Who is Catherine Boyd? I am.
The Who is? I am. series is a collection of stories based on fictitious characters. I take inspirations from bits and pieces of real personalities and character traits of people that I have met, walked over, or both. However, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental and perhaps, a miracle. That includes animals.
With a cigarette clamped loosely between her fingers, she reaches out for the wine glass filled with a sip worth of Merlot. Her trembling hand hovers over the glass, threatening to turn it into an ashtray.
Though this threat is neither hers nor the glass, it belongs to her suppliers and their penchant for risk-taking and contact building, the line workers whom band together in abandoned warehouses, her dealers who have everything to lose and their runners who have none, the consumers and the addicts, their junkie friends in rehab and the rehab in their preachy ex-junkie friends, the doctors hiding their boredom through a smoke of concise delivery of medical terms and the nurses hiding in the storeroom for a smoke, the clerk that files her nails and the flies that vomits on the clerk’s leftover lunch and consuming it heartily.
She is responsible for all of them. As a drug chemist, this wasn’t what she had signed up for. But with the weight of the underground world on her shoulders and a new breed of cocaine on the weighing scale, Catherine Boyd needs a drink.
The shadow over the wine glass shows six fingers of which one is crooked and bellowing smoke. And under the desk light she got for cheap, the light blinks unpredictability over her undecided hand. Her hand that is hovering over the borosilicate made wine glass. A wine glass that cost her friend an exuberant amount of about $3,750.
She had asked her friend, Zooey Artega how much the wine glass had cut her back. Cat didn’t care, she makes more money than any Gucci welding self-righteous fuck-faced whore. She asked only because Zooey had asked her to make a guess. Cat hates guessing. The last time she did, she miscalculated an ounce, and that didn’t make Rico back in Cuba a satisfied customer of his recent bulk purchase.
Zooey gleamed when she mentioned the price for that piece of shit. That wine glass made of borosilicate with additional properties of boron oxide and silica in addition to the usual ingredients to make a glass: quartz, sodium carbonate, calcium carbonate, potassium oxide and calcium oxide.
Cat was indifferent when Zooey -eyes all wide about to pop out from the socket, nostrils expanded and smiling from ear to ear- verbally dangled the price tag over Cat’s blank face and deaf ears. Cat did however spot a smirk when she found out the chemical compounds of the glass.
At a recent lunch, Zooey reminded her of the 0.15 karat diamond with G color and VVS 1 purity that is locked in the stem of the glass.
Cat reminded herself that borosilicate is a glass type known for its high resistance to thermal shock and therefore maintains the wine’s properties at normal levels while the glass is held in warm hands.
Catherine Boyd is a drug chemist and values intricate details and the mechanism of things. Zooey Artega doesn’t know shit about anything and swings emptiness from a Gucci bag.
That’s perhaps why Cat has been so intrigued by the glass. A diamond studded glass, resistant to shock and keeps what it has in it at its natural temperature. This glass reminds her of someone she had always knew.
Cat’s index and middle finger caresses the tip of the glass, round about clockwise and back anti-clockwise until she reaches her lipstick stains; still moist, still thick, and still warm. This is a thermal shock resistant glass. She didn’t thought about that, her mind is numbed with calculations after calculations of numbers, her temples sends painful waves of angry prayers, her forehead crumpled against forbidding times, her eyebags sooted from her burnt days, and her eyes sore over the clouds of cigarette smoke.
She is almost asleep but her cigarette sounds off an alarm. The burning flames making a crackling sound as it dances between the charred tobacco remains and fresh tobacco waiting to be burned. The crackles, like faint laughter of jackals, were set against Peggy Lee’s intro on “Is That All There Is?”.
I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire.
I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face as he gathered me up
in his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement.
I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames.
And when it was all over I said to myself, “Is that all there is to a fire?”
Her fingers have now smeared the lipstick stain around half the tip of the wine glass. This tiresome act of unconscious molestation of the glass tip has distracted her, making her look at it. And as she noticed an abstract smile from the smeared lipstick on the tip of the glass, Peggy sings in her raspy jazzy voice:
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is…
She takes her fingers off the glass and drops the cigarette on the floor. As Peggy continues to sing, she stamps the cigarette out with her fluffy pink bunny bed slippers:
And when I was 12 years old, my father took me to the circus, the greatest show on earth.
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads.
And as I sat there watching the marvelous spectacle
I had the feeling that something was missing.
I don’t know what, but when it was over,
I said to myself, “Is that all there is to a circus?”
Her elbow rests on the seasoned wooden table and her hand takes the form of a placeholder for her head. In this case, in her condition, in her state of being, her hand feels like a pillow and her head feels like nothing. She reaches for the glass, holding the stem and Peggy, dear Peggy continues to sing:
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is…
She lifts the glass off the ground, not wanting, not needing, not rushed, not nothing. A gentle lift akin to that of an angel picking the body as it was left to die. And as she sends it towards the devilish red gates of her lips.
Then I fell in love, with the most wonderful boy in the world.
We would take long walks by the river or just sit for hours gazing into each other’s eyes. We were so very much in love.
Then one day, he went away. And I thought I’d die – but I didn’t.
And when I didn’t I said to myself, “Is that all there is to love?”
The Merlot swirls violently around the glass, barrels its edges, allowing the wine to break its body and open up its flavor and aroma -just like the smell of a body ripped apart, without meaning, without intention, without feelings.
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
And as the blood red liquid slides down the glass towards her lips, it wipes out the vapors exhaled as Cat’s mouth rests against the tip. Rushing towards her, it crashes against the walls of her moist red lips. Red liquid against redden walls, exploding in a firework of textures and at a temperature that makes the glass worth its weight and the wine worth its wait.
I know what you must be saying to yourselves.
If that’s the way she feels about it why doesn’t she just end it all?
Oh, no. Not me. I’m in no hurry for that final disappointment.
For I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you,
when that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath, I’ll be saying to myself,
As the wine floods the tip of her lips, she opens a gap large enough for exclusive entry. The blood red liquid awaits its rush in. And as the waves of wine swims around in excitement, she pulls the glass away in a manner of extreme violence and ferocity. The force was so extreme that it splits the particles of the liquid destroying fragments of its existence, evaporating into thin air.
The glass dives in mid air and shimmers silver and gold from the desk light that she got for cheap. And as the glass shatters into pieces on the floor and the wine changes temperature through the chillingly cold cement, Peggy sings her farewell:
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is…
Catherine Boyd is a drug chemist. All she needed was a drink.
