Curtains – My Summer With Karolina

[Short story entry for The Unhappy Ending Challenge]

Watching Song Sung Blue brought back memories of my hometown, Milwaukee, and of her: Karolina, the lead singer of the all-female Smiths tribute band.

Our story began when I visited a curtains shop to have the hem of my store-bought dorm curtains mended. I learned all I needed to fall in love with Karolina the second I walked into the store, and saw her and the poster promoting her band Sheilas Take a Bow behind her.

Morrissey’s face shone like Jesus behind a silhouette of four women.

I asked, “Can I take you out to lunch, or dinner, sometime?”

She didn’t even look up. “Life is a circle,” she murmured as she measured the hem of my dorm curtains. Feeding the fabric through her machine, she tossed her hair over one shoulder and fixed me with piercing blue eyes, “Find a student. You don’t want to date someone my age.”

“But I do,” I protested. “And I will convince you.”

“I’m sure you will.” She winked, the condescending wink adults give young people who just said something they think will never come true.

I’m going to be a famous writer!

I’m sure you will. Wink.

I’m going to make it to the major leagues!

I’m sure you will. Wink.

I’m sure you will… their intonation climbs higher on each word in a rhetorical staircase toward the death of every youthful dream.

Yet, I couldn’t stop staring. Tall, sharp-cheekboned, she moved with the easy confidence of someone who knew how the world worked.

After collecting my curtains, I sat across the street at the university Taco Bell and nursed a burrito, watching her shop. After an hour, the shop’s sign flipped to “Closed”. Karolina stepped out, swung a leg over the Harley parked at the curb, kicked the starter, and roared off. Bad ass. Girls my age seemed childish in comparison, always obsessed with gossip, makeup, and petty drama. I would soon find out that Karoline was forty-eight, ate like a horse without ever gaining an ounce, and was indeed the lead singer of Sheilas Take A Bow.

I was nineteen and convinced I didn’t care what anyone thought about me. I could handle anything.

I went to her shop every other week and paid for curtain repairs that I didn’t need. She kept saying “money is money“ and “everything goes round in a circle” until finally, she agreed to go on a date with me. She preferred alcohol over lunch, so we wound up at the Pharmacy Bar on Farwell. As the name suggests, it's a cocktail bar in an old pharmacy.

She ordered some fancy cocktail I didn’t know the name of, and I said I’d have the same. She took a long sip and relaxed.

Women, once they open up, they really tell you everything. She informed me her husband had run off six months earlier. Just disappeared one afternoon with a duffel bag and never came back. She said it flatly, as if she was announcing a package that was never delivered.

Her name, Karolina, came from her Polish mother, who loved everything about America except her dad, who ran off when she was 15. She got Happy Birthday cards when he remembered.

After a few drinks, she said I could come to her place to watch TV. She quickly fried up some food, sausages in a buttery sauce that she said was a Polish recipe, and after we ate she poured us another drink.

Every inch of her apartment was covered in posters of Morrissey or the Smiths. It was kind of intense to see his face glaring out from everywhere, but it made sense for a tribute band singer. I didn’t see any photo of the ex-husband anywhere.

Halfway into the first drink, she couldn’t keep her hands off of me. She was refreshingly aggressive versus women my age. I couldn’t resist. I put my hand on her waist. She was all muscle, tight and lean. The night was a blur of passion and promises.

After that, I started dropping by her place whenever I had time.

Within two weeks, I was almost living at her third-floor walk-up on Prospect Avenue.

On Fridays, I would drop by her concerts at Shank Hall. She’d start with a few slow songs, her voice low, and then the band would launch into “Panic”. The crowd, mostly women, would erupt into chanting, “Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ!” at the top of their lungs.

As a finale, when she sang, “Boyfriend in a Coma”, the room lost its mind. I loved watching her up there, tall and commanding under the stage lights.

On quiet nights, she fed me constantly, her onions and kielbasa swimming in golden butter. She was very insistent that I finish all my food, kept saying how nature is a circle, and nothing should be wasted. I learned to arrive hungry.

We’d make love on the couch as the TV played. She never smiled much, and she never mentioned her ex-husband. But I caught the way her eyes followed me with hunger when I walked around shirtless, and that was enough. I felt wanted.

One evening, the power flickered during a storm. Karolina stood at the kitchen counter, frying onions, butter popping and spitting. The apartment grew stiflingly warm and I opened a window. She acted like everything was normal, but I noticed her eyes kept darting toward the big rectangular freezer in the corner. It always looked out of place for the cramped space.

“You got a body in there?” I joked, reaching for the lid to look for ice.

Her hand shot out and slammed the freezer shut with surprising force.

“Don’t,” she said firmly.

I laughed nervously. “Just a joke!”

She didn’t laugh. She stared at me for three long, heavy seconds, blue eyes unreadable. Then she kissed me, hard, desperate, almost violent, and pulled me into the bedroom.

That night, she made love to me with a frantic intensity I’d never felt before. Her nails dug into my back, her breath was hot against my neck.

She pinched the new roll of fat on my belly. “There is some of me in you now.”

“I guess there is.” I indeed had adopted her mannerisms, her love of The Smiths, Polish food, and living like there’s no tomorrow.

The next afternoon, I noticed a new padlock on the freezer.

I told myself I was being paranoid. Karolina was just a passionate woman whose husband had abandoned her. I was the lucky nineteen-year-old who was her boyfriend. Life was good.

One humid morning a week later, I woke up alone. Karolina had already left for the shop. I went to the kitchen for water and stood in front of the freezer. It was humming louder than usual, a low, insistent drone. Then I noticed the padlock was slightly ajar.

My heart hammered in my throat. I couldn’t stop myself. I wiggled the lock and it slid off. I lifted the heavy lid and looked inside.

The freezer was filled with clear plastic bags filled with lumpy frozen yellow butter. I picked one up. The label read:

Gorsky, Karolina – Liposuction Aspirate, April 12, 2012