Pretty Ugly

Short story about revisiting youth. Related to Hourglass and Frozen, read the other two first.

Pretty Ugly

 

The door opened and two men entered. A little bell chimed their appearance, and as that chime faded and tired but cheerful woman stepped through two swinging doors into the relative light of that morning. She wore a smile already--wore it, like it was part of her uniform and not the natural turnings of her face--and her eyes were dark and listless, like coffee that had gone cold in the pot. She walked behind the counter, pulled a little cream-colored pen from her always handy orderpad (which was really just a small notebook, like you might find at your local Pallmart in the school or office supplies section) and looked at the two men, chewing on gum that she’d chewed the flavor right out of, and probably hours before.

     ‘What can I getcha, darlin’s?’ she asked, her voice low and husky, perhaps from years of smoking or maybe just from working here--working always--from never resting. She seemed on the edge of burning out.

     The first man, Ken Carmichael--thirty-one years old but looking older, also very tired--ordered a coffee, black. The second man, much older but the liveliest of them all by far, asked for the works.

     ‘Coffee’ll be a few, dolly,’ said the woman.

     ‘That’s alright,’ Ken said, his voice barely audible--which, in the quiet of the morning said something about the man--and the waitress disappeared.

     ‘She’s a sight,’ the second man observed, almost giddy for it--probably seeing her still, the way he smiled. If you didn’t know him, you might call it leering--but Gerald didn’t leer. A very good-natured man who sometimes enjoyed a harmless fantasy, but nothing more.

     The two men sat at the bar while the coffee was brewed, Ken reading the paper (September 17, 2007) or staring at its contents, at least; Gerald admiring the wartime décor that the diner was famous for--news clippings, photographs, imitation medals, etc. He could even point himself out in one of the pictures, if you asked him to.

     After about ten minutes of waiting, the waitress arrived with the works. After refilling Ken’s coffee, they both watched her walk away. Gerald whistling noiselessly.

     ‘So,’ Ken said, ‘you said you had something you wanted me to see?’

     ‘I did, indeedy,’ Gerald said, pulling from the inside of his jacket a stack of papers that he must have had printed out somewhere just for the occasion. He set them on the bar, smiling proudly.

     ‘What is it?’ said Ken, afraid that he knew the answer already.

     ‘Oh,’ said Gerald, feigning sheepish but not very well, enjoying the moment, ‘it’s just something that I put together. Thought you might get a kick of it, you know. Us being writers, an all.’

     ‘Us?’

     ‘Well, storytellers, anyway. Go on, take a look. See what you think.’

     And so Ken put down his coffee, took the small stack of papers, and started reading.

     This was Gerald’s story:

    

 

The other night, I had what I’d like to call a dream. I’d like to call it that, because I don’t know of any reasonable human being on the face of this ugly planet of ours who’d even believe a word of I’m about to write if I called it anything else. So let’s just start there: I had a dream the other night.

     Normally my dreams aren’t very interesting, except for the sex ones and the ones about this girl I loved all through school and especially the ones that combine those two things. Usually it’s just me dreaming about work or me not wearing any pants (at work, usually), or sometimes I’m back on the high school team playing basketball again but just without pants--you get the picture. Maybe you wish you didn’t, seeing as I’m usually without pants, but all I mean is that my dreams aren’t usually very interesting. Unless you sell pants, maybe.

     In this dream of mine, I was laying in a green field. I’d call it grass, but I’m not so sure it was really grass, it seemed more wavy, rounded than grass--like something a kid might cut out of construction paper for a class project in the third grade. That was the quality of it. It was soft like grass, but it wasn’t shaped like it, and it didn’t smell like grass, either, and believe me, I know. The sky was blue, endless, no clouds, just the glaring haze that seemed to exist somewhere above me. It wasn’t the sun, or I didn’t think it was. It was flat, like a rectangle (I know rectangles aren’t always flat), and the light seemed to be coming mostly from around the edges of it. It was almost like a great big door in the sky and it was just cracked open--just barely, but enough for all of this light to escape and almost blind me, laying there on that not-grass.

     I shielded my eyes, and sat. Now, I’m not really sure if this is how the dream began--sometimes I forget the first part or some middle part--but if there was some reason for me to be where I was--if the place I was meant anything to me at all--I couldn’t remember. Not then, and definitely not now.

     I remember looking all around me, and seeing nothing. Only this green stuff that I was laying on, and maybe a few hills made out of it in the distance. It was quiet, no breeze, nothing. Describing it now, it almost seems a little eerie. I knew a guy once who was writing a book about this kind of afterlife journey (I can’t remember what it was called--it was foreign, he was the kind of guy who thought using foreign words instead of the usual ones made him seem smarter than everyone; and he might have been, the b*****d, but not because of that), and part of this journey involved waking up in a place kind of like this. So when I was looking around, I was looking for two things: a river, and somebody I knew who was important to me.

     I found neither.

     I kind of found the second one, though. After all that looking around, I turned back in the same direction I’d first looked and sure enough, there was someone standing there, just looking at me. It was kind of hard to see who it was right at first, because of the light--or so I thought. I squinted, and thought I could kind of make out a few hallmarks of the typical human face: a mouth (grinning), something sticking out (probably a nose--I hoped), and two sort of darker spots that were shaped like eyes, but seemed to be lost in shadow.

     ‘Welcome,’ said the thing with a (probably) nose, its voice gentle like a Spring breeze. I could almost feel it, just on that one word.

     I began to shape some kind of response--but I had no idea where to start. Every question in the book seemed to fit, but I couldn’t ask them all at once. I couldn’t even see who (or what) I was asking, and the glare seemed to be getting brighter and I just wanted it all to go away.

     ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the thing, that same breeze following every word, calming me a little until the feeling passed.

     ‘I’m not,’ I lied, tough in my dreams, too. ‘I just can’t see nothing.’

     ‘Here,’ it said, the breeze-voice very close now so that it seemed to wash over me, not just brush by in passing. I peeked out from behind my fingers and saw that it was holding something like a pair of glasses--well, that’s what they were, I guess. Maybe they just seemed strange because of who (or what) was holding them.

     ‘Take them,’ it urged, ‘put them on. Then you’ll be able to see.’

     I took them, put them on, and I’ll be damned if she wasn’t right. Not that it made very much of a difference about anything not related to that glare. And I could still see that glare, but kind of like you can still see what’s in a picture in those old film negatives that you probably don’t know about if you’re much younger than I am. I looked up at that flat rectangle in the sky, and believe it or not it was a door--and it was cracked!

     ‘Maybe I don’t need these, after all,’ I muttered to myself, feeling clever.

     ‘Oh, if you like having the use of your eyes, you do,’ she replied. I’d decided it was female, already, just because of the voice--because of that breeze that came with it. Only a woman could make a guy feel that way.

     And it turns out I was right about that, too, because she was very definitely female--and not just any female, but the very same female I mentioned earlier, that I dream about sometimes and sometimes even have sex with in dreams. I’m not about to tell you her name, though.

