Somehow, I became an accessory in the retelling, my appearance so useless and peripheral I could not imagine why I had not been edited out. The story had no need of a traveling companion, and my presence there was all the more awkward for what was not written in.
Whiskey-clumsy
April 14, 2009The two with suitcases knocked the peppershaker off the table on their way out.
“I can’t drink whiskey,” said the man, reaching for her hand. “It makes me clumsy.”
They continued leaving together, too accident-prone to pretend they were apart.
419
April 10, 2009I am sorry if this has reached you in error. It is just that I have so many millions of dollars to share, and isn’t that worth your response? I miss my father, my uncle, my grandfather. He was president, prime minister, or god.
You are the only one who can help at this time. I’m only asking to borrow space in your account. For that, you can take a quarter of the money. It will change your life, as you will change mine.
If I have disturbed you, I apologize. I mean no offense.
Broken wall
April 8, 2009One day we snuck off to an upstairs landing and sat against a tiled wall that hadn’t been properly glued. It all happened almost listlessly: Your face tensing, your eyes rolling to look above my head. The hunch of my shoulders as the tiles tumbled, corners and ceramic bouncing off my head as they careened floorward.
“We need to excise those ghosts that haunt you,” a friend said recently.
I disagree. I think the ghosts were trying to protect me, knocking the wall down in an effort to get me out of there alive. Thank you, ghosts.
Extent
April 6, 2009In the afternoon, he realized the extent of her betrayal. It erased the good morning: Marsalis on the stereo; the frittata cooked just long enough to brown, but not burn; the scent of her shampoo lingering long after she’d left the shower.
As she stood by the door, her overnight bag slung on her shoulder, a rolling suitcase by her side, he asked her how she’d managed to fool him for so long.
“I don’t know that’s the word I would choose,” she said. “All I did was behave in a certain way. You’re the one who never noticed.”
Slippery day
April 2, 2009It was warm there, amidst the stones. The sun had soaked into us all, the water had lapped our feet, we had pressed palms and thrown heads back and laughed harder than ever before. It had been a slippery day, a day that managed to make it past us before we even knew it. It was night, all of a sudden. And then we were gone.
Requiem
March 30, 2009A young woman died, and he made a CD of requiems for the parents.
“I don’t know what it is to lose a child,” he said. “But there is music and that’s why it was written.”
He sang a few bars of the Britten War Requiem, conducting the wordless language of loss.
100 Proof 