{For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, kgwaite gave me this prompt: "The road construction was making it impossible to leave the city." I gave SAM this prompt: "The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good." - Samuel Johnson}
There was a forest of red lights in front of me, the frowning rear ends of Hyundais and Hummers, Kias and Corollas, all forced into equality by a traffic jam. The road was narrowing, down to a single lane, with city drivers showing their typical calm and equanimity by trying to squeeze into every square inch at the earliest possible second. I took a deep breath, trying not to white knuckle the steering wheel. There was nothing to be done, I told myself. All the other routes were worse- nearly every major artery had some project somewhere along it. All the road construction was making it nearly impossible to leave the city.
Up ahead, the cones and flashing orange lights and men with reflective vests were out. I knew they worked hard, because eventually the road got finished and they moved on to the next project, but when you passed by them like this, creeping and beeping, I couldn't help but notice how many of them weren't doing anything at all. It was almost mocking, how they stared back at us, knowing that we were there, trapped in our funeral procession. One of them, a tall, lanky guy who looked a little like Mark Sanchez, stretched in the sun, his perfect abs peeking out from under a US Army shirt, then climbed up into an enormous machine.
This journey was foolish. They were all dumb, but I could write volumes, compose page after page of epic poetry about exactly how stupid it all was. I told myself this, every hurried assignation resulting in another long, slow, shameful ride home, combined with promising myself that I would end it, endure the humiliation and rage and simply cut it off at the knees. Stop answering her summons, risking her rage and some twisted revenge fantasy but knowing it would be better to just let it die.
We were creeping forward still, inch by begotten inch, meekly falling into line. I watched the road grader, huge and imposing, flattening down some fresh asphalt. Everyone seemed to just be watching, staring as the big machine did its work. The gleaming flat blackness, shining in the sun, reminded me of riding my bike as a teen, finding a stretch of straight road in an industrial park, pushing myself as hard as I can, high on the thrill of speed. The minivan in front of me had a stick figure family on the back window, along with a decal of a ballet dancer. My mouth was dry.
It was a text message that started this episode. "Come get me," was all it said, and I was up, closing my laptop and sliding it into my bag with one practiced motion. I had the kind of job where you didn't have to always answer for your whereabouts precisely. People snuck in and out of the office all the time, and yet somehow things always got done. That was a blessing and a curse- if I had a more regimented office, the trap I had fallen into would have been impossible. But that's an excuse. I could have said no, should have said no. I just didn't.
She was a student, visiting in the office for two weeks over the summer so that she can get a tiny flavor of what her intended career may be like. We had a routine for our students, letting her sit on some meetings, helping on some projects, occasionally asked to research this or that stubborn item. She performed splendidly, easily fitting into the culture, dressing well, asking pertinent, cogent questions on occasion. All in all, a delightful experience.
Her last day was when the trouble started. I really have got to stop calling it that. The more I think about it, going over and over it like a movie I can't turn off, she was flirting the whole time, laughing too loudly, standing too close, gently touching arms and waists, longing looks across a conference table. I was just too dense to pick up on it.
The boss decided to take her out to a lunch that I couldn't make on her last day, so she came by my office. She was beautiful, long legs and rich auburn hair, an even, oval face with eager, questioning blue eyes. But they always are- people her age are made beautiful, mindless evolution demanding reproductive fitness regardless of society's wishes. After exchanging contact information, she just kept standing there, so close, exchanging small talk, making tiny hair flips, the pointed toe of her shoe making little circles in front of me on the rug.
I have long made a habit of excusing myself from all manner of horrid behavior, but what happened next cannot be adequately explained. I have said "I couldn't help myself," and "I was a slave to my lizard brain," and I have tried every other type of reasoning and justification I can come up with. I was drawn to her, my arms finding the curve of her hips, my hands the small of her back. She was eager and willing, and while I kept thinking that I should stop, that I should wait, that I can't, that we shouldn't, we didn't stop, and we didn't wait, and I could, and we did.
What came next was just the feeding of an addiction. She calls, I come, I leave and feel guilty until she calls again. And then, like the dog chasing the rabbit at the track, I'm off again. I have to do it, it feels like, the way I have to eat or have to breathe. It is a compulsion. I feel an intense, grinding need while we are together. I don't know whether I am reliving my youth or spoiling hers, but whatever it is, minutes feel like seconds, and it is torture until we are together again. I feel slightly nauseous, like when I have had too much caffeine. My nerves feel raw.
Suddenly the traffic loosens up and I'm accelerating onto the highway. The speed after all that waiting feels like I'm making a jailbreak, fleeing from the authorities. I can feel the distance between us, willing her closer even as I hate her for having a hold on me. I know her exit, the tight turn onto the main road, and then the long, slow merging into the mess that surrounds the school. She is with two other girls, the three of them sharing a quick, hard laugh in confidence, as I wait for a bottleneck to clear in front of me.
Drive away, I tell myself. Get back on the highway and go home and get a hobby. Read a book. See a play. Take up yoga. Buy a gun. Do something appropriate for your age. Let her worry about graduation and her upcoming freshman year like her friends do, like people her age should. Let her find her own way in the world, and stop pretending you are anything more than a wallet with feet. Drive past her high school and don't look back.
But I pull forward, negotiating the confusion, pulling to the side along the sidewalk. I'm cursing myself as I do it, swearing under my breath, knowing that there is a wide gulf between what is legal and what is right. I stop the car, and I see her calves first, long and slender, and she is there, bright and alive and clear and smelling like the free summer breeze. She slides into the seat beside me and shuts the door, setting a lime green bag between her feet. I hate myself, and then she speaks.
"I want to go shopping," she says, and she takes my free hand, and I accelerate away.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Sunday, September 16, 2012
FFF: "What I Know"
[The Flash Fiction Friday challenge this week is to rewrite a famous movie scene in 1969 or fewer words. I have chosen the most famous scene from one of my favorite movies, Aaron Sorkin and Rob Reiner's "A Few Good Men", the scene when Tom Cruise's Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee is questioning Jack Nicholson's Colonel Nathan Jessup about the death of Private William Santiago on the naval base at Guantanamo Bay. (It is the scene that contains the meme "you can't HANDLE the truth," which you have doubtless heard in some context, unless you spent the last two decades on a Martian penal colony.) This story is told from the point of view of Nicholson's character, and while I am confident my readers are smart enough to understand this, I feel bound to emphasize that these are not my views, they are the made up views of a fictional character.] [ This story is called "What I Know".]
It was hot in the courtroom, hot and stale in a way fans and air conditioners couldn't seem to stir. I could feel the sweat across the small of my back and on my thighs. I hadn't looked forward to making the trip to Washington for just this reason. Cuba was hot, sure, but Washington got hot the way no place else did. It was oppressive, miasmal heat- it made you wonder just what in the hell they were thinking to put the capital here.
It was offensive, leaving all my work behind to fly up here and have them act like I have to defend my command decisions. But here is where I was told to come, and when you've saluted the flag as long as I have, when they say come, you come. I knew what these lawyers were trying to do. It was that rotten little weasel Santiago, the inquiry into his death suddenly becoming a big affair, when really, it was just as simple as you please. I don't care what the doctors say- those slick lawyers have been throwing around buzzwords like acidosis and metabolism and all that crap I barely remember from high school biology. The lawyers were trying to make me responsible for Santiago's death, but truth is, he died of not being a Marine. Simple.
They told the kid to quit. Kendrick, Markinson, Dawson, everybody. Just leave the Corps and go home. Nothing to be ashamed of if you can't do it. Not everybody can be a Marine. It's hard because it has to be, so the men will be brave, and it's hard to make you a better man. Plenty of kids can't do it. Go home and ring a register, or go to community college. I'm not saying the kid deserved to die- I'm just saying he wasn't a Marine. No shame in that. Most men aren't.
But the little bastard stayed. He stayed, and he still couldn't hack it. He was terrible at everything- drill, PT, cleanliness, shooting. Every time we dressed him down about it, he apologized and promised to do better, but nothing would happen, the same sorry performance, on test after test after test. So if he wasn't going to go, we had to mold him. That's our job, right? Molding men? So I decided to work with the boy. I listened to Kaffee yammer at me, responding to his questions, wishing for just one stupid little breeze to cool off this stifling room.
Of course I knew the Code Reds were illegal. Everyone knew that. Division had ordered it. But whoever wrote that rule either had never faced bullets with his name on them, or had faced them so long ago all the fear had faded. When you're in it, when the man next to you is depending on you to do your job and you're depending on him, you take comfort in the fact that you know he's good enough. He was forged in the same fires you were, so you know he's made of something. That's the kind of toughness you must have in a forward area, that's the kind of toughness you need in a Marine, and that's the kind of toughness that Santiago would never have, and that's the kind of toughness Kaffee, for all his degrees, would never have on his best day.
Look at Kaffee, barking questions at me like I'm some kind of office flunky of his. I wonder about him. What kind of fire burns in a man like that? I can see the sweat gathering on his neck, asking me questions, one after another. They're easy to parry- I know where he is headed, and engaging in a battle of wits with someone this simple barely taxes my brain. I answer his questions slowly to help me think, but also because I think it irritates him. He's not half the man his father was. He may wear a uniform, but he's not a sailor.
I can't help but tense up when he gets close. I have these flashes of jumping up out of the witness chair, flooring the little prick with a right cross, seeing his head snap back, his perfect hair shaking, that golden nose breaking under the pressure, and then getting down on the floor and pounding his head into the floor until the MPs pull me off. Look, he's trying to prove there was no transfer order for Santiago with some nonsense about the tower chiefs at Andrews. How cute. What a child he is. I look at his eyes, the way they glitter and his nostrils flare when he thinks he's got me. Think again. Listen, boy, I've faced tougher enemies than you before breakfast.
