read the first part of the story...
Derek paced into the hallway, into the den, and stood in front of the couch for a moment, not sitting but not not sitting either, exactly, just in a kind of stasis until gravity caught and pulled him down. He had just been to give his blood sample two days ago; he hadn't expected anyone to call about it so soon, he wasn't quite ready to hear what they had to tell him. It had been raining, two days ago, the silvery parking lot walk reminding him very much of the night they had met, the downtown streets mirroring all the lights that had then seemed so exciting and so endless, hiding all the dirt and the everyday and leaving just a reflection of the night sky perfect down to the smallest of the stars that were out, now that the rain had passed and the clouds had fallen away.
He hadn't been quite ready either, that night, to see her walking toward him arm in arm with a girl he couldn't have described later beyond her gender, even to save his life, as they stopped in front of what just happened to be his favorite bar, on that street at least, but he was ready enough to follow them in and lose himself in watching her over half a beer, and ready enough to walk over to their table and say an entire evening's worth of anythings and nothings in a desperate and unparalleled (for him) fending off of what he couldn't help feeling was inevitable, when she would go home and he would go home and the next time he looked down at the wet streets he would see only the oily mud and the cigarette butts.
He hadn't heard a sound from the kitchen for ten minutes, twelve minutes, and he slowly pushed himself up from the couch with his right arm and walked back, into the kitchen. Martha still had his cell phone open in her hand, the screen helpfully informing no one about its status and remaining battery life while her face leaned against her upturned wrist below it, fat tears running down the side of her chin and falling to her arm, running down to the top of the table and pooling, shining like the silver parking lot or the city night in the reflected light of the toaster and the cheap chandelier.
She shook soundlessly, his hand on her shoulder now and the sobs starting to come alongside the inevitable curse words, the recriminations against an idea of fate or luck or something else even that she wouldn't have believed she could create there in a moment, out of whole cloth, but for the words from the phone and the way they had just changed everything, changed everything in a moment like a chance encounter except that this time there wasn't a jukebox and there wasn't a beer to buy or a girlfriend's arm to hold, this time there was just the bottom falling out and the cursing, shouted now, and his hand on her shoulder and in her hair and pushing out the small pool of tears into a patch of pure shine to remind him of the city street and the smallest star and to catch the light that was retreating far too fast from the kitchen, now.
No comments:
Post a Comment