     ‘Emily?’ I gasped.

     Oh, d****t…I just said it.

     The Emily-thing just smiled at me (I could see her eyes now, too) but she didn’t tell me if I was right or wrong about who she was. Maybe I was just seeing who I wanted to.

     ‘Is this a…’ I leaned in, so that all of the no one that was there with us could hear what I wanted to ask her. ‘Is this a you-know-what kind of dream?’ I might have been a little hopeful, but I think I asked it respectfully. I just wanted to know why I was there, remember? All those questions I had…

     She laughed, this time. Not really the encouraging type of answer I wanted to hear from her--though if she’d said it was one of those kinds of dreams who knows what I would have done. I’ve always been really good at imagining it.

     ‘A sex dream?’ she mused, that damn breeze running all over me. ‘With you?’

     I did what I think probably all guys do or have done once in their lives, but happens all the time in movies, and started rubbing the back of my neck, looking down, shuffling and acting like a stupid a*s.

     I told her I was just joking. And when she started laughing again--when she told me I was a funny man--that didn’t help my self esteem too much. I’ve got no problem admitting that.

     ‘Who ever said this was a dream of any kind?’ she asked me next. Well, nobody had-not yet. But I wasn’t sure how it could be anything else, nothing making sense and the only way that makes any sense at all is if it were a dream, like most of you would say.

     Old Gery, dreaming again. That’s probably what you’d all say. Old Gery, always off in his own little world.

     That’s my name, by the way. Gerald.

     I didn’t say anything to that girl, just looked from her (through those glasses) to the door in the sky, and then I saw it start to open a little wider, swinging slowly like something was pulling it from the inside, something small and weak. Or maybe it was the Inside, itself, pulling it in--and I say that because it sort of felt as if it was trying to pull me in, with it. But I held my ground, dug my feet into that green not-grass.

     ‘You feel it, don’t you?’ she said. I could tell she wasn’t feeling the same thing I was, so I didn’t say anything. Maybe she was the one causing it, after all. She seemed to be enjoying it.

     As I stood there, fighting the pull, I saw the glare stretch out from the doorway (it was all the way open now) all the way down to where I was, like I was somehow standing in just the right spot to start climbing. I thought that was pretty convenient, almost like it knew right where I was going to be.

     But by the time I’d finished thinking all that, I was already several steps up and holding the railing on either side--the whole thing, the stairs and the rails, was made of that glare. It felt warm, like it was just the right temperature for that or any situation; and the rightness of it somehow didn’t feel all that right. I stopped climbing and looked down; that girl was just watching me.

     ‘What’s up there?’ I called down. I wasn’t really all that high up, so I don’t know why I didn’t just say it normally. I think the pull made it seem like I was caught in a gale of some kind, so I probably just shouted out of instinct. Like when you’re on the phone with someone and it’s loud where you’re at so you raise your voice except the person you’re talking to can already hear you just fine. But I didn’t care.

     ‘Don’t you already know?’ she said. She wasn’t teasing me, either. I think she really expected me to know--and the weird thing was that I did. I didn’t the moment that I asked her, but once she said that I did.

     I knew exactly what was up there, and I knew that the warmth of the rails wasn’t warmth exactly but something much more dangerous than that. And I understood the pull. And I knew why my heart was beating out of my chest.

     ‘Well?’ she urged me, as I stood there only part way up, not really looking forward or even back, but more inside myself, where the scales were. I was trying to see which side had the greater value. But they kept tilting back and forth.

     ‘What happens if I do go?’ I asked, still looking inside myself. It was a dark kind of place, like a stage in a theater but most of the stagelights burned out unexpectedly and they don’t have any replacements and the show must go on. I could see movement, I could make out general shapes and from the voices I heard I could identify those shapes, generally.

     ‘The shapes will get darker,’ she said, as if she could see the same things that I could.

     ‘Will they disappear?’

     ‘You will no longer see them,’ she answered. And even I could tell the difference between what I asked and what she said.

     ‘What if I don’t like it?’

     ‘How could you not? You created it, didn’t you?’

      It’s just like that guy’s story, I thought. And then I thought--Oh no! I’m dead!

     ‘You’re most certainly not dead,’ she told me. I won’t say she assured me, because it was pretty clear now that she could see into my mind and there’s nothing assuring about that. ‘If for some reason you do find that you don’t like it, then you are free to return whenever you want. If you remember the way.’

     ‘What’s that…’

     ‘Of course, if you decide to leave, you will never be able to enter that place again. So the choice is yours, Gery.’

     I thought for a minute. While I was thinking I took a few more steps toward the door, not realizing it. She was right, though, they did get darker.

     ‘It’s not much of a choice,’ I said.

     ‘Oh?’

     ‘I have to choose one or the other. If I choose one, the other disappears forever.’

     ‘But that’s exactly what choices are, Gery. If you could have both, then what would be the point of choosing now?’

     I still didn’t like it, those pictures inside me fading…what if they faded so completely that I forgot they were there to begin with? What if, once I got to the top of these stairs and passed through that door--what if everything except what was waiting there didn’t exist anymore, faded from my mind completely?

     I turned to look back down at the girl, and surprised myself to find I was standing right in front of the door. She was a small dot on the not-grass; I don’t think she could’ve head me even if I yelled. And I could hear voices from the other side--some of them were the same voices I’d head inside me lower down on the stairs.

     Weren’t they? It was hard to be sure, at this point.

     Somehow I had made it this far, to the doorway in the sky. I don’t remember taking a single step, but I know I didn’t fly. I briefly wondered what would happen if I took those glasses off now, but no sooner had the thought surfaced than I heard her voice in my head telling me not to. I tried telling her I was just joking, but I don’t think it worked both ways.

     ‘Well, Gery, old boy,’ I said to myself, still feeling a bit anxious but not really sure why anymore, ‘so long as you’re here, you might as well peek inside and see who’s home.’

     So that’s just what I did.

     The stairs just kept on going up, straight into this lightless place that sort of just was--by which I mean it didn’t really seem attached to anything but kind of existed between the place I’d come from below with her and the not-grass and the place that I could hear those other voices coming from. It was full of light, and below me was pretty light, too, so maybe calling where I was ‘lightless’ isn’t the best way to put it. It wasn’t dark--the light below and through that other door ahead kinda filled it up, except in the corners where the darkness seemed to go on forever. I realized as I was making my way through that empty place that I wasn’t getting pulled anymore, I was just following my feet now. I can’t really say I was the one moving them, but they kept right on going and I couldn’t very well stay put without ‘em.

     This place gives me the creeps, I remember thinking. And it only got worse when she didn’t even say anything in my head, like I expected her to. Then I thought, well maybe she can’t reach me here.

     It might sound a little strange, but I kinda felt sad about it.

