short stories

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Double in Tinder

Double in Tinder

John had a chance to go to Washington DC for a conference on Shakespeare, so he took it; he lived in Kentucky, and he didn’t get out much. His older brother, Robert Clement Stone III, lived in D.C, and he could stay with Robert while he attended the conference. His car was running well and, leaving Kentucky early in the morning, he arrived in D.C at about 8 in the evening on a Monday. His brother texted him that he was at a Georgetown sports bar, and gave him directions. It was early fall, and the weather was pleasant, but the roads were confusing and traffic was terrible. By the time John got to the sports bar he was rattled by the traffic and relieved to be able to get out of his car.

He found Robert and his friends at a large table in the back of the sports bar. It was a large place with many televisions and lots of noise; plenty of people filled almost every table. Most of the people in the bar were facing televisions that had the Redskins on them, but John and his friends were near a television that had the news on it; no telling whether this was deliberate. A first glance, it seemed like very few people in the place were watching any of the televisions, even though it was the Redskins.

Robert had four friends, Mark, Terry, Kirk, and Franco, who were at the table. John was sitting between Terry and Mark. Across the table his brother Robert made sure he would receive chips and salsa, and a drink. Terry and Mark ordered doubles, but it wasn’t clear what they were doubling, or whether it actually made them drunk.  The waiter, a tall guy, would come by, and they’d say, “Another double!” and this went on most of the evening. There was evidence that most of them had eaten if they had wanted to.

All four, it seemed, and Robert too, were obsessed with using social media to find and pick up women. Tinder was their favorite app; they sat and scrolled as they talked, and to John it seemed like following Tinder, or whatever they were doing, was a constant habit, whereas it was conversation, or interest in their environment, that would come and go. For minutes at a time they would be on their phones, scrolling, reading carefully, texting, seeing what was happening. Perhaps they wanted something to happen tonight.  John asked Terry and he showed him Tinder, and how he would swipe it, to look at woman after woman who was available, he said. “You can see how this could be addictive,” he added. Swiping right was approving them; swiping left made them disappear from your life. On the other side of him, Mark, more serious, swiped left more often, but looked at them more carefully first.

The news on the television above them showed refugees coming into Europe from the war-torn countries. They were interviewing people in France about taking in the migrants. Occasionally, between bites of dinner or drinks, John would hear what they said or read the captions at the bottom of the screen. Some people stated openly, based on the closed-captions, that it was good, that they would welcome migrants; others said it would be bad, and they were opposed. The Eiffel Tower was in the background; they had positioned the camera to catch it so it was very clearly Paris.

The footage from Paris reminded John of a time he had visited Paris briefly, and, in the four days he was there, met a woman who he’d become very close to. She lived there in Paris; her name was Marie. Both Marie and John had made extraordinary effort to cross cultures and get to know each other, but it wasn’t easy; there were a lot of differences between cultures. They’d become quite close in those four days; they’d spent much of their free time together, and she’d shown him a few of the sights. But when his time came to go, he’d gone, back to the U.S. Perhaps it was better that he’d left; he’d miss her forever, but it probably wouldn’t have worked. Maybe she’d visit Kentucky someday? That was highly doubtful. He was an English graduate student, unable to show her the good time she deserved, or even be as good a host to her as she had been to him.

Back in the sports bar, the friends were talking about their various sexual conquests. Somehow, based on what they said, they’d meet these women, text with them for a while, and go to bed with them, with very little in the way of dating, getting to know each other, the traditional kinds of things. His brother Robert seemed to be just as adept at it as the others. The city seemed to be full of women who were willing to do this; they’d make a profile; they’d answer texts; they’d see what was interesting, they’d swipe their phones as often as the guys at this table would. They’d see what came up, and pretty soon, they’d be in bed with one of these guys. John was somewhat amazed. Life wasn’t really like this in Kentucky; he’d just broken up with a long-term girlfriend, one whom he’d met after going to France, and he wasn’t really out on the singles market anyway. These guys, Robert’s friends, were on a full-scale hunt, based on what he heard them say. They were active participants.

From across the table, Franco, obviously a weight-lifter, explained it to him a little: “I’m busy,” he said. “I work all day, I go to the gym, I have the career thing going, I don’t have time to set up a domestic situation. If I were married or had a steady girl, it would take up too much time and energy; my career would suffer. This way, I look attractive to them. I have money and a car. They give it a try, and so do I. It’s just that I’m less likely to fall for them, I have no motive to settle down.”

