Category: fiction

“A warm mid-summer night in the Emerald City and we’re off to see the wizard,” Raul said.

“I’ve never understood why Seattle got that nickname and not Portland,” Terrence said. “Or which one was the Rose City first: Portland or Pasadena.”

“City nicknames are clearly unregulated,” Raul agreed.

The two men were approaching a square, cinder block building in Seattle, within view of the Space Needle, under sodium amber streetlights. The building, or at least the wall facing the sidewalk on which they stood, was painted with a large green crocodile but otherwise doorless and windowless.

Milling, listless people roamed only generally in the direction of around the far corner. Some of the crowd were smoking, some were holding a drink, some were talking to each other, a few doing all those. It wasn’t a tight-knit crowd Raul and Terrence approached. They were bored, apathetic, cool. They didn’t shout or speak forcefully, their hand gestures were lazy and slow. And they were mostly young, though not all.

Raul, on the other hand, was energetic and smiling, moving quickly enough that his friend had to push to keep up. “Is this the right night? I can’t believe these folks are here to see the same band we are,” he said.

“It’s probably a bigger deal for you because we drove 4 hours to get here,” Terrence said. “And this is the last night they’re playing, in, like, ever.”

“Don’t remind me! I’m just glad I get to see them one last time before they end it all.”

Terrence laughed. “They’re not committing suicide. When did you see them last?”

“Can’t believe you’d ask me that,” Raul said.

“…Oh. Was it…?”

“With… yeah.”

They’d arrived near the door, where a nebulous line of people hovered, some facing the doorman, others talking amongst themselves. Raul craned his neck then looked at his friend, helplessly.

“Excuse me, is this the line to get in?” Terrence asked some random woman.

She blew smoke from one side of her mouth. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Do you know if the main act has gone on yet?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. There was music before.”

Raul rolled his eyes.

The men handed their tickets, printed at home a week ago, to the bouncer, who scanned it and waved them inside. Raul rushed past into a hallway that sharply bent right, right past a man sitting on a tall barstool next to a podium, holding out a rubber stamp, shouting. Terrence, right behind him, tried to get his friend’s attention in the noisy venue interior, but the pre-show music drowned him out.

The stage was back in the corner to their left, the bar against the far wall to their right. The whole room was maybe 40 or 50 feet square, bathed in dim red light. There were two or three booths and tables along the closest wall, but other than that no tables at all; the floor in front of the stage was open and filled with more, milling, mumbling people, the crowd thickening in the direction of the bar.

Raul gasped. His body tensed. The ambient noise seemed to fade away.

20 feet away, among the throng near the bar, but facing half towards the stage: red hair, a few inches shorter than him, the woman had a distinct profile, hooded sultry eyes, a specific demeanor, a tense but expectant attitude.

“They need to stamp your hand!” Terrence bellowed directly into Raul’s ear, breaking his trance.

“What the fuck?”

“Don’t get us kicked out!” Terrence grabbed the other man’s shoulders and pointed him back towards the man on the stool.

“Fine, fine, OK.”

It was Terrence’s turn to scan the crowd, although his attention was on the farthest corner and the sound equipment, and the stage. When Raul returned to him, he said, “This seems like a bad room for acoustics.”

People were on the stage, moving things into position. The crowd noise muted slightly, an anticipation suddenly taking hold. “What do you want to drink?”

“Terrence. I saw someone, just now. I…”

“Drink, motherfucker. Do you want one?” Terrence pointed towards the bar. “I’m buying.”

“Beer me. I’ll be there, closer to the stage.”

Raul moved through the crowd, ill at ease and shaken. He tried not to look at every face, every woman’s face, he passed by.

The band they’d all been waiting to see bounced up onto the stage. Raul was surprised at how tall the lead singer was, how curly his hair was for a white guy, how confident he looked. The rest of the band seemed composed and controlled, practiced, smooth.

“Looks like we got here just in time! Anymore traffic and we’d have missed the opening song!” Terrence once again made his friend jump by shouting into Raul’s ear. Handed him a bottle. “Sorry, that’s all they had. Cheers! We made it!”

“Did we?” But Raul’s voice didn’t carry farther than his own head, as the lead singer suddenly shouted greetings and thanks over the speakers, and the crowd, all at once, was energized in unison. The band laid into the frenetic opening riffs of a deep cut from their second album and the people bounced and shimmied in time.

