I twisted the key in the lock and turned down the hall towards the elevator. I was starving, and once again, there was no food in my apartment. The bits of dough I had found on the floor of the bakery earlier were enough to put anyone off grocery shopping. I didn't know if I could ever trust grocery stores, bakers, or butchers EVER again. And prepared food wasn't much better. Who knew what happened behind those walls. I shivered and almost backed into Kevin. He was also coming out of his apartment, but I was so wrapped up in my thoughts I didn't even hear him. "Good job, Maria," I muttered, before I realized what I had done. I smiled sheepishly at him, and he smiled in response.
"Where are you headed, Maria?" he asked quietly.
"The diner," I replied quickly, trying to cover up my talking to myself. Then a thought stuck me. "Would you like to come?" I asked. Kevin nodded, and we went down the hall, down the elevator, and out the front of the apartment building together. I couldn't help but walk with a lightness in my step even though the day was as dark as usual for Washington Heights. Kevin skipped the sidewalk with me without missing a beat, and we turned the corner towards the diner. I could even hear music from an icecream truck floating from somewhere nearby. The day didn't seem to be living up to its normal gloomy standards.
Outside the diner, we passed Ms. Flogsbottom as she hurried in the oppsite direction, looking smug but slightly distraught. She glanced at me and smiled knowingly, then continued on. Kevin looked sideways at me, and I smiled at him as we walked through the doors of the diner.
I slid into the closest booth, and Kevin sat opposite me. After we both pulled out menus and examined them, he looked up at me. I smiled nervously. I had never been on a date of any kind, not ever. What does it matter, Maria? I asked myself, managing to keep my monologue internal this time. This is no date, don't fool yourself. This isn't a date.
I was silent. I had no idea how to say anything to him now, now that he was actually sitting across from me eating a toasted sandwich with onions that fell out of the end and onto the plate. One onion dropped onto the table and made a greasy spot. My eyes glued to the table. The grease was spreading, multiplying, enlarging across the table. My fingers itched to reach across the table and sweep the onion up into a napkin and put it out of sight. All I wanted was for that little spot to be gone.
Plastic clinked on the table as Kevin put his glass of water down next to his plate. The noise broke my concentration, and I looked up at him once again. He was staring at me with one eyebrow slightly raised. "How long have you been like this?" he asked me. I looked back down at the table, but this time I focused on keeping a blush from my cheeks, not focusing on using my mental power to make the grease spot disappear. I didn't know how to respond. I had always been like this, I thought. Always. Always. Always. Always. Always. I couldn't stare at the table forever so I looked back up. I tried to smile but couldn't.
"You're getting better," he said slowly, sweetly.
I stared at him. "What?" I asked. He was silent. "What do you mean? What do you mean I'm getting better?" He didn't say a word. My heart beat faster and I leaned forward, searching for something in his gaze. I gripped the edge of the table with my fingers. I felt like I was about to stumble upon something important. "Why do you even care? No one cares about me. So why should you? Why do you care? Do you care?" He just stared at me sadly. I could feel myself begin to freak out. I could feel the fear and frustration and lack of control filling me up, about to boil over.
"Do you care?" I asked. I was speaking loudly now. Everything I had been thinking recently was coming to the surface. "I want you to care, it's the only thing I want now." I stopped speaking to listen to him, but he didn't say a word. I couldn't believe that I had just told him that, but I also couldn't believe that he didn't have a single word to say to me. He just sat there.
With his silence, something inside me broke. "Not one," I muttered. "Not one word." Kevin just looked at me, awkwardly, almost as though he wished he could have responded, but couldn't. I collapsed against the seat. "Not one word, not one, not one, not even one," I muttered over and over again. I stared around me, but the diner had gone fuzzy and all the people were indistinct. "Not one, not one, not one not one not one not one not one..." I stumbled out of the booth and ran from the diner.
The sky outside had opened up and the rain came pouring down around me. "I can't even feel it, not without one word, can't feel it, can't feel anything, nothing, nothing, nothing, no words, no sounds, no feelings, nothing nothing nothing," I cried as I slumped to the pavement.