Another guy, Kirk, was into being rough, and he described it a little; it was a little unsettling, because John could tell, through the stories, that the women were not necessarily into rough. But it seemed that Kirk didn’t care about this. He’d text them, and get into bed with them, and he barely knew them. How did he know whether they liked it that way? The only way to find out was to do it. If they didn’t like it, he wouldn’t do it again; he’d find someone else. He seemed to be taking out his anger on a string of strangers. Actually knowing them was never really part of the bargain.

It occurred to John that they seemed to live in a world where they met women in bed first, and then found out a little more about them little by little. This unsettled him a little, and worse, it reminded him of Shakespearean England, a world he now studied, but a world just different enough that he hadn’t quite known what to think of it at first.  Also unsettling was that here in the bar, there didn’t seem to be any other women around them at all; the waiter was a man, and there were no women even at the nearby tables. This lent an air of locker-room brag to what they said, as if, who would even know if they were telling the truth?

At one point he got up to use the bathroom, and walked through the bar. Again he noticed that the Redskins were on, throughout the bar, and not a single person seemed to care anywhere. What kind of town is this, he wondered.  This was the local team. It was Monday night, and they’d be on in front of the world; didn’t people follow their own local team, even a little? Apparently they didn’t.  Staggering a little with exhaustion, he returned to his table. Mark, who was sitting next to him, was a historian of Washington D.C. itself, and happened to know a lot about the French influence in its building and development. Perhaps he had been provoked by the news of Paris above him. He was saying something about the Frenchman who had designed the road patterns. John could see blaming the French for the trouble he had with the roads coming in. Across the table, Robert, who had made sure that John had a dinner coming, cast a rueful look, as if, who cares about the French? Two other friends, similarly, had taken the opportunity of a break in conversation to swipe their phones. More right swipes, a few left swipes.  

Terry seemed to be explaining to Kirk about how he had ghosted some woman that he’d been seeing. This apparently meant simply cutting her off, not answering texts, removing permission to call or view, pretending like someone doesn’t exist – this was what you did if you had no use for someone, or if their being there, on your phone, bothered you. Just cut the connection. Remove permission for them to view your profile. People were describing situations where they’d ghosted various women.

Suddenly, John was jolted out of his thoughts when he happened to see Marie on the television right above him. She was explaining, in French and in partly broken English, how the Parisian people would do the best they could with the situation they had at hand, namely the migrants. She seemed, at that moment, incredibly innocent, and sweet. John’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe that it was Marie, but it was, unmistakably. And within minutes, she was gone; the news moved on to another person.

John stared at the television for a while, hoping to catch another glimpse of her, but she was gone without a trace. The television moved on to more comments about the migrant situation, and about Europe in general, and its ability to stay together under the circumstances. John noticed that among his brother’s friends and the people in their area, Europe had no more popularity than even the Redskins. People were self-absorbed. The friends had their Tinder; they’d look at their phones in between times that they’d talk to each other. The waiter would come; they’d order something, then look at their phones as their friends ordered.  No sense talking to the waiter, for example, about what was happening in D.C.; what was happening was directly on their phones. The other people in the restaurant were the same way, except that, from what John could figure, they were more political than John’s friends; it was, after all, a government town. Politics was everywhere. Everything was political. Franco, at one point, said, “Get used to it. It’s political if you order chips and salsa. It’s political if you don’t. This is D.C.”

Mark, who had been expounding about the French, now told another story. He had apparently been ghosted by a woman he’d slept with. She told him she was pregnant first, then totally cut him off. He admitted to being a little worried. He couldn’t remember clearly how well-protected their sex had been; for all he knew, it was possible that she really was pregnant. But Kirk jumped in and said that was common practice, and it was rare that it was true. They were pretty sure women just did that, and, yes, it was an act of hostility, but that’s what you get.  They tried to make Mark feel better. Robert said it had happened to him as well; he still didn’t know how it turned out. The general conclusion at the table was that women, if they had no use for you, would rather leave you with something to worry about, than simply leave you.

But John wasn’t so sure, and he studied his brother a little. For all his bravado, he might not have been sure either. Did they only do this to certain guys, and if so, which ones? There was no telling; it was a new world they were living in. On television, they were now interviewing a migrant; between worlds, life ravaged by war, unable to enter one country, not welcome in the previous one, and with kids in tow, they, also, appeared to John to be in a world he could barely understand. His head spun as he watched.

