|
| "My first hundred words were the hardest," he said.
"HELLO, my name is Ryan," said his stick-on name tag. He was the oddest-looking guy at the table. His eyes were large with irises ringed in white. His hair was limp and stringy and grew only from the sides and back of his head. His name tag was stuck to a tiger-striped shirt made of what looked like velour.
"One of my teachers told us to skip the first lines and write them later," I told him.
"But your first hundred words are still your first hundred," he said. "You know?"
"Oh, right," I said. "Yeah."
"But yes," Ryan said. "I know what you mean. Writers get so hung up on that first line. Skip it and come back to it when you know what you're writing."
"Yeah."
The table fell silent. Ladies and gentlemen - with name tags bearing various first names or first and last combos or what I could only hope were screen names - smiled politely at each other or took eager bites of the garden salads that had been placed at the table before we were.
"How did your first hundred words turn out?" I asked Ryan. "Once you got them down."
"They were crap really," he said.
"The next hundred were better?"
"Not a whole lot," Ryan answered. | | |
| Weston Meyer mostly ran for exercise and pleasure, but a small, very small percent of the running that he did in his lifetime was out of fear, and that very small percent was accrued right near the very end.
Weston Meyer jogged most mornings, and he signed up for charity runs every now and then. Before that, he played football in high school and ran track sometimes, and before that, he ran in PE class and on the playground in races or in kickball, and before that, he ran in his backyard or down the street or at the park with his parents.
Weston Meyer ran his best that very last day, on a crowded street, and then, in a not-so-crowded alley. It was late afternoon on his very last day - when the sun was low enough in the sky to throw shadows across everything and to turn the city into a checkerboard of darkness and light -when Weston Meyer caught himself in a corner and turned to face the man who carried a knife made for Weston. | | |
| "I dreamed about you last night," this nearly-total stranger said to me as he scanned my ten-for-five yogurt cups. "I ran into you at K-Mart and told you to buy a great pair of Ray-Bans that you'd tried on. Do they even carry Ray-Bans at K-Mart?"
I could say nothing. How are you supposed to respond when a check-out clerk at Safeway tells you that he dreams about you?
"I don't know if you ended up getting them," he went on. "But they looked fantastic on you."
"Thank you," I said, busying myself with my wallet. He was an older man. I don't know why that made it less creepy, but it did. If he was merely middle-aged, I would feel extremely uncomfortable. If he was my age, I'd be embarrassed.
"Of course your hair was different in my dream, shorter and lighter. Have you ever been blond?"
I shook my head. The teenaged bag-boy met my eye, but his expression said nothing. He probably wasn't even listening.
"You should try blond," the cashier continued. "It might look good. Not platinum, probably, but maybe a darker blond?"
"Maybe," I said.
"Forty-five, eighty-two," he told me. "We carry hair-dye here, you know."
I swiped my debit card and put in my pin.
"And then, go to K-Mart and see about those Ray-Bans," he said, and he held out my receipt. When I reached to take it, he pulled it back, and then, he handed it to me with a wink.
"Thanks," I said.
"Have a good day," the bag-boy mumbled as he put my bags into my hands. | | |
| Nearing the last few pages of his notebook, Ari wrote three words:
And then what?
There was nothing he was obligated to do once he finished, so there was no path to follow.
It wasn't the notebook. It was life. Once he filled the notebook, wrote a paper, took an exam, (and assuming he passed) he would be finished. His degree would be complete. And then? What?
Ari guessed that was when life was supposed to start. He could apply for jobs, grown-up, office-type, salary-paying jobs. He could think about grad school (Think about? Yes. Actually apply? Never). He could apply for a work visa and move to Belgium, India, Beirut. He could apply for unemployment and spend the rest of his life pretending to look for work while he writes the next great American novel.
No, he was too academic to write a novel, and he didn't have the life-experience. He had nothing to write about.
"What do you want to do?" was one of the top popular questions in university small talk, a close runner-up to "What's your major?" Ari always answered, "You know, research?" What else do you do with a degree in Sociology?
He could foresee the endless family barbecue in celebration of his graduation, the hours and hours spent trying to answer that question for aunts and uncles who would just repeat the question again at Thanksgiving. "What are you going to do?" "What are you doing now?"
"Move to Iceland," Ari wrote in his notebook on the lines following his question. "Learn to herd sheep."
| | |
| The man arrived almost three weeks after the signal went down. Niamh began suiting up as soon as she heard the dogs, so she was out and waiting just outside the hatch when they pulled up. She didn't have any place to put sled dogs. The man just unhooked the whole team and came to meet her with one thick, gloved hand extended in greeting and the other pulling his balaclava down under his chin and setting his goggles on top of his head.
"We come in peace," he said.
"From South Pole?" Niamh asked. Dumb question. There was nothing else within sledding distance.
"Yeah," he laughed. "It's Eddie."
"Niamh."
She was so relieved to see another human being that she didn't even ask him why he was there before she invited him inside and offered him some boiled carrots and coffee.
"So you're the SETI guy," Eddie said, taking a seat at the table and pulling off his gloves to accept a steaming mug.
"I guess so."
"You're not who I was expecting."
"I'm sort of new."
"I just mean, I didn't think cute girls were into aliens."
"Oh."
"Listen," Eddie rose from the table. "All of our communications are down at the base. Radio, satellite, everything. Do you mind if I use yours? I mean, I know you SETI folks are all about radios." Niamh had to set down her mug. Her arms had gone limp, and she felt her knees threaten to buckle. | | |
|
