Fiction
by Joy and Anoo
Part I: "He"
As far as he could recall, the entire night had been
punctuated by bad dreams, ones which he rarely had. There
were intimations of mortality and worse, just plain
terrifying desolation. Having never given any of his dreams
much thought, he almost felt embarrassed with himself at
having to attribute to a dream his general malaise. Friends
abandoned him in the dreams, which he rationalized as being
in some way connected with his oft joked about fears of
being abandoned by his parents as a child. But last night
had just made him feel uneasy, as if this wasn't supposed
to happen, and somehow somewhere something had tipped in
favor of 'worse' over 'better.' As soon as that thought
emerged in his mind, it was dismissed by a take-charge
"that's just Freudian crap" statement. It was time to move
on.
Showers were catharsis, and so the daily chore had assumed
a kind of ritualistic purpose. It was the only thing that
made him feel good. There was always so much to do in a
day, and the shower was like sleep in a way: it diverted
his thoughts from psychological concerns to physical
comfort. Perhaps most people in the world saw sex as
serving a similar role.
Rituals assumed a strange deliberative purpose when he
wasn't at home. In a motel room, even the act of combing
his hair after a shower assumed a sterile quality, like he
was now going through a checklist at a grocery store,
remembering at the last moment that he had forgotten to
pass through the cold chill of the cheese section. This is
how he thought. Everything had to be like something else.
When it wasn't, he forced it to be like something. Things
were never new, they were just modifications, new versions,
patches, updates. Your jacket reminds me of.... your head
is kind of like.... your shower was a little bit better
than....
He quickly found the note next to his broken walkman on the
dresser, reminding himself that he only had half-an-hour
left to meet her. Stepping out into the afternoon aura, his
mind was still in the drone of the song from last night, in
the train, when he had strapped the headphones on his ears
and listened to eight minutes of what he liked to call "the
drone," the louder the better, a woman's voice in a strange
accent doing loops over the distorted violins and
extra-clean guitar. So softly in his ears, he almost fell
asleep, like he almost did every time when he was alone.
Never quite getting it. He was there now too, as he took
turns through the streets, lost in the drone, lighting and
finishing cigarettes, forcing the smoke into his lungs, a
pain that felt just as life-affirming as peeling the skin
of your wallpaper-dried lips. At the diner, he didn't see
her immediately, but he didn't expect to, he hadn't seen
her as an adult, really had to guess what she looked like
now. He sat down as far as possible from the entrance,
noticing in the walk-past the mirrored background that he
still looked old, nothing had changed, his old black blazer
suggesting desperation, and not the slightly more
preferable artifice. I need to fucking stop looking at
mirrors.
The girl two booths down was smiling to herself, looking at
something next to her on the seat, red plastic covers on
the seats. He was sure it had to be her, she had the same
eyes he remembered from a decade ago, running in the street
in front of Joe's house, running into the ground, screaming
for it to stop. The eyes looked like her. He couldn't tell
the rest. The drone in his head matched his vision of her,
the soft memory, and hard gravel on the street as she
tripped and fell. He got up, walked over, and said "hey,
guess who?" She looked up from the brown envelope next to
her, blankly smiling, tossing her hair back, her body now
suddenly a reality, no longer conjecture. He sat down when
a waiter came up and handed out the menus, asking for
drinks. He wanted a beer, but he needed not to do that
until later, so he wasn't going to get a beer, well maybe
just one wouldn't hurt, it's really not that early, I mean
it's already four in the afternoon, right? and I won't have
another one, and I'll just smoke one cigarette. She ordered
some migas, she was real hungry. (to be continued)