Untitled
“Will you ever tell me what you’re looking for?” she asks. Wistful. Despair mars her pretty veiled eyes, she does not truly want an answer. “Will there ever be an end to it all?”
“Only when there is an end to me,” I tell her. “Do not think that I do not know what I am asking of you. I am asking you to follow me into the dark, into a space that suffocates. A place where it is impossible to dance.”
“Don’t be so cliché, I’m not so naive,” she says. There is an uptwist of electricity, passion. “Your heart, your mind, there’s enough space for me to dance, to breath. The end of you is the end of me, I promise you.”
“You said you were not so naive.”
“I’m not. But I’m serious,” she says. She stares upwards at the stars, and she breaths in the crisp air. Her exhalation tinted by the amber light of the fire. “You don’t know, do you?”
“Where would be the fun if I knew, would you be here? Would we be here? No.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But I do.” I say. “You’re not after a simple life on the prairie. That would drive you insane.”
“Am I not?”
“Not to me.” I look into her eyes to prove the veracity of what I’ve been saying.
“You’re a terrible liar, you must know that.”
“Tell me oh truth-seeker where have I lied.”
“Never with your words, never intentionally, no.”
“And you accuse me of being cryptic.”
“Because you are.” She says with a smile. “But you lie with your eyes. You see, you seek, and your feet don’t follow. I can’t place its origin. It’s neither fear nor uncertainty.”
“So why is it not fear?”
“I wouldn’t be here if it was, it would make you smell wretched.”
“But then, what do I smell like now?”
“You smell of dirt and roses, smoke and gasoline,” she says. “All mixed with the essence of you.”
“Sweat, you mean.”
“If you wish to be so crass about it, yes.” And she rests my head on my shoulders. “I need you to tell me where we are going if you want me to follow you.”
“To the edge.”
I did not have the heart to tell what I had truly meant, but perhaps all she had wanted was direction. Reassurance. Her line of questioning had nothing to do with me. Come to think of it, it had nothing to do with her. It all had to do with this distortion world we had built.
We sit in such musical silence as we drift through the back roads, up and down hills, past the expanses of fields, barns, and powdered pines. We communicate through our breaths and sighs, with our eyes, our hands. With the purr of the engine and the solid mechanical clicks of the old orange beast. Too hot, too cold. Too quiet, too loud. Nice and easy, petal to the metal. Sad songs, upbeat songs. Pop songs and beautifully harrowing sonatas. Nothing. Radio and advertisements. Everything and anything but our words.
We were scared that we would carve our words into stone, that we would say something that cannot be unsaid. So everything was left unsaid. Everything we wanted to say was so temporal, so fleeting. It would be a tragedy if anything was said.
“I want fries.” She says with such dissonance I did not know if she is serious. “I’m serious. And ice cream.”
“So what do you suppose you’ll find when you’re there?” Asks the all too curious cashier. We must have been her daily anomaly. At one point, the characters here would have been novel. Frightening. Enigmatic. But she’s read their books a hundred times over and she’s doomed to read them a thousand times more. And yet she is still here with a chipper voice and a smile. There is no fire, but there is light.
“I-”
“I’ve seen your kind before,” she says. “Just once. Once. But it’s been decades. He had your face and now that I think about, he had your voice too. You don’t come here too often. Your type, I mean.”
“I would not think so, no. But please, could you tell me what you meant?”
“Of course, honey.”
And the three of us sit at table in the corner. The cashier sits opposite of us. She starts to explain. “He was your age, too. But he never came back. It was all in the news. I reckon it must have been a national story. Search parties could not find even a sock. No footprints and no blood. No body. Some say the wind took him, made a ghost of him. Truckers see him on the side of the road he last traveled. Hikers dream of him when they camp on the cliff he dove from. Allegedly dove from. But he wouldn’t have died from that dive. He wouldn’t have, I promise you that much.”
“What do they dream of, when they dream of him?” She asks with utter fascination.
“They never say and they never come back the same. From their looks of their faces, it is something they will take with them to the grave.” The lady says. There is an uncomfortable silence.
“What is he looking for?” She asks and then she corrects herself. “Was. What was he looking for?”