Robert, in any case, was being a good host; he ordered whatever John wanted; he made sure John had a good dinner and a few beers. He was serious about his role as big brother, and kept asking John if he was ok. John was. He was dazed, tired from the long drive, and overstimulated by the heavy traffic, but, once he had dinner and a couple of beers in him, he was ready to face the world. They would go to his brother’s small apartment, and he would lay out some blankets on the couch, and fall sound asleep, knowing he would be going to that Shakespeare conference, first thing in the morning. From one world to another he would go; fortunately, he thought, there were no children, yet, to share this story with.

At the Gate

At the Gate

At the gate, Gate 13, they still hadn’t changed the sign that said where the next flight was going. It was going to Lubbock, and so was Ronald. He sat facing the sign, rather than looking out the window at the wide Texas sky, because he was getting nervous, and he wanted to see when they changed the sign. The flight was only about a half hour late, and the attendants kept assuring everyone that it would take off as soon as possible. And the flight to Lubbock was leaving out of this gate, as soon as they could board it. But the seconds, the minutes were becoming longer and longer. He could almost no longer bear it.

To his left, a television went on about the presidential race; there were way too many candidates, at this point, and he could barely focus. Occasionally this particular news channel would switch to a bombing or some violence somewhere else in the world. Ronald wasn’t used to television, and its constant blather irritated him as well. Off in the corner of the gate area, a poor mother was trying to control three young children; the youngest, a boy maybe two, was pawing away at a garbage can, while his older sister, about four, argued with her mother about the way she had changed the daughter’s hair. The third child, also a sister, was a bit older, maybe fourteen, and cast a disparaging look at everyone, but didn’t do much about the little boy. The boy’s hand was now reaching into the garbage can, leaning it over, while he climbed on a nearby seat. He was about two or three, very active, perhaps more than the mother could handle. The mother, in her thirties, very pretty but completely exhausted, kept calling the boy and telling him to return, but to no avail. He seemed determined, in his own way; if anything, he was determined to find out what was in that garbage can.

Ronald was a wind energy consultant. His specialty was knowing how various kinds of winds interacted with the various blades of the modern wind generator. He’d gone to Canada to help with a project on the high plains of Saskatchewan, but something had bothered him on the return trip: a man who, for whatever reason, had been allowed to leave Canada, but not allowed to enter the U.S. The man, a good-looking young fellow of indiscriminate national origin, had somehow convinced the Canadian authorities to let him try to enter the U.S., but he didn’t have a backup plan for what to do if rejected, and basically, Canada didn’t want him, once he was rejected. His luck had run out. He was stranded in that nowhere land between customs agents, arguing for what seemed to be an eternity, and it seemed like forever even to Ronald, who at that point was just standing in line. Ronald wasn’t sure how such things worked; what if the guy couldn’t go anywhere else?

Now, at the gate, another young man sat picked a seat next to Ronald and sat down, and started talking to Ronald about various topics: the flight, the delay, the weather.s He was pleasant, well-dressed, about twenty five or so, and had a few lines of worry on his face. As often happens, the conversation somehow drifted to the topic of eternal salvation, and the loving power of this young man’s savior. Ronald noticed at the same time both how likely it was for this to happen, and how thoroughly incapable he was of diverting the topic, or even just shutting it down. He was bored; he was being friendly; it just seemed like a normal conversation at first. Now he was considering bringing up the truth – that he really didn’t believe in heaven, at least not the heaven of everything being good, everyone happy. If there was a heaven, then what was this, purgatory?

Now people got off another flight, coming into the airport, which was in Dallas, and this was a good sign; the flight to Lubbock would be departing soon, probably with that very plane. The flight attendants arrived with their luggage and talked with the man at the ticket counter. Ronald was relieved. Progress was being made. The sign still hadn’t changed, but there was every indication that there would truly be a flight to Lubbock, and Ronald would get home.

