“You don’t really mean that.” Abby said as she sipped the red wine from the bottle by the sink, her hip leaning against the counter.
“I know I don’t. I just wanted to see your reaction.” Riley glanced up from the photographs on the polished wood table. “Just as I suspected.”
Her eyes flashed him a glare. “What do you mean by that?”
“You built a wall again, Abby. You shut me out. You don’t want to share your emotions because you feel the irrational need to put up a strong front, to be strong for me.”
“Who gave you a degree in psychology, Dr. Phil?” She drained the remnants of the wine from the bottle and set it on the tile counter with a bang. “I’m going to bed.”
Riley rose from the kitchen table and crossed the room to catch Abby by the waist. He gently touched her cheek to make her look at him.
“You should talk to me about this. You are not the only person in this house who is upset.”
“I know that, Riley. I just have to deal with this by myself first.”
He stepped away from her. “You are doing it again.”
“Doing what?” She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation.
Riley moved back to the table and picked up a picture. His voice was calm and slow when he spoke: “Just talk to me, Abby. Like we used to talk. We could tell each other everything about everything. Now, you never say anything.” His hands shook as he handed her the picture.
Abby’s breath caught in her throat. “I’m angry,” she murmured. “I know it wasn’t my fault and that I couldn’t have controlled it. I know that. But I’m angry that it had to happen to us. What did we do to deserve this?” A silver tear rolled down her cheek and hung on her chin for a moment before dripping onto the front of her black dress.
Riley wrapped his arms around her. “I know, baby. I know.”
Abby began to weep, tears and sobs shaking out of her like wind rattling through a broken window. Her tears soaked the front of Riley’s dress shirt, staining black mascara on the white fabric. Neither one of them cared.
Riley wept too, drenching Abby’s dark curls. They both wept for what they had lost and what they had never known.
When Abby couldn’t cry anymore, she leaned against her husband, breathing him in. She let the rage she felt eat into her, devouring her reason. She glanced at the photographs that she had dropped on the floor. Anger sparked inside her, fueled by the incessant flow of alcohol that she had been drinking for the past week. Her fingers balled up the hem of her black dress and she stepped away from Riley. She watched him like a scared cat watches someone who only wants to pet it, with wary eyes.
She made a break for the stairs, running up them as quickly as she could, her bare feet pounding against the hard wood. Time began to slow down as she sprinted into the unfinished room on the second floor. Abby couldn’t contain herself: she snatched up different objects from around the room then ran down the hall to the bathroom, throwing things in the trash careless of what the objects were.
“Abby! Abby, stop!” Riley clutched her wrists, making her stop her frantic mission. Dark curls had come unpinned in her rush and her eyes were wild.
“I can’t look at that room anymore! I can’t! We have to get rid of everything. Everything!” She fought against Riley, desperately wanting to set fire to the green room just down the hall from where they stood.
“I understand that, Abby.”
Abby couldn’t stand anymore. Her knees buckled under her and she sank to the plush gray carpet, barely aware of Riley’s arms around her. She touched her stomach, cramped with her emotions and the bottle of wine she had consumed.
“He’s gone, Riley. We had to bury our child today. He had a name. Ethan. I carried him for six months and now…he’s gone.” Pain shone in Abby’s eyes but her voice was devoid of any kind of emotion. She shattered Riley’s heart when she gazed up at him.
“I know, baby. We are going to get through this though. I promise. You just have to trust me. Do you trust me enough to get through this? Or are you going to completely break down on me?”
Abby couldn’t breathe. He was asking too much of her right then. She had watched her child’s body be lowered into a dark hole in the ground. How could he ask her to move on, to go with her life as though Ethan hadn’t existed?
Riley saw the look of disbelief on her face. He had always had an uncanny ability to read her emotions when they played across her face. “I’m not asking you to forget Ethan. I am asking you to heal from his death, Abby. Heal with me. I love you and I need you here. All here. Heal with me?”
She swallowed the lump of pain in her throat. She really looked at Riley’s face, saw her own anguish reflected in his strong features. He was being strong for her right now. They both had to learn to lean on each other now. Ethan wouldn’t become just a memory. He had affected their lives forever in the six months they had known he existed. Nothing and no one could take that from them.
Riley lifted her up and together they walked down the hall to the green room.
Abby touched the dark wood of the crib in the corner while Riley caressed the soft green blanket lying inside it.
He kissed her cheek and her fingers twined with his.
They would heal together.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Secure...
So. I know that nobody reads this, and that is perfectly fine, I just feel the need to type.
I have this friend. I used to believe that she was perfect and I wanted to become like her. Now that I really stop and think and watch the way she lives her life, I am very very happy that I am not like her. She is ungrateful, unappreciative of the amazing things in her life, spoiled, materialistic, what most would call a skank. She is insecure.
I used to believe that this girl had everything all together, but really, she doesn't. She's a mess and she can't see it. Will I point this fact out to her? No. Why? Because I have tried in the past and it has led to nowhere. She fills some kind of void in her life with men. Men and possesions. When things don't work in a relationship, which they inevitably don't, she runs into the arms of the next man waiting in the wings. Does she truly love these guys? I can't say for sure. She gets with them and then dumps them like yesterday's newspapers. Is she happy? Not by a long shot. I am more secure than she is. I can stand on my own two feet without a line of men supporting me. I've had to. I am more secure in myself, in my own attributes than she is in hers, which is astounding because she fits the description of pretty, whereas I do not.
I feel secure right now when I look at my life next to hers. Odd.
I have this friend. I used to believe that she was perfect and I wanted to become like her. Now that I really stop and think and watch the way she lives her life, I am very very happy that I am not like her. She is ungrateful, unappreciative of the amazing things in her life, spoiled, materialistic, what most would call a skank. She is insecure.
