To balance my efforts in writing non-fiction on Tuesdays, I'll be exercising (exorcising?) the fictional side of my writing with Fiction Fridays. Each will be a short story, vignette or snippet.
Enjoy!
The first words I could get out of my mouth had nothing to do with anything. He tells me now that I spoke very clearly, articulating each syllable with comedic, exaggerated mouth movements, pushing my lips forward as I formed each “o” or “ou” sound. He says now that he laughed out loud when he heard me speak, though he immediately felt guilty, because I was clearly very serious about my message. He even feels guilty about telling me all of this, though I enjoy hearing the story and ask over and over again for him to tell it. Usually, he gives me a kind of gentle scoff, then he averts his eyes, then he shakes his head. But because of my persistent begging, and because he loves me so much, and because, of course, he’s so glad to be able to see me, touch me, actually converse with me, he usually relents. Okay, he always relents. I’d like to take the humble approach and tell you that I’m not proud of the way I strong-arm him, but I’d be lying. I’m actually quite proud of that. Very pleased.
And that matters. Doesn’t everything? The time you set on your alarm clock. The amount of gas you put in your car. The kind of shoes you put on in the morning. It all matters. Some might say that even the gentle whisper of a butterfly’s wings or the innocuous flutter of a woman’s eyelashes can change the world. I might not have believed that before.
It’s funny, now that I think of it, how everything divides so neatly into “before” and “after.” Before, I wouldn’t have been the kind to strong-arm him. Before, I wouldn’t have believed that my choices, anyone’s choices, were all that important. Not on a global scale, anyway. Maybe not even on a regional scale. I wouldn’t say that I vehemently disbelieved it. I mean, I still voted, after all, so I must have believed that somehow my actions could make a difference. But I don’t think I put much mind to the little things.
And then, in my second life (Ben likes to refer to it as my second life because he says I’m a cat. I think it comforts him that I have seven more lives to go), I can’t stop thinking about how everything matters. There’s a penny on the ground. What will happen today if I pick it up? How will the course of the world be altered? What if I don’t pick it up? How will stopping for just that second--maybe even a millisecond--affect me and those around me?
And what happens, if, say, for example, a person comes through your line at the grocery store, and they neatly line up all of their purchases on the conveyor, and you greet them cordially, just like the manager wants you to do, and you mindlessly ring up every item, and you total up the order, and they dig through their purse for a checkbook before looking up at you and asking, very plainly, “Do you have a pen I could use?” Because, if you’re anything like me, you’d search the counter in vain for a pen before reaching into your hoodie pocket and pulling out your very own favorite pen, handing it over with total trust and assurance that they’re just going to use said pen, not stick it in their purse and walk away. If you’re anything like me, you probably wouldn’t even notice because the day is so monotonous and mundane that you’d forget to ask for the pen back, and you wouldn’t even think about it until it’s much too late.
How can it be too late to realize your pen has been heisted? You wouldn’t ask that if you’d lived my life, my other life, my first life. You’d know full well how a simple ball-point pen could change things. Everything.
For me, I realized that my favorite pen was gone when I reached into the pocket later that day, right after I’d made a fool of myself at the gas station, peering around the corner of the pump to check out the guy with the ’67 Volvo. Have you ever had your embarrassing mistake broadcast by a gas station attendant over the speaker system? “Attention pump #10. Your gas tank is overflowing.” And, sure enough, it was. The guy in the Volvo drove away, and I was left with a red face and a puddle of gas. The guy in the Rabbit stayed. Why didn’t I mention him? Because I didn’t notice him. But he noticed me, and there he stood, beside his rodent of a car, pumping his gas confidently and grinning, first at me, and then, after I shot him a look of indignation, at his shoes. And that would have been the end of it, except that I noticed the bumper sticker on the his car, the one that said, “Real Men Eat Maple Syrup”, and I knew that I just had to have one. Since he’d acknowledged my pathetic, gas-spilling presence anyway, I felt we’d already bridged that “I don’t know you” gap, so I asked.
“Where’d you get the bumper sticker?”
“Excuse me?”
“The bumper sticker. The one that says, ‘Real Men Eat Maple Syrup.’ Would you mind telling me where you got it?”
What I heard was, “Oh. Sure. I found it on blahblahblahsyrup.com.”
And I knew I’d never remember, so I reached in my pocket for the pen. You remember the one. The one I didn’t know I didn’t have. And, you guessed it, it wasn’t there.
“Can you, uh, can you write that down?”
“Sure. Do you have a pen?”
“In fact, I don’t.”
I’m not sure what it was that did it. Was it the way he said, “Sure?” Was it the way he leaned against his car waiting for the pump to stop? Or was it the bumper sticker itself that caused me to finally notice him? Not sure. But suddenly it was imperative that I get that website address on paper. With a quick, “Hold on,” and a quicker step, I darted for the gas station.
I didn’t see this next part, but I’ve been told how it went. Me, striding forward with single-minded purpose. Car, barreling through with absent-minded carelessness. At the crossroads, large metal motorized object meets small, human, female pedestrian. Not a good combination.
I don’t remember this next part, but I’ve been told how it went. After a rush to the emergency room and a long period of me not talking, moving or responding in any way, I fluttered my eyelashes, stared into the face of a man who somehow reminded me of buttermilk pancakes, and spoke, very clearly and with strong conviction.
“Indonesia has experienced a mighty transformation.”
That’s when Ben decided that he was in love.
As for me, I had to wait until the concussion wore off.
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