This week, between hectic days at work, I wrote a short little flash-fiction. I had thoughts of sending it off into the wide world someplace and seeing if it would catch thirty dollars in some magazine, and then I realized ain't nobody got time fo' that before Thanksgiving, so instead I'm letting you read it. This was a fun exercise in an unusual (for me) POV. And if you're wondering, though the events are fictionalized, the tone and certain facts are definitely autobiographical. This is, in short, how it feels to walk downtown as Rachel Heffington. Ciao, ciao.
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Here’s
the problem with being idealistic:
You
always hope. Always. And when things don’t turn out your way, it’s almost
pitiful how faithfully you smile and shrug. “Maybe next time.”
And
your Experience says, “Yeah. Sure.”
And
your Idealism says, “Yeah, sure!”
So
this is why you find yourself (having locked your keys in your car by accident in
a downtown parking garage) instead of cursing, thinking, “Hey, an inconvenience
is just an adventure wrongly considered, right?” This is why you smile
expectantly at the next car that passes, hoping they will notice your
predicament.
They
don’t.
Maybe
next time.
You’ve
got your purse, though, and your outfit is a power-house itself and there is a
Place to Be, so let’s not allow imprisoned keys to set the afternoon counter-clockwise.
You shove off the side of your car and swing your purse higher up your
shoulder, headed toward the North stairs. The strap catches and dumps the
contents of your purse’s outer pocket into the center lane of the parking
garage. A BMW purrs up the ramp. It’s either dive for your Yves St. Laurent
lipstick or let him run it into a woebegone, cinnamon-colored smear on the second-level
ramp.
With
the skill of a gold-medalling gymnast, you dart into the path of the oncoming
Beemer, grab for the lipstick, and tumble to the other side. The driver blares
his horn and throws his hands up, voicing everyone’s disbelief:
“What
the heck, woman?”
Or
some curried variation of the phrase.
The horn-blast pierces back on itself as you
check: all limbs accounted for. You go, girl. High-heels intact and everything.
You smile and wave at the car’s taillights and reach the North stairs
unaccosted.
Take
the two flights down.
Exit
on the quiet side of the street.
There’s
a light mist in town. It isn’t exactly coming down thick enough to warrant the
umbrella you left in the (locked) car, but it’s going to settle in a fine mesh
on your hair, pulling it into damp, clinging tendrils. You had wanted to look
especially polished. Well, you lost that one.
Two
businessmen round the corner as you approach. You notice the vintage make of
the taller one’s briefcase, the slim cut of his suit, the way his pocket-square
matches his eyes. The broad set of his shoulders hunched against the
vaguely-chill damp; his good hair and supremely wonderful beard. But it’s the
compact, razor-burnt member of the pair who gives you a preoccupied smile. You
return the expression, knowing full well his heart wasn’t in it. Still, a smile
from a stranger is valuable, even though you might have been a mildly pleasant
stocks-report for all the meaning in it.
Hurry
now. Skitter around the corner, past your favorite restaurant, scents of anise,
cumin, coriander, Chinese five-spice, and teriyaki wrapping exotic hands around
your stomach. You flip the collar of your trench against the mist and hunger,
wishing again for a real, live Burberry and a festive meal with friends.
You
slowly pass your soul-mate store, tempting you with blank cards and paper for
perfectly wrapping a yet-to-be-purchased gift for a yet-to-be-discovered
Someone…dinner party invitations; placemats; card-cases; ink; cranberry-colored
tassels. What you would do with a tassel doesn’t matter. You want one. You’ll
find a use for it.
You
wait for a string of fancy sports cars to finish their intricate four-way
stop-sign dance and then hazard your chances getting across the intersection.
After all, you don’t want to end up a
woebegone, cinnamon-colored smear in the pavement. Plenty of people are
gathered around the fountains in the Town Square as you flit by. You know you
shouldn’t really stare at the couple having their date in the table at that
picture- window, but you can’t help a quick peek. Bad news: they look up at
you. The man laughs. His date narrows her eyes. Oh well. You cross again at the
haberdashery store with its emblem of the Golden Fleece. Yeah, you’d need the
corner market on the entire Golden Fleece trade
to afford anything in there, but someday. Someday.
Despite
that Place to Be, you pause to view the model in the show-window and your hand
automatically slides up this side of the glass to touch his cashmere sweater,
to fix his tie, to rest your palm on his chest and inhale the scent of his
cologne. Some shop-girl with civil eyes and devastating cheekbones steps into
the case and fixes the tie for you. So he, also, belongs to someone else.
They
all do.
Maybe next time.
You
duck against the mist that has somehow become a rain and press on through more
businessmen in tailored suits, more women thinner, chicer, more successful in
their careers than you, skirt a few
hopefuls dancing hip-hop to a beat straining from a rattled boom-box. A smile
for them all. They don’t notice. Not most of them. But that’s okay. Smiles are
cheap currency.