The boy had now fallen into the garbage can, head first. It was the kind of garbage can where the hole in the top was smaller than the can itself, so that once he was in it, he couldn’t get out very easily, even when it was tipped over or sideways. His mother had seen it, at the last minute, but she had been unable to prevent it, because it happened quickly. Her anguished shouts upset the boy, and one could hear him crying and shouting out inside the garbage can, though because it was metallic there was an echo and it just raised the general noise and confusion, without solving the problem. The problem, really, was that he had two legs and two arms, and he wouldn’t be still enough for them to remove him, legs first, and they couldn’t seem to take the top off of the can in order to make the process easier. She had help now, as some bystanders saw the problem and came over to help, including someone from the airline. The boy kicked furiously, inside the can, hoping that would make a difference; it made the situation worse. Ronald considered helping, being naturally good at keeping his composure and taking apart things such as garbage cans, but he didn’t; screaming kids made him uncomfortable, especially anywhere near airplanes and confined spaces, and he didn’t want to be any closer to them than he was already.

The young man sitting next to him, dressed up, intent on discussing the joys of heaven, was similarly aloof from the situation with the boy. Ronald again almost blurted out his disagreement with the concept of heaven; he was, after all, a scientist; but instead he asked the young man about the particulars of his flight. He was coming back from Africa, he said, where he was on a mission. But it was more than a mission; he was training African missionaries, so that Africa could have more African missionaries, and they would be more thorough and efficient in covering the world with missionaries.  Ronald, hungry all of a sudden, excused himself and stepped out into the hallway where there was a McDonald’s.

In the hallway of the gate, there was a steady stream of travelers, with suitcases and packs, traveling either way, either toward the lower-numbered gates, toward the SkyTrain, or perhaps toward the bathrooms or the flight information boards. One person with the silver star of the Dallas football team on his dark blue shirt, struggled with a few extra bags. Ronald longed to be back in his office, where he studied computer models of wind flow and the behavior of certain kinds of wind-generation systems in response to variations in the flow. He couldn’t even begin to discuss it with the average airport traveler, so he kept it to himself. But occasionally, lost in a sea of humanity, especially people moving in a hallway such as this, or many people going the same direction in all different speeds, he’d think about his research.

At the McDonald’s, the big question, of course, was whether he could actually get something quickly enough to eat it before, at the gate, they would be boarding. He had now run out of time, and knew that he had to be back at the gate in minutes, perhaps ten or twelve.  At McDonald’s there were three separate lines, each with three or four people, but some man was complaining loudly that he had been given a hamburger with cheese, when he had explicitly said no cheese. McDonald’s workers were scrambling to accommodate him, trying not to lose track of their other orders.

The memory of the guy who was stranded at customs led Ronald to try getting something to eat, no matter how bad or how quickly eaten, and he almost stepped in line. But in the end, he chose against the food; it would be easier, and healthier, to simply wait, and not take the chance of missing a flight. When he got back to the gate, people were lining up. The pressure on the boy to hold still and let himself be removed from the garbage can was intense; finally, they had figured it out, and he got out, bubble gum in his hair. He was telling the airline attendant about the kinds of garbage he had experienced in there, in the darkness, as the grownups around him tried to make him presentable for the flight.

To the side, another airline steward was counseling the older sister of that boy, the one who had cast such disparaging looks at everyone when Ronald had first seen her. This girl, who was about thirteen, had apparently exploded in a rage against her mother, just as Ronald had stepped out of the gate and gone down the hallway. Her face was red, and she was shaking. She was at an age, apparently, when everything around her was faulty, nothing was as it should be. She couldn’t really describe how she had become so angry and exploded, or even how she was feeling now. They tried to restore her composure as well, so that the family could board the plane.

The young man who had sat next to Ronald, the missionary, had now realized that he had lost his cell phone, on some connecting flight; after a good amount of frantic searching, and even asking Ronald if he’d seen it (he hadn’t), he was now alerting the airline attendants to the problem. But it was pretty clear to Ronald, as he watched this, that the airline attendants had better things to do. The young missionary, apparently missing his wife and children, who had given up on Africa and returned to Texas earlier, was now in a panic; he was going to have to go without that phone for a few days, and that was quite a hardship, in the modern era, even if you were a missionary. Ronald noticed that they had changed the sign, and lined up to board the plane, grateful that he was moving on to the next step.

(8-15)

Minding One's P's and Q's

Minding One’s P’s and Q’s

Gilfredo walked up the stairs of his office building slowly, thinking that he hadn’t been in his own office as much recently as he used to; he’d been staying at home, drinking more and more, doing scholarly activities less and less. He blamed this on a young graduate student, Maya, who had chosen to make his life hell, presumably as punishment for his amorous affection being removed; she was, after all, a terrible poet, and she had gained a hundred pounds since the time he’d been seeing her, maybe a couple of years ago. He caught his breath, climbing the steps; the office building was at the same time very familiar, and also just a little tense.