He's going to ask me. I can feel it. All he has to do is ask me if I have violated a direct order, accuse me of a crime, and I've got him. Then he'll be on the defensive, and I can just smile and watch the little prick really sweat. He's walked into the trap now, I just have to spring it on him. It's like when you're in a foxhole, and you can't see anything, but you know they are there. It's just a matter of waiting for the enemy to move. Then you bring the rain.
I stare at Kaffee, turning aside his stupid little digs and asides and snide looks. Now he's honing in on the two orders, the one that Santiago wasn't to be touched, and the second sending him off the base. I make dozens of decisions every day, and I can't always explain them afterwards. It's a gut feeling. It's called leadership. It's not as simple as pushing papers. I look at his perfect, shiny teeth and wonder if he is involved with Galloway after all.
Kaffee is close, so close I could punch him, and the thought is so pleasant my arm twitches.
"Did you order the Code Red?," Kaffee finally says, his face inches from mine. No one moves, and I luxuriate in the silence for a split second. It's almost like being on stage.
"Did I order a Code Red? Is that what you're asking me? I think that's what you're asking me, Lieutenant, unless all the gunfire over the years has damaged my hearing. And the answer, son, is no, I didn't order a Code Red. I didn't order a Code Red because my superiors told me I couldn't. I transferred Santiago off the base because he had angered his unit, and because he was a substandard Marine. I did what I did because we exist on a small island with the Cuban Army staring at us, eyeball to eyeball, and to do any less than ensure that the men under my command are the very best they can be is a dereliction of duty. I make decisions all the time, and I admit that not every decision I make is a perfect one.
"Perhaps I should have taken Santiago into protective custody. Or perhaps he needed a more in depth physical exam to figure out why he was performing so poorly. I don't know, and I will go to my grave not knowing what I could have done differently to save Santiago's life. But Santiago is gone, and his death, believe it or not, affects me deeply. Every man I have ever lost does. It is the burden of command. It is not an easy one, but when you accept the rank, you accept the responsibility. I did not order the Code Red, Lieutenant, because I was ordered not to. And at Gitmo, we take orders seriously."
I smiled, watching the words hit home. Kaffee's expression was priceless, almost as good as if I had punched him. Even the dust motes in the air seemed frozen. Then everyone was talking at once, and I knew it had worked. Kaffee was in trouble now, because he had made the accusation without proof, and all I had to do was let things play out. There were things that Kaffee knew that I didn't. The only thing I knew about law was that I had to obey them, and I'm sure he knows every regulation backwards and forwards. But there were things I knew that he didn't, hard lessons about what are truths and what are higher, more important truths and how to distinguish between them. Kaffee didn't know that the integrity of the Corps is the freedom that makes the other freedoms possible. Kaffee doesn't know what I know.
It was hot in the courtroom, hot and stale in a way fans and air conditioners couldn't seem to stir. I could feel the sweat across the small of my back and on my thighs. I hadn't looked forward to making the trip to Washington for just this reason. Cuba was hot, sure, but Washington got hot the way no place else did. It was oppressive, miasmal heat- it made you wonder just what in the hell they were thinking to put the capital here.
It was offensive, leaving all my work behind to fly up here and have them act like I have to defend my command decisions. But here is where I was told to come, and when you've saluted the flag as long as I have, when they say come, you come. I knew what these lawyers were trying to do. It was that rotten little weasel Santiago, the inquiry into his death suddenly becoming a big affair, when really, it was just as simple as you please. I don't care what the doctors say- those slick lawyers have been throwing around buzzwords like acidosis and metabolism and all that crap I barely remember from high school biology. The lawyers were trying to make me responsible for Santiago's death, but truth is, he died of not being a Marine. Simple.
They told the kid to quit. Kendrick, Markinson, Dawson, everybody. Just leave the Corps and go home. Nothing to be ashamed of if you can't do it. Not everybody can be a Marine. It's hard because it has to be, so the men will be brave, and it's hard to make you a better man. Plenty of kids can't do it. Go home and ring a register, or go to community college. I'm not saying the kid deserved to die- I'm just saying he wasn't a Marine. No shame in that. Most men aren't.
But the little bastard stayed. He stayed, and he still couldn't hack it. He was terrible at everything- drill, PT, cleanliness, shooting. Every time we dressed him down about it, he apologized and promised to do better, but nothing would happen, the same sorry performance, on test after test after test. So if he wasn't going to go, we had to mold him. That's our job, right? Molding men? So I decided to work with the boy. I listened to Kaffee yammer at me, responding to his questions, wishing for just one stupid little breeze to cool off this stifling room.
Of course I knew the Code Reds were illegal. Everyone knew that. Division had ordered it. But whoever wrote that rule either had never faced bullets with his name on them, or had faced them so long ago all the fear had faded. When you're in it, when the man next to you is depending on you to do your job and you're depending on him, you take comfort in the fact that you know he's good enough. He was forged in the same fires you were, so you know he's made of something. That's the kind of toughness you must have in a forward area, that's the kind of toughness you need in a Marine, and that's the kind of toughness that Santiago would never have, and that's the kind of toughness Kaffee, for all his degrees, would never have on his best day.
Look at Kaffee, barking questions at me like I'm some kind of office flunky of his. I wonder about him. What kind of fire burns in a man like that? I can see the sweat gathering on his neck, asking me questions, one after another. They're easy to parry- I know where he is headed, and engaging in a battle of wits with someone this simple barely taxes my brain. I answer his questions slowly to help me think, but also because I think it irritates him. He's not half the man his father was. He may wear a uniform, but he's not a sailor.
I can't help but tense up when he gets close. I have these flashes of jumping up out of the witness chair, flooring the little prick with a right cross, seeing his head snap back, his perfect hair shaking, that golden nose breaking under the pressure, and then getting down on the floor and pounding his head into the floor until the MPs pull me off. Look, he's trying to prove there was no transfer order for Santiago with some nonsense about the tower chiefs at Andrews. How cute. What a child he is. I look at his eyes, the way they glitter and his nostrils flare when he thinks he's got me. Think again. Listen, boy, I've faced tougher enemies than you before breakfast.
He's going to ask me. I can feel it. All he has to do is ask me if I have violated a direct order, accuse me of a crime, and I've got him. Then he'll be on the defensive, and I can just smile and watch the little prick really sweat. He's walked into the trap now, I just have to spring it on him. It's like when you're in a foxhole, and you can't see anything, but you know they are there. It's just a matter of waiting for the enemy to move. Then you bring the rain.
I stare at Kaffee, turning aside his stupid little digs and asides and snide looks. Now he's honing in on the two orders, the one that Santiago wasn't to be touched, and the second sending him off the base. I make dozens of decisions every day, and I can't always explain them afterwards. It's a gut feeling. It's called leadership. It's not as simple as pushing papers. I look at his perfect, shiny teeth and wonder if he is involved with Galloway after all.
Kaffee is close, so close I could punch him, and the thought is so pleasant my arm twitches.
"Did you order the Code Red?," Kaffee finally says, his face inches from mine. No one moves, and I luxuriate in the silence for a split second. It's almost like being on stage.
"Did I order a Code Red? Is that what you're asking me? I think that's what you're asking me, Lieutenant, unless all the gunfire over the years has damaged my hearing. And the answer, son, is no, I didn't order a Code Red. I didn't order a Code Red because my superiors told me I couldn't. I transferred Santiago off the base because he had angered his unit, and because he was a substandard Marine. I did what I did because we exist on a small island with the Cuban Army staring at us, eyeball to eyeball, and to do any less than ensure that the men under my command are the very best they can be is a dereliction of duty. I make decisions all the time, and I admit that not every decision I make is a perfect one.
"Perhaps I should have taken Santiago into protective custody. Or perhaps he needed a more in depth physical exam to figure out why he was performing so poorly. I don't know, and I will go to my grave not knowing what I could have done differently to save Santiago's life. But Santiago is gone, and his death, believe it or not, affects me deeply. Every man I have ever lost does. It is the burden of command. It is not an easy one, but when you accept the rank, you accept the responsibility. I did not order the Code Red, Lieutenant, because I was ordered not to. And at Gitmo, we take orders seriously."
I smiled, watching the words hit home. Kaffee's expression was priceless, almost as good as if I had punched him. Even the dust motes in the air seemed frozen. Then everyone was talking at once, and I knew it had worked. Kaffee was in trouble now, because he had made the accusation without proof, and all I had to do was let things play out. There were things that Kaffee knew that I didn't. The only thing I knew about law was that I had to obey them, and I'm sure he knows every regulation backwards and forwards. But there were things I knew that he didn't, hard lessons about what are truths and what are higher, more important truths and how to distinguish between them. Kaffee didn't know that the integrity of the Corps is the freedom that makes the other freedoms possible. Kaffee doesn't know what I know.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Trifextra: "In Shadow"
{Those fans of Earl "Pitching, Defense, and Three Run Homers" Weaver over at Casa Del Trifecta Writing Challenge want us all to write 33 words only based on or involving the Rule of Three. This story is called "In Shadow".}
"You have big shoes to fill," he said. Caitlin sunk down. She wasn't an athlete, or a beauty, or popular, like her older sisters were. Being Caitlin, it seemed, wasn't enough.