The first several songs were hard and fast, the lyrics were clever and convoluted, the tone ironic and sincere at the same time. The band were on their A game, and they controlled the crowd with panache. The energy in the room filled the fans up with the power of song.

Alone in the crowd, Raul kept looking around, half present, half wondering. Was she here? Did he imagine her? They’d been on and off again for so long, and had been out of touch for months now, after the final breakup, the one that left the deepest scars.

As the band moved from song to song, they reached a point where they wanted to slow things down. They pulled out a song a bit more contemplative, less driving and more brooding, and as before, the crowd reacted, swaying instead of bouncing or dancing, their upturned faces now lit by the brighter white light picking out the tall, curly haired lead singer, who crooned into the microphone.

And in the light spilling off the band, casting a silver one-sided glow on those watching, near the stage, Raul saw her, again.

She was facing the stage, arms wrapped around her as if in a hug, but somehow seeming separate from the crowd, as Raul felt. She was swaying. She was in quarter profile, oddly, instead of facing directly toward the band, considering she was almost directly in line from Raul to the lead singer.

She had a soft smile on her face, a dream-like cast to her eyes.

Raul stepped forward.

The crowd suddenly resisted his advance, closing like a curtain between her and him.

And just like that, the song was over.

“Hang tight, boys and girls! Just give us a minute to get a drink. We shall return for another set!” The singer shouted, drenched in effort. The spot light shut off; the room went dim red again, then suddenly the house lights went up. The spell broken, the crowd became restless again.

“Wow, that was incredible! Such a great set!” Terrence was laughing, powered up by the music. “You OK?”

“Seeing them was our first date,” Raul said.

“Dude, we’ve been friends forever but I’m not putting out tonight,” Terrence laughed.

“No. No! I mean…” He scanned the crowd. Had he imagined her? “Nevermind.” He clinked his bottle with his friends’, chugged the remaining drink. “Let’s get another beer.”

It was 10 blocks from his girlfriend’s house to the bus stop, and he didn’t want her to have to walk all that way, at night, after he’d gotten on the bus to his own neighborhood, so he and she walked downstairs, quietly, and he put on his coat, and said goodnight.

But of course he didn’t want to go, and so he lingered, and they kissed and whispered at the door, hoping that her mom didn’t hear, or, if she did, that she didn’t care enough to wake up and interrupt or embarrass them. And so the minutes passed; his easy, plenty-of-time walk quickly became a more difficult, walking-fast-I-should-be-OK walk, and she had enough presence of mind to push him out the door before it turned into a must-run-the-entire-way run, or, even worse, a have-to-walk-all-the-way-home walk.

Her house was one side of a duplex, set oddly angled on a patch of grass at the end of the road; beyond it was only a railroad track, and then a yachting club, and finally the river. But he was going the other direction, past houses both small and large, affordable and overpriced, under low hanging tree branches and past giant hedgerows.

There was a black and gray cat he nearly always saw when he walked to and from the bus stop to her house, and tonight was no exception. The cat gave him an almost bored look, and got up off his haunches to slowly walk towards him, but he whispered, “I’m in a hurry tonight, cat, some other time,” and he kept up his fast pace.

He wasn’t in the best of shape, the boy, and he started to feel a cramp in his calves, but he kept going. Once per block, he’d pull out his phone and pull up the bus app to see how much time he had. He didn’t have much but he should make it.

Four blocks from her, he nearly tripped on a piece of sidewalk that had been uprooted by a growing tree, hidden in the dark under that same tree’s canopy. His eyes hadn’t had time to adapt. He tumbled. When he got up, his palm had a dark sticky smear on it, black in the dim night, and it stung. He wiped it on his jeans and kept going.

In the very next block, his phone chirped, and it was loud. Carefully pulling it out with his injured hand, he read

luv U – A

He chuckled because she didn’t have to sign it. But she did, and he adored that. He tapped out

Love you, too. Not there yet. – B

and felt a smugness at his software-assisted punctuation and capitalization.

7 blocks and he had to cross a busier street, but it was late, and there were no cars, and he ran. He began to scan ahead the remaining blocks to watch for the bus driving by, or hear the distinctive roar and squeak of the coach. Sometimes the bus would be early, and the driver would go into the convenience store next to the stop. The shop let the drivers use their bathroom, and he’d seen a driver once who had picked up some beer, in a plain brown paper bag, and tucked it behind her seat.

