Welcome to the next post in The Adventures of Roland! You can find all the previous posts in Roland’s escapades here. Each installment typically comes out around once per month. I hope you enjoy! Also as an FYI this the final post of the original short story which I wrote about Roland, so that means that all the posts after this one are in new and uncharted territory! Here we go! Feel free comment and share below. I’d love to hear your thoughts, feelings, and ideas about Roland, the people around him, and where to go next. Happy reading!
—-THE ADVENTURES OF ROLAND—-
“Mmmm. A brisk walk eh?” Pepper replied.
“Well you know head over to the tar pits or something.” The La Brea Tar Pits are of course the preserved natural asphalt which has been seeping up from the ground for tens of thousands of years now. In it the lies the skeletal remains of ancient saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, bison, turtles, and many types of flora. Pepper delighted in the thought of this man-boy Roland jogging over the remains of prehistoric predators and glacial age fauna.
“Yeah let me put this back in my box.” Just as she was speaking the very words, her hands and feet moved swiftly over to her mail box, turned the key, and returned its contents to their, albeit transitional, home.
The evening air was cool but nowhere near uncomfortable. Wilshire Blvd. was of course busy with cars, and the lights overhead and passing by made for a somewhat zoetrope-like experience upon the shop windows and metal signs which lined the street. Roland was nervous as he walked along with Pepper’s red converse shoes and purple laces. He thought he could there was a smiley face on the line of lace nearest to her toes, but she kept moving her feet so rapidly he was never really sure.
“So what’s up? How are the hell are you?” Pepper smirked and looked over at him to see his reaction. He began to chuckle uncomfortably.
“Yeah. I’m alright. What’s up with you?”
“Nothing. Just got off work and now I’m walking with you.” There was a momentary pause, a beat in her rhythm. She checked and then double checked and then went for it. “You’re afraid of women aren’t you?”
“Excuse me? I mean what?”
“Women. You’re afraid of them. You honestly don’t know what to say to me right now do you?”
“Well I guess that’s true considering the circumstances. So how’s your day been? Do you have any pets?” Any pets? What the fuck am I saying? Roland started to fade away. His vision became slightly blurry. The evening lights of LA streets began to bubble up and haze over each other. Distinct lines and definitions were furry and cozy now. “I’m sorry about bumping into you like that.”
“Oh you mean when you felt me up like that!” A cute laugh burst out of her for a brief moment unexpected by either of them. “Yeah that’s cool man no worries. Truth is I kind of liked it. My day’s been kind of fucked up, I hate my boss, hate what I do, could be doing something way better for myself, my talent, blah, blah, blah. And yeah I have a pet turtle. His name’s Seth and he’s super chill.” She looked at him hard now. “Yeah it’s cool man no worries. I haven’t had it for a while now you know so it’s alright.” Smiling and winking at him, she turned to look out over the boulevard and then deep into the ventricle of the city and beyond. Roland just sat there listening to her as he looked into the bright, bulbous security lights around warehouse buildings and empty parking lots.
“A pet turtle huh. That’s cool.” Roland made a right hand turn onto Curson St. and started to cross it when Pepper grabbed his arm.
“Watch it!” A car burst forth into Roland’s vision on his right hand side. He stepped back and bumped into Pepper again. Their bodies swayed into each other, gelatinous and vibrating slightly, enjoyably.
“Woah thank you. I don’t know what the fuck happened there. I didn’t even see him at all.”
“Yeah he might as well WATCH WHERE HE’S GOING!” Pepper yelled off at the car as he drove by while sounding as though she was still carrying on her conversation with Roland. “Fucking prick. Doesn’t even deserve to be driving like that.”
Roland watched her as she exploded over herself in front of him. The random freckles on her face somehow protruding more visibly to him in her anger, her neck and chest turning a devilish blood-red. He watched faint strings of her blond hair held in suspension before his face as she turned her head away from him, towards the speeding car beyond. Your hair is so…what? So what Roland? What the fuck is her hair?
“I quit my job today.”
“Really? That’s cool! What are you going to do now?”
“Not sure to be honest.” For the time a smile peeled off Roland’s face as he uttered those words. He hasn’t even told his parents yet, and already, simply by sharing it with Pepper perhaps, he was confident that he could talk to them now.
“Nice. What were you doing?”
“Web design.”
“Yeah that’s cool. That pays good money. So are where are you headed next? Paris? Rome? Tokyo? Mongolia?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What? Aren’t you going to like travel the world or drive across the country or hike the Andes or something now that you have the time off?”
“Well. I don’t know. I mean I don’t think so. I mean I wasn’t planning on that really. I kind of need the money I have just to keep my expenses up and pay rent and all you know.”
“Yeah, yeah I hear that bud! All I’m saying is this may be a once in a lifetime moment for you – and so what are you going to do with it eh? You know what I mean!?”
For the first time, Roland seem to see into a world opening up before him. Opening up like the legs of Alice all those years ago when he lost his virginity. When she laid down on the floor in his parent’s basement, and spread her legs. When he climbed onto her, light and racy, pulled down the condom and finally entered for the first time ever. He could do anything! He was a free man! All the world was laid out before him! And finally for the first time in he didn’t know how long, Roland felt his chest expand outwards as though a balloon was blown up inside his rib cage. His back straightened up, and he looked out over the fenced in lawn and greenery that lead its way up to the prehistoric tar pits. He noticed the giant red box of an “L” – the sculptured art work planted out there in the small sea of grass and nighttime. A cricket began to seesaw its distinct cadence out into the springtime blackness, the green openness that only museums and fences can foster in big cities. The commodity of spaciousness, a luxury for its inhabitants, the opportunity for wider considerations, a gentler rhythm made available to anyone willing enough to let go, to slow down, to sacrifice.
“My God Pepper!” And with that Roland gripped her arms as though he were a steel worker, a mill worker, a welder. He felt her pulse surge through the flesh in her upper arm, her yellow hooded sweatshirt like a blood pressure cuff squeezing into her arm, forcing the flow. She tilted her head back slightly in hopes he would understand.
“Thank you Pepper! Thank you! You’re right! You’re so fucking right!” Roland loosened his sudden manly grip on her, looked straight into her eyes once again, turned around from her, and jumped over the blue 6 foot high metal fence dividing the sidewalk from the ancient greens. And as he walked off, he never looked back, he didn’t see the soft shock that wove all through her body, her mouth open, available, and breathing in the darkness all around them.