"You have big shoes to fill," he said. Caitlin sunk down. She wasn't an athlete, or a beauty, or popular, like her older sisters were. Being Caitlin, it seemed, wasn't enough.
100 Word Song: "Wednesday Morning, 3AM"
(My Georgian homeboy Lance, the Lando Calrissian of bloggers, continues on with the 100 Word Songs, even as his metal buddy Leeroy is resting up at the Robot Hospital. [It's probably just a computer virus. *rimshot*] {Hopefully, Lance didn't send him to the droid repair shops on Cloud City.} This week's song is the Counting Crows' "Come Around", and this story is called "Wednesday Morning, 3AM.")
She was sitting on the curb. I could see her shoulders underneath the gauzy film of her nightgown. I was standing because I didn't know what else to do. She was shaking as she stared down at the charred remains of a photo album. There was a snowfall of burned flakes of paper on her lap and on the ground around her. She didn't even have shoes on. The lights lit up the neighborhood in a kaleidoscopic mess of red, blue, and white flashes.
"These are pieces of us," she said, "pieces of the people we have been."
She was sitting on the curb. I could see her shoulders underneath the gauzy film of her nightgown. I was standing because I didn't know what else to do. She was shaking as she stared down at the charred remains of a photo album. There was a snowfall of burned flakes of paper on her lap and on the ground around her. She didn't even have shoes on. The lights lit up the neighborhood in a kaleidoscopic mess of red, blue, and white flashes.
"These are pieces of us," she said, "pieces of the people we have been."
Monday, September 10, 2012
SPE: "Bad Day"
[For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, SAM gave me this prompt: "The impending storm looked like one never seen before. The sky was green and the animals were restless. It was a bad day to be a zookeeper." I gave Laura this prompt: "An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place when he thinks he's at somewhere. You always have to realize that you're constantly in a state of becoming. As long as you can stay in that realm, you'll sort of be all right." -Bob Dylan]
The days had begun to have an awful sameness. You slept out of exhaustion, awakening more tired than ever. You checked the phones, which were still down, then clicked on the radio, which surprisingly hummed to life. So there was electricity, which meant there may be coffee. Or something approaching coffee- Magda had to reuse grounds so many times now it was only a distant impersonation of the coffee you used to have. The radio announcer was talking of victories, pushing the enemy back, driving perfidious Albion back into the sea. If that's so, you thought, why do we get bombed by the British during the day and the Americans at night? You thought that, but of course, you didn't say it.
You put your feet on the floor, feeling it for vibrations. A vibrating floor used to mean that the streetcars were up and running, but now it only meant the bombs were coming closer. You shook your head, trying to clear it of any cobwebs. Thank God Herman and Francis were with Aunt Sophia in the country, far from the madness of Berlin. But was there anywhere that was safe any more?
You stood up, your darling Magda at the stove, trying to assemble something that resembled breakfast. You saw the tears and stains of her housedress, and you wanted nothing more than to rush down to Fassbender's or Schraum's and buy her a new one, one with lace trim and fine, fine silk. But the shelves were empty of all but the most essential goods, and sometimes not even those. There were no fine garments to be had. It was folly to even ask.
Your wife turned to look at you. The light had gone out of her eyes long ago, but it was her face you saw when you closed your eyes in frustration. Despite all the hardship, all the shortages, she stayed, devoted to you beyond all reason, delighted to see you and willing to share whatever she had with you. You started to tear up whenever you thought of how touched you were when she accepted your proposal, how awestruck and frightened you were through both of her pregnancies. She was the center of your world, and while you couldn't really picture what would make a man fight, when you thought about your Magda shot by a British plane, or struck by an American bomb, it filled you with a bottomless, impotent rage.
"Breakfast, dear one," Magda said, and she had indeed made coffee and oatmeal and toast she blackened over the stove burner. There was margarine, for once, a commodity that had been in short supply, and you wondered what sort of trade Magda had to make to get her hands on that. She set a tray down on the table and pulled your chair out, the kind of gesture that brought the sadness back all over again.
You thought about the birds at the zoo, the ones you knew were starving to the point that they started to pick at each other's flesh. This grain might help one or two of them live another day, you thought, but your own hunger overcame you, consuming the terrible, lukewarm dish with relish. Your own need sated, you looked at your dear wife, looking out the kitchen window at the perpetually gray sky, her ribs now clearly visible along the sides of her body, her tiny breasts even more shrunken.
"Did you eat, my love?," you said.
"Oh, yes, sweetheart," she said eagerly. You knew she was lying, but you let it pass.
It didn't used to be like this. When they came to power, when all this started, suddenly the shelves were full again, and things were normal. All they wanted, they kept saying, was to let the Germans be German- bring Austrian Germans and Czech Germans and French Germans together in one united Germany. All they wanted was the room for all the Germans to live together. They said they didn't want war. We didn't know war was coming, we just wanted the suffering and misery to stop, and that's what they told us they would do, and briefly, that's what they did.
It all turned, of course. They had a million excuses- they told you that there was treachery, that Germans were turning on the Fatherland, betraying their brothers. They told you that there was a minor setback that would be immediately reversed, and that if we only held on a little bit longer, all would be saved. They told you England would surrender, except it didn't, and then they told you they would invade it, except they didn't. They told you the Americans would never come, until they came, and then they said they would be sent home with dispatch. Then the bombers came, first occasionally, then regularly, then every day and night like clockwork. It got so bad that mockery began to peek out. When a loud explosion was heard nearby, Mr. Weber downstairs could be heard shouting, "Another minor setback, eh?"
You had to get back to the zoo. With all the men now serving, you were left with a crew of women and children and wounded soldiers, and they could barely be trusted to feed the snakes. Regular shipments of feed had stopped months ago, and at this point "running the zoo" amounted to figuring out how to divide up the shrinking stores to keep everyone alive for one more day in the vain hope that the long promised trucks would rumble in through the gate. "Pretty soon," Hans Gruder, a one legged veteran of the Russian front commented yesterday, "we're going to be feeding the small ones to the big ones." You laughed, but you knew Hans had a point.
You kissed your wife goodbye, then made your way to the street, walking down towards the bus stop. The buses used to be as regular as clocks, showing up, shiny and new looking, every ten minutes, but at this point, one in the morning and one in the evening was all you could count on. You saw the bus rounding the corner, uttered a short prayer under your breath, and hurried to meet it. You looked ahead at the others who were lined up, all of them as dirty and tired looking as you were.
You heard and felt the shock of a bomb explosion, very close by, shaking the cobblestones under your feet, and saw a column of smoke beginning to tunnel its way into an already dirty sky. The sun looked green through the haze. You lined up behind the others climbing on to the bus, still watching the smoke rising into the air. You said another prayer of thanks that it was not your house, not your Magda trapped in rubble and fire and screaming in pain. You heard a distant sound of a siren, wondering if they would get to this side of the city in time.
As you filed on the bus, you saw Dieter, who worked in the machine shop attached to a small concern that made gyroscopes. You used to drink with Dieter, when you both had free time, when times were good and beer was plentiful. You hardly ever saw him any more.
"A bad time to be a zookeeper," Dieter says, sliding over to allow you to sit. He smelled like liver and onions.
"It's a bad time to be anyone," you said.
The days had begun to have an awful sameness. You slept out of exhaustion, awakening more tired than ever. You checked the phones, which were still down, then clicked on the radio, which surprisingly hummed to life. So there was electricity, which meant there may be coffee. Or something approaching coffee- Magda had to reuse grounds so many times now it was only a distant impersonation of the coffee you used to have. The radio announcer was talking of victories, pushing the enemy back, driving perfidious Albion back into the sea. If that's so, you thought, why do we get bombed by the British during the day and the Americans at night? You thought that, but of course, you didn't say it.
You put your feet on the floor, feeling it for vibrations. A vibrating floor used to mean that the streetcars were up and running, but now it only meant the bombs were coming closer. You shook your head, trying to clear it of any cobwebs. Thank God Herman and Francis were with Aunt Sophia in the country, far from the madness of Berlin. But was there anywhere that was safe any more?
You stood up, your darling Magda at the stove, trying to assemble something that resembled breakfast. You saw the tears and stains of her housedress, and you wanted nothing more than to rush down to Fassbender's or Schraum's and buy her a new one, one with lace trim and fine, fine silk. But the shelves were empty of all but the most essential goods, and sometimes not even those. There were no fine garments to be had. It was folly to even ask.
Your wife turned to look at you. The light had gone out of her eyes long ago, but it was her face you saw when you closed your eyes in frustration. Despite all the hardship, all the shortages, she stayed, devoted to you beyond all reason, delighted to see you and willing to share whatever she had with you. You started to tear up whenever you thought of how touched you were when she accepted your proposal, how awestruck and frightened you were through both of her pregnancies. She was the center of your world, and while you couldn't really picture what would make a man fight, when you thought about your Magda shot by a British plane, or struck by an American bomb, it filled you with a bottomless, impotent rage.
"Breakfast, dear one," Magda said, and she had indeed made coffee and oatmeal and toast she blackened over the stove burner. There was margarine, for once, a commodity that had been in short supply, and you wondered what sort of trade Magda had to make to get her hands on that. She set a tray down on the table and pulled your chair out, the kind of gesture that brought the sadness back all over again.
You thought about the birds at the zoo, the ones you knew were starving to the point that they started to pick at each other's flesh. This grain might help one or two of them live another day, you thought, but your own hunger overcame you, consuming the terrible, lukewarm dish with relish. Your own need sated, you looked at your dear wife, looking out the kitchen window at the perpetually gray sky, her ribs now clearly visible along the sides of her body, her tiny breasts even more shrunken.
