Portia July

*If you were in a Creative Writing class with me, this was originally shared with the title ‘Systemic Risk.’ This is Part 2. Part 1 was published last week. Part 3 will be available next week.*

    I met her when I was a trader. A consolation prize, an apology—that’s all she was ever supposed to be. I’d just lost an account I’d been courting for a while to my best friend from college, Paul, who’d gotten me the job at the firm in the first place.

    “Gavin,” Paul knocked on my office door. “Got a minute? I want you to meet Ace.”

    I sized up the man who held his hand out to shake mine. I’d expected someone who looked like a criminal. There were no scars to indicate severe gang initiation beatings, no prison tattoos on his wrists to document a misspent youth. In a pressed grey suit, tailored to his five-foot-nine frame, Ace looked like any other business man. How twisted a man is can’t be judged by the knot in his silk tie.

    “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Ace.”

    “Likewise, but you can leave out the ‘mister,’ Gavin.” His expression was friendly enough. “You do great work. Our projections have never looked better.”

    I nodded in an attempt to mask my bitterness. “Glad to hear that, sir.”

    Glad. That’s the word to use when an unsavory billionaire rips a $200,000 rug right out from under your feet, then returns to pat you on the back while you’re licking your wounds.

    “Gavin,” Ace said, clearing his throat, “I am a business man. What happened today was business, not personal. But I want to make it up to you.”

    Ace pulled a business card from his breast pocket and laid it on my desk.

    “I’d like to monetize your personal pursuit.”

    The card was black with numbers clustered in the shape of a diamond.

    “My personal – what is this?”

    Ace grinned. “It’s a gift. And a lesson on quality versus quantity. Pick your poison. They’ll put her on my tab. When’s your birthday?”

    “May 9th,” I said.

    “You make it to a thousand in the next eight months and I will wire $200,000 into any account you’d like.”

    Paul and I exchanged glances.

    “And if I don’t?”

    “It’s a bet,” Ace winked. “You will.” He turned to Paul. “I’ll show myself out.”

    Once Ace had disappeared into the hallway, I chucked the card into my waste basket.

    “Gavin, he knows how hard you worked on the account.”

    “And he’s paying me in sex because he thinks I’m an addict – thanks to you.”

    Paul shook his head. “I told him it was just a goal you set for yourself. It shows you’re ambitious. No other guy I know is even close to having a thousand notches on his belt by age thirty.”

    “I’m not calling. He’s a snake.”

    “He’s a rich snake, Gavin.” Paul bent to retrieve the card from my waste basket. “And this is how rich snakes apologize.”

***

    As instructed, I wait for the beep.

    The wine bottle slams into the passenger side door as I turn into the parking lot of my apartment complex.

    “Hey Paul, it’s Gavin again. Wondering if you have plans for next weekend. There’s a show I want to see at the 169. Call me back.”

    Paul hardly ever returns my calls these days. If roles were reversed, I can’t say I wouldn’t avoid him. There’s a reason I teach Algebra. No one on Wall Street would take me after I was fired. Ace blackballed me. I assumed that made us even. In Ace’s eyes, we weren’t—not even close.

***

    A month after I’d met Ace, I found myself drunk and alone in my apartment.

    “Thank you for calling Diamond Associates. Please listen to the prompts and make your selection.”

    It wasn’t the first time I had called, but it was the first time I’d responded to the automated system. I was nervous, but casual sexual encounters were a risky business altogether. I’d been through the fake pregnancy scares, the real pregnancy scares, the STD scares, the angry boyfriend scares. Jail time didn’t seem like much of a threat, all things considered.

    Within the hour, I checked into a hotel five blocks from my apartment.

    A gorgeous young brunette arrived at the bar a few minutes after me, wearing a blue cocktail dress that accentuated all of her curves. She is known by those who pay for her company as Adriana. But that isn’t her name.

   ***

    “Unbelievable.”

    For three straight weeks now, the mystery man who has taken a liking to my numbers has purchased the ticket by Monday morning.

    “I am very sorry,” Louis says. “You literally just missed him.”

    I pay for a coffee, black with a dash of sugar, and forego the lottery ticket for the first time in years. By the time I get on the road, traffic is backed up. I’m stuck behind a white Cadillac, driven by a blonde who is more concerned about doing her makeup than making it to work. The ceiling of my own car feels lower today than it usually does.

    A sealed envelope is waiting on my desk when I arrive in my classroom. I toss the entertainment section of the newspaper beside it and drop my bag on the floor.

    Work has been a nightmare over the past couple of weeks. Our funding heavily relies on annual assessments the students are required to take. Even after several weeks of prep, all of my students bombed their assessments. I suspect that the administration is firing me, but I don’t know that they’ll even get the chance. I decide to file the unopened letter in my waste basket.

