell to the ground.

I imagined all sorts of beaches. Waterfronts of lust, where the desk 
was blurred and his knack for numbers hardened where it counts. That 
I cared for his wedding? Hardly. How in loneliness I sat before him, 
a lie all my own. A flat for him to come-to. I saw the two coins that 
fell between us, how joyfully they broke in two and the world was 
saved from financial ruin. And always, saying that it is never too 
late to try again.

He came and I was treated fairly. A coincidence that we had met. If 
only a day sooner, then a connection hard-placed. But the flesh of 
him, there between who he wanted me to be and that hole in his head. 
A fantasy of entrance was good, in dreams. But in thought, he would 
never come. We sat brooding darkly over the numbers. I had it in mind 
to treat him fairly. Lick and insult. Round that hardened place that 
made him. Would that time had no past.