"Did you eat, my love?," you said.
"Oh, yes, sweetheart," she said eagerly. You knew she was lying, but you let it pass.
It didn't used to be like this. When they came to power, when all this started, suddenly the shelves were full again, and things were normal. All they wanted, they kept saying, was to let the Germans be German- bring Austrian Germans and Czech Germans and French Germans together in one united Germany. All they wanted was the room for all the Germans to live together. They said they didn't want war. We didn't know war was coming, we just wanted the suffering and misery to stop, and that's what they told us they would do, and briefly, that's what they did.
It all turned, of course. They had a million excuses- they told you that there was treachery, that Germans were turning on the Fatherland, betraying their brothers. They told you that there was a minor setback that would be immediately reversed, and that if we only held on a little bit longer, all would be saved. They told you England would surrender, except it didn't, and then they told you they would invade it, except they didn't. They told you the Americans would never come, until they came, and then they said they would be sent home with dispatch. Then the bombers came, first occasionally, then regularly, then every day and night like clockwork. It got so bad that mockery began to peek out. When a loud explosion was heard nearby, Mr. Weber downstairs could be heard shouting, "Another minor setback, eh?"
You had to get back to the zoo. With all the men now serving, you were left with a crew of women and children and wounded soldiers, and they could barely be trusted to feed the snakes. Regular shipments of feed had stopped months ago, and at this point "running the zoo" amounted to figuring out how to divide up the shrinking stores to keep everyone alive for one more day in the vain hope that the long promised trucks would rumble in through the gate. "Pretty soon," Hans Gruder, a one legged veteran of the Russian front commented yesterday, "we're going to be feeding the small ones to the big ones." You laughed, but you knew Hans had a point.
You kissed your wife goodbye, then made your way to the street, walking down towards the bus stop. The buses used to be as regular as clocks, showing up, shiny and new looking, every ten minutes, but at this point, one in the morning and one in the evening was all you could count on. You saw the bus rounding the corner, uttered a short prayer under your breath, and hurried to meet it. You looked ahead at the others who were lined up, all of them as dirty and tired looking as you were.
You heard and felt the shock of a bomb explosion, very close by, shaking the cobblestones under your feet, and saw a column of smoke beginning to tunnel its way into an already dirty sky. The sun looked green through the haze. You lined up behind the others climbing on to the bus, still watching the smoke rising into the air. You said another prayer of thanks that it was not your house, not your Magda trapped in rubble and fire and screaming in pain. You heard a distant sound of a siren, wondering if they would get to this side of the city in time.
As you filed on the bus, you saw Dieter, who worked in the machine shop attached to a small concern that made gyroscopes. You used to drink with Dieter, when you both had free time, when times were good and beer was plentiful. You hardly ever saw him any more.
"A bad time to be a zookeeper," Dieter says, sliding over to allow you to sit. He smelled like liver and onions.
"It's a bad time to be anyone," you said.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
SPE: "Boys Who Smell Like Woods"
[For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Amanda gave me this prompt: I'm finished with being careful. I gave SAM this prompt: "I do the best I can. Everything else is everybody else's problem." -Alison Janney]
When I complained about smelling like coffee, my mother told me that she spent a summer working at a movie theater, and, over time, she grew to loathe the smell of butter. I had to admit that, if you have to smell like something, coffee isn't a bad choice. Better than butter. I enjoy the coffee smell, actually, the bitterness of it, the slight tang it gives to anything you come in contact with. Even when the scent fills my room after a feverish, sweaty dream, I don't mind it.
I had a boyfriend who smoked, once, and it was kind of like that, only more pleasant. It got into everything- hair, clothes, blankets, car, bodily fluids, it was an echo everywhere that lingered for months after he was gone. I wondered if I was like that: could you taste the coffee in my sweat, on my skin, at the roots of my hair? Nobody was ever close enough to notice. Was it a smell someone could get used to?
We do get close to each other at work, but who could tell there? No one had complained in class, yet, or in the library, but I was also customarily carrying a cup at those times. It wasn't something that kept me up at night, but it made me wonder. Was I the girl who smelled like coffee? Would some future man be disgusted by that? Or would he get misty eyed every time he walked by a Starbucks, thinking of me?
Not likely. I wasn't the type anyone pined after.
When I walked by the smokers' congregation, leaving the library after a night of research, even now, Darryl's face would still come to mind. Darryl's soft, stupid face, with those eyes that I could never say no to. Sweet, handsome Darryl, with all the promises he made, all the beautiful words that I'm sure he meant every syllable of right up until the day my sister had the day off and so did he. Some things you can't erase.
I had retreated from life after that happened, burying myself in school work and working extra shifts at the coffee shop, trying to make up for in volume of human contact what I lacked in intimacy. It was a quiet, soulless existence, enjoying little, my days desiccated and dry, always too busy to be social, packing days and evenings with events that left me exhausted, dropping into bed only to restart the mad rush the next morning. I was in the middle of one of those days, coming off of morning classes, planning to help with the afternoon rush, then taking off for an evening meeting about a book of poetry I was going to co edit. I had taken enough psych classes to know what I was doing, but not so many that I could make myself stop.
I squeezed into the work routine, finishing an iced with a swirl of Rorschachian chocolate, running up to the register to help a Mom juggling a baby, a three year old, and a purse, then dashing back to refill the sweeteners and napkins. I baked, I served, I spun, I loaded grinders and roasters and refilled cups. I remade an iced tea for a skinny teen that had spilled hers after taking it from my trembling hand. I noticed him as I buzzed about, hunger starting to gnaw at my insides, making me feel lightheaded and a little removed from myself.
He had his hipster badges on, MacBook top with clever sticker in view, thick glasses and erratic facial hair, well highlighted paperback on the table next to his coffee. We were supposed to engage with anyone who had been there a while, ostensibly to see if they wanted something else, but subtly to hint that someone else might want the seat. I looked over at tall, willowy Marina, who gestured with her head towards him. He's yours, the gesture was supposed to mean, and I knew, coming from her, it meant more than one thing. Marina was uncomfortable around single women, and fixing me up had become her latest project.
I walked up to him, a little unsteadily, and waited for him to look up. He did, and he was cute, in a lost puppy sort of way. He looked innocent and kind, and it took him a moment to focus on my face. I tried to stand up a little straighter. He certainly liked coffee, too- his large was almost gone.
"Can I-can we-can I get you something?," I stammered.
He smiled.
"You can get me a list of Trajan's five greatest accomplishments as a Roman emperor," he said drily. He had an amused look on his face, like he thought he was funnier than he really was.
"I was thinking more along the lines of a refill," I said.
"Ah. No, I'm actually fine, thank you," he said. He smiled again, and I felt something.
I had made such a practice of walling these feelings off, denying them and boxing them away like old Christmas decorations, that I had to exert effort not to do it again. I'm finished with being careful, I decided at that moment. I have done enough treading gently around men who might be single, trying hard not to reveal anything, never letting on that I'm not taken, that I have insecurities, that I cry at midnight sometimes for no reason. I argued with myself briefly, pinning my insecurity to the floor like a wrestler. I was sick of talking myself out of things, fed up with protecting myself against potential heartbreak.
"Would you like to go out sometime? Like, maybe, for coffee?," I said, immediately reddening as I realized how dumb that sounded. It wasn't the dumbest thing I had ever said, but it was in the top 5.
"I would think you'd have had your fill of coffee," he said with a low chuckle. His eyes were lovely, broad and blue. Yep, it was definitely a something that I was feeling. I felt a tiny cramp of hunger and prayed silently that my abdomen not make any noises.
"That's true," I said quickly. "I'm sorry- I'm stupid- I mean- what I meant-"
He laughed again, a musical sound, warm and friendly. "I understand. Dinner tonight?"
"I have a-a thing...um...a meeting."
"OK," he said. "Tomorrow?"
"Sure," I heard myself say, and I felt a weight drop away. It was time. I wasn't willing to spend the rest of my life mourning that idiot.
"You're done with that?," I said, gesturing towards his cup. He drained the last swallow, then handed it to me.
"Sure am," he said. As I leaned in to take it, I noticed he smelled faintly like the woods. I liked that. That was a good thing to smell like.
When I complained about smelling like coffee, my mother told me that she spent a summer working at a movie theater, and, over time, she grew to loathe the smell of butter. I had to admit that, if you have to smell like something, coffee isn't a bad choice. Better than butter. I enjoy the coffee smell, actually, the bitterness of it, the slight tang it gives to anything you come in contact with. Even when the scent fills my room after a feverish, sweaty dream, I don't mind it.
I had a boyfriend who smoked, once, and it was kind of like that, only more pleasant. It got into everything- hair, clothes, blankets, car, bodily fluids, it was an echo everywhere that lingered for months after he was gone. I wondered if I was like that: could you taste the coffee in my sweat, on my skin, at the roots of my hair? Nobody was ever close enough to notice. Was it a smell someone could get used to?
We do get close to each other at work, but who could tell there? No one had complained in class, yet, or in the library, but I was also customarily carrying a cup at those times. It wasn't something that kept me up at night, but it made me wonder. Was I the girl who smelled like coffee? Would some future man be disgusted by that? Or would he get misty eyed every time he walked by a Starbucks, thinking of me?
Not likely. I wasn't the type anyone pined after.
