The Kangaroo that Ran Out of Steam

by Michael Cooke

The kangaroo ran out of steam. I was with him when it happened. He was wound up and attempted to flip over as usual, but he didn’t. Then he finally just wheezed and whirred and made the vain effort of one more try. But the one more try was nothing more than a subtle jerk. It was rather like an afterthought of all the life that had sprung so easily from him from before. But he couldn’t, he just could not. He wheezed, whirred and flat out ran out of steam.

There was a stadium, or was it? An indoor sports facility that was similar to a stadium, but not the usual structure of design. It had the standard oblong shape, but altered, not quite in perspective. The center of it, where the main events might take place was blurred, out of focus, not the primary area of attention. The spectator seats in the stadium appeared to be where the main action might take place. The seats were shrouded in a dull, murky, ambient light. And the structure was slightly disproportionate and smaller than usual, seemingly not very large, though substantial enough to still contain a good number of people.

Perhaps it was a conjured up fantasy indoor stadium. Or maybe it was very real. The mood all-round was gray in color, with something San Quentin-ish about it, dim, pockets of deep shadow, as in being stuck in the dead of night whatever time of day it actually was. The feeling of the place gave the odd impression of a Dionysian mask, forgotten, sunken, lying upon a mound of dust, thrown aside, discarded, unnoticed. It evoked the melancholy and disquiet of a dark theatre of a Monday after eight PM where not even a night watchman can be seen. The only illumination being a harsh and cold source: the predictable unmasked bare naked stage light downstage center here performing the starring role in and on an otherwise actor-less stage.

He was loved, so loved. And then he had to beat out, sputter out, leave the scene not only to one single person, but all the rest of us. He was loved and yet he punked and let going the distance be damned, threw his big feet into the air no more. It won’t happen, it will not happen again – meaning him in joyous and magical turn over, because he sputtered out.

She had a hyphenated name, always a danger – to be repeated – danger, as in a dangerous portend. The guy didn’t know it at the time, the effect that is, of a hyphenated name. He was just like any other guy when greatly aroused. When a guy is aroused by a woman, he does not take notice of hyphenated names.

She was made up of deep sensitivity, deep pain, with perhaps a whisper of talent. She emerged as one who presumed, suggested, hinted at, the sincerity and madness of love. She could incorporate all the disappointment and lack of authentic love in her life and combine all of that into a love mix of her own invention with which she strove for something she no question had not a clue about: love, quote unquote, for real. She wanted to be more than she was. She aspired to more intelligence, more social graces, more worldwide wisdom. But there was no way she could ever achieve such imagery. For that would be what she might only lamely achieve, an image of, a vague picture of, a remote grasp of a conceptualization falling apart and away from her even as she strove to perceive or attain it.

But she was capable of something like love. Yet she could not get a hold of her own being enough to manifest that true emotion in any rational reciprocal way. There was no genuine reality in her at all. Hers was an unintended fraud within her being. Her pretense was caused from familial indifference which manifested as ineffective intimations of love that so penetrated her core that she was doomed to live her life in futile pursuit of the real thing. She had to live the lie of her own profound sensitivity every day. The paradox being that there was a reality there, there was true feeling. But it was all masked by a coarse upbringing which caused her, forced her to phony up what truly underneath was the real deal. So though if you pricked her, she did bleed, the blood was only visible as a bodily manifestation, since the blood within her was actually made false due to the coldness of hereditary and familial depravation. Her feelings were shackled to the effect of her family’s unhealthy influence. And as a counter to that, her whole life was acted out as if she had balance, perspective, real understanding – and none of it was there.

July, hot July, New York City. She’d broken up with the guy she loved. Or rather the guy broke up with her. She was more than volatile. She was of the frightening myths, as in her hair turning snake-like, and her eyes, if stared upon you, capable of driving you mad. And here she shows up at a grand opening of an unspecified artistic something-or-other somewhere in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan. The air conditioning was broken and the medium-to-capacity guests were all sweltering, dripping with unforgiving humidity and endless sweat. And everyone drank copiously, more out of resuscitation than the usual impetus to imbibe to get a buzz on.

And there she was, just the side view of her revealed, an unknown figure at that moment by the keen observer. She is striking, stunning. He notes she wears a simple and tastefully designed bright white cotton ragged-cut summer dress which ever so compliments the contrast of her bronze glow: the bronze glow of the summer sun-toned skin of her legs, bare shoulders, arms and face. Her face is turned away, angled downward. She was unidentifiable but for the intentionally disarranged but carefully attended-to dark hair that only the back of her head revealed. She hitches her hip smoothly, sexily, as she suggestively leans over the h’orderves table and plucks up a canapé between her fingers, sizes its culinary potential, then brings it to her mouth and takes a nibble from it. She turns to her side to expose enough of a glimpse of her face in profile. And that is enough for him to see that it is her he is enthralled with, her who he had called it quits on. And he’s ravenous for her. She suddenly turns her head and catches him looking at her. She is stunned. He, looking straight at her, is stunned as well. They’d broken up only two days ago. She is astonished. He equally astonished. They burst out in huge smiles and laughter simultaneously as they mutually question the reality of such a coincidence by trading ‘it’s YOU” back a forth. Here in Hell’s Kitchen, a one in a million chance occurrence of being brought together having just broken up is cemented by an air-condition-less devilish scorching occasion. Precisely at this very moment the die is cast, the death knoll tolls for the both of them. Their two days ago break-up is now with certainty altogether tossed out. And their intense bond, now unexpectedly revived, becomes hotter than ever.