He was an Argentine poet and a full professor; he knew all the Argentine poets he had grown up with, but he specialized in a Cuban poet, and could talk for hours about the beauty of the Spanish language when it was bound up in the enchantment of poetry. Sometimes in the rhythm of his own steps he would hear the words of the poets, or the beauty of the language, but this was in better times. Now his steps sounded more like a nails sealing his own coffin. He intentionally recalled great Spanish poetry, trying to reverse the downward spiral of his thoughts; it wasn’t working. Each step seemed like a thorn in his side, rather than a beautiful syllable of a beautiful language.

Expounding on the beauty and grace of the Spanish language: this was how he met Marcelline, a woman in his own building, a French teacher who had recently been studying logic as part of semantics and thus as part of language. He had enchanted her by telling her about how, in his generation, they studied logic along with Latin, and he’d told her about a Latin teacher who had been one of his inspirations. Here in the US, it was similar; back in the old days, namely the turn of the previous century, in certain schools, logic was one of the hardest subjects students would take, and they would refer to it as “p’s and q’s” as in “minding one’s p’s and q’s” – which was, in essence, hitting the books.  He’d had a logic teacher who had been a monster, abusive and cruel, but he’d survived, and he was proud of it. He’d studied the great Spanish poets, and studied in England. With Marcelline, he’d gone on to tell her about the Argentine poets, and, of course, his own favorite Cuban poet, and he was, at this moment, climbing the stairs in hopes of maintaining an amorous relationship with Marcelline, who had implied she would be in her office at this hour, after class.

He could, of course, take the elevator, but the elevator made him feel old, and he was only 56. It was almost twenty years ago, he thought, thinking in years, that his first wife had left him. She, too, was Argentine; she was disappointed that they hadn’t had a child by then; but most of all, she simply wanted to go home. She wasn’t happy in the USA, and she’d let him know that. He’d been quite stubborn about it; he was successful here; he’d become a professor; he’d impressed everyone, and his career, basically, was here. The sadness of that breakup had haunted him.

At first, he had enjoyed his freedom, seeing woman after woman, many of them in this building, which was like a little Europe. He courted Portuguese teachers, Italian teachers, even a German professor. He had wild nights on the town with beautiful, well-educated young women.  

Everyone seemed to tolerate it; he was, after all, a tenured professor. But this young poet, Maya, had basically ruined it all, in his view. She had come along at a time of weakness for him, and somehow he didn’t see what an unhappy person she was, not to mention the fact that she was a bad poet. At a reading one time she was reading her poetry, and he was admiring her figure, when all of a sudden he caught himself listening to the words, and having to admit that, yes, it was pretty bad. What was he doing? What had he stooped to? What had gone wrong?

The other day, someone had asked him why windows in the building could never open. They were sealed shut, and that was no doubt because a central-air system meant that an open window would mean that the building would be air conditioning a very hot outdoor patio, or trying to heat a very cold winter day. But what it had meant, in the long run, was that every single person in the building had become accustomed to being cut off from the outdoors, operating, if they were lucky, with a window to look out of, but not a window to breathe out of, or yell out of. The building was a fortress, sealed off from the invading world, closed off except at the front and back doors. He thought of this, sometimes, as he compared it to Europe, say, or even to the USA. Places become insular, he thought, as do the people in them, cut off from reality, unable to feel something obvious in the air.

Marcelline had given him hope again, though even Marcelline looked at him sometimes as if she’d been through a few relationships herself, and wasn’t going to be so quick to trust him. The hallway that he now walked down was full of signs that said “No means No!”, and he looked at them, thinking of their discussion of logic. You’d think that, in a building where everyone taught various languages, “No” would be the most basic word, the first one, one that you wouldn’t have to argue about. Didn’t it translate as “No” in Portuguese, French, or German?

He knew that in fact these signs were part of a campaign, in which women, particularly professional women on campus, were enraged by a fraternity whose members had allowed themselves to be photographed publically with a sign that said “No means Yes” – it was more complicated than that, but it was blatantly disrespectful to women, and the women on campus had responded with these signs. It all made sense, in context, of course, if one understood the campus and what was happening on it. But from a purely logical point of view, it was somewhat absurd, and it reminded him of that logic teacher so many decades ago.