     Lucky for me, that empty place wasn’t very big. The stairs curved as they climbed so maybe it felt a little bigger because of that but pretty soon I was standing in the open doorway on the other side--except when I got there, I discovered that it wasn’t much of a doorway, really. Really it was just a kind of rectangular hole in that emptiness. I could hear the voices coming through but they were all jumbled, like they were coming from under water or something. And I could see colors--really beautiful colors, I thought--but even they were a little…I don’t know the word for it. It was like looking into a watercolor painting and a bit of water’s spilled onto it, that’s kind of how it looked. I wondered if I should even try to step through--but my damn feet weren’t interested in what I thought and kept right on going.

     Passing into that place felt a bit like walking through those misters in the produce section of the grocery store. And I couldn’t believe what I saw--the place was so beautiful, so rich and the grass was lush and wavy and actual grass, and I could hear streams trickling away somewhere close by and even feel the wetness of the breeze. Birds were chirping, and there was birds everywhere I looked, all kinds of ‘em--way more than I know the names of, but they were all the kinds you’d usually see in the Spring. Flowers everywhere, I even watched a few of them open up as if they was saying ‘Hello’ to old Gery, so I told them ‘Hello’ back and even bowed as much as my old back would let me--and, wouldn’t you believe it, it was pretty far, too.

     I’ve never felt so much life, so much energy--and it was in the air, and I could feel it getting into my skin, my bones, my blood. My soul, I guess. I felt younger, like I was back in my early twenties--I felt alive.

     I remember laughing, that’s how good the feeling was. I couldn’t stop myself--I just laughed and laughed, not even running out of breath--not rasping, but full, deep laughs, like the kind I used to laugh before I got shipped off.  Back when everything was beautiful, before I started forgetting what beauty was. That’s how it seemed.

     I put my hands of my hips (no love handles!) and turned around, trying to take it all in--all that marvelous world in. I must have looked everywhere a dozen times, spun around a dozen times before I was satisfied. There were no more stairs to follow, no path to speak of but wherever I felt like going.

     There also wasn’t a doorway back into the empty place, but I didn’t realize it at the time.

     With nothing else to guide me, I started off in the direction of the voices--or what I that was the direction of the voices. This colorful place was wide open but still somehow it seemed like everything bounced around--not just the voices or the birds, but the breeze even. It was almost like nothing moved in a straight line, but followed some other kind of…what’s the word…trajectory? I think that’s what I mean.

     I might not have mentioned it before, but the breeze in that place was just like her voice. I don’t even think it occurred to me then because I’d already forgotten about her but looking back, its like she was there around me all the time.

     Anyway, like I said, I tried to follow those voices--they sounded happy and the whole place seemed happy, too, and I felt happy but I thought I might be happier if I wasn’t all by myself--so, in a way, I guess I really was still getting pulled along by something, I just didn’t realize it, or care anymore. Following those voices, looking for that happiness, it didn’t seem like nothing more than a stream in the forest seeking its way to a larger bit of water--lake or river, doesn’t matter. I guess it’s a natural thing, though. Not even just a human thing. I think most things want to be part of something bigger. I think most things find their own special kind of happiness that way.

     Then again, what did I know about happiness, really?

     After a bit of wandering, I found this kind of open arena in the grass made of white stone and unfinished pillars rising up out of the floor, like something out of Greek mythology, and there were these viny plants climbing the pillars and the vines were all decorated with yellow flowers and you could smell ‘em just like you were holding a handful of ‘em up under you nose. Which I never was too fond of doing, but these flowers smelled alright. Everything here was alright--more than alright, it seemed perfect.

     In the middle of the arena was a long white table, it seemed to sort of rise up out of the floor as if it was all one piece, just chiseled in such a way; and there were chairs all around and they were the same way, and most of them had people sitting in them and all of those people were young and beautiful and happy and I recognized each and every one of them.

     That was a bit of a surprise, let me tell you.

     They all seemed to be expecting me. At least, none of ‘em seemed surprised at ol’ Gery walking up out of nowhere, spoiling their fun. But its almost like I wasn’t even spoiling it--it’s almost as if the fun was meant for me and they’d just been waiting for me all along. And maybe they were, too. It seems wild now, but at the time it didn’t seem that way. It was the kind of place where you never really felt like there were any questions to ask--you just took it all as you saw it, enjoyed it. A pretty simple way of things, but it sure beat the hell out of the cynicism of old age and I didn’t mind it one bit. Not worrying about things is a light feeling, I’d forgotten how light it was.

     It seemed only natural that I’d go sit with them, so that’s what I did. We greeted each other like the old friends we were, even though now that I think about it a lot of them couldn’t have ever known most of the rest. I was the only thing some of them had in common, or should have been. But nobody cared. Everybody chatted like we’d known each other all our lives, talked about things that I’d forgotten but the memory of them came back like light through a blind when you open it and I was laughing--boy, was I laughing, probably like I’d never laughed before, at least not since I was younger. None of them seemed too interested in what had happened since we parted ways--I found that a little odd, but not odd enough to worry about--so we all just traded stories about the good old days for what felt like hours, talking about the past like it wasn’t even the past yet. I could feel the years slipping away by the minute--what I mean by that is I felt younger, I felt like they looked. There was food on the table, too, but I didn’t eat any of it. I was too busy laughing.

     You probably won’t believe what happened next, so I won’t go into too much detail about it. I used to be a pretty damn good basketball player, though--and, wouldn’t you believe it, I found I could still get up and down the court with some of those guys. I didn’t even run out of breath, not really. These days I can’t hardly walk a hundred and fifty feet uphill without sucking wind like a vacuum, but not in that place. I probably could’ve played for hours. I might even have, I don’t really remember.

     Time seemed to be…what’s the word…relative--I think that’s it: time seemed to be a bit relative, there. I know I’d been there for quite a while at this point, but the light never changed. Not that I recall seeing any kind of sun in the sky, either. So maybe it’s more that time didn’t exist, at all. A never ending noontime, in a never ending Spring. It was like that, I guess.

     I was walking off the court after playing with the guys when I noticed her for the first time--I could tell right away that it was a girl, but not very much else about her stood out. No--something did stand out, and that’s what caught my attention: she was all by herself. Everyone else was there at the game, playing or watching, but she was standing off in the distance, seeming small, seeming darker than the rest of them--less colorful, I mean. It was almost like she was standing in the shadows, but there was nothing to cast any shadows so that couldn’t have been it.

     I asked one of the girls who it was.

     ‘Who’s who?’ this girl replied, not looking.

     ‘Her,’ I pointed, ‘over there.’ The shadowed-girl seemed to realize I was pointing and duck down out of sight. ‘Oh, never mind.’

     But I couldn’t stop wondering, even when everyone else began wandering this way and that--all of them wanting my attention, for some reason--and the whole time I was playing cards with J or sitting by K talking about stories or else listening to A play guitar or just picking at the grass in peaceful silence with L (see?--I’m not giving you any more names), I just couldn’t shake the image of that shadow-girl or the feeling that she might be someone important, maybe even the real reason why I was here in the place to begin with.

