“I can’t wait to see who you end up with,” she said, and I laughed, because it was the only noise that made sense in that moment.
I laughed, because I walk every day in hope, but fear trails behind me, threatening to overtake me at any moment. Maybe, it whispers, you’ll only end up with you.
She had not expected time to move this way, first side to side, then backward. One moment they were dancing, the next, on a ferry. Then they sat somewhere out under the stars.
He took her hand and told her everything would be fine, that there was nothing to worry about, that he loved her madly.
It was the last word, madly, that made her the most nervous. It might have explained why she was so dizzy, why her stomach felt so upset, why she couldn’t quite convince herself of happiness.
That one? He draws pictures, using whatever they’ll give him to draw. Jesus overlooking the yard. A mother and child coming to visit. Five guys in the weight room.
They caught him once, putting signs in his drawings. Signs that no one else would recognize, unless they knew the neighborhood. Problem is, one of the counselors did know the neighborhood.
He can still draw, but now he has to show them before he shows any of us.
In the morning, she made tea, stirring in sugar quickly, the spoon scraping the bottom of the mug and making a soft tinkling sound, like far away wind chimes. The whole house was hushed, no water dripping from taps, no laundry tumbling down in the basement, no one else breathing or sighing or moving. The sipping noise she made as she drank reverberated. As the silent morning worse on, it became even more unbearable. Although she’d wanted them to go, she missed the noisemakers.
“Have you been there?” he asked. “To Alameda?”
The other man shook his head. “I’ve heard it exists, but I’ve never been there.”
She walked on pebbles, the flesh of her feet no real barrier between rock and bone. Excruciating at first, it became less so after a time, her feet adjusting to the uneven surface, her nerves so overloaded that eventually they just backed away from the surface, retreating to calmer places in her body.
“I’m an incorrigible optimist sometimes,” he said. “An incorrigible flirt other times.”
“The two are not entirely incompatible, you realize,” I said. “Flirting is, after all, essentially an expression of incorrigible optimism.”
100 Proof 