Of course, he couldn’t bring this up with Marcelline; she had a similar sign on her office as well. It would simply make her mad; there was always the possibility that she would think he “didn’t get it” or “didn’t take it seriously.” On the contrary, he thought, he took it too seriously. He read it for what it was. He remembered his education in logic, every hour of it, and it came boiling to the surface at moments like this.

The case with Maya was slow in working its way through the system; it was unresolved. Maya had complained to the highest authorities, saying that he was using his sexual involvement with her, and the personal fallout from the breakup, against her in her pursuit of a PhD. His view was the opposite, that if anything, his involvement had helped her, had taken her much further than she deserved, and his lack of support now was simply forcing her to get the PhD. on her own, without his help. He didn’t feel like he was preventing her from doing anything. And he felt like everyone – chair, ombudsman, provost – was colluding to make his life miserable.

Perhaps Marcelline could change his mood, and make him feel worthy again. But, alas, there was a note on Marcelline’s office door, addressed to him, and basically telling him she was busy for the evening, and was sorry to back out of whatever engagement he had planned. Now in fact, as he went over exactly what he did have planned, and how much of this he had actually communicated successfully with her, he was sorry to admit that it was all very vague, and he was sure she knew what he had truly intended, and had simply rejected that. Perhaps she had done her homework, or had heard through the grapevine about the situation with Maya; or, perhaps she was truly busy, and would be glad to make other arrangements later. There was no way of knowing whether this was a temporary or permanent setback.

In this picture, of course, things were very rarely direct, and Gilfredo had long ago become used to this way of operating; he’d even mastered it. But now he felt like he was a victim of it, in that he didn’t know where he stood. The “No means No!” signs seemed to mock him, as he stood there, in the hallway. Things had, in fact, come to this, and it wasn’t pretty. He was entirely alone, up there in that hallway, and badly needed another drink.

8-10-15

Rite of Passage

Rite of Passage

The little boy had chicken pox, and Jordan realized, as he saw how truly miserable the kid was, that it had never occurred to the kid that he wouldn’t always be the cutest thing on earth. He was only about three; he hadn’t looked in the mirror all that much, but he’d looked in it today, and that’s when he saw them, the little red spots all over his face that made all the grownups in his world gasp in horror and turn away, or tell him what a poor child he was.

Chicken pox isn’t so bad if you’re three; it’s mostly bad if you fail to get it, and get it later as a full-blown adult. That’s the way these things are; almost everyone gets it when they’re three. The little guy had dozens of friends, in his daycare and in his playgroup, and whenever he was with them he was completely with them, in their faces, being moved from one friend to the other. This little strain of chicken pox probably took all of five minutes to spread to the whole daycare, and another five, later that week, to hit every kid in the playgroup. Then the reports came in; so-and-so had chicken pox, so-and-so wouldn’t be coming to the playgroup this week. It was a kind of recurring pattern.

The kid was actually Jordan’s brother. Jordan was 20; he’d just come back from college, but he’d just wrecked his car, when he was almost home. His girlfriend had dumped him, apparently, before he’d left, but he found out accidentally, and then, somewhat upset, had been coming home in a hurry. His parents, busy with a sick 3-year-old and a couple of other siblings, had barely noticed his arrival, though they did promise him his favorite dinner, spaghetti, as soon as they could provide it. He had a knot in his stomach, and he felt like it was caused by having two homes, one at college, where things had fallen apart rapidly, and one here, where it was home, of course, but his poor brother was so miserable, and it didn’t really feel like home anymore. He wanted to go out for a drive, but his car was wrecked and was in the shop. He kept checking his phone, hoping somehow for a text from his ex-girlfriend, but, even if she texted, what good would that do? What could she say that would make any difference whatsoever? Perhaps he could text someone in town that he knew.

It was raining at his parents’ house. Finally he reached his girlfriend from high school, Rachel, and she was due to come over in about half an hour; maybe they’d do something together. They’d broken up when he went to college, and his feelings for her were gone; they’d gone separate ways. But she was still a friend, and would cheer him up, he hoped. She was going to a university on the other side of the state, but was home at the moment too. She’d come home to find out that not only had she lost her room, but she’d lost her whole house; her parents had split up, gone separate ways, neither having a room for her anymore. Ordinarily she’d go visit her grandmother, but grandmother was in the hospital, not expected to live into the next month. The grandmother had a house, and even a room, but being there or staying there was next to impossible. When Rachel came over, she was a nervous wreck, and was considering driving back to the university that very day, texting friends at the university and elsewhere almost constantly, in her nervousness. At least at the university she had a place to stay.