When I walked by the smokers' congregation, leaving the library after a night of research, even now, Darryl's face would still come to mind. Darryl's soft, stupid face, with those eyes that I could never say no to. Sweet, handsome Darryl, with all the promises he made, all the beautiful words that I'm sure he meant every syllable of right up until the day my sister had the day off and so did he. Some things you can't erase.
I had retreated from life after that happened, burying myself in school work and working extra shifts at the coffee shop, trying to make up for in volume of human contact what I lacked in intimacy. It was a quiet, soulless existence, enjoying little, my days desiccated and dry, always too busy to be social, packing days and evenings with events that left me exhausted, dropping into bed only to restart the mad rush the next morning. I was in the middle of one of those days, coming off of morning classes, planning to help with the afternoon rush, then taking off for an evening meeting about a book of poetry I was going to co edit. I had taken enough psych classes to know what I was doing, but not so many that I could make myself stop.
I squeezed into the work routine, finishing an iced with a swirl of Rorschachian chocolate, running up to the register to help a Mom juggling a baby, a three year old, and a purse, then dashing back to refill the sweeteners and napkins. I baked, I served, I spun, I loaded grinders and roasters and refilled cups. I remade an iced tea for a skinny teen that had spilled hers after taking it from my trembling hand. I noticed him as I buzzed about, hunger starting to gnaw at my insides, making me feel lightheaded and a little removed from myself.
He had his hipster badges on, MacBook top with clever sticker in view, thick glasses and erratic facial hair, well highlighted paperback on the table next to his coffee. We were supposed to engage with anyone who had been there a while, ostensibly to see if they wanted something else, but subtly to hint that someone else might want the seat. I looked over at tall, willowy Marina, who gestured with her head towards him. He's yours, the gesture was supposed to mean, and I knew, coming from her, it meant more than one thing. Marina was uncomfortable around single women, and fixing me up had become her latest project.
I walked up to him, a little unsteadily, and waited for him to look up. He did, and he was cute, in a lost puppy sort of way. He looked innocent and kind, and it took him a moment to focus on my face. I tried to stand up a little straighter. He certainly liked coffee, too- his large was almost gone.
"Can I-can we-can I get you something?," I stammered.
He smiled.
"You can get me a list of Trajan's five greatest accomplishments as a Roman emperor," he said drily. He had an amused look on his face, like he thought he was funnier than he really was.
"I was thinking more along the lines of a refill," I said.
"Ah. No, I'm actually fine, thank you," he said. He smiled again, and I felt something.
I had made such a practice of walling these feelings off, denying them and boxing them away like old Christmas decorations, that I had to exert effort not to do it again. I'm finished with being careful, I decided at that moment. I have done enough treading gently around men who might be single, trying hard not to reveal anything, never letting on that I'm not taken, that I have insecurities, that I cry at midnight sometimes for no reason. I argued with myself briefly, pinning my insecurity to the floor like a wrestler. I was sick of talking myself out of things, fed up with protecting myself against potential heartbreak.
"Would you like to go out sometime? Like, maybe, for coffee?," I said, immediately reddening as I realized how dumb that sounded. It wasn't the dumbest thing I had ever said, but it was in the top 5.
"I would think you'd have had your fill of coffee," he said with a low chuckle. His eyes were lovely, broad and blue. Yep, it was definitely a something that I was feeling. I felt a tiny cramp of hunger and prayed silently that my abdomen not make any noises.
"That's true," I said quickly. "I'm sorry- I'm stupid- I mean- what I meant-"
He laughed again, a musical sound, warm and friendly. "I understand. Dinner tonight?"
"I have a-a thing...um...a meeting."
"OK," he said. "Tomorrow?"
"Sure," I heard myself say, and I felt a weight drop away. It was time. I wasn't willing to spend the rest of my life mourning that idiot.
"You're done with that?," I said, gesturing towards his cup. He drained the last swallow, then handed it to me.
"Sure am," he said. As I leaned in to take it, I noticed he smelled faintly like the woods. I liked that. That was a good thing to smell like.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
100 Word Song: "Right Cross"
[When my main muchacho Lance and his anodized pal Leeroy agreed with "The Stranger" as this week's song selection, I was so in I was nearly behind Lance as he poured his sweet tea this morning. This story is called "Right Cross"]
"I don't even know you when you're like this," she said. I clenched my fists.
"Like what?," I said, trying to sound calm.
"Like this," she said. "Why are you so angry? He was just flirting with me!"
She didn't understand. It was disrespectful. I was standing there, and this suit puts his hand on her perfectly tanned forearm. I had to hit him. I couldn't do anything else and still live with myself.
"What makes you like this?," she said.
I couldn't think of anything that made sense, so I didn't say anything.
"I don't even know you when you're like this," she said. I clenched my fists.
"Like what?," I said, trying to sound calm.
"Like this," she said. "Why are you so angry? He was just flirting with me!"
She didn't understand. It was disrespectful. I was standing there, and this suit puts his hand on her perfectly tanned forearm. I had to hit him. I couldn't do anything else and still live with myself.
"What makes you like this?," she said.
I couldn't think of anything that made sense, so I didn't say anything.
Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge: "Now Warming Up..."
{Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word challenge this week is prepared to allow the nomination to proceed via a voice vote. The word is actually a phrase, "road trip", and this story is called "Now Warming Up..."} {Please note: this story does contain a single bad word. If bad words give you the vapors, why don't you get off the Internet and start reading a nice pamphlet.}
"It's you, Cheese."
"Chuckles" hung up the phone with a rattling slam.
"Dammit," I said. "Doesn't he know I've pitched 6 times on this fucking road trip?"
"Doesn't know," Chuckles said laconically. "Or doesn't care."
I got up and stretched. My arm ached horribly. We heard the whistle and thump of another line drive finding the right field corner, and the rising roar as the home crowd cheered. Petey, the bullpen catcher, crouched down to give me a target. I took the mound, grimaced, and threw. The glamorous world of a pro athlete, I thought.
"It's you, Cheese."
"Chuckles" hung up the phone with a rattling slam.
"Dammit," I said. "Doesn't he know I've pitched 6 times on this fucking road trip?"
"Doesn't know," Chuckles said laconically. "Or doesn't care."
I got up and stretched. My arm ached horribly. We heard the whistle and thump of another line drive finding the right field corner, and the rising roar as the home crowd cheered. Petey, the bullpen catcher, crouched down to give me a target. I took the mound, grimaced, and threw. The glamorous world of a pro athlete, I thought.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
SPE: "Man In The Moon"
[For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, SAM gave me this prompt: "What if there really was a little man on the moon? Who is he? Why is he there? And why does he always have such a silly expression on his face?." I gave Christine this prompt: "I'm in a hurry."]
We left early, because she wanted to. We always did what she wanted to do, because she had a force about her, a way of making it impossible to say no. She wouldn't stop, couldn't stop, until she got what she wanted. She wanted the picture, prince and princess in rented clothes, so we did that, and she wanted to dance, to be seen. So we did that, too, and then she wanted it known that she was leaving early, not for some lame, parent protected gathering, but alone, with me, leaving the rest to the listener's imagination. So we left.
We drove north, towards the seacoast beaches, because that's where she wanted to be. We listened to George Michael and Peter Gabriel, because they were her favorites. When we found a parking lot that was semi abandoned, we parked there. We walked across the street to a pizza place, their lonely fluorescents seeking customers that weren't there yet, the girl behind the counter congratulated us on our wedding. I didn't correct her.
We ate, then walked on the beach, her perfect brown toes barely touching the wet sand, carrying her shoes like we were making a jewelry commercial. We went back to the car, kissing for a while, then finally, when she said we had to stop, putting the seats back and looking at the sky. The moon stared down at us both, fat and tan and full. I opened the moon roof. We listened to the waves crashing on the beach. My hand found hers. I held on to her in the darkness. It felt like we were the only two people in the world.
"I used to believe in the Man in the Moon," she said.
"You did?"
"Yeah. When I was five or six. My Daddy told me he would always be up there, watching me. Protecting me."
"You believed him?"
"When I was five, I did," she said a little too sharply.
We were quiet for a while. A car passed by behind us, disturbing the purity of the moonlight. I thought about what her friends thought we might be up to. She had a bit of a reputation. Were they envious? Or disdainful? Probably a little of both.
"You don't need anyone to protect you now," I said.
"I need you," she said.
"I can't really protect you," I said.
"You do your best."
"But what if that's not good enough?"
"It will be," she said confidently.
We were quiet again. I assumed that, as long as we were clothed, the police would leave us alone. So far, I was right. I stared up into the night, thinking about the photons that were hitting my retina. I knew the moon didn't glow, it just reflected sunlight that we couldn't see. I remembered reading that if the sun were to explode, as if we lived in a disaster movie or a comic book, we wouldn't know for several minutes. I wondered if we would really know at all.
The distances involved in talking about cosmology always staggered me. Some of those stars you could see, far away from the moon's omnipresent glow, had sent their light towards Earth when Christ lived, or when Tutankhamen did, or when dinosaurs ruled the world. It seemed like an impossible burden, all these millenia leading inexorably to me, sitting here. Generations of families, carrying the genes forward, babies begetting more babies, for century after century. I didn't feel worthy of all that history.
"When that girl congratulated you? At the pizza place?"
"Yeah," she said. "That was funny."
"Why didn't you correct her?"
"I wish she was right."
"Really?"
"I don't know. Kind of."
"That's nice. I wish she was right, too," I said.
"Yeah," she said. "I really feel like we could be, you know?"
"Yeah. I've never felt anything like this before."