I used to believe that this girl had everything all together, but really, she doesn't. She's a mess and she can't see it. Will I point this fact out to her? No. Why? Because I have tried in the past and it has led to nowhere. She fills some kind of void in her life with men. Men and possesions. When things don't work in a relationship, which they inevitably don't, she runs into the arms of the next man waiting in the wings. Does she truly love these guys? I can't say for sure. She gets with them and then dumps them like yesterday's newspapers. Is she happy? Not by a long shot. I am more secure than she is. I can stand on my own two feet without a line of men supporting me. I've had to. I am more secure in myself, in my own attributes than she is in hers, which is astounding because she fits the description of pretty, whereas I do not.
I feel secure right now when I look at my life next to hers. Odd.
Monday, December 20, 2010
A Scene
This is a scene from a possible story that I am thinking about continuing. Any advice or direction for where to go? I kinda like the start; it works, I think, because it starts in the middle of the scene, makes you wonder what they are talking about.
“You don’t really mean that.” Abby said as she sipped the red wine from the bottle by the sink, her hip leaning against the counter.
“I know I don’t. I just wanted to see your reaction.” Riley glanced up from the photographs on the polished wood table. “Just as I suspected.”
Her eyes flashed him a glare. “What do you mean by that?”
“You built a wall again, Abby. You shut me out. You don’t want to share your emotions because you feel the irrational need to put up a strong front, to be strong for me.”
“Who gave you a degree in psychology, Dr. Phil?” She drained the remnants of the wine from the bottle and set it on the tile counter with a bang. “I’m going to bed.”
Riley rose from the kitchen table and crossed the room to catch Abby by the waist. He gently touched her cheek to make her look at him.
“You should talk to me about this. You are not the only person in this house who is upset.”
“I know that, Riley. I just have to deal with this by myself first.”
He stepped away from her. “You are doing it again.”
“Doing what?” She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation.
Riley moved back to the table and picked up a picture. His voice was calm and slow when he spoke: “Just talk to me, Abby. Like we used to talk. We could tell each other everything about everything. Now, you never say anything.” His hands shook as he handed her the picture.
Abby’s breath caught in her throat. “I’m angry,” she murmured. “I know it wasn’t my fault and that I couldn’t have controlled it. I know that. But I’m angry that it had to happen to us. What did we do to deserve this?” A silver tear rolled down her cheek and hung on her chin for a moment before dripping onto the front of her black dress.
Riley wrapped his arms around her. “I know, baby. I know.”
Abby began to weep, tears and sobs shaking out of her like wind rattling through a broken window. Her tears soaked the front of Riley’s dress shirt, staining black mascara on the white fabric. Neither one of them cared.
Riley wept too, drenching Abby’s dark curls. They both wept for what they had lost and what they had never known.
“You don’t really mean that.” Abby said as she sipped the red wine from the bottle by the sink, her hip leaning against the counter.
“I know I don’t. I just wanted to see your reaction.” Riley glanced up from the photographs on the polished wood table. “Just as I suspected.”
Her eyes flashed him a glare. “What do you mean by that?”
“You built a wall again, Abby. You shut me out. You don’t want to share your emotions because you feel the irrational need to put up a strong front, to be strong for me.”
“Who gave you a degree in psychology, Dr. Phil?” She drained the remnants of the wine from the bottle and set it on the tile counter with a bang. “I’m going to bed.”
Riley rose from the kitchen table and crossed the room to catch Abby by the waist. He gently touched her cheek to make her look at him.
“You should talk to me about this. You are not the only person in this house who is upset.”
“I know that, Riley. I just have to deal with this by myself first.”
He stepped away from her. “You are doing it again.”
“Doing what?” She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation.
Riley moved back to the table and picked up a picture. His voice was calm and slow when he spoke: “Just talk to me, Abby. Like we used to talk. We could tell each other everything about everything. Now, you never say anything.” His hands shook as he handed her the picture.
Abby’s breath caught in her throat. “I’m angry,” she murmured. “I know it wasn’t my fault and that I couldn’t have controlled it. I know that. But I’m angry that it had to happen to us. What did we do to deserve this?” A silver tear rolled down her cheek and hung on her chin for a moment before dripping onto the front of her black dress.
Riley wrapped his arms around her. “I know, baby. I know.”
Abby began to weep, tears and sobs shaking out of her like wind rattling through a broken window. Her tears soaked the front of Riley’s dress shirt, staining black mascara on the white fabric. Neither one of them cared.
Riley wept too, drenching Abby’s dark curls. They both wept for what they had lost and what they had never known.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The Star's Wish
What many of you little people on Earth don’t realize is the fact that there are resplendent things down on your solitary planet. All of you gaze up towards the unknown, striving to reach higher and higher for something you have no hope of ever finding or wrapping your greedy little fingers around. You do not stop to gaze around you, to let yourselves see the world at eye-level. Take a moment to do so, please. What do you see?
Do you see a cold dorm room with cinderblock walls countered by bright, cheery bedspreads?
Do you gaze out the window and see the snow swirling gently to the frozen ground?
Do you see someone you care very deeply about?
Take a moment and be grateful that you have the ability to see. Color and form are things that humans take for granted, I’ve noticed, as I gaze down from my perch in the cosmos.
I see things that you mere mortals cannot fathom; I see the depravity of the human soul; the listless motions that most would not notice; the unspeakable violence of the world that your fragile forms cannot handle.
We watched massacres of millions of people, silently aching for the will to crash to Earth and destroy such malevolent beings.