     Don’t ask me how I got to thinking that way, it’s not like one thing led to another and that’s what I ended up thinking. It’s more that I just felt it, somehow. Like, even though I knew all of these faces--all these old friends of mine, people I’d been close to in some way or another--she was the only one I’d seen that I truly felt connect to. How I knew that from just one quick glance at a distance, I’m not sure. But I think we know a lot of things we don’t really understand how we know, just as we grow older we forget about it and think everything comes from experience and then if that doesn’t explain it then we just say we forgot what the experience was, exactly. Because if there’s one thing us old folk are good at, it’s forgetting things. Right?

     Now, what I was saying…

     (That was a joke.)

    

Ken looked up briefly from the stack of pages. He could tell Gerald was waiting for it, so he gave him a slight smirk. Gerald cackled. The waitress refilled their coffees, and he watched her go.

     ‘Truly a sight,’ he mused.

     Ken continued reading.

 

I was sitting there with L by the pond, my eyes watching her curly hair bob in the breeze, but my mind thinking about that shadow-girl. I picked a few blades of grass and let them fall onto the water. They just sat there, not moving. I’m not sure what I expected, but it’s a little funny that the same breeze that moved her hair around couldn’t shuffle a few blades of grass even an inch on the water. I started to focus on our reflections, hers and mine. I hadn’t thought of L in a long time. I used to think she was pretty--and I used to be right, because she was. She looked just how I remembered her, that night when she told me how great I was, just not for her. And as I looked at her reflection in the water, I remember wondering if she remembered that too.

     ‘Hey,’ I heard her say. The first thing either of us had said yet.

    I looked up, away from her reflection and at the real her, which was even prettier. Maybe even prettier than what I remembered. I don’t think that’s usually how it works, but that’s what I thought.

     ‘I heard you asking about her,’ she went on, looking away now, looking at all the others who now seemed to be waiting for nothing except my attention--maybe even jealous of L, which kinda amused me for some reason.

     ‘About who?’ I asked, distracted by her reflection and the memory of her and her now, and everyone else.

     She said a name--it wasn’t one that I recognized, not one I could put a face to, either, but somehow I knew she meant that girl, the one I’d seen in the not-shadow. And it seemed to move around inside me, somehow, that name did. Strange.

     ‘How come she was by herself?’ I asked. ‘Is she afraid of me?’ When I was younger, one of my girl classmates told me that I had an intimidating look and that I used to scare her before she got to know me.

     L shook her head. ‘I don’t think it’s you she’s afraid of.’

     ‘Then what?’

     L looked around, not saying anything. A butterfly landed in her hair, stretching its wings in the breeze.

     ‘You should talk to C,’ she said, at last. ‘C should be the one to tell you, if she will.’

     ‘She knows? And why wouldn’t she tell me?’ I was getting confused. Not that it takes much to confuse old Gery--not usually. But I hadn’t felt this sharp in years.

     L shook her head, and pretty soon we fell back into silence. I forgot how pretty she was, forgot she was even there. I started craning my neck all around like a periscope or something, looking for C--figuring I’d probably hear her first before I ever saw her (she had that kind of laugh--she laughed like a bazooka--you know what I mean). And the whole time I was looking for C, I was also keeping an eye out for the shadow-girl, whose name I will not say.

     Let’s call her M. M for mystery--because that’s what it was starting to feel like. When I was a kid (since I’m thinking of mysteries), I lived just below a fire station, down the hill from it I guess. You could walk right up through a hedge and through the neighbor’s yard and there it was. I remember one day it got broken into, and me and my brother and a couple other kids decided we were gonna solve that mystery and so we started a detective club and drew sketches of things not a single one of us had actually ever seen (the thief, for example), trying to piece the whole thing together. We investigated the scene, even--at least, the little bit of grass outside which was all anyone would let us play on (they thought we were playing), and there we found what we all agreed pretty firmly was the instrument by which thief had gained entry. It was a nut (like the kind you’d use on a bolt) attached to the end of a string. Obviously, the thief had spun the nut around pretty fast like a sling or a yo-yo and then hurled it through the window, which was how he was able to sneak in and do his thieving. We were all very proud of ourselves and handed over our notes and sketches and even the string/nut to the proper authorities, feeling pretty sure we’d get our names in the paper.

       I was started to get that kind of feeling again, about M. Like it was my duty to uncover the truth of her. The feeling young again was nice, but it really did kinda bother me, the whole mystery did.

     I left L sitting beside the pond, and I’m not sure she even noticed me leaving. She always had been the sort of girl who could lose herself in a thought--an artist, you know. A pretty damn good painter, I remember it now. I thought she’d make a decent painting, herself, but then who would do it?

     Before I could ever track down C, I ran into K. K was sitting on the edge of the arena, facing away from me and she had a notebook in her hand. She must have heard me coming because she turned around, closed the notebook tight and smiled--I could only see one of her eyes because her hair seemed to always cover the other one up, the right one. But the left eye was big and green and beautiful and I assumed the right one was, too. She lifted the notebook to her chest and her cheeks colored, matching the flowers at her feet.

     ‘I was just writing a little,’ she told me, the pencil still in her hand. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why it always makes me so shy.’

     ‘It’s fine,’ I told her. I’d heard that about writers, I added, about most of ‘em, anyway. She seemed to relax, and let the notebook fall open on her lap.

     ‘It’s about a guy named Jensen,’ she explained, but I already knew everything about it because I remembered her telling me before--it must have been a long time but for some reason it didn’t seem that way, and I could recall the details of her story before she ever shared them with me. Jensen was a smalltown pastor who was hiding a secret sin and though he put on a good face for his congregation and wasn’t a bad guy, really, that sin had become a monster and he was too ashamed to ask anyone for help so he tried to face it alone. K didn’t mention it now, but I also knew the story to be partly true--that Jensen was partly her--that she had monsters she’d always been too afraid to admit were hers. And I know they nearly got her, once, after we drifted apart.

     ‘Are you alright?’

     I shook my head, hearing her voice. I must have been reliving the whole thing.

     ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I like your story,’ I lied.

     She beamed. She set the notebook down and stood, turning to face me and that’s when I noticed the flower in her hair, pretty rare to see a girl wearing one but it seemed to fit her. I’d always thought so. I’d never told her that, though.

     ‘Queen Anne’s Lace,’ I said, and she nodded.

     ‘I don’t know why, though. It’s weird, isn’t it?’

     ‘No,’ I said, ‘it suits you.’ And it did. At least, that one beautiful purple bloom in the middle of all that white suited her. It stood out, stood tall and was content to be itself. I guess the reason I always thought of her when I saw that flower was because I wanted her to be like that purple bloom. I wanted her to stand tall and strong and proud, and I was always afraid she wouldn’t.

     And that one time, those monsters almost got her.

     ‘But they didn’t,’ I must have said then, not meaning to.

