She went shopping over the weekend. She made her choices carefully. Her color was ice blue. She had her nails done, to go with her eyes.
Rina decided on Wednesday. People tended to have more to talk about at the beginning of the week and the end of the week, either about what they had done over the weekend or what they were about to do the next weekend. There was not so much to talk about on Wednesdays.
Rina brought her shot glass with her, for good luck, and because the glass was easy to chill.
She made her move after lunch. There was still a lot of work in the afternoon, and the gossip tended to die down then.
She opened the freezer door, took out the chilled shot glass and the sandwich bag with her ice cube. She took the ice cube out of the bag and put it into the shot glass. Condensation immediately formed on the outside of the glass.
She took off her sweater, picked up the glass in her hand, and began to walk around the office.
She walked wherever there were groups of people—in the hallways, by the printers, next to the coffee machines. As she approached, people felt a sudden chill in the air, and there would be a lull in the conversation. Witticisms sounded flat and stupid. Arguments died. Suddenly everyone would remember how much work was left to do and make up some excuse to get away. Office doors closed as she passed them.
She walked around until the halls were quiet, and the only office with its door open was Jimmy’s.
She looked down into the glass. There was a small pool of water at the bottom of the glass; soon the ice cube would be floating.
She still had time, if she hurried.
Kiss me, before I disappear.
She put the shot glass down outside the door to Jimmy’s office. I am not Joan of Arc.
She walked into Jimmy’s office and closed the door behind her.
? ? ?
“Hello,” she said. Now that she was alone with him, she didn’t know what else to do.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s so quiet around here today. What’s going on?”
“Si tecum attuleris bonam atque magnam cenam, non sine candida puella,” she said. “If you bring with you a good meal and lots of it, and not without a pretty girl. That’s the one. That’s my favorite poem.”
She felt shy, but warm. There was no weight on her tongue, no pebble in her throat. Her soul was outside that door, but she was not anxious. She was not counting down the seconds. The shot glass with her life in it was in another time, another place.
“Et uino et sale et omnibus cachinnis,” he finished for her. “And wine and salt and all the laughter.”
She saw that there was a saltshaker on his desk. Salt made the blandest food palatable. Salt was like wit and laughter in conversation. Salt made the plain extraordinary. Salt made the simple beautiful. Salt was his soul.
And salt made it harder to freeze.
She laughed.
She unbuttoned her blouse. He began to get up, to stop her. She shook her head and smiled at him.
I have no candle to burn at both ends. I won’t measure my life with coffee spoons. I have no spring water to quiet desire, because I have left behind my frozen bit of almost-death. ??What I have is my life.
“All life is an experiment,” she said.
She shook off her blouse and stepped out of her skirt. He could now see what she had bought over the weekend.
Ice blue was her color.
? ? ?
She remembered laughing, and she remembered him laughing back. She worked hard to memorize every touch, every quickened breath. What she didn’t want to remember was the time.
The noise of the people outside the door gradually rose and then gradually settled down. They lingered in his office.
What lips my lips have kissed, she thought, and realized that it was again completely quiet outside the office. Sunlight in the room was taking on a red tinge.
She got up, stepping away from his grasp, and put on her blouse, stepped into her skirt. She opened the door to his office and picked up the shot glass.
She looked, and looked frantically, for a sliver of ice. Even the tiniest crystal would suffice. She would keep it frozen and eke out the rest of her life on the memory of this one day, this one day when she was alive.
But there was only water in the glass; clear, pure water.
She waited for her heart to stop beating. She waited for her lungs to stop breathing. She walked back into his office so that she could die looking into his eyes.
It would be hard to freeze salty water.
She felt warm, inviting, open. Something flowed into the coldest, quietest, and emptiest corners of her heart and filled her ears with the roar of waves. She thought she had so much to say to him that she would never have time to read again.
? ? ?
Rina,
I hope you are well. It has been a long time since we last saw each other.
I would imagine the immediate question on your mind is how many cigarettes I have left. Well, the good news is that I have quit smoking. The bad news is that my last cigarette was finished six months ago.
But as you can see, I am still alive.
Souls are tricky things, Rina, and I thought I had it all figured out. All my life I thought my fate was to be reckless, to gamble with each moment of my life. I thought that was what I was meant to do. The only moments when I felt alive were those times when I lit up a bit of my soul, daring for something extraordinary to happen before the flame and ashes touched my fingers. I would be alert during those times, sensitive to every vibration in my ears, every bit of color in my eyes. My life was a clock running down. The months between my cigarettes were just dress rehearsals for the real performance, and I was engaged for twenty showings.
I was down to my last cigarette, and I was terrified. I had planned for some big final splash, to go out with a bang. But when it came time to smoke that last cigarette, I lost my courage. When you realize you are going to die after you have finished that last breath, suddenly your hands start to shake, and you cannot hold a match steady or flick a lighter with your thumb.
I got drunk at a beach party, passed out. Someone needed a nicotine fix, pawed through my purse and found my last cigarette. By the time I woke up the empty box was on the sand next to me, and a little crab had crawled into it and made it its home.
Like I said, I didn’t die.
All my life I thought my soul was in those cigarettes, and I never even thought about the box. I never paid any attention to that paper shell of quiet, that enclosed bit of emptiness.
An empty box is a home for lost spiders you want to carry outside. It holds loose change, buttons that have fallen off, needles and thread. It works tolerably well for lipstick, eye pencil, and a bit of blush. It is open to whatever you’d like to put in it.
And that is how I feel: open, careless, adaptable. Yes, life is now truly just an experiment. What can I do next? Anything.
But to get here, I first had to smoke my cigarettes.
What happened to me was a state change. When my soul turned from a box of cigarettes to a box, I grew up.
I thought of writing to you because you remind me of myself. You thought you understood your soul, and you thought you knew how you needed to live your life. I thought you were wrong then, but I didn’t have the right answer myself.
But now I do. I think you are ready for a state change.
Your friend always, Amy
THE PERFECT MATCH
Sai woke to the rousing first movement of Vivaldi’s violin concerto in C minor, “Il Sospetto.”
He lay still for a minute, letting the music wash over him like a gentle Pacific breeze. The room brightened as the blinds gradually opened to the sunlight. Tilly had woken him right at the end of a light sleep cycle, the optimal time. He felt great: refreshed, optimistic, ready to jump out of bed.
Which is what he did next. “Tilly, that’s an inspired choice for a wake-up song.”
“Of course.” ?Tilly spoke from the camera/speaker in the nightstand. “Who knows your tastes and moods better than I?” ?The voice, though electronic, was affectionate and playful.
Sai went into the shower.
“Remember to wear the new shoes today.” ?Tilly now spoke to him from the camera/speaker in the ceiling.