The first sign was an almost imperceptible creak coming from the wooden stands to the left, the ones with the 2002 vintage. I brushed it off and willed myself to focus on the deal at hand. What wine was good enough to say: yes I’ll invest $2M on you? The red cab and say blend was good. I took a step in that direction to remind myself of the aromas of that blend- the ones with chocolates notes usually did it fir me- when I heard the sound of something rolling down on the floor. But when I scanned the floor it was clear. Bingo, a red blend with a finishing chocolate touch! Just as I lifted the bottle off the shelf, right next to the one I just removed another bottle fell and crashed. Two eyes looked at me from the dark whole that was left.
“You’re a two,” the Spanish exchange student said to Ana as they stood outside of the college bar waiting for their other friends and deciding who would go on which car to the next bar. Ignacio was the exchange student’s name. He offered this rating with no context, they were not even speaking. Then he hopped on the passenger seat of the black jeep pickup truck.
Ana opened her eyes wide, trying to process what had just happened. What the actual fuck?
“What did you just say?” She asked, taking a seat on one of the available seats at the back of the pickup.
“That you’re a two,” he said, unmoving.
“That’s so rude why would you say that?” Ana asked. They were speaking in English, and given that she was from Panama and he from Spain, it was all extra odd.
“Well it got me to get you in the car,” Ignacio retored. “So that we could all get going ti the bar. And I accomplished just that.” That clever motherfucker. Through his first rate asshole comment he got just what he wanted. What the actual fuck though,
He had blonde hair and blue eyes. He was very attractive. But she herself was pretty enough. She didn’t need him to confirm it. And even if his goal was just to get her to go into the car there was something so wrong with it all…
He didn’t apologize or said he was kidding. As their very brief interaction finished, other people trickled into the pickup truck and the conversation was left at that. Ana can’t think of it without rolling her eyes in disgust.
“What you must know about life,” I began, unsure I could pull this off, “is that you must live it by and for yourself.” I paused, that’s what you do for dramatic effect, right?
“You should not give your life meaning through others. Through the way they treat you, what they say to you, or ever worse- what you think they think of you.”
Practice what you preach, you hypocrite. Why was I so concerned to make sure they believed me? Yes, I knew I had travelled back in time a few centuries at least and I was supposed to be a philosopher giving this speech about the meaning of life in this century, but no one knew I was a fake. I could tell them much much more, but I wanted to be believable. So I strove to find acceptance through the assessment of the crowd’s faces.
“Yes we care, of course, about how we’re perceived by others. And we must care to coexist in a society. But we shouldn’t let others be the sole force driving forward our feeling of having a meaningful life.”
Someone from the crowd said something. Something that sounded clear, but jumbled and unintelligible to me. That’s when I realized their blank stares didn’t mean they were deep in thought. They meant they were very fucking confused and probably didn’t speak English (at least not modern English).
A few other people mumbled other things. Were they… pissed? Annoyed? Or maybe even, scared? I started to look for an exit I could run to.
Anne stared at him intently. He- Lucas was his name- immediately realized she didn’t recognize him, but it didn’t upset him at all. Rather he relished the opportunity to make people, especially nice people, uncomfortable when he could.
“Anne,” he made stretched each of her name’s letters and made a big pause before proceeding, “Who would’ve thought we’d meet at a Wallgreens in middle of nowhere Georgia of all places?”
“Right?” Anne shifted uneasily, looking for any sign. High school? No way. College? No, no, first job at that ad agency? Ugh.
“What have you been up to since… well since that last time?” Lucas asked, pleased on how purposefully ambiguous he could be when he wanted to.
“Well… lot’s has happened you know? When was it even? The last time we saw each other I mean,” Anne was clever enough to ask.
“It was right around… oh what do I know? Probably around that time we went to eat with Chris? At that Italian restaurant?”
He hadn’t gone out to eat with Anne and a Chris (they didn’t even have a mutual acquaintance Chris as far as he was concerned) but it seemed believable enough.