But we do not control our movements, like humans do. We stretch out our fingers of light, hoping that feeble human eyes may gaze up at our beauty and wonder what we are thinking.
When hopeful minds wish upon us, we hear these things. Did you know? The only tangible things that stars can hold are the whispered hopes of hearts too full to contain them. I bottle mine, stow them away. They come to us like snow falling in reverse, like gravity beginning to pull in a different direction. They shine, shine almost brighter than we do in the darkness, illuminated by the hope or desperation that each person wished with. Some wishes glow a deep blue, wishes for themselves. Others give off a yellow pulse, like a candle flame, wishes for someone other than the wisher.
I also witness the most gorgeous acts of kindness; of love in all its forms. Though it may be hard to spot upon first glance, the human race is by far the most amazing of any kind in the universe because they can love. Even the stars weep to know that humans are more perfect than we are.
The stars, the silent observers, can name the panoply of emotions that can sprint across a human’s face in a matter of seconds: happiness turns to jealousy which turns to hurt which turns to self-pity.
Can a simple mind even comprehend how blessed the human race is? The stars gaze down on you with envy written in light around them. We envy humans for the gifts that the Creator gave them and not us.
You can smell the rain as it falls like shining diamonds.
You can hear the solitary sound of a dove as it passes over the frozen lake in the middle of the woods.
You can touch another person’s hand.
These things are what the stars envy.
We hang here surrounded by light and long to move, to breathe, to sigh.
The stars are also gifted with the ability to wish, though. Among us, the wish we most desire is not for ourselves. We hang in this vast ocean of perpetual darkness, never being able to love, truly love. The stars desire the human race to love. All problems could cease if the human heart could embrace unconditional love.
So many people walk past others, never noticing faces, expressions. Next time you walk down the street, the stars dare you to tell someone you have never met ‘hello’, with a smile. The stars dare you to show caring, a feeling ingrained in every single body on the planet.
Love starts with a simple smile.
Next time you walk under the star-laden sky, wish for unconditional love.
We, the stars, are wishing for it too.
Do you see a cold dorm room with cinderblock walls countered by bright, cheery bedspreads?
Do you gaze out the window and see the snow swirling gently to the frozen ground?
Do you see someone you care very deeply about?
Take a moment and be grateful that you have the ability to see. Color and form are things that humans take for granted, I’ve noticed, as I gaze down from my perch in the cosmos.
I see things that you mere mortals cannot fathom; I see the depravity of the human soul; the listless motions that most would not notice; the unspeakable violence of the world that your fragile forms cannot handle.
We watched massacres of millions of people, silently aching for the will to crash to Earth and destroy such malevolent beings.
But we do not control our movements, like humans do. We stretch out our fingers of light, hoping that feeble human eyes may gaze up at our beauty and wonder what we are thinking.
When hopeful minds wish upon us, we hear these things. Did you know? The only tangible things that stars can hold are the whispered hopes of hearts too full to contain them. I bottle mine, stow them away. They come to us like snow falling in reverse, like gravity beginning to pull in a different direction. They shine, shine almost brighter than we do in the darkness, illuminated by the hope or desperation that each person wished with. Some wishes glow a deep blue, wishes for themselves. Others give off a yellow pulse, like a candle flame, wishes for someone other than the wisher.
I also witness the most gorgeous acts of kindness; of love in all its forms. Though it may be hard to spot upon first glance, the human race is by far the most amazing of any kind in the universe because they can love. Even the stars weep to know that humans are more perfect than we are.
The stars, the silent observers, can name the panoply of emotions that can sprint across a human’s face in a matter of seconds: happiness turns to jealousy which turns to hurt which turns to self-pity.
Can a simple mind even comprehend how blessed the human race is? The stars gaze down on you with envy written in light around them. We envy humans for the gifts that the Creator gave them and not us.
You can smell the rain as it falls like shining diamonds.
You can hear the solitary sound of a dove as it passes over the frozen lake in the middle of the woods.
You can touch another person’s hand.
These things are what the stars envy.
We hang here surrounded by light and long to move, to breathe, to sigh.
The stars are also gifted with the ability to wish, though. Among us, the wish we most desire is not for ourselves. We hang in this vast ocean of perpetual darkness, never being able to love, truly love. The stars desire the human race to love. All problems could cease if the human heart could embrace unconditional love.
So many people walk past others, never noticing faces, expressions. Next time you walk down the street, the stars dare you to tell someone you have never met ‘hello’, with a smile. The stars dare you to show caring, a feeling ingrained in every single body on the planet.
Love starts with a simple smile.
Next time you walk under the star-laden sky, wish for unconditional love.
We, the stars, are wishing for it too.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Brick by Brick...
I'm scared to talk to you because I'm afraid you will be just like him...
I'm afraid to start something that won't go beyond a lie.
I'm frightened of believing that you really are the way you act, and not a shadow of reality.
Time heals all wounds, supposedly.
I am healed completely, though imperfectly. I know that.
The faultline that he left is still visible, ready to open up and swallow me if I make one wrong step.
"Time is short," as THEY say.
I just can't do it.
"Live life to the fullest," as THEY say.
I try. Sometimes it doesn't work.
I stuck my heart back together after he ran it through the shredder. I won't have that happen again. I can't. I fell apart the last time, self-destructed, imploded.
I built my walls high since then.
They can't crumble now, not after all the time I spent building it, brick by brick.
In the words of Paramore:
"Well make sure to build your home brick by boring brick
or the wolf's gonna blow it down."
I'm afraid to start something that won't go beyond a lie.
I'm frightened of believing that you really are the way you act, and not a shadow of reality.
Time heals all wounds, supposedly.
