‘ everybody’s life sucks, c. but i guess … if i looked into anybody else’s home, i wouldn’t trade my shit for their shit. so tu secret es mi secret. i’ll be the tomb, you’ll be the fancy coffin, and maddy'll be the mystical mummy. ‘ the affliction of the shameless is this: they speak nonsense, and they speak it with conviction. any time a fantastic phrase or idea pops! into his head, he simply has to say it. all the ugly, insecure things that fly around in there tend to die a lonely death, afraid to come out. he makes a zipping motion across his mouth with his free hand, locking her secret behind quirked lips. jimbo imagines her as saturn / imagines her as having the intense gravitational force of a planet with a thousand moons. ( when he lost his balance, he didn’t even fall; he just went into orbit around her, and she caught him and held him there. ) you good? she asks. he thinks he answers, hearing his own words play out in his mind. good? best. fucking phe-nom-en-al. but all that comes out is a crude laugh ––– the ugly sort, hitched and wild and resonating from the throat, the way children laugh before they’re taught to do it with the polite restraint of adults.
he looks at her hand on his and feels serene: a body freshly drowned, content to float in the warmth of her presence and count the stars that glitter at the tips of her fingers. for a second, he loses himself in the mirage he’s conjured up from inside the haze; when he comes back down to earth, he realizes what she’s said. i don’t think you’re a loser. the smile about him becomes something inscrutable. he should say thank you. instead, he grabs her hand and holds it up as if to study it. ‘ what is your deal, howard? ‘ he has a gentle way of speaking, when it suits him. something in his voice becomes reminiscent of smoke, masking the usual stilted words and drawling inflections. ( pay no attention to the man behind the curtain / the red flags painted green. ) he always believes in the importance of the moment, and right now that moment is spelled C-A-S ––– well, he doesn’t know how it’s spelled. but he knows he likes the way it feels. jimbo lowers her hand, letting his fingers slip away from hers and picking at an imaginary loose thread on his shirt. as they talk, he finds himself imitating the pace of her step and tilting his head at the same angle as hers. ‘ you’re a thinker. i can tell, ‘cause you’re the only person i’ve talked to all night who isn’t lame as hell. oh hey, speaking of …‘ they weren’t, actually, ‘speaking of.’ ‘ … you ever seen deal or no deal? you’d look good with a tiny briefcase. ‘
simply put, it doesn’t matter that his words begin to go down a path that she can’t quite follow. this doesn’t mean all jimbo’s talk of mummies and coffins and maddy flies off into the ether, necessarily, but rather that cassie hangs on them solely to hear him speak. most of the guys she knows tend to have a very limited vocabulary. ( fuck, baby, you’re so pretty. / hey, are u still up? / i love it when you do that. / your tits look great tonight, cass. ) jimbo, however, is just as full of shit to talk as he was fifteen minutes ago. though he goes at his own speed, marches to the beat of his own drummer, he does it so freely that she can’t imagine he’ll ever run out of gas. it doesn’t take much to impress cassie howard, but he’s not even trying! when he holds up her hand, she inspects it as if she’s never seen it before, as if she didn’t spend forty - five minutes picking out a shade of nail polish to perfectly compliment the blue sparkling around her eyes. it’s always been easier for cassie to see herself when someone shows her the way. from here, it normally escalates the same ––– fingers dragging up her arm and to her jaw, pulling her head closer. he is not normal, though, and all his bumpy roads and creaking bridges ignite an excitement in her she expects him to continue fanning. and when you think about things the way cassie does, WHAT IS YOUR DEAL, HOWARD? is a pretty fair question. it’s just not one that she’s prepared to answer. it’s not a path she could follow without ending up in a place much darker than this moonlight - bathed street.
❝ my deal . . . ? ❞ she’s similarly gentle, but not like smoke. maybe fragile would be a better word. maybe she’s just a skeleton of glass decorated with glitter and crystal. when he drops her hand, the dream she had of where this was going shatters. A THINKER? she, coincidentally, thinks. yeah, an overthinker ––– save for when she’s put to rest by the taste of straight vodka. if that’s what he means, he’s certainly on par, as there a plenty of thoughts running through her head right now ( 1. the way he touched her hand. / 2. the way he stopped touching her hand. / 3. fuck pizza or wherever the hell they’re headed right now, she wants to kiss him in the middle of the street. ) though he doesn’t specialize in the brand of compliments she’s familiar too, cassie finds herself relaxing when that big brain of hers works fast enough to understand that he just said something nice about her. something very him, but very nice! ❝ uhm . . . maybe once or twice? sometimes my mom and i watch late - night reruns of shows like that . . . ❞ while absolutely plastered and spiraling, yes. it’s actually one of their favorite fucked up mother / daughter bonding activities. despite how sad her life is ( tu secret es mi secret, after all. ) cassie smiles on, the hand previously held by him reaching up to primp at her golden hair. ❝ are you saying i’m like vanna white? ❞ there’s a lingering excitement on her tongue, a remaining ARE YOU SAYING I’M TELEVISION SCREEN BEAUTIFUL? god, she wishes she had a little briefcase right now. to make up for that, however, she strikes her best vanna, gesturing broadly to a passing mailbox. ❝ i’m... wait, shit! i’m trying to think of something she says! ❞