Jordan tried to get Rachel to take him out for a drive, even though it was raining, and he promised her he’d give her some gas money or take her for coffee. His little brother’s wailing and whining were bothering him. She didn’t want to go; she appreciated a safe haven, a house that wasn’t hers, or wasn’t full of her mom’s bitterness for her dad, or her dad’s anger. They went back behind the shed and smoked a cigarette, a kind of teenage ritual that they’d performed many times in high school. The rain dripped off the roof of the shed and threatened to put out the little nub of a cigarette as they were smoking it. Rachel pointed out that they were lucky they were in college; she had a friend who was already a mother, another who was in jail; one old acquaintance from high school had been killed in a car wreck.  While they were there, checking their phones, Rachel let him in on two more personal dramas. The first involved her own little sister, about thirteen, who had flown to New York to spend a week with her uncle’s family. But the uncle had been delayed on his way to the airport by a missed connection, and left her stranded in the airport. The sister kept texting Rachel and Rachel would text back furiously, encouraging her and telling her that the uncle would be there as soon as possible. Second, she found out, reading her messages, that her dad had been fined for some business infraction; this would likely cost him his business and he’d have to get another job. Jordan, checking his own messages, found out that a friend of his back in college had a mom who had fallen, and would need months of rehab; that friend would have to drop out, go to school somewhere else or perhaps not at all, and rearrange his life accordingly.

At one point the rain let up a little, but they were both busy texting people, and didn’t really see it. They described the dramas that were playing out on their phones to each other. And then, when everything seemed so bleak, the sun came out above them; it was still raining a little, so there was a rainbow, clear as day, out over the creek, behind some neighbors’ houses. Jordan was using his fingers to crush what was left of his cigarette.

Finally Rachel agreed to let Jordan take her out for coffee, and they went into the house to get his keys. Jordan’s brother was still whining; chicken pox made him miserable. It was more the idea of it that made him miserable than the disease itself. He was no longer a baby, and was going to have to lie around and whine until he got better, because everyone was busy. They’d put a movie on and hoped he’d just sit there watching it. Jordan stopped to talk to him for a minute, but he didn’t want to linger, because the kid would delay him, and hang on to him, and he was really eager to get out of the place. Also, he wasn’t quite sure if he’d ever had chicken pox, so he was a little hesitant to get too close to the kid. He told his brother about the rainbow, but they looked out the window, and it seemed to be gone. The brother got mad at him, and complained that all the good stuff in life, all that Jordan had promised, was all a cruel hoax. Jordan licked his lips, hoping the kid wouldn’t smell the cigarette, knowing his brother was watching him carefully. Basically, he agreed with the kid. It was a tough world, and you just had to get used to it.

(7-2015)

I Call Shotgun

I Call Shotgun

Melinda noticed two things about the courthouse as she entered and took a seat for her brother’s trial, touching a scar on her hip unconsciously, as she often did. First, the blinds were pulled down on the windows, so you couldn’t see out of any of them; this reminded her of the house where she grew up, and where her grandfather insisted that they live without the benefit of natural light. Second, there was a family, already seated, to Melinda’s right, and it consisted of a young mother with her two children, a girl and a boy; the girl was older, and was trying to contain the boy, who kept climbing over the seats or being restless.

She felt a sickness at the bottom of her stomach as she tuned in to her brother’s trial; he was guilty, probably, and she knew it; he would be sent to jail, and there wasn’t much anyone could do for him at this point. She also knew that once they took him off to jail, she would probably not see him very much; after all, she had several children herself, and the prison was across the state. She looked hard at him, trying to give him hope; at the same time, in her mind, she was reliving their wretched childhood.

The stern judge, a bald older man with a gavel and too many clothes on, reminded her of their grandfather, also a stern old man, who disapproved of virtually everything, and who would yell at them from his chair at the front of the house. Their early life had been one of confinement; they weren’t allowed to play, or go here, or go there, because he liked his alcohol and didn’t want to have to follow them, or go out into the world after them. The world had seemed bright, and green, and full, while their house was small, dark, confined, and oppressive.  Melinda, in spite of this, had managed to get married and make a decent life for herself; she worked at a restaurant nights, and still managed to get her kids off to school mornings. She even had enough friends that she could find one to watch her youngest child while she came for this part of the trial.