I am healed completely, though imperfectly. I know that.
The faultline that he left is still visible, ready to open up and swallow me if I make one wrong step.
"Time is short," as THEY say.
I just can't do it.
"Live life to the fullest," as THEY say.
I try. Sometimes it doesn't work.
I stuck my heart back together after he ran it through the shredder. I won't have that happen again. I can't. I fell apart the last time, self-destructed, imploded.
I built my walls high since then.
They can't crumble now, not after all the time I spent building it, brick by brick.
In the words of Paramore:
"Well make sure to build your home brick by boring brick
or the wolf's gonna blow it down."
Friday, December 10, 2010
Paperthin Heart...
I have been continuously told that I have to be "open to love".
I believe that I am open to it.
In fact, I am so open to love that I wear my now paperthin heart pinned to my sleeve.
I pray that a breath of wind will blow and tear my paper heart off my sleeve, blow it around and let it fall into someone's waiting hands; someone who will trade me for his paper heart.
My wrinkled paper heart is creased and has been folded and unfolded many times.
It has holes in it.
Ink smudges the paper.
Watermarks mar the lines.
This is my fragile paper heart, that I hold in my palms.
I'm not sure I want possesion of my paper heart.
I haven't taken very good care of it.
I feel like I am going to drop it again soon...
I just hope somebody will be there to catch it.
I believe that I am open to it.
In fact, I am so open to love that I wear my now paperthin heart pinned to my sleeve.
I pray that a breath of wind will blow and tear my paper heart off my sleeve, blow it around and let it fall into someone's waiting hands; someone who will trade me for his paper heart.
My wrinkled paper heart is creased and has been folded and unfolded many times.
It has holes in it.
Ink smudges the paper.
Watermarks mar the lines.
This is my fragile paper heart, that I hold in my palms.
I'm not sure I want possesion of my paper heart.
I haven't taken very good care of it.
I feel like I am going to drop it again soon...
I just hope somebody will be there to catch it.
Monday, December 6, 2010
This whole concept is irrational...
The way I feel about this boy is irrational.
The way anyone feels about anybody on the planet is irrational.
The whole concept of lust, love, envy, anger, aggression, acceptance; is completely and utterly irrational.
Why do I feel so irrationally linked to this boy who doesn't even acknowledge my existence?
I can admit that if I were asked to pick the single most attrative guy out of all the ones here at Grace, I am not sure I would pick him. He has incredible buff arms and is attractive in a scruffy-football-player kind of way. He is shy and sweet and funny, vulnerable and strong at the same time. He seems like the kind of boy who would be the protector, the strong tower in the face of adversity.
I have realized that the above qualities are my type. Odd.
Last night I spent more time talking to a good friend than I did on my homework, and I am very glad of this fact. He gave me some of the most beautiful words I have ever read. Check it out:
If he looked into your eyes… he would see something not reflected in anyone else’s eyes he has ever looked into. He would see the twinkling, the honesty; your heart. He would not only see your eyes, but in a strange way hear every one of your heartbeats as they steadily get louder and more frequent. He would gaze into them and get lost; it would be as though the chains of time no longer held him and all that would matter would be that moment. All that there would be was that moment and in that moment, he would feel everything, and nothing. He’d have the whole world in his hands and it would be such a powerful thing that tears would be shed because they weren’t ready for it. I mean that. :D
I agree with all of the above because I am completely irrational.
The way anyone feels about anybody on the planet is irrational.
The whole concept of lust, love, envy, anger, aggression, acceptance; is completely and utterly irrational.
Why do I feel so irrationally linked to this boy who doesn't even acknowledge my existence?
I can admit that if I were asked to pick the single most attrative guy out of all the ones here at Grace, I am not sure I would pick him. He has incredible buff arms and is attractive in a scruffy-football-player kind of way. He is shy and sweet and funny, vulnerable and strong at the same time. He seems like the kind of boy who would be the protector, the strong tower in the face of adversity.
I have realized that the above qualities are my type. Odd.
Last night I spent more time talking to a good friend than I did on my homework, and I am very glad of this fact. He gave me some of the most beautiful words I have ever read. Check it out:
If he looked into your eyes… he would see something not reflected in anyone else’s eyes he has ever looked into. He would see the twinkling, the honesty; your heart. He would not only see your eyes, but in a strange way hear every one of your heartbeats as they steadily get louder and more frequent. He would gaze into them and get lost; it would be as though the chains of time no longer held him and all that would matter would be that moment. All that there would be was that moment and in that moment, he would feel everything, and nothing. He’d have the whole world in his hands and it would be such a powerful thing that tears would be shed because they weren’t ready for it. I mean that. :D
I agree with all of the above because I am completely irrational.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
***STILL NEEDS A TITLE***
Callie Daniels settled down into a chair at one of the few remaining tables in the crowded café. She set her steaming coffee cup down on the marble tabletop and dropped her bag into the empty seat next to her. Shrugging out of her red pea coat, she pushed her dishwater-blonde hair out of her eyes and pulled a notebook from her bag. The notebook was nondescript: a blue leather journal about the size of a wallet. She glanced around at all of the people around her, chatting over lattes, loudly gossiping about the newest celebrity scandal, scurrying in from the snow falling delicately to the earth.
Her gaze landed on a man in the corner of the café. The man was older but she could still see the remnants of a handsome face in the laugh lines around his mouth and the way his eyes shone as he quietly read his paper, pausing every so often to drink from a dark green coffee mug. He wore an old black blazer, worn threadbare at the elbows but still elegant. Callie could tell right away that this man was intriguing, like a James Bond in the role of grandpa.