He hoped the bus was early tonight.

He ran flat out the last two blocks, his sneakers slapping against the concrete, his arms jangly and awkwardly pumping, his coat flying behind him. But when he got to the stop and looked down the street, he couldn’t see the bus. He looked the other direction, in case he’d missed it and it had gone past, but it wasn’t there, either.

A car drove past on the other side of the street, its tires hissing on the damp asphalt.

The light around him went suddenly dark; the convenience store had gone dark, startling him.

This stop had no seat or bench. He sat on the curb.

His phone chirped again.

On bus? – A

He tapped back,

No. I’m at the stop. No bus. Hope I di

and he was startled again by the sudden halogen glow and roar of the giant coach rumbling past. He stood up, waving his phone’s screen in the air, his only light, and yelled. Out of breath, hand still stinging, he ran after the bus, making as much noise as a quiet chubby boy can make when running, a hoarse cry for help.

Red brake lights. The rattle of the bus stopping. The hydraulic hiss of the door opening.

He stepped up, unable to speak, out of oxygen, fumbling for his fare.

“Didn’t see you in the dark. With your dark clothes. Almost didn’t stop,” she said, the driver who’d bought the beer before, an older blonde woman with a stoic smile but kind eyes.

“Thank you.”

She waved off his attempt to pay. “Call us even.”

He took a seat right by the door, and rode home.

Inspired by reality but this is entirely fictional, as far as I can tell. Another short one, I hope.

He opened the video store for the last time on a Thursday afternoon.

Not a Friday, not a Sunday, not a Monday. It was because he had announced that the store would be closing at the end of the month, because that’s how the bills came in, and the last day of the month was a Thursday.

In retrospect it seemed off-kilter to him, but once he’d announced it, and posted the giant “GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE” and notified the landlord and talked to the phone company and the internet company and the electric company, it seemed like such work to change it to a Friday or stay open through that weekend that he decided not to.

He had a wife at home, taking care of their child, and he had spent the final month feeling torn in two. He’d had the video store since he was a bachelor, and it felt like his first love. The shelves packed with hand-selected titles, DVDs of movies that were hard to find elsewhere, jammed in with a lot of more common stuff. Most customers had wanted the new releases, but every once in a while, he’d get a customer looking for something obscure, and he had taken a lot of pride in being able to show that he got it.

But then, running the store after the first year, when he’d finally built up a reputation and a regular clientele, his new confidence had attracted the woman who was now his wife, and their courtship had been the catalyst to him finally hiring a second employee, and then another one when they’d wanted to plan and carry off a nice wedding.

His personal life had blended with his professional life in the sweetest way possible.

But as time had gone on, his sales had dropped. Customers were avoiding mentioning the N word around him. Netflix. Netflix had first threatened him by offering simple home delivery of DVDs, from a much larger selection, and then had dipped into streaming over the internet. Customers didn’t have to leave home for those obscure titles. He’d gotten some diehards to stay around. But he couldn’t keep the lights on on a handful of customers once or twice a month.

So it had come to this. The final month, and the final day, and now the final hours. He’d seen a few customers come in to return their last, guilty rentals. Some had even been able to look him in the eye, stay and chat. He tried to be positive and welcoming. He still lived in the neighborhood, he still saw his customers when he went to the grocery store or got coffee or went out to dinner. Even after he closed this store he wanted to be friends, or at least friendly, with these folk.

With two hours left until his closing time, the store as empty as it had been on his first night, he put in a movie to pass the time: The Empire Strikes Back. It was the Special Edition, with windows at Cloud City, but it was still a great film, the one George Lucas had altered the least of the original trilogy. It distracted him from the empty aisles, but as the ending wound to its conclusion, he realized too late that it was not a conclusion at all, but a cliffhanger, and that made him sad.

When midnight rolled around, he had already counted up the till and gotten his final deposit ready. $6.00 total income. Three rentals. At least it wasn’t the slowest night this week.

He tucked the cash bag under his arm, made sure he shut down the computer, and turned out the lights. In the dark, he walked to the front door, and moved the basket so that it would be under the return slot when he closed the door.

Then he walked home. It was a warm, late summer night. He almost wished it was raining.

The next morning the baby woke him up. He offered to check the diaper and feed her. He let his wife keep sleeping.