The package room smelled like carton. Carton boxes and boxes on top of boxes. Not the ideal place to meet a lover. It was not like the Bridgerton gardens where Daphne met the Duke. My affair was possibly the complete opposite of that- it started and only developed in the constraints of a DHL package room. What was worse than the impregnating, artificial carton smell was the tape. It would get stuck in my hair or on other places. Not even the classic service closet. Classy.
Was that? No, no, it couldn’t be. Leah put her phone down for a moment and looked at her reflection in her white-rimmed bedroom mirror. A woman with white freckly skin stared back at her. That checked. Tucking a strand of brown hair behind her left ear Leah dared to reach out for her phone again. Slowly she inputed her old passcode-1397; she thought it was clever skipping odd numbers like that- and heard the screen click itself unlocked. She willed herself to click on the photo app, which she did after what seems like more than a minute. Staring back at her from her phone screen was a mirror selfie taken 6 years ago, apparently. A young woman with bright red hair, razor focused, looked at the mirror. She didn’t seem to be posing for the selfie, but rather staring right through the glass. Leah thought she had imagined it the first time she looked at the picture, but looking at it a second time she confirmed that the read headed woman was clutching a knife with her left hand. A knife smeared with a red… with what could’ve only been blood. An all too familiar woman with a freckly white face staring at nothing in particular with a blood dripping knife, capturing it all on a selfie in her bedroom’s white rimmed mirror. She had died her hair brown 6 years ago.
Exhausted from the running and the crying and the sun and the rain, she left. She didn’t know what she was leaving because she was still physically there, but she decided this was her leaving. Leaving the mental state of resignation and deciding she would go somewhere. Maybe leave town. Leaving had a nice ring to it. It was perpetually in process so she already felt like she had started it. And what’s best- it had no due date, its happening from the moment she decides it starts to when she decides it finishes.
(Alluding to verb tense discussion)
“What do you mean, it slipped?” “I mean I… of course I didn’t know that he didn’t know” Ari dropped her hands in desperation. Did Joe really just think she’d tell her 12-year-old that yes, he was her son but no, her husband was not his biological dad? “How much did you tell him?” “I basically… we were just joking around…” This is why I should’ve stopped talking to Joe years ago, Ari thought. He was one of those effortlessly careless, happy people: which was obviously a bad thing when you let things like this slip. “Joe just tell me,” Ari said, softening up. “I told him he should angle his throws more to the right. That the angle of his throws is just like mine because, well because he’s mine,” Joe looked down at his feet as he said it, probably one of the only times Ari every him embarrassed. “Richie doesn’t know,” Ari’s expression was stone cold. “What? I thought you told him” “Yes of course I told him he isn’t his, but I didn’t tel him he’s yours.” “Shit Ari I’m…” “Sorry, yes well I’m screwed so…”
The dogs were not barking, they were howling. Their howls pierced the night air not like a bat piercing the side of a piñata to unleash a candy cornucopia, but like a needle-pierced water balloon with so many holes you can’t stop it from spilling.
I stepped outside of my apartment and into the night’s black with a little less than $20 and no real plan. I usually didn’t mind the neighbor’s dogs, but they usually didn’t howl. Or perhaps they did how but it just wasn’t as shrill and chilling of a howl as it was tonight. Maybe I just couldn’t bare to sit alone on my couch with the thought of what I’d done. Or rather what I wanted to do, but didn’t do, and then what happened because of it, or because not it.
I had the intention of going into a random bar and sitting there alone at the bar, sing us a song you’re the piano man vibes. But as I walked past a Chinese restaurant- not one of the trendy ones with graphic designed menus with bold fonts and cute drawings, but one old and run down one which I’d never bothered to even look into- a plate of streamed dumplings suddenly seemed like a necessity. Not a craving, a need.
I walked in and no one noticed me. I sat myself down at a table which, luckily, had a menu on it so I didn’t have to ask anyone for one. $6.99 for a plate of chicken and shrimp dumplings, $4.99 for a vegetable only. I ordered the chicken and shrimp ones and opted for tap water, no, excuse me, a beer? Yes please just one.
(Use imagery and descriptions of what things are NOT, not so much what they are) hauling is play on howling but hauling his guilt for what he didnt do