She sipped her peppermint cappuccino, a drink her own father called ‘a lame frou-frou drink’, and began to describe the whole scene in her journal: the bustling cluster of well-dressed ladies at a large table in the front, shopping bags creating a sea of color around their feet; the young couple by the windows, their fingers twined together; the middle-aged man grading papers with a harried look on his scruffy face. Callie described the teal blue walls and the smell of fresh brewed coffee and newly baked muffins wafting through the room.
Her gaze drifted again to the man in the corner who would occasionally glance up at someone entering the café through the revolving door, always with a look of disappointment scrawled across his features. His eyes turned to look out the window for a long moment then he pulled a pack of playing cards from a briefcase on the floor next to him. Carefully, he shuffled the deck then arranged the cards for a game of solitaire. He finished the game and drank the rest of his coffee, all the while looking as if he were waiting on someone to come in the door with the cold breeze.
Without being noticed, Callie watched the man. She noticed that he bit his lip when he looked up at people entering. She watched him tap out a nervous rhythm with his feet between games of solitaire.
Callie noticed the tiny details. She was a writer at heart and had need of an interesting person for a new story. She had finally found the man of her story.
~*~*~
The next Thursday afternoon shone bright, but cold and Callie stepped into the café with a feeling of excitement. The man sat at the same table, the green mug in front of him. Callie planned to maybe introduce herself. She found that the people you least expected to be interesting were the ones with the wealth of secrets stockpiled in their minds. Callie took her place at the same table that she had occupied the week before, pen in hand and blue journal on the tabletop.
The man again looked as if he were waiting on someone to breeze through the door from the cold. He kept glancing at his watch and shaking his head in obvious frustration. Callie sat for half an hour, observing, before she got up and made her way to his table.
“Hello.” She murmured happily. “Is this seat taken?”
The man looked up at her in a startled manner, wrinkling the newspaper in his hands.
“Oh, yes. I mean, no. Please, sit.” He stood and moved to pull the chair out for her.
“Why, thank you!” Callie was impressed. Off the movie screen she had never seen an actual man pull a chair out for a woman. She immediately liked the man.
“Well. Whatever made a pretty girl like you decide to sit with an old geezer like me?” The man’s eyes were a slate grey color that matched the snowy sky of the December day.
“Good question. My name is Callie and I like to think of myself as a writer. I was wondering if you would like to contribute to a story, Mr…?”
“Taylor. Quinten Taylor.”
Callie smiled. Even his name sounded like one out of a James Bond film.
“Are you going to change my name for your little story?” He stared at her intently. There was no trace of him needing contacts or glasses. His gaze pierced her like an arrow and she found that she wouldn’t be able to lie to such a gaze.
“Not unless you want me to.”
“Nah. My name is cool. Keep it.” He said with a smile.
Callie scribbled in her notebook.
“So. I saw you here last week. It seemed as though you were waiting for somebody.” She probed.
“I was. But I know he isn’t going to show up. He never was good with keeping appointments.”
“Who? A friend? A sibling?”
“Both, I suppose you could say.”
“What is his name?”
“Frankie Marks.”
“How did you meet him?”
Quinten settled back into his chair, taking a sip of his steaming coffee.
“We met…Oh, you wouldn’t believe me.”
Callie pursed her lips. She thought to herself that this guy was going to be harder to get a story out of than she had anticipated. Her fingers twisted the pretty silver ring on her right hand.
“Try me.” Callie said, determination glinting in her blue eyes.
Quinten shuffled his deck of cards and began to speak in his deep, refined brogue.
“I met Frankie Marks by accident. Frankie lived in the same neighborhood that I did, growing up. We knew each other only at school. I was the brown-nosed cookie-cutter preppie and Frankie was the stereotypical bad boy. We had never spoken two words to each other until the day that he got arrested.”
“For what?” Callie studied the old man’s features, trying to read the lines in his face like a street map.
“I had just walked out of the museum downtown and was headed home. I had a job as a curator there. Frankie barreled toward me down the sidewalk, not stopping or looking up from the concrete. I had my nose in an art book and didn’t notice a thing. He ran straight into me and knocked me to the ground. He yanked me up by the arm and didn’t let go. He pulled me all the way down the street and we ducked behind a dumpster in a deserted alley, though this move was unnecessary. Apparently he had stolen some jewelry and the cops were chasing him. Eventually, they caught up to him, after he made me swear that I wouldn’t rat him out.” Quinten chuckled to himself as Callie frantically tried to get the whole story down.
“We have been best friends ever since.”
Callie smiled. It was a nice story, but there was more to it than he was telling her. “And then what?”
“And happily ever after. Are you really that unlearned?” He grinned like a mischievous child.
“Lies and deceit. Tell.”
“Frankie and I were both very good at keeping secrets. That was why we were recruited for jobs under Joseph McCarthy. We were both basically spies for the United States in our own country. Every couple months we would pack up and relocate to another small town, trying to find Communist sympathizers to turn in. In the time we worked with McCarthy, Frankie took a bullet for me and I had helped him find the girl of his dreams. We got paid a LOT of money for ratting people out, enough to pay for a whole life twice over. But it wasn’t a life. The only thing both of us craved was to settle down. He had his dreams of owning his own bookstore. I wanted to write for a local paper. We both wanted to plant roots somewhere, with wives to cook for us when we came home from work and kids to play in the yard with. The ridiculous ‘American dream’ was what the whole country wanted.”
Quinten sat back in his chair, remnants of the past darkening his eyes.
“Did you get your ‘American dream’?” Callie whispered.