She plays cagey in her flirting. And he chomps at all the bait she gives out. He tries to stall his ardor, for that is what it is. But he loses. And before he knows it he proposes they take a cab to her place. She at first desists, and with a come hither smile calls him a fraud and other demeaning things. And then he persists, cajoles, wins. And without even a cursory nod to their hosts, or whoever had invited either one to the event, they leave and steal away out the building arms around each other rushing to hail down a cab. They get in. He gives the exact address to the cab driver, the address firm in his memory that it would take months later for him to forget, if not eradicate altogether from his memory.

Together they sit a moment in silence before he makes the move to draw her near to him in the attempt to kiss her. She pushes him off and away, affronted, resentfully asking, ‘what do you think you’re doing’. He is startled. He says’ ‘What?’ to that. He leans in and tries to kiss her again. She wallops him on his cheek. He withdraws back. He questions why she is doing this. She explodes with invectives to him of his breaking it off with her. She reels off a seemingly non-ending stream of vehemence to him, and loudly. He is shocked and embarrassed as the cab driver certainly overhears everything. She does not edit or reign in one thought of her vitriol towards him. He simply has to take it, thinking all the while how he can manage somehow to get out of the cab and get away. He decides in his captivity the best response is to yield to her angry words in acknowledging them as a means of calming her down. And he laces his words with bold contrite admissions to her in order to be all the more convincing so that she will stop lambasting him. He lets her know that she is right and that he has no defense for his behavior. They sit in the cab, neither of them talking, separate, apart, unconnected, angry, wounded, silent.

The cab stops at a red light. The light switches to green, the cab moves on, the blocks flash by. There are successively more red lights to stop at. And then more green ones with which to move on. And then out of nowhere, as he maintains his forlorn and incarcerated stare out the cab window, a foot with a leg attached to it ever not so surreptitiously grazes alongside his shin. His staring out the cab window focusing his attention as to how to get out of the cab is now being greatly threatened because of this physical advance from her. He is not quite sure the foot graze really has occurred. And so he sustains, stout fellow, his steady gaze to the flitting-by streets as they move through the blocks of Manhattan. The foot takes a second advance to graze a bit more forcefully against his shin again. This stroke is accompanied by, cleverly, she thinks, inching her body closer to his side. She brings her hand up to his chest and continue up to his neck and cheek, the cheek she had recently walloped. And his head and eyes continue to sustain their focal point solely on the streets flying by. He maintains his stare out the cab window until, without his consent or his own knowing or conscious intention, as if he was directed by other forces beyond his control, he turns away from peering out the window and faces her dead on. And then it’s done, that’s it, it’s finished, the forgone conclusion rules: their evening now has become sealed.

After a time, as in years passing, no knowledge of either one to the other is ever investigated by either of them. Who knows what life presents to her, or to him.

The gray indoor stadium’s “center court”, clouded, obscured, is never approached or viewed as the main attraction. The “main event” is panned, like a camera movement swiftly gliding by the spectator seats in half-light, along with shadows and the intimation of strips of stronger shards of light. And no further illumination is cast upon the empty rows as they are walked, footsteps one after the other treading between rows become the star of the show. They are walked with the suggestion that someone is following, pursuing. Sounds are heard, flashes of movement flit by the rows of seats. But no one is there but the walker. He carries on as like a treadmill never ending, until he spots on the floor slightly ahead of him near one of the iron leg supports of one of the stadium’s bolted seats, a minute orange figure. It barely can be discerned by the stadium’s dusky light. He leans down, picks it up, the feel of the small plastic figure warmly familiar to the palm of his hand. He looks upon it as if greeting an old long lost friend now reunited. It is an object he had not obtained in his youth, he had received it as a gift in his middle age. It was a present to him. And he’d always cherished it for its innocence, its openness, its ridiculousness, its childishness, its vulnerability. But through time and the hurdles of life he managed to misplace it and/or lose it. And now strangely, here in this strange place, seemingly from out of nowhere it is here again remarkably, for him. Here it was looking bright and cheery as it had been, offering up the pleasure it had given him when he twisted the doo-hinghy to rev the guy up so he’d flip – perfectly every time. He’d wind it up and the toy orange kangaroo would flip over onto his big feet every time consistent, sure, steady, reliable. The kangaroo loved his own ability to flip every time consistently — until now, here and now when he’d found him again. He winds him up and places him on the cold gray concrete slab where people scuff their feet and drop their food and drinks sitting in their stadium seats. And he watches as the orange kangaroo lamely whirrs and wheezes and hardly jerks even. And then the kangaroo just sits there with his bright silly naked pumpkin face motionless, attempting to belie the fact that he has run out of steam. He can’t run out of steam, he couldn’t. He’s an immortal to be sure. But he is not. The son of a bitch punked out and has run out of steam.

Wind Up Kangaroo

Michael Cooke