' Diems 'of Van

Haven't spoke to Van in a year .Don't know if her demons got her or the law has her.I started going to a fashionable lounge years ago as a different stop-off before turning the old 69 Cutlass Convertible for home. A place to go after the earthy Star Bar or the pedestrian Smiths Olde Bar.I meant I went there because of the hot trashy eurobabes that Andy, The Franco-Lebanese owner has always hired. Either for the customer's pleasure or his.Smart Guy.A young woman who worked there particularly caught my eye.At that time my favorite show was a b type TV spy thing LA FEMME NIKITA. The main character was played by Peta Wilson, a willowly, green eyed, long haired blonde of the nordic ehtnicity.When I first saw Van, I could have sworn they were twins.Always stylish,obviously sophisticated,sometimes off-beat and always sexy. Now let me preface that I am half-deaf. Sometimes I don't always hear things that others do.But when I want to sleep in quiet all I have to do is roll over on my ear to go to sleep.
Now, I always tried to get a table for Van to wait on me just so I could see her and maybe start a conversation. But the music is always playing at Diem and for a long time I couldn't hear her just so.Big buildup.So one night I'm in there and she finally leans over(wearing a black blouse,stategicaly buttoned,long blonde hair sweeping across one green eye) and say's(North GA backwoods,up behind the creek, dog's under the porch, engine on a chain swinging under a tree,get off me daddy your crushing my cigarettes, aunt-mom..uncle-dad can I borrow the truck to hook a rope up to the jail bars so I can break brother out in time to go to the spring dance) " Hey hunnnny, where you been?". Wow , I did not see that coming.But at least she was remembering me now.Illusion shattered.
Mystery gone ,she was far more approachable now. And yes she was missing a few teeth.Right behind her canines. The two top teeth, one each side.Never noticed till I got closer to her.Later I learned that they caused her some embarassment. She explained one night ,over tequila shots I kept sneaking , that in her youth in Cumming her mother had started writing her own pain-killer perscriptions to the druggist. This lead to bigger things and finally the cops closed in , which lead to the break-up of the family,dropping out of high school, and running with the meth-amphetamine crowd. Real Big in North Georgia. Crack to the hill-billy.One night when she was 19 ,at a big party she became convinced those teeth were baby teeth and had to go. Locking herself in a closet she got out a pair of pliers and pulled them out. Emerging victorious from there she proceeded to show the horrified, wired-up revellers her bloody baby teeth, complete with roots.
Later ,I met her boyfriend Brody, a thick-set , pudgy , handsome boy complete with guitar and big plans. Van had been with him for 7 years, off the crank and totally devoted to him while he made one dumb decision after the other.Whether it was buying a 10 year old custom van for his band, at 10,000 dollars more than it was worth, wrecking it repeatedly , or actually passing out on top of his keyboards at a show, in the middle of his own birthday song.Yep, she worked to pay the note on the apatment in worst section of Cabbagetown (The last white-trash hold-out in the inner city), and the $500 a month note on the smoking pile of crap he used to transport his band and gear.She would always say she was going to stick it out one more year in case he got famous.
She actually worked a few jobs for me after I got to know her. Now Van had many faults but she always showed up cheery and with a smile. Her passion was looking for arrowheads, at every job-site she would spend her break hunched over looking for old indian arrowheads.And anything remotely pointy, any rock, to her was an ancient treasure.She even went out on her own and and sold some tarps and fence materials, and even made side money cleaning the homes of my wealthy friends. The husbands where always surprised to see such a beautiful girl cleaning the bathroom.
Actually I gave her a car.Well it was a even trade. My neighbor was moving and had parked a 87 Pontiac Gran Prix, last of the rear drive cars, at the side of his house. Mysterious eletrical gremlins. I bought it for $50 on the day he was moving.I had it running by the next day.I knew Van needed a car so I slipped on some used tires, welded on a new glasspack muffler for a rumble sound, and headed down to Atlanta. She was overjoyed.She hadn't had a car in 5 years. She took it everywhere. Her and Brody drove to Dahlonga and camped in it, she took her grandfather to the doctor in it, she took her friends out in it.Now you or I wouldn't want that car ,but it gave her freedom.Things where looking good for her even as Brody came home less and less.Then they moved back to Cumming.Now it would all fall apart.
Brody left her about 4 weeks after they moved back.She couldn't keep up the payments on their apartment alone so she moved in to a room. Brody moved into a new house.He had moved into his best friends ex-girlfriends house. They were married 4 weeks later The bride said she was going to bankroll him until he was discovered.She was a real estate agent.Van was crushed.She went through some boyfriends and started to drink more. I knew she was taking it bad and then the room she was renting was gone ,the woman sold the house.A while back I told her Van could stay on my boat at the Marina. I gave her the keys and she said she would never take it out. She would call every now and then and sometimes her and Shelle would pick up a job from me and do it together. Always smiling, no matter had bad things were getting for her, self-inflicted or otherwise Then she got a job from a old biker dude. Van would run his newstand while he traveled. Then it became weekend trips with him up to Cherokee NC for gambling.I wondered if she was messing around with meth again( olde biker+hot blonde=drugs). I am usually right when I get a vibe or a feeling about something.Unfortunately I wasn't wrong.
The calls got farther and farther apart and then last February she called for some work. I said sure, I had a trade show to go to and a little help would be perfect before I left. She showed up a little worse for the wear ,but still with that old glimmer.I paid her a few extra bucks and told her I would see her soon.Then I started to get little parking tickets for the car,none of which I had to pay, and even a fine for running the toll booth at Ga 400. A couple of months ago I even got a parking notice for the car's tag on a old Chevy Blazer on Tybee Island.
One day in June, Shelle and I went down to the boat to clean it up for a weekend trip on the lake. It had been trashed.The motor had been run hot and blown a gasket.There was garbage everywhere and those little foil strips meth-heads use to smoke the devil's shit.The ignition key was still in the boat and a weeks worth of unflushed shit in the port a potty.I knew it had been Van and maybe even one of her addict friends.I cursed her for a few months but then I started to wonder what had happened to her.Maybe she was to embarassed to call after trashing the boat, maybe she finally got that 3rd DUI,and was sitting in some jail,maybe she was in a clinic....
I don't hold any ill will to her now, in fact I would love to hear from her. If she is out there I hope she has finally gotten herself together,...but how often does that happen?