“Eventually. I did start writing for a paper in Orlando, Florida, covering the police beat. At the office I met a woman. Her name was Sophie. We got married in the fall, on a rainy day on the beach. She loved the rain. Still does actually.” His eyes filled with a love that words could not express and he lovingly caressed the band of gold on his left hand.
“We had three kids: Mark, Christopher, and Jane. I loved my life. I had everything that any man could ever want: healthy kids, a wife I loved with every fiber of my being, a roof over my family’s heads and food on the table. I had a job that I loved, faith in my Creator that no one could ever take from me, and a best friend that I am not sure I could have gone a day without. I am utterly positive that I was the luckiest man in the whole universe.”
A waitress stepped up to the table and politely asked if they needed anything. Both of them declined, waiting for the waitress to depart and bother other customers.
The odd pair sat in comfortable silence for a long moment, both contemplating what was said and what was yet to come.
“When were you born?” Quinten suddenly asked.
“September of 1990.” Callie answered.
Quinten tapped his finger against his chin. “Frankie was diagnosed with lung cancer in November of 1990.”
Callie’s lips turned into a frown. She had seen the effects of cancer in her own family and instantly felt sympathy for anyone who had witnessed it firsthand. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured and reached out to cover his hand with hers. She had spent a whole hour with this man and already she felt as though she had known him for years.
The man before her didn’t cry, didn’t even blink his eyes. He was silent, stoic, strong, for the man who wasn’t there right now, stronger than he ought to have been.
“Frankie was stronger than me. I broke down when he told me the news. I had seen people waste away, fold in on themselves from cancer, a disease that no one knew how to treat. To say that I was simply afraid for my best friend would have been the worst understatement in the cosmos. Petrified, terrified, distressed, and panic-stricken: I was all of them at once. Frankie had always been the absolute epitome of strength. It was unfathomable that a tiny speck inside his lung could lay him so low. The cancer set in fast. He started to shrink. It broke my heart to know that I could only sit back and watch as my best friend grew so weak that he couldn’t breathe without the aid of a machine. He couldn’t go for his daily run, which he was so rigorous about. It physically pained me to go and visit him and Carina, his wife. Sometimes, when I allowed myself a weak moment, I cried in front of him.” Quinten stopped his reverie to take a small swig from a miniscule flask he inconspicuously slid from his blazer pocket. Callie caught the sharp scent of alcohol as it wafted across the tabletop.
She didn’t know what to say, though she knew the intense feeling of helplessness. Her own grandfather had contracted a tumor at the base of his brain and he had slowly folded in on himself, losing his memories as he shrank away into nothingness. All she could offer the now crumpled man in the now sad blazer was her silence, her understanding, the knowledge that he was not alone with his feelings.
“He’s the one I’m waiting for, actually.”
“He conquered his cancer?” Callie took the risk and hoped that this man’s story had a happy ending.
“No.” Quinten sat stoically again, not allowing himself to show such weakness as tears for a man who was long dead and had been stronger than he. “Frankie died less than six months after he was diagnosed. I was there when they turned the oxygen machine off. I watched his chest stop moving.” The secret government official that he had been years ago showed now in the hard steel of the set of his eyes. “I still wait for him. We used to come here and have coffee and discuss the news. Call me crazy, but I feel like if I keep coming back, he will show up, that I will have dreamed this whole terrible scenario up, that none of it will have been true and we can return to our lives.”
Callie sat in calm silence. She could grasp why he did it, why he waited every Thursday afternoon for his dead best friend to come see him. Molly Shay had been Callie’s best friend for six years and not a day passed that they didn’t speak. It was easy to imagine that when she was older and if Molly wasn’t around, she would keep on hoping for a miracle.
Quinten turned his wrist over to take a glimpse at the simple black watch there. “Miss Daniels, I am afraid that I must request a leave of absence.” Here his gray eyes took on such a delightful look that it infected Callie and she smiled back at him. “I have a date with a very good looking girl tonight.”
“Oh, well, I mustn’t detain you any further, Mr. Taylor. Thank you so much for talking with me today.”
The man studied his hands on the tabletop. “I haven’t told anyone that story. Nobody except my family knows how much Frankie meant to me.”
Callie stood and moved around the table to hug the man. “I am glad you told me.” He hugged her back before she sat down in her seat again. Her notebook sat in front of her, untouched since she had recorded the events that lead up to Quinten and Frankie meeting for the first time.
Quinten stood and picked up his briefcase. “Maybe I will see you here again sometime soon.”
“I’m sure you will.” Callie smiled, genuinely happy to have met this man.
Callie watched the figure she described as James Bond as a grandpa move fluidly out the door and into the cold gray day.
Her gaze landed on a man in the corner of the café. The man was older but she could still see the remnants of a handsome face in the laugh lines around his mouth and the way his eyes shone as he quietly read his paper, pausing every so often to drink from a dark green coffee mug. He wore an old black blazer, worn threadbare at the elbows but still elegant. Callie could tell right away that this man was intriguing, like a James Bond in the role of grandpa.
She sipped her peppermint cappuccino, a drink her own father called ‘a lame frou-frou drink’, and began to describe the whole scene in her journal: the bustling cluster of well-dressed ladies at a large table in the front, shopping bags creating a sea of color around their feet; the young couple by the windows, their fingers twined together; the middle-aged man grading papers with a harried look on his scruffy face. Callie described the teal blue walls and the smell of fresh brewed coffee and newly baked muffins wafting through the room.
Her gaze drifted again to the man in the corner who would occasionally glance up at someone entering the café through the revolving door, always with a look of disappointment scrawled across his features. His eyes turned to look out the window for a long moment then he pulled a pack of playing cards from a briefcase on the floor next to him. Carefully, he shuffled the deck then arranged the cards for a game of solitaire. He finished the game and drank the rest of his coffee, all the while looking as if he were waiting on someone to come in the door with the cold breeze.