***

    “You’re like a drug,” I said.

    “Is that a line you use on every girl you sleep with?”

    She didn’t know she was the only girl I’d slept with since we’d met.

    “Only the ones who use fake names.”

    I toyed with the bracelet on her wrist, a gaudy gold piece she wore to let her friends know she was working. Friends who might approach her at a club or a fundraising event. Friends who knew her as someone other than Adriana. I hated that bracelet.

    The sheets crinkled as she rolled to face me. I brushed a strand of her hair away so I could focus on the flecks of gold in her green eyes – no small feat without my glasses.

    “I’ll tell you my name if you tell me my number,” she said.

    “Tell me your name and I’ll let you guess your number,” I said.

    “Maya.”

    “Maya,” I repeated. I picked a number in my head. “Maya, you’re 782.”

    She smiled. “And what number are you on now?”

    “Still 782.”

    “You’re lying,” she said.

    “No.”

    “It’s been three months.”

    At that point in my life, I had everything and nothing – simultaneously.

    “Maya, I am in love with you. I want you to quit this. Move in with me.”

    She laughed. “You’re serious?”

   ***

    Paul finally called back almost a month after the last message. We meet at the club, order a couple of drinks each, and make small talk for half an hour before the bands start playing. We’ve been friends for long enough that we don’t feel any need to sugarcoat our lives. We’re both single men who hate our jobs. After a while, there’s really nothing to talk about. I realize now that’s why we never call each other anymore.

    As the opening band finishes their set, a guy who looks like he never graduated from his frat house pushes through the crowd, dragging a beautiful brunette in a pink dress behind him.

    “Did you know she was going to be here?” Paul asks.

    “I had an inkling,” I say.

    “You’re too calculated for inklings,” he says. – ©️ 2014-2021 Portia July

(To Be Continued NEXT Week…)

*If you were in a Creative Writing class with me, you’ll recognize this story as originally shared with the title ‘Systemic Risk.’ This is Part 1. Part 2 will be available next week.*

Fifty-two times a year, I buy a lottery ticket. Usually I wait until Friday afternoon, unless it’s a bad week. I stop at the last gas station I pass on my way home from work. It’s the one right next to the discount liquor store, which is convenient if it’s been a really bad week. I always choose the same lottery numbers for half-methodical, half-sentimental reasons. I don’t believe in luck anymore.

    Today is Friday. I don’t bother locking my classroom door. Should the malcontents I teach conspire and break in over the weekend, I invite them to torch everything. I’m sure the janitor locks all of the classroom doors at the end of his two-hour shift. I’ve heard rumors about how much money he makes. He’d better be doing something to earn his paycheck. Five days a week, I spend eight hours in a room that reeks of sweat and urine, teaching Algebra to at-risk high school students who stare at me like I’m a freak. I used to be a day trader. The money I spent on the car I drove then would cover my current rent for ten years. Ten years. I try not to think about that too much.

    It was candy apple red. I got a lot of speeding tickets driving that car, almost lost my license. I can close my eyes and remember every detail – the gears shifting seamlessly, the intimacy of the songs that came through the speakers, the lingering scent of leather mixed with her perfume.

    The car I drive now was a used purchase, acquired for very little cash and a lot of desperation.

    “It’s not fancy,” the seller stated the obvious while he watched me kick the tires. “But it’ll get you from A to B.”

    He failed to mention the other four letters I’d encounter between A and B: H-E-L-L. My economy sedan is painted a hail-damaged black, with manual windows, an out of commission air conditioner, and a wet dog scent that gets downright oppressive in the summer. The seventeen-and-a-half minute drives between school and my apartment feel a lot longer in August than they do in January.

    A construction crew is rolling up black compressor hoses and orange extension cords as I pull into the gas station’s parking lot. My door creaks open and they stare as I awkwardly climb out of the driver’s seat. I’m not attractive, but I’m used to being noticed. At just over six-foot-seven, with albino white, curly hair, and thick black-rimmed glasses, I’m hard to miss.

    “Gavin,” Louis the attendant greets me as I walk through the door, “they’ve raised the prices next door.”

    I’ve noticed the crew working on the liquor store every morning when I passed by this week, but it never occurred to me that a remodel would mean higher prices. Of course it should have.

    “No kidding? How much?” I ask.

    Louis is waiting for a customer to make a decision on a gum purchase, so I politely wait several feet back from the counter, my eyes tracing the chips in the dirty, outdated tile. There’s a hint of professional grade cleaner in the air.

    “My bottle of whiskey was a dollar more yesterday than it was last weekend. You know it started with Smith’s. I guess Marco’s just the first one to cave,” Louis says, referring to the liquor store’s owner.

    “Well, I don’t blame Marco for trying to make an extra buck. Everybody’s doing it – my landlord raised my rent again at the beginning of the year,” I say.