Her brother Marcus had not been so lucky. Marcus was about the same size as Melinda, and strangers would point out how much they looked alike. Marcus, though, had clearly made some bad choices. His friend Joey had got him involved in a robbery of a convenience store, which he had told her about later, and yes, Marcus said, somebody had gotten hurt in the process. As it turned out, a young man had been shot, and later died, and it was a good guess that it was either his sister, or his wife and family, over there on the other side of the courtroom. The trial, she knew, was to spell out how it happened, to what degree Marcus was responsible, and what the punishment was, but Melinda could barely listen to that part. When Joey had come out to testify, she had planned to stare him down, because, the best she could figure, he had turned state’s evidence, and was helping the prosecution put Marcus away. How could a guy betray his best friend like that? To her, it was Joey’s fault; he had talked Marcus into involvement; he had made the arrangements. Marcus alone wouldn’t have done something like that.

 When Joey came out to testify, though, she could see how a guy like him could turn state’s evidence. He looked like death, hopeless, with a choice of telling his story the way they wanted, or nothing. She looked hard at him, trying to catch his eye, but she realized that staring him down would do no good at all. He knew what he was doing to his best friend, and he had done it anyway. He clearly didn’t feel like he had much in the way of choice.

Over on the other side of the courtroom, the girl continued to try to control the boy, usually unsuccessful. The boy looked at everything and continued to try to reach anything that held the slightest interest. He looked at Melinda occasionally, but wasn’t generally interested. The girl perfected the art of yelling at him while still whispering. The mother, or the woman who appeared to be mother, paid close attention to the trial.

Melinda, touching her scar again, suddenly had a memory of what had happened in their small house, one day when, as usual, she was with only her brother and her grandfather. When the grandfather said that they were going somewhere, anywhere, whoever called out “I call shotgun!” first would get the front seat of the car; this was highly valued as the back smelled of rotten clothes and alcohol. The battles for shotgun were legendary, but eventually they decided that they couldn’t even call it until they got out the door; at that point, there would be vigorous battles to get out the front door first. But the front door had a jagged metal piece in it, and one time, Marcus and Melinda hit the threshold at the same moment, and her hip was cut by the jagged metal. The cut was deep and painful, but healed adequately and she didn’t need stitches. The scar was still there, though, and Melinda could still feel it, under her pants; she could still feel that pain, even today.  At the time, Marcus had gotten into a lot of trouble for it, as if he had injured her purposely, but he hadn’t. It was just because they had gotten there at the same time, and were both using all their force to get through the doorway.

The fan in the courthouse was going around very slowly, too slowly to change the air, or keep her from feeling completely stifled and frustrated. The tragedy of Marcus’ situation was that he had already started to clean up, and get his life back on track, when they came after him for what had happened at the convenience store. He was couple of years into having a job, and was trying to get back on an honest path, but the same couldn’t be said for Joey. And when Joey went down, they really wanted to get to the bottom of this convenience store thing, so they laid into him. She felt the weight of the system, the inevitability of Marcus’ doom. She looked at Marcus again, his head down, realizing that Joey’s testimony would put him away for years.

The testimony about the gun, late in the afternoon, dragged on for hours, it seemed. The prosecution asked incisive questions that were intended to pin the blame squarely on Marcus, and did, although it could have been any gun, could have come from anywhere. Did it matter? It was late in the day, and Melinda couldn’t bear it anymore. She squirmed in her seat. Somewhere deep in her memory she could hear her grandfather admitting that his stern approach hadn’t worked too well with their father, who had killed himself and their mother in a car crash, but it was all he knew, and he could only do what he knew.

The situation with the little boy had reached a climax, and the mother was now involved, telling him what he could and couldn’t do, and how he was to behave. But something she said to him made his eyes open wide, and turn to stare at Melinda. Later she guessed that she had simply told him that Melinda was Marcus’ sister. The boy stared now at Melinda, as if she were totally responsible for everything that had happened. It was a cruel, hard stare, and it melted Melinda; she couldn’t bear it anymore.

 She took a last look at Marcus, nodded at him as she got up to leave, and walked out of the courtroom, never to come back. It was almost as if she was walking away from her entire early life, the memory, the pain, the confinement, the whole thing. She needed some fresh air.

5-2-2015