"I really feel good when I'm with you. Safe," she said.
"Safer than the Man In The Moon?"
"Way safer," she said.
I looked at my watch and pulled my seat upwards. I reached over and fastened my seat belt.
"Already?," she said.
"Yeah," I said. "Your dad said midnight, it had better be midnight." Her father, imposing and Texan and ramrod straight, an Air Force officer who knew one way of doing things.
"I wish I didn't have to go home," she said.
"I know," I said. I started the engine, and the Peter Gabriel tape came on. I looked around and prepared to back out. She was looking up at the sky, still laying down, the moonlight creating shadows beside her aquiline nose.
"I really do want to get married," she said. "Someday."
"But what if you stop loving me? What if you learn to hate me? What if you fall in love with someone else?"
"That couldn't happen," she said, and took my hand. I drove away slowly, keeping an eye on the moon behind us, knowing she was lying, and wondering if I was, too.
We left early, because she wanted to. We always did what she wanted to do, because she had a force about her, a way of making it impossible to say no. She wouldn't stop, couldn't stop, until she got what she wanted. She wanted the picture, prince and princess in rented clothes, so we did that, and she wanted to dance, to be seen. So we did that, too, and then she wanted it known that she was leaving early, not for some lame, parent protected gathering, but alone, with me, leaving the rest to the listener's imagination. So we left.
We drove north, towards the seacoast beaches, because that's where she wanted to be. We listened to George Michael and Peter Gabriel, because they were her favorites. When we found a parking lot that was semi abandoned, we parked there. We walked across the street to a pizza place, their lonely fluorescents seeking customers that weren't there yet, the girl behind the counter congratulated us on our wedding. I didn't correct her.
We ate, then walked on the beach, her perfect brown toes barely touching the wet sand, carrying her shoes like we were making a jewelry commercial. We went back to the car, kissing for a while, then finally, when she said we had to stop, putting the seats back and looking at the sky. The moon stared down at us both, fat and tan and full. I opened the moon roof. We listened to the waves crashing on the beach. My hand found hers. I held on to her in the darkness. It felt like we were the only two people in the world.
"I used to believe in the Man in the Moon," she said.
"You did?"
"Yeah. When I was five or six. My Daddy told me he would always be up there, watching me. Protecting me."
"You believed him?"
"When I was five, I did," she said a little too sharply.
We were quiet for a while. A car passed by behind us, disturbing the purity of the moonlight. I thought about what her friends thought we might be up to. She had a bit of a reputation. Were they envious? Or disdainful? Probably a little of both.
"You don't need anyone to protect you now," I said.
"I need you," she said.
"I can't really protect you," I said.
"You do your best."
"But what if that's not good enough?"
"It will be," she said confidently.
We were quiet again. I assumed that, as long as we were clothed, the police would leave us alone. So far, I was right. I stared up into the night, thinking about the photons that were hitting my retina. I knew the moon didn't glow, it just reflected sunlight that we couldn't see. I remembered reading that if the sun were to explode, as if we lived in a disaster movie or a comic book, we wouldn't know for several minutes. I wondered if we would really know at all.
The distances involved in talking about cosmology always staggered me. Some of those stars you could see, far away from the moon's omnipresent glow, had sent their light towards Earth when Christ lived, or when Tutankhamen did, or when dinosaurs ruled the world. It seemed like an impossible burden, all these millenia leading inexorably to me, sitting here. Generations of families, carrying the genes forward, babies begetting more babies, for century after century. I didn't feel worthy of all that history.
"When that girl congratulated you? At the pizza place?"
"Yeah," she said. "That was funny."
"Why didn't you correct her?"
"I wish she was right."
"Really?"
"I don't know. Kind of."
"That's nice. I wish she was right, too," I said.
"Yeah," she said. "I really feel like we could be, you know?"
"Yeah. I've never felt anything like this before."
"I really feel good when I'm with you. Safe," she said.
"Safer than the Man In The Moon?"
"Way safer," she said.
I looked at my watch and pulled my seat upwards. I reached over and fastened my seat belt.
"Already?," she said.
"Yeah," I said. "Your dad said midnight, it had better be midnight." Her father, imposing and Texan and ramrod straight, an Air Force officer who knew one way of doing things.
"I wish I didn't have to go home," she said.
"I know," I said. I started the engine, and the Peter Gabriel tape came on. I looked around and prepared to back out. She was looking up at the sky, still laying down, the moonlight creating shadows beside her aquiline nose.
"I really do want to get married," she said. "Someday."
"But what if you stop loving me? What if you learn to hate me? What if you fall in love with someone else?"
"That couldn't happen," she said, and took my hand. I drove away slowly, keeping an eye on the moon behind us, knowing she was lying, and wondering if I was, too.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
FFF: "Don Sutton"
(This week's Flash Fiction Friday comes from, well, me. This story is called "Don Sutton".)
Baseball isn't a metaphor for anything, but there I was, laying on top of a rickety cot, staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling, thinking about Don Sutton. I saw Don Sutton pitch once. I was a kid in a Boy Scout uniform, running loose around the park in the dog days of one of those long Red Sox summers where the team is out of contention before Memorial Day. I realized you could stand right behind Sutton as he warmed up in the visitors' bullpen, so I went and stood there, awestruck as a major league pitcher practiced his craft no more than 10 feet from me. Sutton didn't seem all that fast, and compared to the greats, he wasn't, but it was remarkable to watch him throw, every toss with a wrinkle, a break or curve that would turn a mighty swing into a four hop grounder to short.
I didn't know at that time that Sutton was on the downside of a long career, no longer able to pile up strikeout after strikeout, instead relying on changing speeds and control. Guts and guile, the sportswriters said, replacing a young man's overwhelming power with an older man's knowledge and patience. I also didn't know then that Sutton had a reputation for altering the ball, nicking it or applying something to it to make the ball dive or soar. Throwing the ball over the plate, but from an angle they weren't expecting, at a speed they weren't ready for, baseball as Zen, the speed of a ball that isn't there. Looking back on it, I understand him. I feel like a veteran hurler now, looking for any tiny edge just to survive, looking towards the bullpen for relief but seeing no one warming up.
It was hard to reconstruct the path that brought me here. My memories felt like newsreel footage, scenes and fragments that I can't knit together into a narrative. I could remember whole scenes, like watching Sutton pitch, and I certainly remembered the big mistake, the one that made all the others possible. It was a nightmare that you can't wake up from- seeing the scene, knowing you need to make the substitution, to put yourself into the scene and change the decision you made, but you can't. In the dream, you keep screwing it up, again and again. I never should have answered the phone.
"Norman?," said Miss Donna, the mother hen who watched over us, from the doorway. The sacrifice she made, watching over America's unwanted, was staggering.
"I'm getting up, Miss Donna," I said. I pulled myself upright. When the weather was good, we had to be out of the shelter by 9am.
"Alright, Norman. You hungry?"
"No, Miss Donna. Thank you, Miss Donna."
"You're welcome, Norman."
Laura called me in the middle of the night. I came and got her, and we were driving with the back windows open, not going anywhere, just going. She was sitting there, her back against the dashboard so she could look at me, her long bare legs extending between the seats into the back. She took my hand off of the steering wheel and held it over her heart. I could feel the fluttering under her narrow breastbone, the pounding that told me she was alive, and that I was, too. I could have groped her, moved my hand left or right, playfully, and she probably would have laughed and pulled my hand away. But I didn't. I just left my fingers there, feeling the steady beat of her heart. It had a nice, easy rhythm to it, like a subtle jazz drummer. Then there was a lot of loud noises and flashes, all at once. That's all I remember.
Baseball doesn't tell you about life, or fate, or karma, or anything else. It isn't anything other than what it is. It's a child's game played by men for ridiculous amounts of money. Like in baseball, you have to scrape for every advantage in life, utilize whatever you have to get the job done. That's what I failed to do, what I couldn't manage. I never saw life as a game of winners and losers. I was always too emotional. And just like pitchers do sometimes, after the bloops fall in, lucky hits and errors, baserunners all over the place, I got mad. You get mad, and you fire a pitch in anger, too straight, and someone mashes it, and you're left alone on the bench, cursing your own stupidity. Balls can't be unthrown, and mistakes can't be undone.
Baseball isn't a metaphor for anything, but there I was, laying on top of a rickety cot, staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling, thinking about Don Sutton. I saw Don Sutton pitch once. I was a kid in a Boy Scout uniform, running loose around the park in the dog days of one of those long Red Sox summers where the team is out of contention before Memorial Day. I realized you could stand right behind Sutton as he warmed up in the visitors' bullpen, so I went and stood there, awestruck as a major league pitcher practiced his craft no more than 10 feet from me. Sutton didn't seem all that fast, and compared to the greats, he wasn't, but it was remarkable to watch him throw, every toss with a wrinkle, a break or curve that would turn a mighty swing into a four hop grounder to short.
I didn't know at that time that Sutton was on the downside of a long career, no longer able to pile up strikeout after strikeout, instead relying on changing speeds and control. Guts and guile, the sportswriters said, replacing a young man's overwhelming power with an older man's knowledge and patience. I also didn't know then that Sutton had a reputation for altering the ball, nicking it or applying something to it to make the ball dive or soar. Throwing the ball over the plate, but from an angle they weren't expecting, at a speed they weren't ready for, baseball as Zen, the speed of a ball that isn't there. Looking back on it, I understand him. I feel like a veteran hurler now, looking for any tiny edge just to survive, looking towards the bullpen for relief but seeing no one warming up.