     ‘Didn’t what? Who didn’t?’ She was smiling still, that one big beautiful green eye sparking. I had the urge to kiss her, like before, but this time I didn’t do it. Maybe it hadn’t happened yet, in her mind. I wasn’t really sure how this place worked, yet.

     ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Have you seen C?’

     She scrunched up that pretty face of hers, thinking I guess.

     ‘Try the library.’

     ‘Library?’

     ‘Think lots of books, all in one place.’

     ‘I know what a library is, but where is it?’

     She pointed to a stairway at the end of the arena, one I hadn’t noticed before. It seemed to reach around behind one of the pillars and disappear.

     I thanked her, and she sat back down with her notebook and started writing again. I watched her for a few seconds, remembering her. Remembering her standing in front of me at the bottom of the staircase in the tunnels below the administration building, looking up at me with that one eye, it sparkling, her smile and the way she leaned up toward me with expectation. I remembered her lips, how soft they were and tried to remember feeling anything like that since but couldn’t. And I remembered getting on the train to go see her, after we’d parted. And I remembered her sending me a message after the train had departed that maybe meeting again wasn’t such a good idea, after all. In fact, she had plans. I could look at her now, sitting there at the edge of the arena, happy, smiling, strong--a lot like that purple bloom--and I could feel the warmth when she looked at me, and it made me want to cry.

     I’m not a crying man, I’d like to point that out.

     Well, now and then.

     I never saw K after we parted ways. I almost did once, but I ended up having plans. Of course, I didn’t really have them. I was just afraid. And then the monsters almost got her.

     The stairs at the end of the arena circled around and around the pillar--don’t ask me how, because they did not do that at all until I started climbing them--and finally stopped on what I guess was the second floor of the building that wasn’t just made of white stone anymore but carpeted (the color of wine, red wine) and had walls and windows and rooms and everything. But I could look out those windows and still see the grass, see L sitting by the pond, A over on the hill strumming his guitar for J, I could see everything there was to see except for M, the mystery girl.

     The library was at the far end of this second floor, and it was just about like what you’d picture from one of those stuffy old stories they make you read in school--like what that old codger Dickens might invent. Walls of books, big windows, a few fancy couches here and there, a desk (for writing some of those books, maybe), a globe for some reason, a fireplace that had actual fire burning inside it--though where it could be going, I don’t know. Given that the arena had no roof or chimney, at least on the outside.

     No matter what, I did find C sitting on one of the couches, totally clueless that I was there. She was reading a small black book of British poetry, if the title could be believed. And I guessed it probably could be.

     Still not aware that I was in there (I think), she broke the silence pretty suddenly with one of her usual bazooka laughs, followed by her also usual gatling gun laughter, and then after letting that go on for a few seconds she lowered the book over her mouth to I guess keep herself from exploding right there on the couch. That was when she finally noticed me, or at least acknowledged me.

     She sat up, but didn’t do anything about the book, just held it open in her lap. C was a very pretty girl, just like L and K, but she had a different kind of pretty to her, her face was flatter, rounder around the edges, very soft looking and somehow comforting--but I guess that was one of her charms, that comfort. She had an easy way of putting a guy at ease--not to use the same word twice in one sentence.

     ‘You’re here,’ she announced--another one of her charms was making these obvious, awkward statements. Like I’d be anywhere else!

     ‘I was looking for you, actually,’ I said.

     She raised one of her eyebrows--they were thin, really thin, and kinda sharp when she raised ‘em like that. I’d forgotten about that. It was the only sharpness to her, I think. Except her wit, sometimes.

     ‘I was wondering if you knew anything about--” And I asked her about M.

     She turned and looked out the window, seemed to really be thinking about it.

     ‘L said you were the person to ask,’ I added, not really sure if it would help things or not. I don’t think L and C ever actually met--I’m not sure why they would have--but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t get along. Maybe mentioning L wasn’t a good idea, I thought.

     But she kept right on thinking. Maybe really thinking about it, or maybe deciding if it was something she wanted to talk about--I remembered L saying she might not. I realized then that I hadn’t asked K about her--about M, I mean. Maybe I will on my way down, I thought.

     Maybe I should have known better by now, but that’s what I thought.

     ‘Are you sure you really want to know about her?’ C asked, looking out the window still. She sounded kinda far away, but she was just right there.

     ‘I’m curious,’ I answered. I wasn’t sure what else to say. I watched as C started to chew on her own lip.

     ‘She’s Nobody,’ she said, after a few seconds of chewing. ‘But she’s more than that, too. She’s also Everyone.’

     ‘Nobody…’ I repeated, mostly to myself, ‘and Everyone?’ I’m not sure why but I knew they weren’t the common ‘nobody’ and ‘everyone’--that’s why they’re capitalized. Not like I could actually hear that in C’s voice.

     ‘You haven’t figured it out, yet,’ she said, turning to me, ‘have you?’

     ‘Figured what out?’

     ‘This place--what this place is. What it means--to you, and to everyone here. And especially to M.’ She said the real name, though.

     I shook my head. It seemed like I was back living in some of my memories that got all put together kinda like a watercolor painting--and as I thought that, a kind of shiver when through me.

     Watercolor painting? Why did that feel so important?

     I don’t know when she did it, but I felt C’s hand on my forearm, that soft touch of hers and the comfort that watercolor painting or the idea of it was trying to steal away was in that touch, driving the question away. I felt the peace coming back. I felt the peace coming back and I stopped feeling anything else--including curious. I forgot about M. I just stood there, C’s hand on my arm, that beautiful, flat/round face of hers looking straight into mine (she was my same height, 5’9”ish), and it was almost like nothing else even existed anymore. I thought I could stay there forever.

     I forgot there was ever anywhere else I could belong.

I’ve been waiting for you to say that, I could hear her voice--just like I remembered, I know you’ve been hurting, really hurting and I was trying to respect your feelings but I’ve really, really been wanting you to say that. I’ve felt the same way. I’ve felt the same way for a long time, now. I was just waiting--hoping that you would notice. Hoping that you’d feel it…

     The memory filled my mind. The heartbreak, the emptiness. The not wanting to talk, not wanting to live but only to exist. Going to work to ease the numbness, then letting it have me until the next day when I’d bury myself in work for nine more hours--always wanting it, needing it--the burial. I didn’t care what with. I remembered her laughter, how it grated on my every nerve. How I just wanted her to shut the f**k up and let me exist, merely exist. How I hated the light that she kept trying to cast through the shadow of my self-loathing. How some of it managed to get through. How everyday after work she would send me a message, and how I wanted her to leave me alone but I had nothing better to do so I’d humor her and send her a message back, short, not encouraging. Hoping she’d get the hint (please God) and just leave me alone. And how she kept sending them, and how I kept sending them back. And then one night it didn’t stop, and it was morning and we were still sending each other messages and I realized I knew so much about her but it wasn’t enough, and how I kept messaging her. And pretty soon how instead of messaging we began to spend time together. Chatting like normal people, smiling, laughing. And I remembered how much I loved that laugh now, never wanting it to stop. And I remembered standing with her on the steps of the library, one cold February night, our breaths fanning out before us, our cheeks red with cold and with feeling. I think I like you, I told her. I’ve been waiting for you to say that, she replied. A few days later we went on our first date. It went well, I remembered that too. And then I remembered sitting in my car with her, dropping her off, enjoying the quiet. And I remembered her breaking the quiet with five simple words: I think I changed my mind.