Without being noticed, Callie watched the man. She noticed that he bit his lip when he looked up at people entering. She watched him tap out a nervous rhythm with his feet between games of solitaire.
Callie noticed the tiny details. She was a writer at heart and had need of an interesting person for a new story. She had finally found the man of her story.
~*~*~
The next Thursday afternoon shone bright, but cold and Callie stepped into the café with a feeling of excitement. The man sat at the same table, the green mug in front of him. Callie planned to maybe introduce herself. She found that the people you least expected to be interesting were the ones with the wealth of secrets stockpiled in their minds. Callie took her place at the same table that she had occupied the week before, pen in hand and blue journal on the tabletop.
The man again looked as if he were waiting on someone to breeze through the door from the cold. He kept glancing at his watch and shaking his head in obvious frustration. Callie sat for half an hour, observing, before she got up and made her way to his table.
“Hello.” She murmured happily. “Is this seat taken?”
The man looked up at her in a startled manner, wrinkling the newspaper in his hands.
“Oh, yes. I mean, no. Please, sit.” He stood and moved to pull the chair out for her.
“Why, thank you!” Callie was impressed. Off the movie screen she had never seen an actual man pull a chair out for a woman. She immediately liked the man.
“Well. Whatever made a pretty girl like you decide to sit with an old geezer like me?” The man’s eyes were a slate grey color that matched the snowy sky of the December day.
“Good question. My name is Callie and I like to think of myself as a writer. I was wondering if you would like to contribute to a story, Mr…?”
“Taylor. Quinten Taylor.”
Callie smiled. Even his name sounded like one out of a James Bond film.
“Are you going to change my name for your little story?” He stared at her intently. There was no trace of him needing contacts or glasses. His gaze pierced her like an arrow and she found that she wouldn’t be able to lie to such a gaze.
“Not unless you want me to.”
“Nah. My name is cool. Keep it.” He said with a smile.
Callie scribbled in her notebook.
“So. I saw you here last week. It seemed as though you were waiting for somebody.” She probed.
“I was. But I know he isn’t going to show up. He never was good with keeping appointments.”
“Who? A friend? A sibling?”
“Both, I suppose you could say.”
“What is his name?”
“Frankie Marks.”
“How did you meet him?”
Quinten settled back into his chair, taking a sip of his steaming coffee.
“We met…Oh, you wouldn’t believe me.”
Callie pursed her lips. She thought to herself that this guy was going to be harder to get a story out of than she had anticipated. Her fingers twisted the pretty silver ring on her right hand.
“Try me.” Callie said, determination glinting in her blue eyes.
Quinten shuffled his deck of cards and began to speak in his deep, refined brogue.
“I met Frankie Marks by accident. Frankie lived in the same neighborhood that I did, growing up. We knew each other only at school. I was the brown-nosed cookie-cutter preppie and Frankie was the stereotypical bad boy. We had never spoken two words to each other until the day that he got arrested.”
“For what?” Callie studied the old man’s features, trying to read the lines in his face like a street map.
“I had just walked out of the museum downtown and was headed home. I had a job as a curator there. Frankie barreled toward me down the sidewalk, not stopping or looking up from the concrete. I had my nose in an art book and didn’t notice a thing. He ran straight into me and knocked me to the ground. He yanked me up by the arm and didn’t let go. He pulled me all the way down the street and we ducked behind a dumpster in a deserted alley, though this move was unnecessary. Apparently he had stolen some jewelry and the cops were chasing him. Eventually, they caught up to him, after he made me swear that I wouldn’t rat him out.” Quinten chuckled to himself as Callie frantically tried to get the whole story down.
“We have been best friends ever since.”
Callie smiled. It was a nice story, but there was more to it than he was telling her. “And then what?”
“And happily ever after. Are you really that unlearned?” He grinned like a mischievous child.
“Lies and deceit. Tell.”
“Frankie and I were both very good at keeping secrets. That was why we were recruited for jobs under Joseph McCarthy. We were both basically spies for the United States in our own country. Every couple months we would pack up and relocate to another small town, trying to find Communist sympathizers to turn in. In the time we worked with McCarthy, Frankie took a bullet for me and I had helped him find the girl of his dreams. We got paid a LOT of money for ratting people out, enough to pay for a whole life twice over. But it wasn’t a life. The only thing both of us craved was to settle down. He had his dreams of owning his own bookstore. I wanted to write for a local paper. We both wanted to plant roots somewhere, with wives to cook for us when we came home from work and kids to play in the yard with. The ridiculous ‘American dream’ was what the whole country wanted.”
Quinten sat back in his chair, remnants of the past darkening his eyes.
“Did you get your ‘American dream’?” Callie whispered.
“Eventually. I did start writing for a paper in Orlando, Florida, covering the police beat. At the office I met a woman. Her name was Sophie. We got married in the fall, on a rainy day on the beach. She loved the rain. Still does actually.” His eyes filled with a love that words could not express and he lovingly caressed the band of gold on his left hand.
“We had three kids: Mark, Christopher, and Jane. I loved my life. I had everything that any man could ever want: healthy kids, a wife I loved with every fiber of my being, a roof over my family’s heads and food on the table. I had a job that I loved, faith in my Creator that no one could ever take from me, and a best friend that I am not sure I could have gone a day without. I am utterly positive that I was the luckiest man in the whole universe.”
A waitress stepped up to the table and politely asked if they needed anything. Both of them declined, waiting for the waitress to depart and bother other customers.