It was hard to reconstruct the path that brought me here. My memories felt like newsreel footage, scenes and fragments that I can't knit together into a narrative. I could remember whole scenes, like watching Sutton pitch, and I certainly remembered the big mistake, the one that made all the others possible. It was a nightmare that you can't wake up from- seeing the scene, knowing you need to make the substitution, to put yourself into the scene and change the decision you made, but you can't. In the dream, you keep screwing it up, again and again. I never should have answered the phone.
"Norman?," said Miss Donna, the mother hen who watched over us, from the doorway. The sacrifice she made, watching over America's unwanted, was staggering.
"I'm getting up, Miss Donna," I said. I pulled myself upright. When the weather was good, we had to be out of the shelter by 9am.
"Alright, Norman. You hungry?"
"No, Miss Donna. Thank you, Miss Donna."
"You're welcome, Norman."
Laura called me in the middle of the night. I came and got her, and we were driving with the back windows open, not going anywhere, just going. She was sitting there, her back against the dashboard so she could look at me, her long bare legs extending between the seats into the back. She took my hand off of the steering wheel and held it over her heart. I could feel the fluttering under her narrow breastbone, the pounding that told me she was alive, and that I was, too. I could have groped her, moved my hand left or right, playfully, and she probably would have laughed and pulled my hand away. But I didn't. I just left my fingers there, feeling the steady beat of her heart. It had a nice, easy rhythm to it, like a subtle jazz drummer. Then there was a lot of loud noises and flashes, all at once. That's all I remember.
Baseball doesn't tell you about life, or fate, or karma, or anything else. It isn't anything other than what it is. It's a child's game played by men for ridiculous amounts of money. Like in baseball, you have to scrape for every advantage in life, utilize whatever you have to get the job done. That's what I failed to do, what I couldn't manage. I never saw life as a game of winners and losers. I was always too emotional. And just like pitchers do sometimes, after the bloops fall in, lucky hits and errors, baserunners all over the place, I got mad. You get mad, and you fire a pitch in anger, too straight, and someone mashes it, and you're left alone on the bench, cursing your own stupidity. Balls can't be unthrown, and mistakes can't be undone.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
FFF: "Don't Tell The Children"
(This week's Flash Fiction Friday theme is back to school, or as we call it in our house, the most wonderful time of the year. This story is called "Don't Tell The Children".)
The calculus of what to wear on the first day of school was always a delicate one. It was a sad moment, driving through the sudden 8:00 traffic, passing the brightly colored girls and the dark denimed boys standing in clusters at the various bus stops. You could see the hope and fear on their tiny faces. They weren't the only ones.
After ten years in, I had easy classes that bonded early and got along well, distant classes that were at loggerheads until the very end, and every gradation in between. It never got easier, it just got different. I spent the last week obsessing about my first day's outfit, starting with my new shoes, smooth looking bone colored flats, then plunging into the morass of choices for clothing.
Dresses can seem too formal and overtly feminine, but pants can seem uptight and bitchy. You have to have authority, to look like you're in charge, while not seeming unapproachable and mean. You can't overwhelm them, but you can't look dowdy. The whole process was frustrating, because it shouldn't matter what you wore, within reason, as long as you did your job, but it took me as much effort as any anxious middle schooler.
I had settled on a long dress in muted colors and a gentle pattern, tasteful jewelry and very little makeup. I was counting on Dennis, our rotund principal, to make some sort of a barbed remark as soon as he saw me. I could tell that it drove him crazy that I wasn't married and never admitted to having a personal life. It was always, with him, an overly broad compliment that I knew concealed a double meaning. He wanted to know what I was about, and I secretly delighted in not allowing him to see.
I parked in my usual spot, alighting from my car with my bag and my cooling latte. I walked up the steps towards the front door, the first few students making their way in beside me. Dennis was usually right inside the front door, booming out his greetings to one and all. I came up to the front doors, scanned my ID, and pulled them open. The lobby already smelled like fall- disinfectant, sweat, and fear.
Jim Reynolds was already there, the tall, thin, preternaturally calm assistant principal. One of the crueller jokes the faculty circulated was that, when he stood next to Dennis during an assembly, they looked like the number 10. He was engaged in a fevered conversation with Miss Peabody, the nosy blueblood school secretary. He half turned when he saw me come in.
"Elin...er....Ms. Hirsch, good morning. Have you heard?" It was a regular rumor around the building that Jim and I were having a torrid affair, being the two singletons on staff. And I hadn't dismissed the idea- he was classy and smelled good and looked strong. But we both imagined the complications and laughed off the idea.
"Heard what, Mr. Reynolds?" We tried not to use first names within range of little ears, but they all figured out our names anyway.
"Dennis...Mr. Gold didn't...he isn't....his wife had to call 911 this morning. She found him on the bathroom floor. He wasn't breathing."
I stopped short, my heart suddenly pounding. "My goodness," was all I could say. It wasn't what I wanted to say, but when I was in school mode, I disconnected my four letter word module.
"We're waiting on word from the hospital," he continued uselessly.
"We've decided not to tell the children," Miss Peabody put in. She liked to think she was part of the management team.
"Of course," I said, shocked, backing away as the two returned to their conversation. Dennis had hired me, new in town and fairly fresh out of school with very little experience to my name. He always had about him a clammy desperation, the kind of man who could be counted on to peek down the front of your dress if something fell on the floor and you bent to pick it up. I knew what he could say and do, and what he couldn't, and while he never violated any rules of any kind, I always had the feeling he wanted to. He was needy, and sweaty, and he stared at you too long. He never seemed to understand how to talk to women at all. I didn't dislike him, but I didn't really like him, either. He was my boss, and he was just so sad and lonely. It was impossible to think of him with anything except pity. I wouldn't miss him if he were gone, but I hated myself for that thought as well. I thought about him on the bathroom floor, perhaps still in his boxer shorts, his body huge, still and silent like a wall of sand, while his wife waited for the paramedics. Was she panicky with fear, or did the have the same tiny voice in her head whispering "finally" that I did? Unhappy men had to die just like everyone else, I supposed, but it seemed somehow unfair that he'd never get to see how cute I looked in these shoes.
The calculus of what to wear on the first day of school was always a delicate one. It was a sad moment, driving through the sudden 8:00 traffic, passing the brightly colored girls and the dark denimed boys standing in clusters at the various bus stops. You could see the hope and fear on their tiny faces. They weren't the only ones.
After ten years in, I had easy classes that bonded early and got along well, distant classes that were at loggerheads until the very end, and every gradation in between. It never got easier, it just got different. I spent the last week obsessing about my first day's outfit, starting with my new shoes, smooth looking bone colored flats, then plunging into the morass of choices for clothing.
Dresses can seem too formal and overtly feminine, but pants can seem uptight and bitchy. You have to have authority, to look like you're in charge, while not seeming unapproachable and mean. You can't overwhelm them, but you can't look dowdy. The whole process was frustrating, because it shouldn't matter what you wore, within reason, as long as you did your job, but it took me as much effort as any anxious middle schooler.
I had settled on a long dress in muted colors and a gentle pattern, tasteful jewelry and very little makeup. I was counting on Dennis, our rotund principal, to make some sort of a barbed remark as soon as he saw me. I could tell that it drove him crazy that I wasn't married and never admitted to having a personal life. It was always, with him, an overly broad compliment that I knew concealed a double meaning. He wanted to know what I was about, and I secretly delighted in not allowing him to see.
I parked in my usual spot, alighting from my car with my bag and my cooling latte. I walked up the steps towards the front door, the first few students making their way in beside me. Dennis was usually right inside the front door, booming out his greetings to one and all. I came up to the front doors, scanned my ID, and pulled them open. The lobby already smelled like fall- disinfectant, sweat, and fear.
Jim Reynolds was already there, the tall, thin, preternaturally calm assistant principal. One of the crueller jokes the faculty circulated was that, when he stood next to Dennis during an assembly, they looked like the number 10. He was engaged in a fevered conversation with Miss Peabody, the nosy blueblood school secretary. He half turned when he saw me come in.
"Elin...er....Ms. Hirsch, good morning. Have you heard?" It was a regular rumor around the building that Jim and I were having a torrid affair, being the two singletons on staff. And I hadn't dismissed the idea- he was classy and smelled good and looked strong. But we both imagined the complications and laughed off the idea.
"Heard what, Mr. Reynolds?" We tried not to use first names within range of little ears, but they all figured out our names anyway.
"Dennis...Mr. Gold didn't...he isn't....his wife had to call 911 this morning. She found him on the bathroom floor. He wasn't breathing."
I stopped short, my heart suddenly pounding. "My goodness," was all I could say. It wasn't what I wanted to say, but when I was in school mode, I disconnected my four letter word module.
"We're waiting on word from the hospital," he continued uselessly.
"We've decided not to tell the children," Miss Peabody put in. She liked to think she was part of the management team.
"Of course," I said, shocked, backing away as the two returned to their conversation. Dennis had hired me, new in town and fairly fresh out of school with very little experience to my name. He always had about him a clammy desperation, the kind of man who could be counted on to peek down the front of your dress if something fell on the floor and you bent to pick it up. I knew what he could say and do, and what he couldn't, and while he never violated any rules of any kind, I always had the feeling he wanted to. He was needy, and sweaty, and he stared at you too long. He never seemed to understand how to talk to women at all. I didn't dislike him, but I didn't really like him, either. He was my boss, and he was just so sad and lonely. It was impossible to think of him with anything except pity. I wouldn't miss him if he were gone, but I hated myself for that thought as well. I thought about him on the bathroom floor, perhaps still in his boxer shorts, his body huge, still and silent like a wall of sand, while his wife waited for the paramedics. Was she panicky with fear, or did the have the same tiny voice in her head whispering "finally" that I did? Unhappy men had to die just like everyone else, I supposed, but it seemed somehow unfair that he'd never get to see how cute I looked in these shoes.