     And that was it. There were no more memories after that, no good ones, anyway.

     Now her hand was on my arm, and all I could think about was how good it felt, how I never wanted that feeling to end.

     ‘It’s heaven,’ I whispered. Maybe to her or maybe just to myself, I don’t know.

     ‘It could be,’ she said. ‘If you want it to be.’

     Did I want it to be? I hadn’t felt this good in, well…in longer than I could remember. I felt light, alive, nothing hurt--it was the world that I remembered and missed, the beautiful world of my youth before all the doors started closing on me and all I could do was keep moving forward, one ugly step at a time toward some rapidly decaying future that probably once looked bright but over time became the grave. I couldn’t remember that grave now--then--just that it was there, waiting, wanting me. Hadn’t I wanted it, too?

     I shook my head. C tilted hers, it looked like she had something she was about to say but she never said it because right then we had a visitor. A very pale girl that I recognized vaguely--blue eyes and black hair tied back in a ponytail, galaxies in those eyes--stood in the doorway of the library, her chest heaving.

     ‘You should see this,’ she said, breathless, disappearing as soon as she’d come. I don’t think she was talking to me, but C pulled me along with her so I went, too, went to see whatever it was we should.

     From the top of the stairwell I could see all the way down into the arena, that open area where we’d all met before and where K was probably still sitting with her notebook, except it didn’t look the same from up here. It looked like the place we still were--me and C--looked like a normal, fancy kinda house with red wine carpets and walls, big windows and probably generations of stuffy old portraits on the walls (not that I saw any). From the top of the stairwell, looking down, I could see a doorway--the front door, I guess--and it was open and she was standing in it, M was. M who I’d forgotten about after C had touched me, filled me with notions of heaven--M who was both Nobody and Everybody. She stood framed in the doorway, in shadow, her face (or faces--it seemed to change a little as it moved, or my viewpoint did) looking up at me, eyes searching, piercing even. And, I thought, afraid.

     Not of you, but of this place, I recalled L saying. Yes, but of me, too, I thought then. Scared of it all. But why? I wanted to ask her, call down from the second floor, but my voice caught. Something kept me from speaking, like a physical thing inside my throat.

     C’s arm had wormed its way around mine.

     ‘You don’t belong here,’ she said--she didn’t yell, didn’t raise her voice even but I could feel it, and I was pretty sure M could, too. But M didn’t look at C, not even once. Her eyes stayed right on me. And I could feel her fear, almost as much as I could feel C’s heaven spread from her olive skin into my own. It was like the two were battling--the fear, and the peace--but over what? And why did they have to do it inside me?

     The next thing I knew, M turned away and disappeared. I could still see her, but she was gone. C’s arm was gone, too. I’m not sure when it happened, but I’d pulled myself away. Separated myself from the heaven of her touch. She looked surprised, but not hurt.

     ‘I need…’ I began, not really knowing what I needed but that it was something. Then I remembered the old restaurant standby and said ‘I need to freshen up, where’s the restroom?’

     C pointed across the hall to a narrow door between two much larger doors, and I followed her direction, thinking Freshen up, what am I--a chick? But even as I was thinking that, the idea of cold water against my face seemed pretty good. I felt like I was missing something--like there was something I’d lost and needed to find again, but didn’t have any idea what it was or where to start looking. Heaven? What’s that? All that I’d seen in this strange, pretty world appeared before me as I walked across the hall, almost like I wasn’t moving at all but the images kept on flashing by like the changing landscape through the window of a train. The library, C, the stairwell, the arena, K, the table and the dinner (that I didn’t eat), the game, A and his guitar, L and the pond, the birds and the flowers and the pretty color everywhere, and the grass and the watercolor--

     Watercolor? What made me think of that, I wondered, standing outside the bathroom door now. When had I ever cared about watercolor painting? Not since I was a kid, not that I could remember. But I could see it, a shadow of it--a rectangular image, faded but beautiful, like somebody had spilled a little water on it by accident, and the misters in the produce section of a grocery store.

     ‘Gery,’ I said to myself, shaking my poor old head, ‘you’ve finally lost it, old boy.’

     I went to turn the handle on the bathroom door when one of the door larger doors opened. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I caught myself looking inside. Nobody had opened the door--there wasn’t anyone there, not that I could see. Not at first. It just kinda swung open, a little bit, like doors will when the foundation settles. There wasn’t any breeze.

     Then again, the breeze was everywhere.

     Why did that breeze feel so familiar?

     ‘You can come in, if you like,’ said someone from inside the room. Her voice was quiet, warm. I pressed the door open a little further and I finally saw her, sitting there to one side, her back to me, leaning over what looked like an old sewing machine. She was making a blanket, that’s what it looked like to me, anyway. She never turned.

     ‘How are you liking it here?’ she asked me, still working on that blanket. It looked like something meant for a small child, maybe a baby even. I wasn’t sure. I’d never had much experience with them. Blankets or babies.

     ‘It’s…’ I searched for the words. I almost called it heaven, but stopped myself. I was afraid to say it, now, for some reason. ‘It’s pretty,’ I said at last. ‘Very pretty.’

     The girl made some kind of sound, like she was agreeing with me. Or measuring what I said, to see if she agreed. There was the hint of a question in it.

     ‘Maybe pretty ain’t the word,’ I added, self-conscious all of the sudden.

     ‘It’s a good word,’ she said quickly, warmly. She stopped her work and finally turned to face me. Her skin was mocha-colored, as warm as her voice was and her smile was the same, and her eyes. Her black hair fell around her shoulders--sometimes it seemed wavy but then the breeze would get ahold it and it would change, lay flat and shimmer. She’s hard to describe, looking back. Warm is the best word for her, though.

     ‘It’s strange, though,’ I said, after a short silence. The way she kept watching me made me think she expected me to keep talking, but I didn’t know what to say.

     ‘You’ve probably just forgotten,’ she answered. ‘It’s very easy to do.’

     ‘Forgotten? Forgotten what?’

     ‘What it all looked like, once upon a time. Of course--well…’ she trailed. Then, smiling, she went back to her sewing.

     ‘Who’s it for?’ I asked her. ‘The blanket, I mean.’ As if I could have meant anything else.

     ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Yet.’

     You’re going to be an uncle.

     I don’t know where the voice came from, but it was there, right there in my head. A voice I knew but that I knew had never once spoken those words to me. Because I’d read them, in a message. Sitting somewhere by myself, under an endlessly blue sky, the breeze flowing around me almost like it was now, in this room with her.