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Brone Barnheart Apt. 223
I was on the sidewalk, trying to light a cigarette. It was raining, of course. After one to many failed attempts, I gave up and let it just hang there. I was sucking on nothing. I had a few buck and nothing to do. My feet immediately took me in the direction of the bar. I saw her in the gutter, crying, rocking herself. No time to crack jokes. I reached out my hand to touch her shoulder, console her, but I hesitated. There was nothing I could say, knew how to say. So I silently slipped off my trench coat, and placed it around her. She didn't look up but grabbed the edges, continually rocking. I left her there, there was nothing more I could do. As I walked on I glanced across the street and noticed that my woman in red was not behind the counter, a guy this time. I sighed. As the bar windows came into view I spit out the unlit cigarette. My hand on the door I saw the red scarf on the coat hanger. “Heh.” There she was at the bar, beautiful and mysterious, my kind of woman. I walked in, sat down on her right and ordered a red Russian. Luckily I was not carded. She didn’t talk much, and always wore a poker player’s face. It was hard work to learn even the slightest detail about her. As the day turned to night, I learned some of her dislikes; idleness, delay, boredom. She hid her emotions, but I saw something very familiar in her eyes, trouble. I like trouble. Her body language was screaming out something to me too. It looked like the night was about to get interesting. I grinned. I looked past her and I saw…no…it couldn’t be! My smile evaporated. I was paralyzed in my chair. Outside the bar, it was….it was Meredith. Was I dreaming? Another Nightmare? I rubbed my eyes and looked again, just in time to catch the wisps of her hair leaving the window view. She was heading into town, shit. She was the one who had killed my heart all those years ago. There was only one reason she was hunting me down now.
“I….I have to go.” I said lamely. I quickly got up and left the bar. Meredith was nowhere to be seen. I chanced a look back inside. Was she, was she crying? No time to worry about her now. I called Seebach.
“Michael, what the hell. Give me my ID."
"I need it much more than you idiot. Don't think you can trade me a hundred bucks for it."
"Unbelievable huh? but that's not important, of course I'm calling you for a reason. So listen carefully, because I'm serious about it."
“I think I saw Meredith.”
He said something about meeting, but I already knew this was my problem. I went back into my apartment and laid down. Looks like my dreams were catching up to me, but how was it going to end? Sleep took me and there she was, standing pretty with a pistol.
George Jefferson stepped into his room. He had just come back from the clinic. He hadn't gone to the hospital this time; they ask too many questions. He had waited a few days after his accident to get treatment so as to not attract attention. He could barely remember what happened that night. He hoped no one else had been hurt during the chase; Ryan Ford wouldn't have any lasting damage, but it was still too much. He had been reckless, and someone innocent had been hurt. He would have to lay off of his Robin Hood - like thieving spree for a while again, but this time he wouldn't have to be completely inactive. He shut the door behind him and made sure that it was completely locked. He pried open the floor boards and revealed the numerous treasures, formerly belonging to unworthy drug dealers. It was time to give something back to the community.
There were a couple thousand dollars under there (Jefferson needed something to replace his lost police salary), but most of it was much more valuable than money. Jefferson had chosen to steal objects whose worth was uncalculable, objects of true beauty and art. These were things that no criminal, common or otherwise, could ever truly appreciate. That was why he had stolen the Miura; it had fit his criteria perfectly. Now he was charged with the task of redistributing these precious objects to those who would appreciate them.
Unfortunately, he had no idea how he would accomplish this task. His stomach rumbled. Today was not the day, he decided. Now he just needed food. Jefferson grabbed some of the smaller bills in his stash and replaced the floorboards. Then he left his apartment, went down the elevator, and out on to the street. It was still overcast. I don't know if I remember what the sun looks like, he thought. He walked down the street. An ice cream truck was parked across the street. It was completely silent and still; no kids or music or anything. Jefferson also noticed that it appeared to be the same make and model as the black van he had nearly plowed into only a few days earlier. He would have thought about it more if it wasn't for an odd girl he noticed walking in the street ahead of him. She was walking as though every step filled her with disgust. Probably some sort of neat freak, Jefferson thought. If only he had some sort of golden disinfectant in his stash somewhere, he could give it to her. She would probably appreciate it. he smiled to himself and kept walking.
He arrived at the grocery store and entered. He picked some basic food items to stock his apartment and proceeded to checkout. A middle-aged woman was in front of him was taking an unnecessarily long time buying her food. She was obviously quite smitten with the checkout boy; Jefferson wondered if the boy realized this as well. He wondered which of his treasures he would give to these two people. Probably some sort of exotic rose would be given to the woman; of course, such a gesture could easily be taken the wrong way. Plus, he didn't think he had anything like that.
As Jefferson left the store with his groceries, he felt depressed. He had no idea how he would distribute his loot. He wanted his gifts to match the receiver, but he realized he knew very little about the people in his neighborhood. He had spent most of his stay at Washington Heights patrolling the streets alone at night. His was a lonely pursuit, and now it had caught up with him.
