Our Blessed Mary
by Nik Korpon

Ripken homered in the second and Mussina broke the Yankee shortstop’s nose in the third because he was crowding the plate, blood splattering over the batter’s box like he was Jackson Pollock. Even the umpire had to get a disinfectant wipe from one of the batboys. Combined, those had been the highlight of the evening.

On the stool next to me, Christine hovered like a vulture over carrion, one lazy eye on her pint, one on the Orioles game. I chained smoke after smoke until I sounded like Louis Armstrong. The fog of cigarettes hung heavy in Frasier’s, and it was almost like I could use that blanket as an excuse for smoking instead of talking. It didn’t seem like she minded. Or noticed.

I waved my hand to Ray, chatting up some chick at the other end of the bar with hair the color of a raspberry I’d gladly eat off her bare chest. It took using both hands like I was directing plane traffic to get his attention. I pointed two fingers down, one to the whiskey glass and one to my pint. He nodded and continued charming Red. I lit another smoke and turned my attention back to the game. Yankees had men on first and third, one down, but even in the sixth, Mussina was still throwing 90-plus.

‘He’ll go eight, easy,’ I said in the general direction of Christine.

‘Yeah, easy.’ She bit a straw until it was flat and cleaned something from under her nails. At that angle, I could see the red lace at the top of her black bra. I stared for a hot second then finished my pint.

‘Did you want to stay at my place tonight?’ she said.

I tried to blow smoke rings like a target over the mirror reflection of myself. ‘Doesn’t matter. Whatever you want.’

Half an inning later, Ray managed to pull himself away from Red and refill my drink. I nodded at Christine’s drinks—‘Another for her, too, please’—and he sighed like I was part of the Spanish fucking Inquisition but took her glass anyway. While pouring her pint, he licked his teeth, sniffed, grinded his jaw, inhaled hard enough to make his nostrils distend, sniffed twice more. His hand vibrated as he set her pint down and he was back to Red before I finished blinking. Definitely riding high on the white horse.

I was watching him, smiling to myself, when the front door opened. A blast of bright lights made the townies cover their eyes and backlit a figure in the doorway. Definitely a woman from the curves, possibly a goddess descended into North Baltimore. The headlights passed the bar door and she came into focus.

She crossed the bar like she was walking on water, but with a swagger in her step that gave me the urge to tie her to my couch and lick every bead of sweat from her body. Black motorcycle boots and lowcut jeans that hung below the curve of her pallid seashell hips. Rosewood hair pulled back into a delicate ponytail. She garnered the attention of the bar—Ray included—with only her lips.

I must have her.

Something like a hammer on my bicep startled me. I shook my head, gathered myself, and looked to Christine. She nodded at my future.

‘Who is that?’ she said, rubbing her fingers together like there was a phantom nipple. I shrugged. The announcer said something about bases loaded for the Yanks.

Ray rode his white horse back with the goddess’ drinks. She smiled, her eyes disappearing in a way that was painfully cute, and knocked back her whiskey in a breath. She commandeered my heart before she could even swallow.

‘She doesn’t look familiar?’ Christine said from somewhere.

I started to answer when the goddess caught me staring and pretended to cough into her fist to hide a smile. I took a long drag on my cigarette as she meandered over to us with her Yuengling. Christine’s breathing was audible. The announcer said Mussina picked off the guy on third base.

‘What kind do you smoke?’ the goddess asked me. Her smell like salt in an onshore ocean breeze. She glanced over my shoulder to Christine, smirked.

‘Casamir,’ I said, trying to play it Bogart-cool.

‘I have Lights, too,’ Christine chimed in. ‘They’re kinda nicer than the regulars.’ I lit one of my smokes for the goddess. Her eyelids, bathed in the blue of electricity.

She nodded at the television. ‘Who’s winning?’

Christine sputtered Red Sox and I said O’s.

‘So it’s a tie, then?’

I shrugged and Christine laughed like a nervous hyena. Wisps of silence twirled through the fingers of smoke around us.

‘I’m Mary,’ she said eventually.

‘Christine. Just like the movie.’ She laughed, laughed some more, held out her hand like she might stab Mary with it. ‘Only I can’t set things on fire with my mind.’

‘I always wished I could do that,’ Mary said, a stilted edge to her voice. ‘I’d never have to pay a heating bill again.’ That got another cackle from Christine.

I muttered That was Carrie, moron then turned back to the game, cursed as the Yankees singled and scored two runs. Two long drinks and my glass was mostly empty. Ray was busy wooing his chick, though, so there wasn’t much point in trying to get another round. I lit another cigarette instead. Christine nattered on behind me.

Mary called out and I watched her motion towards me, looking without looking. Not more than thirty seconds later, a full pint sat at my hands. I took a deep breath as John Bonham played drums inside my chest. I clinked my glass with Mary’s. She winked, bit her bottom lip and I kept as neutral an expression as I could manage so she wouldn’t smile and I could stare into her eyes, like oceans of sapphire. Endless and depthless and able to devour me with a blink. I could swim in her for days without coming up for air.

Her eyebrows made a V shape, finger on my forearm. ‘That isn’t what I think it is, is it?’

My tattoo, a K inside a shield, from when I was fifteen. ‘Depends.’

‘All they do is scream and complain,’ Christine butted in. ‘I mean seriously, how much does a junkie have to complain about? He’s got all this money and still bitches, waa waa waa, no one understands me.’ She leaned in to Mary, laid her hand on her thigh, and said with a huff, ‘That’s a Nirvana tattoo, by the way. I mean, seriously? And with everything that’s happening in Yugoslavia…’

I sighed and swiveled back to the game. The announcer updated us on the Yankee shortstop, said he had massive facial injuries but no word on anything neurological. Christine continued to call me infantile and other assorted things. I finished my pint and moved to the next one, felt heat next to me. Slowly, their conversation seeped through my loathing of Christine.

‘I don’t think that’s true. A lot of times, it’s just posing. Like a lounge act,’ Mary said. ‘Because, usually, truth is just covered in security. And I’d like to let it smother me, I’d really like to, but it wouldn’t work unless you’re trading off and taking turns.’ This Mary, this blessed Mary, where did she come from? This Mary who downed whiskey like holy water and wore motorcycle boots and picked out the difference between Christine and Carrie but didn’t point it out to be polite. Who quoted Lounge Act by Nirvana in conversation, the song that said I’ll wear a shield because Kurt Cobain got a tattoo to impress a girl and the reason I got the tattoo in the first place was now impressing a girl. She scooted closer to me, touched her knee to my back and set my skin aflame. ‘Just, don’t regret a thing.’

Christine laughed through her nose, the laugh she’d give me that said you’re a genetic mistake.

I turned around in my stool to Mary, touched knee to knee. Her eyelids drooped and I knew I set her to flames as well. Christine’s laughing faded into spent cigarette smoke.

‘I’m Damon,’ I said. ‘We should hang out sometime.’