[612 words]
‟You have kind eyes,” she said and puckered her lips.
The swirling tendrils of smoke lifted from the cigarette, manifesting into clouds that hung heavy and low in the troposphere. The world, outside of the car, maintained a sense of placidity. Even the people, as they burrowed further into each other for warmth, appeared to remain static. Yet, the inside of the car was active, with the traveling clouds and the wheel clanking from one side to the other.
A relic from a past love—a charm affixed with beads and feathers, hung from the rear view mirror and danced with the sway of her motion. The street lights burned like cool blue flames and melted passing snow flurries on their descent. Leftover ribbon and Styrofoam cluttered the streets. Frosty winds ripped down the street and whistled through Alma’s cracked window. Holiday lights clung to the side of the buildings like frantic children do their mother’s breast. Muddied tracks crisscrossed the snow, leaving pockmarks reminiscent of an old, dirty kitchen sponge.
Alma raised out her hands and compared them to one another. She spoke in an eloquent manner. Soft and whispery and the slightest hint of Pinot still on her breath. She leaned in close— so close that Gem spotted the abrasive line where her front tooth was chipped— and said, ‟I think my hands are different sizes.”
She held them out and they compared under the haze. Gem pulled the smaller of the two in close and kissed it. It tasted like ash and cinnamon.
Rings orbited her fingers as commonly as satellites do planets. Each one was affixed with a different rock or crystal. She called them her atonements for previous sins. They looked at each other but didn’t have the words to speak. The pressures of the drink had reduced much of Gem’s vocabulary to that of monosyllables. It was a rotten feeling. Gem searched for something far grander, a superlative more potent than, ‟Pretty.”
The snow bundled on the windshield and darkened the interior of the vehicle. Alma leaned back into her seat and continued to play with the wheel. Gem knew she should say something, knew this was the moment to lean over and kiss her. But the rotten feeling crept further up her body. Like a wash of acid rose up and out of the gullet and pooled into the mouth. She was petrified by their mutual discovery.
Alma spoke of peculiar acts. The time she studied in Poland when she was eleven. Her first exposure to public nudity. She spoke on and on, and Gem sat and listened. She nodded her head slowly and blinked when Alma turned to her. It was two when she exited the car. She felt lonely amongst the empty streets. Lonely amongst the vestiges of a party that only happened mere hours ago, but felt like days. She wandered up the block and watched the moon cast its frown down upon her. Its opaline scowl shimmered between gusts of snowfall.
Only once she returned to her car did the rotten feeling start to fade. The alcohol drained from her head and proper words began to formulate again. She gripped the steering wheel and twisted it. The clank of the tires sounded sad against the frame of her car. Still, she mimicked Alma as she had done so before. She felt an absolute abandon in that other car. She saw her life, vivid and familiar, slipping away like the final frames of a movie reel. In its place, a new reel began to turn, casting scenes of unknown landscapes, a quiet reminder of how seamlessly one story can give way to another.
Bran Winkler is a novelist and archivist from Baltimore, MD. When not working, Bran frequents coffee houses and hikes the Shenandoah.