    “It’s a racket, man,” Louis says, turning his attention back to the woman who’s made her selection. Wintermint.

    Smith’s General Store, a high-end corporate grocery store chain came in shortly after I moved to the neighborhood. Investors have been buying up low income housing and opening new restaurants. Gentrification has been good for the established business owners, too. But for everyone else, day to day life has become more expensive. I should have moved after the rent increased, but moving requires motivation I don’t have and money I don’t want to spend.

    Louis cheerfully counts change for the woman, making small talk like always. He’s a short man, maybe early forties, with dark hair and a dark beard – I think he might be Italian. He’s got a wife and three kids. Or, maybe four. I can’t remember. Anyway, I doubt he makes good money here. But he’s always in a good mood. Maybe it’s the whiskey.

    “Look,” Louis says after the woman exits the store, “I have more bad news. Some guy took your numbers earlier this week.”

     “What?”

     My mind is racing to calculate the odds of that happening. I chose the numbers from a chart I created myself, based on numbers that belonged to someone I knew before I lost everything. She was the closest I ever came to being lucky.

    “I tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted,” Louis says.

    It’s irrational, but I feel like I’ve been robbed. One of the few things I care about now belongs to someone else. For this week, at least.

    Quickly scrambling the numbers in my head, I make my ticket purchase and wish Louis a good weekend. Next door, the inside of the liquor store smells of fresh sawdust, wet paint, and vodka from a bottle that burst when the Indecisive Gum Buyer from the gas station dropped it moments before my arrival.

    I don’t drink vodka. I hate the way it smells. I don’t drink beer, either. There’s a reason for “cheap, unintelligent, simple guy” stereotypes in the beer commercials. Most of my students were probably fathered by beer drinkers.

    I drink wine. Spicy, full bodied reds. The right wine, if its layers are complex enough, is a drink for the sophisticated gentleman who doesn’t want to shell out the cash for scotch. I actually have a bottle of single malt scotch in my kitchen cabinet, but I’m saving it for the right occasion – either the day I win the lottery, or the day I get her back. Until then, I drink wine.

    “I’m so sorry,” the Indecisive Gum Buyer apologizes to Marco’s daughter, Rosa, as she finishes cleaning up the mess. Rosa doesn’t seem bothered. She’s sweet as sugar and if she wasn’t so young, I would hit on her, Marco or no Marco.

   I can’t stop thinking about the ticket. I’m not obsessive compulsive. I’m just very particular about certain things. I don’t have a good feeling about the numbers I just picked.

    It really shouldn’t matter, though. The numbers I use are based on a lie. I never told her. Some truths are better left untold. – ©️ 2014-2021 Portia July

(To Be Continued NEXT Week…)

*This is a tiny excerpt from a novel I’m currently querying. My favorite rejection so far? I wanted to love it, but I just didn’t.*

…

The speakers crackle mid-sentence and fall silent. There’s a monotone buzzing.

Heels click against the concrete floor and reverberate off of the walls. Vega imagines someone approaching in stilettos. She laughs.

“Something funny?”

The heels stop clicking. A very tall woman now towers over Vega. She smells like peppermint. She’s wearing white sunglasses and a wide grin, with teeth stained yellow from excessive coffee or cigarettes or both.

“My name is Eve,” the woman says. “And I love jokes. So, please, do tell me what’s funny.”

“Ugh, I’m terrible at remembering jokes,” Vega says. “Well, maybe that’s too self-deprecating. I always remember the punchline, but forget the set-up. And if you give away the punchline from the start, you might as well not bother to tell the joke.”

“Indeed,” Eve says. “Why bother?”

“Are you wearing stilettos,” Vega asks.

Eve folds her arms across her chest. She exhales peppermint. She’s wearing a white turtleneck. Against the bright white walls, she looks like an eyeless, floating head with a pair of hands. And her teeth really are much too yellow for the scene.

“I suppose you came for Lannix,” Eve says.

“Who’s Lannix,” Vega says.

“You never forget the set-up, do you,” Eve says.

“I can tell already,” Vega says, “that you and I are going to have a really fantastic time together.”

“Oh, yes,” Eve replies. “And you’re stuck with me now. The Committee just voted against coming to get you.” 

– ©️ 2020-2021 Portia July

            It’s been three years since I last saw Grandpa.

            Audra and I brought our (then) nine-month-old to Galveston at my father’s insistence.

            “He’s ornery,” Dad had conceded. “But he won’t be around much longer and he needs to meet his first great-grandchild.”

            After a debilitating fall that broke his hip, Grandpa chose to remain in his beloved semi-tropical environment.

            “Everything’s bigger in Texas,” he’d say over the phone, “and better.”

            He must’ve chanted that to himself decades earlier as his rearview mirror swallowed his wife, children, and the unpaid mortgage he left behind.