      ‘He’s going to love it,’ I said. Who was I even talking about? I didn’t know. The words just kinda came out of me. I might have whispered them, even. But she heard.

     The machine came to a sudden halt.

     ‘He,’ she echoed. She rose and for a moment I could see her in profile, caught in the light that fell through her window, like a golden statue, and I could see it on her cheek, too, that golden tear.

     Then she said a name, his name. And she looked at me.

     ‘It’s very pretty here,’ she said to me. ‘And so very ugly, too.’

     ‘Ugly?’

     ‘I remember you, you know. I remember everything. Do you?’

     ‘I think so,’ I said, thinking so. She stayed still, caught in that light, the tear on her cheek not moving. And I could remember it.

     ‘You were the first one for me, in that place. That place where we set out together,’ she went on. ‘We didn’t do it on purpose, but that’s how it happened. That’s how it almost always happens. Life is accidental. Love is accidental. I loved you, you know.’

     ‘I know,’ I said, knowing then for the first time. Knowing that I loved her, too, but differently. Loving her still. ‘I know.’

     ‘It could have been yours. It might have been.’

     I kept silent. Imaging that it had been. That it could still be, here, in this place.

     ‘I was bitter, it was hard knowing what could never be. But I tried not to let you see it. I loved you that way, too. The same way you loved me. I hope you knew that.’

     ‘I did,’ I said. ‘I do.’

     ‘I always enjoyed being with you, talking with you. But it seemed as if the only time you felt the same way was if you needed something from me, if there was something I could help you with.’

     ‘No, I--’

     ‘It wasn’t me you really needed. But you preferred me. And I found a kind of happiness in that. Don’t worry, I never blamed you. We were just another accident, you and I. A blessed accident. Friends are a blessing, aren’t they?’

     I nodded. I found I couldn’t do anything more than that. Friends were the greatest blessing in the world--I remembered it then. I’d forgotten it, but I remembered it then.

      ‘I was happy, you know. I was okay being that person for you--the person who was there when you needed help. If that was what I was to you, even if that was the only thing I was, I was happy. I would be that for you. Because nobody can be all things to everyone--most of the time they can’t be all things to anyone, even. So to be anything at all to someone is a gift, isn’t it? A precious gift. We don’t always see them for what they are, do we? Gifts. Sometimes we don’t even realize they were gifts until very much later. Until they’re gone.’

     ‘I’m sorry,’ I found myself saying. It was the only thing I could say. And I could only say it that once, or I’d start crying myself. I wasn’t even sure why.

     ‘Don’t be.’ I felt her hand close around my own. It didn’t feel at all like C’s hand, It was cold. ‘We were best friends, weren’t we?’

     You’re my best friend here, you know that, right? You’ve always been my best friend here.

     ‘It was nice to hear you say that,’ she said, as if remembering it, too. Or maybe she could hear my thoughts, just like…--who? Had someone else been able to do that? I couldn’t remember, not now.

     ‘Sometimes we don’t say the things we should,’ I replied, feeling like I’d told her the very same thing, once upon a time.

     ‘And sometimes we say too much. It’s very hard, isn’t it? When everything is so pretty.’

     That was the last thing she said to me. She let my hand go, returned to her sewing machine and started working again on that blanket of hers.

     You’re going to be an uncle.

     No, not of hers--of his.

     I closed the door, then felt myself fall back against it. I closed my eyes, and the images returned--everything about this strange place with there with me, every beautiful color and every beautiful face, all of it for me. Waiting for me, wanting me.

     ‘Heaven?’

     Nobody can be all things to everyone.

     Everyone?

     She’s Nobody…and Everybody.

     Why doesn’t she belong here?

     You feel it, don’t you?

     What’s up there?

     Don’t you already know?

     The shapes will get darker.

     What shapes?

     You created it, didn’t you?

     If you choose one, the other disappears forever.

     What will?

     It could be heaven.

     But whose?

     The monsters almost got her…but they didn’t.

     What if they did?

     He’s going to love it.

     I was an uncle.

     It’s very pretty here.

     The watercolors.

     And very ugly, too.

     The grocery store mister.

     The shapes will get darker.

     The winding stairway.

     Will they disappear?

     The empty, lightless place.

     You will no longer be able to see them.

     The doorway in the sky.

     Is this a sex dream?

     And her, on the not-grass.

     ‘Emily?’

     I ran to the nearest window and looked out--then to the next, and the next--everyone window in the house, looking for it. But it was nowhere to be found. The grass stretched in every direction, miles of it--but there was no doorway back.

     There was no way back.

     I turned the handle and the door opened. The bathroom was small, a narrow little sink cabinet against one wall, a mirror over it. Toilet and clawfoot shower to the side. Some might have called it pretty. But the word didn’t exist for me, anymore. All I could do was see everything that I’d left behind me, down there on that not-grass--the ugly world I’d managed to create for myself by nothing more than a series of accidents that all worked together to strip away the prettiness the future of my youth once promised.

     And I wanted it all back, so bad I could vomit. I wanted that ugly world back. I wanted her to forget about me and marry N and make me an uncle, and have nothing more to do with it than meet her by accident at the place we started off from together, accidentally become best friends, and then accidentally drift apart. I wanted C to see the world that I couldn’t have ever showed to her. I wanted K to always--always--beat those monsters. And I wanted L to always be looking for something greater.

     Sometimes we don’t even realize they were gifts until much later…until they’re gone.

     Had I given them any kind of gift, any kind of gift at all? And if I had, wouldn’t my coming here--here, to this place I created--take that gift away from them? That gift, and whatever other gifts might have followed, might have branched out from my own. Might this pretty world of mine be built on all the prettiness that theirs should have known?

     ‘I shouldn’t have come here,’ I said, not to anyone particular because I was alone. I imagined the cost of this pretty world, knowing I could never give to them all what I had brought them here and promised--knowing that the only thing I could promise them now was the ugliness I’d left behind. And I felt myself retch.

     Clutching the sides of that sink cabinet, I braced for the vile exodus I knew was coming. And that’s when I noticed my reflection. Or, the reflection that should have been mine, but wasn’t.

     I don’t know who was looking back at me, but it wasn’t Gerald. Not old Gerald. Not even young Gerald. Behind those strange glasses was a face I’d never seen before in all my days. I no longer felt the need to vomit. Instead, I leaned in for a better look at this stranger in the mirror.

     And I took off my glasses.

     The next thing I knew, I was laying in a field. A green field, like a field of grass, only the stuff I was laying on wasn’t grass at all, it was too wavy and rounded, almost like the type of grass a kid might cut out of construction paper for a school project--a kid with considerably more artistic talent than I have or ever had. It stretched out all around me, this not-grass. I looked up--the sky was blue, a kind of dull blue with nothing very spectacular about it--mottled, like somebody drew it up there with a crayon.