The odd pair sat in comfortable silence for a long moment, both contemplating what was said and what was yet to come.
“When were you born?” Quinten suddenly asked.
“September of 1990.” Callie answered.
Quinten tapped his finger against his chin. “Frankie was diagnosed with lung cancer in November of 1990.”
Callie’s lips turned into a frown. She had seen the effects of cancer in her own family and instantly felt sympathy for anyone who had witnessed it firsthand. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured and reached out to cover his hand with hers. She had spent a whole hour with this man and already she felt as though she had known him for years.
The man before her didn’t cry, didn’t even blink his eyes. He was silent, stoic, strong, for the man who wasn’t there right now, stronger than he ought to have been.
“Frankie was stronger than me. I broke down when he told me the news. I had seen people waste away, fold in on themselves from cancer, a disease that no one knew how to treat. To say that I was simply afraid for my best friend would have been the worst understatement in the cosmos. Petrified, terrified, distressed, and panic-stricken: I was all of them at once. Frankie had always been the absolute epitome of strength. It was unfathomable that a tiny speck inside his lung could lay him so low. The cancer set in fast. He started to shrink. It broke my heart to know that I could only sit back and watch as my best friend grew so weak that he couldn’t breathe without the aid of a machine. He couldn’t go for his daily run, which he was so rigorous about. It physically pained me to go and visit him and Carina, his wife. Sometimes, when I allowed myself a weak moment, I cried in front of him.” Quinten stopped his reverie to take a small swig from a miniscule flask he inconspicuously slid from his blazer pocket. Callie caught the sharp scent of alcohol as it wafted across the tabletop.
She didn’t know what to say, though she knew the intense feeling of helplessness. Her own grandfather had contracted a tumor at the base of his brain and he had slowly folded in on himself, losing his memories as he shrank away into nothingness. All she could offer the now crumpled man in the now sad blazer was her silence, her understanding, the knowledge that he was not alone with his feelings.
“He’s the one I’m waiting for, actually.”
“He conquered his cancer?” Callie took the risk and hoped that this man’s story had a happy ending.
“No.” Quinten sat stoically again, not allowing himself to show such weakness as tears for a man who was long dead and had been stronger than he. “Frankie died less than six months after he was diagnosed. I was there when they turned the oxygen machine off. I watched his chest stop moving.” The secret government official that he had been years ago showed now in the hard steel of the set of his eyes. “I still wait for him. We used to come here and have coffee and discuss the news. Call me crazy, but I feel like if I keep coming back, he will show up, that I will have dreamed this whole terrible scenario up, that none of it will have been true and we can return to our lives.”
Callie sat in calm silence. She could grasp why he did it, why he waited every Thursday afternoon for his dead best friend to come see him. Molly Shay had been Callie’s best friend for six years and not a day passed that they didn’t speak. It was easy to imagine that when she was older and if Molly wasn’t around, she would keep on hoping for a miracle.
Quinten turned his wrist over to take a glimpse at the simple black watch there. “Miss Daniels, I am afraid that I must request a leave of absence.” Here his gray eyes took on such a delightful look that it infected Callie and she smiled back at him. “I have a date with a very good looking girl tonight.”
“Oh, well, I mustn’t detain you any further, Mr. Taylor. Thank you so much for talking with me today.”
The man studied his hands on the tabletop. “I haven’t told anyone that story. Nobody except my family knows how much Frankie meant to me.”
Callie stood and moved around the table to hug the man. “I am glad you told me.” He hugged her back before she sat down in her seat again. Her notebook sat in front of her, untouched since she had recorded the events that lead up to Quinten and Frankie meeting for the first time.
Quinten stood and picked up his briefcase. “Maybe I will see you here again sometime soon.”
“I’m sure you will.” Callie smiled, genuinely happy to have met this man.
Callie watched the figure she described as James Bond as a grandpa move fluidly out the door and into the cold gray day.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
The Heart Knows No Reason...
Apparently, neither does the mind.
Are dreams connected to a person's heart? Or are dreams soley flecks of real events splayed out into a movie reel of sequences that could never actually happen? Are dreams only what a person WISHES to happen?
If dreams are the latter of the two, I basically want the same thing to happen all the time.
If anyone could explain to me how it is that a person can dream of the exact same person for a full week, I would be eternally grateful. If the dreams I have been having are any indication of my "heart's desire", then I am in BIG trouble. Are dreams flashes of the future? Part of me hopes yes and the other half says "NOOOOOOOOOO!" (I really don't want to be in a boat with a giant talking banana. But that is a different story.)
Seriously though, there is a theory that states that if you dream of a certain someone it is because they thought about you before they fell asleep. I am very skeptical of such a theory, although I dearly hope it is true. To go with what the amazing female-Buddha-like Autumn Ladyga said in a blog, it is very hard to find something to believe in.
Are dreams connected to a person's heart? Or are dreams soley flecks of real events splayed out into a movie reel of sequences that could never actually happen? Are dreams only what a person WISHES to happen?
If dreams are the latter of the two, I basically want the same thing to happen all the time.
If anyone could explain to me how it is that a person can dream of the exact same person for a full week, I would be eternally grateful. If the dreams I have been having are any indication of my "heart's desire", then I am in BIG trouble. Are dreams flashes of the future? Part of me hopes yes and the other half says "NOOOOOOOOOO!" (I really don't want to be in a boat with a giant talking banana. But that is a different story.)
Seriously though, there is a theory that states that if you dream of a certain someone it is because they thought about you before they fell asleep. I am very skeptical of such a theory, although I dearly hope it is true. To go with what the amazing female-Buddha-like Autumn Ladyga said in a blog, it is very hard to find something to believe in.
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