Tell me something, she said. Will you miss me when I’m gone?
He didn’t want to say yes, not aloud, not quite yet. He wanted to see if she noticed the way his fingers trembled just a bit. He wanted to tell her he loved her, but he couldn’t say that yet, either.
I will miss this, he said. I will miss us.
He began counting, one heartbeat at a time, as she walked away. He would carry the numbers with him like memories until she returned.
She had approached the day as if it were a track to barrel down, her path glinting bright in the morning sun. But trains still run on wheels, and when the news arrived, it loosened the pins that held hers fast. She felt them skitter away to the sides, her plans tipping one way or the other, left scattered alongside where they should have been. It would take days to get out of this mess, she realized, days of piecing metal back together, lifting and pushing and tugging until everything returned the way it had been when she first picked up speed.
But this is not a deus ex machina world. When rabbits emerge from hats, it probably means we should have been checking sleeves the whole time.
What time is it? he asked.
11:11, I replied. Make a wish.
I wish people would stop assigning superstitious associations with things just because we have a Base-10 numerical system, he replied.
A string of words, winding from lip to ear, is not string at all, nor train (of thought), nor line (of conversation). It is sound waves, moving through the medium that, on this night, is denser than most. The waves oscillate between us, but arrive, somehow, at an unexpected angle.
We are smart people, he says. We can figure this out. And it is true. We already hold tuning forks, pitch pipes, and metronomes. We have arrived at this conversation holding in our hearts and heads all we need to know about the fluid dynamics of sound.
They swore snow was coming. They believed in visions of the crystals dusting all the sidewalks, piling in the grass. The ones who had never seen snow, most particularly, dreamed of angels and balls.
But there was no frosting to be had, no plummet in temperatures that seemed any different than any other day.
They looked at their emergency supplies, their stockpiled food, their new parkas. They considered trips to the mountains. They wondered where they’d put their receipts. Finally, they went back to waiting for the Big One instead.
The bartender spoke loudly to the woman sitting at the bar. “We have literary readings here, and I have the biggest problem with those,” he said. “The people who read? They only come in here and read stories about themselves. It’s like, ‘Listen to me. This is why I’m special.’ Nobody’s special.”
100 Proof 