At
last you’ve arrived. The sign ahead shines bleary-eyed against the rain and you
hush into the simple, glass-fronted shop. Here, it is warm and dry. The others
inside blink up against the dampness you brought. Laughter swells inside as you
wring out your ruined hair and feel your heart pushing eagerly against your
breast-bone. Adventure. Adventure.
Adventure, it beats.
“You’re
late,” the others say in their several, silent ways.
You
laugh and whisper to no one, to everyone, “What’s new?”
“Meet
any dashing strangers this week?” a girl asks from the far side of her earl
grey latte. In the foam is drawn a plumy feather.
“Not
a one.”
She
sips her drink. Pewter daylight pings off her French manicure. “Pity.”
“Uh,
yeah.”
You
order a chai tea latte made with whole milk instead of water and wait as the
new barista draws the foam. Will he make a string of hearts or a leaf or the
latte-cat you’ve waited for your entire coffee-drinking life? He sloshes the
cup across the bar and you catch it, scalding-hot against your palms.
“Thanks.”
Then you see he didn’t know how to make the art, or didn’t bother to. Your foam
is looking spectacularly like, well, foam…with a careless brown blob in the
center. No leaf, no feather, no hearts. Definitely no cat.
Your
heart settles into its everyday promise:.
Maybe next time.
Carefully,
so as not the spoil the art-that-wasn’t, you carry your latte to the corner
booth. The booth that’s always empty every Thursday afternoon around four; the
time you come. In you slide, down you slip, and even though it’ll come off on
the cup’s rim, you swipe on some of the rescued lipstick. You never can tell
when you’ll meet with an adventure.
Suddenly,
the door jangles open and a swath of damp air matches itself against the back
of your neck. Confident steps stride to the counter. The little hairs on your
arms stand up tall. Something big just came through that door. You lift your
coffee and sip, rotating just enough to watch the newcomer without it appearing
to be your sole mission. Italian-looking shoes. Slim-fit, navy slacks. A
trench-coat, belt knotted behind. A trilby,
for lawd’s sake.
Adventure,
adventure, adventure.
He
orders black coffee, extra hot, takes one hand out of his pocket and pays for
it. As he waits for the coffee, he surveys the crowd in the shop, like he’s a
regular and they’re the newcomers, drumming the fingers of his right hand on
the polished cherry bar. Polished till it gleams almost as dark as his hair.
Bluffing, you think. You’ve never seen him
here on a Thursday at four.
As
if he heard that thought, his gaze roves to you. The eyes crinkle and a grin
–the best kind of grin—quirks at the corners of his mouth and finally cracks
wide open, for you. He gives a two-fingered salute and you contemplate the
consequence of trying to vanish into your latte.
“Black
coffee, extra hot, for Grady?” bawls the barista.
He
grins again, murmurs thanks, and sips his coffee. You decide it should be
illegal for anyone’s jaw to do what his jaw just did. And just at the point
when you’re beginning to wonder whether he’s a doctor or a lawyer (we can probably
rule out Indian chief), he slides into the booth across from you, plunks down
his coffee cup, and says:
“Mind
if I sit here? Everywhere else is taken.”
You
peer around the shop. Gosh, it’s true. You’re thankful for the decision to add
lipstick and deftly rub off the evidence from the edge of your for-here mug.
But before you have a chance to say anything even mildly intelligent, he takes
his other hand from his pocket and clasps both around the mug.
“Chilly
out there, isn’t it?” he remarks. Tiny drops of silver cling to his lapels, his
shoulders, even his finely-etched face.
You
nod, your heart a tiny, startled lump of chilliness itself.
“Didn’t
expect it to start pouring like that.” He taps the fingers of his left hand
against the mug, wedding ring clinking fatefully, as he stares out at the rain.
So
he, also, belongs to someone else.
They
all do.
And
just like that, your heart begins to chug again, pulling itself back on the
tracks, steaming along through life to the rail-song, Adventure, adventure, adventure. Somehow you make small-talk and he
finishes his coffee and you finish your latte and he leaves and nothing is
different than any other time in your young, long life except that maybe you’ll
put him in a book someplace.
For
a second, you thought it had happened.
You’re
a little ashamed of having thought it was happening. Wryly, you notice how
you’ve been knotting your hands in your lap, biting your bottom lip. You stop
all that. There’s always someday.
Probably
someday an adventure will come your way and the dashing stranger won’t be married and maybe you’ll buy a
coat and you’ll find a twenty in the outside pocket and perhaps Diane von
Furstenburg will start making dresses in a size fourteen and maybe, you know,
someone will give you an inheritance or you’ll go on a road-trip and end up by
mistake in a town called Accident. It happens, you know.
You
grab your purse, slide out of the booth, and return the lipstick-stained mug to
the dish-rack. You wave goodbye to the girl with the foamy feather and step
back into the rain, smiling again at the people who don’t notice.
Maybe
next time.
And
at any rate, there’s still the matter of what to do about your keys.
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