“Elian, seriously dude, we’ve got to go. You can eye fuck the hot chick another time,” his friend said crudely, elbowing him rather viciously in the back.
Elian flushed in what I can only assume was embarrassment. I laughed again. I couldn’t help it. It was all just too perfect.
He gave me one more of his smiles, bestowing it like a gift, and then left.
My hands closed over my book as I watched him walk out the door.
I took my time walking back to my apartment.
Not home.
Just a place I slept.
I had only lived in the tiny, sleepy town of Brecken Forest, Virginia for four months. It was a quaint village of a place with a main street straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting with colonial features and polite neighbors
I chose Brecken Forest carefully. For reasons that were my own.
I walked up the steps of the two-story brick house where I rented the bottom floor. I waved to Mrs. Statham who lived upstairs. She was petite with stooped shoulders and grizzled white hair. She spent most of her time baking cookies. I hated the way it made the house smell like Christmas.
“I put some cookies outside your door,” the sweet old lady with the gnarled fingers and furtive smile said, sweeping steadily with the broom in her hand.
I looked at Mrs. Statham, the crazy old lady with cat hair on her clothes, and I wondered what places she had been and experiences she had had. What stories she had to tell.
I could have asked her about her life. I could have sat down with a cup of tea in hand, eating her snickerdoodles, and let her tell me about the secrets behind her grin.
But I didn’t.
Because I wanted to imagine her truth rather than hear it.
I didn’t need any more than that.
“Thanks, Mrs. Statham. I’ll bring the plate back when I’m finished,” I told her.
“And when you do, you can tell me about that new job of yours.”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t wonder about how she had discovered this detail about me. She existed as any old woman without family nearby. Completely invested in strangers that weren’t in any way invested in her.
I walked inside, making sure to take a deep breath, pulling the sweet smell of baking into my lungs, feeling sick on it, before picking up the waiting sweets on my welcome mat.
I balanced the plate in one hand and closed the door with the other. I kicked off my shoes and headed into the narrow, galley style kitchen just off the living room.
I dumped the cookies I would never eat into the trash and placed the now empty plate in the sink. It wasn’t rude not to eat them. I didn’t indulge in false generosities.
I looked around the small, cramped room and felt no connection to the shabby furniture and random knick-knacks. None of it was mine. Every single piece belonged to someone else. Another family.
Another world.
I made a point to bring little with me. Very few ties. Only the ones I could bear.
I carried only small things from one life to the next. Some clothes, my green notebook, and the old book with the blue cover that had become my constant companion. Words that struck a chord and dragged me on.
And the photographs.
A row of framed pictures lined the windowsill. Beautiful faces immobilized forever.
I opened my familiar copy of Swann’s Way, flipped to the first page, and ran my finger over the now barely noticeable script that had once been so vibrant.
For my little, Lay ~
There’s contradiction in solitude.
Daddy
A cryptic message from a man I could remember in excruciating detail. Except for his face.
He left the book tucked away for me to find at the most opportune moment. When he was gone and I was supposed to never, ever want him back.
In his aftermath, I poured over the pages of the battered Proust, thinking there was a sign in there somewhere. A secret message amongst the self-indulgent ramblings.
Eventually I stopped looking.
Eventually I stopped caring.