Then, as he rounded the corner, he saw the answer to all of his problems.
He ran back to his apartment. He threw his groceries into the fridge. As he was about to pry open his floorboards, he heard a knock at the door. He opened it, and there stood Oscar Alcazar. Oscar grabbed Jefferson by his necktie and pulled him close so Jefferson could smell his spicy breath. Jefferson's problems weren't over; they had just begun.
Train of Thought
It was another rainy afternoon. Luckily, Kevin wouldn't be out much. He had only one class today, an afternoon lecture on the endocrine system.
Kevin sat alone in the car of the SMARTA train, staring blankly through the window across the aisle, watching flashes of orange light the color of macaroni and cheese pass by, interrupting the blackness that was the bowels of the city.
Lulled by the rhythmic clacking of wheel on rail, Kevin was lost amid the sea of thoughts swimming through his head. He reflected on the crazed events of the morning.
Especially noteworthy was his lunch with Maria. She had bumped into him as they were both leaving their apartments in search of decent food, a rare commodity among the residents of Washington Heights, it seemed. They had ambled down the wet pavement together, the both of them skipping the sidewalk in Maria's usual, peculiar manner. Then came the fun. The sandwich Kevin had been eating had a serious onion leakage problem. One piece of onion that fell onto the table seemed to flip a very strange switch in Maria, causing her to fall into a silence only to be broken with shouts of despair and affection, followed by her flight from the diner.
Kevin's thoughts also wandered to an attractive young woman he had seen around Washington Heights. She, too, wore a Johns Hopkins sweatshirt. He wondered what she might be doing around Washington Heights so much. Did she live there, too?
Kevin was aroused from his meditations by the squeal of brakes as the train entered a station. Glancing up, Kevin saw the sign reading Johns Hopkins University. Grabbing his bag, he trod onto the platform and up the stairs, returning to the gray world outside.
Seemingly complacent, Elizabeth sat in a booth at the diner. Her novel was done. Dead? Her past was dead, that was for sure. Malcolm was probably somewhere in Las Vegas by now.
The faintest whift of decay brushed her nose. She turned to find Kevin brushing a hand through his hair as he and Maria sat down to a booth, both grinning. They were having lunch or dinner or something. An echo of a cheerfully eerie tune passed her ear. Elizabeth looked out the window to see the source being chased by a group of school children. An ice cream truck. It was four o'clock. They were probably having a late lunch.
The front door chimed. Mrs. Flogsbottom entered the diner, smiling. Elizabeth smiled, remenising over Mrs. Flogsbottom's advice. She had waited until the completion of the sixth chapter for her protagonist to be kissed by ... Malcolm. She'd actually waited until chapter 8, but that's a different story.
She wasn't sure of anything anymore. Dialogue had become nothing more than an echo of whispers. Her latest response had been, "Huh?"
"Would you like some more water, Liz?"
It was Mac.
"Please," Elizabeth replied, looking to the glass in embarrasment.
"What's wrong sweety?"
"Who knows,"
"Just let me know when you need a refill.
Elizabeth continued to stare at the water glass, now filled to the brim. "Thanks," she said, as Mac progressed to another table. Moving forward — the one thing Elizbeth needed to do, yet the only thing she couldn't. The afternoon turned to evening and evening into ...
"Liz," a voice echoed in the wind.
The building shook.
"Liz!"
The building shook again.
A sharp pain severed the dream.
"Liz, are you alright?"
It was Mac again. Everyone was gone. The sky was pitch black as raindrops spat against the window.
"What time is it?"
"It's midnight, sweety. We're about to close up shop."
"Right," Elizabeth said, rubbing her temples.
"Are you going to pass out again?"
"No Mac, I'm fine," she lied.
Without another word, she rose from the booth and walked out the door. Ten minutes later Elizabeth entered her apartment with a single letter in her hand. It was the only parcel she'd received that day. No junk mail. No letters from Mom. Just a letter from her editor Jerry Hacker. She'd made the deadline. She didn't know why he would complain. She sat upon her bed as she began to scan the letter.
Dear Elizabeth,
What a work of genius. ... We look forward to publishing your work very soon.
Sincerely,
Jerry Hacker
P.S. - I especially enjoyed the transformation of the protagonist after she confronts Mr. Gainnes with her realization of where her heart truly lies.
As Elizabeth laid the letter on the bed, she looked to the ceiling of her apartment. A hot tear rolled down her cheek. It was true. It was all true. Every word, paragraph and page of the novel was true and her biggest regret. She balled up the letter and threw it across the room, just like had thrown her heart across the country.
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