I’ve kept a journal off and on for as long as I can remember. A diary, a therapist, a place to sort my thoughts in writing, an idea holder. I’ve saved some of them, and lost some of them; in my younger years I had some troubles keeping jobs, which led to having trouble paying bills, which led to troubles with landlords and roommates. I moved a few times, sometimes in the middle of the night, and having to take only what I could carry on me.

I often wonder if those journals ever got read. Did it provide any insight into me and why I acted that way? Or was it unceremoniously dumped in the trash, since it wasn’t able to be sold to pay the debt I’d skipped out on? Questions I ask myself. Questions I can’t really answer since the state of my mind at the time has been lost along with that journal. It all seemed like my best option, in the moment.

I’m better now. I’ve kept a stable job for a few years. Made some friends, reconnected with old friends. Patched things up when I could, avoided those I couldn’t face or satisfy. I’ve got a nice little place, in a great neighborhood, the bills are paid and I even have a little nest egg. And I still keep a journal, for all the same reasons. As I sit here and sip my whiskey rocks in the darkening living room of my nice little place, I can see my journal: a maroon cloth-bound book, undecorated, a bit more than an inch thick, worn on the corners, the spine a little broken for having had a pen tucked inside it for the couple of years I’ve owned it. A humble mass-produced object that’s nevertheless, through long use and wear and tear, been made undeniably mine.

And sitting next to it is a journal that once was identical to the other, but is now slightly different, and yet still mine in some subtle way I can’t put my finger on. I stare at it, afraid to touch it again, feeling a knot in my stomach at how similar and not it is from the one I’d just pulled from my shelves.

At work today I had received a text from Aileen, breaking the 7 or 8 month silence since we’d broken up. She hoped I was doing well and had something of mine she would like to return. I was cautious but curious, and when I replied positively I asked what it was. She ignored that and said she would meet me after work for a drink. For her, that meant coffee, which had been a point of tension between us, but since I didn’t want to fight, again, I suggested a coffee shop near her work. She surprised me again by saying that place was closed and counter-offered Heaven, a place we had frequented when we were together, and before we were together. I didn’t want to read between the lines any more than I already was, so I agreed.

Heaven, whose name was now ironic to me. I couldn’t believe I was here again. Two small wrought-iron tables on the sidewalk outside reminded me of nothing so much as the fight we’d had that had become the start of our breakup. Stepping in I caught the aroma of roasted coffee beans, the sound of chatter, 80s music, and the espresso steamer, and the sight of dark wood paneling, white oak tables and chairs, the stairway up to a small balcony on which couches Aileen and I had talked and dreamed and bonded. As below, so above.

She was seated, back to the wall, facing the door, with a large white mug holding an intricate piece of ephemeral steamed milk art. She warmed her hands, and leaned forward, and her hair, which was once pale blonde, had now been expertly dyed a warm auburn.

“Aren’t you going to get a drink?” she asked as I sat. Her face was serene, even relaxed, although one of her legs was shaking under the table just out of sight.

“I don’t really feel like it. Why here, Aileen? No bad memories?” I slung my bag off my shoulders and set it down.

“Why would I? We spent so much time here. The happy memories outweigh any bad.”

“OK. How are you? Is it OK if I tell you I like your new hair? I don’t know the rules. I want to ask if you’re happy, if you’re seeing someone, but I don’t want to be that guy.” I leaned forward. “I really do want you to be happy now.”

“That’s sweet. And thank you. You look… like you’re about to jump out of your skin. Is this so strange? But I don’t think that’s the conversation we should have. Not yet.” She reached down to one side and from the black backpack she used as a purse, pulled out the maroon journal.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Aileen! Have you had that this whole time?” My cheeks, instantly hot; my heart, immediately in high gear. I wanted to tear it out of her hands but I felt frozen in fear and anger.

“You recognize it, but of course you do. Don’t be like that, don’t be angry. I found it last week. It’s not like I’ve been keeping it since we broke up. I mean I guess I have but I didn’t know it. We were, I was moving the bedroom around and when, it was under the bed, I guess, mixed in with the storage and boxes. I didn’t know what it was, but when we flipped through it, I could see that it was yours, and I didn’t read any further. I knew it was private, and I respected you enough to keep that private.”

“I’m sorry for shouting. I assumed, and I should know better. Even when I would write in it, I know how curious you were to know what I was writing.”