SPE: "The Gentle Fog"
{For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, November Rain (k~) gave me this prompt: "Marshmallows in the snow". I gave Wendryn this prompt: "Whatever you want to do can be done before midnight...Nothing good happens after midnight." -Vanna White}
It was one of those days when the house was too small. Paranoid and claustrophobic, we all started snapping at one another, like wild animals packed too close together at the zoo. "She pushed me!" "She said something mean!" "She won't be quiet!", then my husband, hung over and irritated, rumbling too loudly, "Everyone be quiet!"
I tried to speak to him about it, but that just induced another battle, so I dropped it. Sulking in the kitchen, I listened to him speaking to them, attuned for the raised voice that would signal more discord. I felt wrung out, like a limp dishrag. Outside the kitchen window, it was snowing in a desultory way, like the sky couldn't make up its mind. I thought about drinking a glass of wine, ashamed of how appealing the idea sounded at 12:15 pm.
I was interrupted by our youngest, the bundle of love, noise, and exposed nerves called Angeline. "Daddy says....daddy says....," she began excitedly. When something wound her up, which was almost always, she stumbled over her words. "Daddy says he'll roast marshmallows if you go get the things!"
I focused on her eyes, cornsilk blue below her tangled brown hair. We were all in our Sunday best, which for us meant whatever we had slept in Saturday night.
"The things?," I asked.
"Yeah! The sticks! And...um...the marshmallows."
"Daddy said that?"
"He DID," she said confidently.
I stepped past her, looking into the morass of half eaten breakfast dishes and sprawled family members that was surrounding the television, broadcasting a program about impossibly pretty teens and their madcap adventures that neither was watching.
"Is that true?"
"Yes," Harry said without opening his eyes. "I'll fire up the grill and we can have them after lunch. Angel wants to." If our younger daughter asked him for his right arm, Harry would start looking for the bandsaw.
"When is the last time we grilled?," I said. "Labor Day?" I hated to splash cold water on everything, but someone had to be the voice of reason.
"Trust me," he said, barely smiling. The last time I fell for that, I wound up pregnant.
"Alright," I said with as much authority as I could summon. "I want you two to clean up the breakfast dishes and brush your teeth and your hair. I'll come home with lunch and marshmallows. No treats unless you clean up first." My surly tween, Elizabeth, looked up at me from underneath her bangs. The older she got, the more I wanted to call her Violet, like Sarah Vowell's character in The Incredibles.
"What if we don't want stupid marshmallows?," she said softly.
Angeline was underfoot, already reaching for a bowl with a few lonely Lucky Charms floating in it. "Marshmallows aren't stupid!," she objected immediately. That was the way they were. One would assert that water was wet, the other would immediately deny it. I saw the tension build on Harry's face. For some reason, he was absolutely intolerant of bickering.
"Easy," I said to them. "Be quiet, now. Less talking, more cleaning." I turned to leave, then stopped and turned back.
"You two will be good for your father?," I said.
"Yes, mommy," Angeline said in her singsong voice.
I pulled on some boots, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and drove to the store under scudding gray skies. I hoped they would stay calm for him. Leaving the three of them together always provoked a nervous prickle in my stomach. Harry was their father, but he had this inchoate rage, this uncontrollable fire. Suddenly, whether it was the drinking, or more stress at work, he overreacted to anything they did, screaming and cursing, a reaction way out of proportion to their actions. He promised he would try to control himself, but he never managed to.
When I got back home, the tires crunching over the hard packed snow, I was looking forward to finally eating something, and then gently, lovingly, falling into the arms of a first glass of wine. I could see it, the light reflecting off of the surface, the gentle swirls as I picked it up, the tart bite of it against my tongue and throat, and the gentle fog that followed, allowing me to drift into a slow nap to kill off the afternoon.
I had lunch and the marshmallows in one hand, with my other hand reaching for the knob, when I heard it. Elizabeth was screaming, her voice distorted and raw like on a bootleg concert recording. Her voice pierced me, my heart pounding, my muscles dissolving to jelly in seconds. She was saying something about how she hated him, and she would never ever do anything he said ever again. I heard his bass, rumbling with threat and menace, and along the edges, Angeline's high shriek of "Stop it! Stop yelling!"
I dropped the food and was through the door and moving towards the stairs, full of rage and guilt and the beginnings of a pounding headache. I separated the combatants, using all the strength I had not to scream back at both of them, then made my way back downstairs. Angeline had snuck past me somehow and was back downstairs, standing in front of the door, the cold outside air blowing through her still tangled mane. She was holding the bag from the grocery store, bits of snow melting off the bottom and falling on her tiny feet. She looked at me, her tiny face enormous and red and puffy now.
"Mommy?," she said before sniffling twice. "Mom-mommy?"
"Yes, baby," I said as sweetly as I could.
"You left the marsh-the-the-the marshmallows in the snow, Mommy."
"Yes I did, Angel. That was silly, wasn't it?"
"Yes, Mommy. That was silly," Angeline said.
Friday, August 17, 2012
100 Word Challenge: "Ready?"
Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge is still extant, not yet having been asked to report to the coach's office and bring its playbook. This week's word is "Wrought", and this story is called "Ready?"
"What hath God wrought," I said. She was playing with her hair, tying it back.
"What?," she said.
"It's Biblical."
"It sounds like something Sam Jackson said in Pulp Fiction."
"It kind of does. It's also what Samuel Morse sent as the first telegraph message."
"You know a lot of worthless shit."
"Yeah. It's a gift."
"What does it mean?"
" 'What hath God wrought'? What has God made. It expresses wonderment at beauty."
"You talking about me?"
"You're beautiful."
"I know. You ready?"
"Yeah."
We pulled out our pistols, cocked them, and walked into the bank.
"What hath God wrought," I said. She was playing with her hair, tying it back.
"What?," she said.
"It's Biblical."
"It sounds like something Sam Jackson said in Pulp Fiction."
"It kind of does. It's also what Samuel Morse sent as the first telegraph message."
"You know a lot of worthless shit."
"Yeah. It's a gift."
"What does it mean?"
" 'What hath God wrought'? What has God made. It expresses wonderment at beauty."
"You talking about me?"
"You're beautiful."
"I know. You ready?"
"Yeah."
We pulled out our pistols, cocked them, and walked into the bank.
100 Word Song: "Idiot"
Leeroy and his humanoid pal Lance challenge one and all this week to write a 100 word tale based on Diana Krall's version of the jazz standard "Peel Me A Grape". This story is called "Idiot".
My wife, bleary with fatigue, headed for the coffee maker, stopped dead on her way across the kitchen.
"You're peeling her grapes?," she asked with incredulity.
Eva, our 4 year old granddaughter, had heard me walking by and said from under her rat's nest of tangled hair, "Want grapes, Poppy." I prepared a bowl of grapes, setting it on the table before her. She looked and said, "No, Poppy. Peeled grapes." So I took the bowl back into the kitchen and began removing grape skins.
"You're an idiot," my wife said, using the same tone Eva had.
My wife, bleary with fatigue, headed for the coffee maker, stopped dead on her way across the kitchen.
"You're peeling her grapes?," she asked with incredulity.
Eva, our 4 year old granddaughter, had heard me walking by and said from under her rat's nest of tangled hair, "Want grapes, Poppy." I prepared a bowl of grapes, setting it on the table before her. She looked and said, "No, Poppy. Peeled grapes." So I took the bowl back into the kitchen and began removing grape skins.
"You're an idiot," my wife said, using the same tone Eva had.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Trifecta Writing Challenge: "For Shy"
Those fans of the three base hit at the Trifecta Writing Challenge have issued a challenge centering on the word "home", and a story from 33-333 words. This story is called "For Shy"
I'm not a crier. I have my moments. But I'm not a routine crier. Some women are- a sad story, a bad review at work, and boom- waterworks. But me? Even at my PMS flame throwing best, not a tear. So I was genuinely surprised, almost angry, when I felt the tears welling as I left the table.
"I'll be right back," I had managed to stammer as I pushed away from my penne alla arabiata, backing out and away, walking delicately in my peep toe pumps across the soft tan carpet of the restaurant.
I had asked him what I thought was an innocuous question. "If you could live anywhere, where would you want to go?"
"New York...LA....Dallas....I don't know," he had said, his eyes twinkling with mirth. "Wherever you are."
I pushed myself though the faux leather of the bathroom door and found an empty stall. My tiny clutch found the floor, and I slid out of the teetering heels. I turned and sat, staring at my bare feet. I grabbed some tissue and dabbed at my eyes.
I told myself all the time that I didn't need anybody. I made enough money, I had friends, I dated, I had fun, I had no one to worry about but me. It was my life.
But this one was different. He didn't push, he let me be me, but he was so easy to be around, so nice. I felt a security I hadn't felt since elementary school. I felt comfortable and at home. Erica teased me with the M word, and I denied it, of course, but more and more, I was starting to think she had a point.
I looked at the floor. A few items had fallen out, a couple of folded twenties, a lipstick, and a wrapped tampon that I was waiting to have a need for. I bent over and gathered the items. Not yet, I thought. Maybe someday, but not yet.
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