     ‘You came back to me,’ said the girl. She was standing right beside me, not glaringly bright anymore but like a real girl, a plain but real girl. And she was smiling.

     ‘Is this…’

     ‘Still not a sex dream,’ she said. It took me a second, but I realized she was joking with me. ‘I’m proud of you, Gery.’

     ‘That place…?’ I never have been very articulate (I got some help writing parts of this, to be honest) but I was still pretty confused by the whole…journey? If that was even the right thing to call it.

     ‘That place was the future--or many of them--that once were yours. That was the world as you feel it must have been when you were younger.’

     ‘When it were still my oyster, then.’

     ‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘But isn’t it, still?’

     I didn’t know about that, but I didn’t feel like arguing with her since she seemed to be trying to cheer me up.

     ‘Oh, I’m not just trying to cheer you up. I mean it.’

     D****t, forgot she could do that.

     ‘What if I would’ve stayed up there?’

     ‘Then you would have been able to experience on of your other futures--any of them you wanted. I don’t suppose you encountered even a small fraction of them, but they were all there, or could have been.’

     ‘Because I created that place.’ I looked up at her.

     ‘Yes.’

     I sighed. ‘It really was beautiful, up there.’

     ‘I know,’ she answered. A kind of strange answer, I thought.

     ‘It’s not strange,’ she went on. ‘After all, wasn’t I there with you?’

     ‘You were?’

     ‘I’ve always been with you, Gery. Longer than you realize. And I will never leave you, not while you’ll still have me.’

     ‘…Emily?’

     She laughed. ‘No. Not Emily.’

     ‘Then who?’

     ‘I’m Nobody, Gery. And Everybody.’

      And suddenly I understood. I finally did.

     ‘You’re my future.’

     ‘Yes, Gery. The ugly future that you created for yourself. I’m sorry--’

     ‘You’re not ugly,’ I said. ‘You’re not ugly at all. All the prettiness that I found in that place made you who you are. You’re not ugly. You’re beautiful. And I wouldn’t change you for anything.’

     For the first time, she couldn’t think of anything smart to say. And also for the first time, I know she had no idea what I was thinking. Because when I got up and put my arms around her, pulled her tight, she seemed to be very surprised. Surprised, but not upset. I held her against me, closed my eyes and just felt her. She was the pretty ugly future I’d made for myself, and I didn’t want to ever let her go.

     No sooner had I thought that, though, than I felt her leave. I opened my eyes and there was nothing there. I was alone again, I thought.

     No you aren’t, I heard a voice inside me say. Not as long as you’ll still have me.

That story I mentioned before, the one with the foreign title. There was a character in there I remember I remember whose only purpose was to absorb all the bad of the world around her and then to die, taking with her all that bad and making the world a better place. I can’t remember if she knew that was her purpose or not, but I remember thinking that it didn’t really matter because she was the kind of character that would choose to go right on through with it, even knowing it would kill her in the end. And I remember thinking to myself, if I could ever be like be like her, that character--if I could take all the pain or the sadness or the sick or the bad dreams away from just one person in the whole world, and make the world better for just that one person, would I do it? And I remember thinking that I would--believing I would.

     Maybe my life isn’t gonna ever get turned into a Hallmark picture (thank God), and I might not ever be as happy as the next person. I might never get married or have kids but just stay an uncle. Not many people might ever care that I was even here. But if I could make just one person’s world a little better, a littler prettier even, isn’t that something to hang a hat on?

     Of course, going back might seem nice. It might even be nice. Some parts of it, for sure. Maybe I could convince L I was pretty great after all. But then I wouldn’t be where I am now. I might miss the chance to help whoever all this ugly prepared me to help--or who knows what would be different. A lot would have to get erased, for something like that. And like this quote my high school football coach handed out once, For all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. And what the hell’d a guy like me want to go messing that up for? Better to just do what a guy can to make someone smile, right?

     There’s nothing prettier than that, than making somebody smile. And that’s just what ugly ol’ Gery aims to do.

 

Ken put the stack of pages down on the counter, looking hard at the old man who was, himself, pretending very earnestly not to notice that the story was over. But the upside-down newspaper he was feigning to read didn’t much help the charade. Putting the papers back into the envelope, Ken sighed, then finished what was left of his coffee.

     ‘It’ll never work,’ was all he said.

     ‘What’d’ya mean, it’ll never work?’ Gery cried. The waitress reappeared with more coffee, but Ken waved her away. Gery didn’t even notice.

     ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Ken.

     ‘It was a dream!’

     Ken peered at him, as if searching him for something. Not finding it.

     ‘In any case, take out that stuff about my book.’

     ‘Oh, come on! I helps tie it together, don’t it?’

     ‘I haven’t even written it yet, just told you a little about it. You’ve basically given the ending away.’

     Gery seemed to think it over, pulled something out of his pocket and took the envelope under his arm. ‘So without that, it’s okay?’

     ‘As a story, I guess it’s interesting.’

     Gery whooped, slapped five dollars on the counter and ran off--ran back in and slammed down five more and winked at the waitress, then ran off, laughing. Ken shook his head, smiling. 

     A pretty ugly future, he thought. He almost added: wish I’d thought of that, but caught himself just in time. The waitress walked over with the bill.

     ‘What’s got ol’ Gery so worked up?’ she asked, the two of them wandering a short distance over to the register where Ken paid for his coffee.

     ‘Just a dream,’ he said.

     ‘A dream,’ she said, handing him back his change. ‘Say, didn’t I see you the other day, over at the park? You were with a little boy, strange kid I ain’t never seen in here.’

     Mort.

     ‘Yeah. It was his birthday.’ He started to walk toward the door. ‘Thanks for making the coffee fresh. It was perfect.’

     ‘No it wasn’t,’ she replied. ‘Hey, umm…’

     ‘It’s Ken.’

     ‘Ken, right,’ she looked through the glass door out into the street. It was still morning, not very many people were out. There was still a lot to do.

     ‘Well--’

     ‘It’s been bugging me, Ken,’ she said suddenly, still looking through the door. Gery had wandered back into view, though it was only his backside. He was doing a hornpipe, or something remotely like one. He turned, spread his arms wide, grinning that ugly grin of his.

     ‘I didn’t notice it ‘til he got up to leave,’ she went on, almost lazily. ‘He comes in here a lot, Gery does. And you two seem close.’

     ‘I suppose.’

     ‘But I ain’t never seen ‘em before. Have you?’

     ‘Seen what?’ He looked from her back to Gery, through the smudged glass of that door--Gery beckoning, that envelope in one hand, and the other moving up toward his face to keep his glasses from falling off.

     ‘That,’ she said. ‘I ain’t never seen him wear glasses before. Have you?’

     The other night, I had what I’d like to call a dream.

     ‘No,’ he said. ‘Never.’

     I’d like to call it that, because…

Author's Note

As it's in progress, it's very much unedited. Not that a finished story would probably change that.