“I resented it. It felt like you were keeping secrets. At the time. I know better now. Too late, too late.” And yet she still held on to it, with two hands, the coffee ignored. She continued, “But… before I could call you, before I could bring myself to even text you. I was, still, curious. I’m sure you understand.”

“Not fucking likely, Ai. Why don’t you give it to me so I can go? This is a strange kind of torture to inflict on an old boyfriend.”

She took a deep breath and her hazel eyes nearly glowed in the dark shop. “I need to show you something. I think I was meant to find this for you. We weren’t together that long but long enough for me to recognize the years this covers. Listen.” She cracked the book open toward the beginning. Paging through and pointing at my handwritten dates and words, she explained. “This is that time you were in a car accident, and totaled your friends’ car.” Flip. “This is when you and I first met. You said the sweetest things in here, though you were kind of a jerk to me in person. You were nervous, I guess?” Flip. “Here must be where you were struggling with your new boss.” Flip, flip. “These are just dreams you had.” Flip, flip.

She looked up at me, held my gaze. “And here’s where you broke up with me. December 16, last year.” She spun the book flat on the table so it faced me, and I could see for myself. My handwriting, undeniably. But my handwriting was telling a story that didn’t happen. That was months earlier. Aileen and I had had some fights around Christmas but we’d patched things up, had stayed together, moved in together in late January.

“It’s you, it’s your words. Keep reading, you need to see what happens after it gets left in my bedroom.”

I flipped forward a page or two but I was dizzy and could hardly see straight or move my fingers well. The next couple of entries were about being heartbroken but resigned. Then a gap of several weeks, and a new entry mentioning a new job and seeing a therapist. The sounds of the coffee shop were overshadowed by rushing in my ears.

“This is fuckery of the most sadistic kind, Ai. I can’t even begin to understand how you pulled this off.” I swept up the book, stood up, grabbed my bag and stormed for the door. But some part of my brain knew I was lying.

“Keep reading, Cal! It’s important! Keep reading! You’ll want to know!” She stood but did not follow me.

I made my way back home, stuffing the book in my bag. Once home, I poured a drink, and another, steeling myself to go look on the shelf for the journal I knew was still there. When the warmth of the whiskey had spread from my belly enough to help me breathe calmly, I dug the other journal out of my bag, and arranged the pair of them on the table in front of me.

I knew what was in the journal that had been resting on my shelf. But still I leafed through the pages to reassure myself. Yup, that was all as I remembered it.

But the new one – well, not new, it was apparently exactly the same age as the other – this one, it got to a certain point and then it diverged. And actually the drift started happening even before the breakup with Aileen. According to the me that wrote this, I missed a day of work that I had actually not; I’d seen a movie in the theater that I remembered catching on Netflix; my exercise routine was ever slightly different than I had documented for myself. Bit by bit, it added up over time.

Reading further than the breakup became almost physically impossible. As I approached that date in the journal, my arms grew heavy and my mind reeled. I had to force myself to continue. What happened next? I wanted to know. I wanted to forget all this.

I managed to skip ahead several pages. The me who wrote this book had become severely depressed. He’d fought with his co-workers. He’d begun using up all his sick time. He’d fallen apart. The therapy helped, a little. Friends had stepped up and tried to listen, but I, or he, or we? hadn’t listened. He wrote of being lost, of having gotten on the wrong track. His therapist had prescribed meds but we forgot to take them, and then rationalized it as for the better; we didn’t want to further cloud our mind.

I tried to trace back to when the feeling started and, re-reading the journal, I had realized it seemed to be centered on Aileen. But I knew that I couldn’t just show up like this. She’d think I was a madman. So I had texted her, and told her that I had found something of hers, that I wanted to give it back to her…

In my living room, the heat from the whiskey was instantly replaced by ice.

I read further. Not many pages left.

I offered to meet her at Heaven. She had agreed. Seeing her again, in that familiar shop, was indescribably, deliriously joyful. We recognized a connection, started making lunch dates, and dinner dates, and before long, we were dating again. I documented all this in my journal, in this journal, and in the final entry, with blank pages yet to be written, dated just a few short weeks ago, I was writing that Ai and I had agreed to move in together, since I had been spending so much time there.

The final words, in my hand writing, on the last filled in page, were: “But there’s still something off. Something’s not right. I have one last thing to fix.”

There’s a knock on my door.