            Dad chose Grandpa’s nursing home. It was a charming five-bedroom house in a suburb of Galveston, not far from the beach. The front yards of the surrounding houses were littered with children’s ride-on toys and broken toilets-turned-flower-beds. Grandpa’s yard was pristine. Hibiscus, oleander, and elephant’s ears grew near a white stone bird bath. Porch swings swayed in the humid breeze.

            The good die young. The not-so-good grow old in paradise.

            Grandpa was waiting by the front door in a bright green and blue polka-dotted hat that declared, “It’s Party Time.” His face was clean-shaven, his posture stately despite the wheelchair. He wore a faded red button-up, grey suspenders, and a black pair of polyester dress pants. And, of course, he had his cowboy boots on.

            “Well, lookee here, lookee here,” he said in his Southern Texas drawl. “Deary, you are lookin’ mighty fine.”

            Grandpa’s grandchildren are all “Deary” to him. My cousins and I have discussed this at length, determining that it is easier than remembering our individual names.

            “And so are you, Grandpa,” Audra lied, greeting him for both of us.

            A vain man, Grandpa had never been overweight. But I guessed he’d lost several pounds, judging from the looks of his hollow, grey cheeks.

            “That’s because I’m happy here,” he said. “Happy, happy, happy.”

            A phrase he should have trademarked.

            Oliver began to cry.

            “My lands… That’s just the Cherokee blood in her coming out,” Grandpa said.

            “Grandpa,” I said, “this is your great-grandson, Thomas Oliver Brewer.”

            “Oh,” he beamed. “A Thomas, huh? That’s a fine name. You can’t go wrong with a Thomas.”

            Thomas is Grandpa’s first name, just as it was my father’s first name. And mine. Giving it to Oliver had been Audra’s decision.

            The nurses ushered us into the kitchen, where a large table had been covered with a red plastic table cloth. In the center, a white cake waited to be cut. A quote about the tree of life had been penned on it in black icing. A cheerful yellow covered the walls. Balloons floated from white ribbons, clinging to the windows and patio door as if they wanted to escape.

            For the next two hours, we listened to him rewrite family history. Didn’t we know what a good Christian he was? Hadn’t we heard that he had given generously to those in need? Weren’t we aware that his was a happy life?

            I promised myself I would never return to that nursing home that reeked of pina colada air freshener ever again.

            But then my father got sick.

            “Don’t deny a man his last dying wish,” Dad said with a smile. “He needs to see the beach again.”

            Even if he hadn’t forced a promise out of me to visit Grandpa, Dad’s death meant that I was now required to act as Grandpa’s power of attorney. My first challenge in this new role was to find new hospice care for Grandpa. A mild case of the measles had given way to encephalitis. The virus had weakened his immune system and attacked his brain cells.

            “I know it’s bad timing,” a nurse told me over the phone.

            The timing could not have been worse. I had one week to burn until a group of shareholders would decide the fate of the company Dad and I built from the ground up. Instead of much needed prep time in the office, I found myself speeding down a Texas highway in a rental, reminding myself of all of the reasons my Dad should have hated Grandpa.

***

            Born and raised on a Cherokee reservation, Grandpa’s ticket out was a construction job in the city. Most of what I know about him is secondhand, but all of it is interesting – even if it isn’t actually true.

            I’ve heard that he was an automobile magazine collector, banking on a stranger’s word that they would be worth good money in fifty years. (They’re as worthless now as they were back then.)

            I’ve heard that he used to spit in his chewing tobacco because it kept the other guys on the crew out of his can of chew.

            That he never washed the handkerchief he always kept in his shirt pocket.

            That he used to bury money in coffee cans in his backyard.

            That he could cuss like a sailor and sing like an angel.

            That he allowed several days to pass between baths.

            I’ve also heard that he was handsome, which partly explains how my grandmother—a woman half his age—fell in love with him. But Grandpa was in love with gambling, alcohol, and chasing other women.

            “He never could stay home,” Dad had admitted when I was old enough to wonder where he’d gone wrong.

            Before he found Jesus and sobered up for good, my grandmother had been hospitalized five times. Three times for domestic abuse. And twice when she gave birth, to my aunt and then to my dad. Grandpa had also fathered an illegitimate child – an aunt I’ve never met. The weight of his guilt was a burden he soon grew weary of carrying. With Texas in his heart and Kansas in his rearview mirror, he set out to make a new life for himself.

            A happy, happy, happy life.

            I knew none of this as a child. I knew the man in worn Western shirts and scuffed cowboy boots. I knew he loved polka music and poodles and the blue Oldsmobile he drove from Texas to see me every Christmas. He stopped visiting when he was too old to drive, and then it was up to my parents to drive to Texas.

            Instead, we mailed him our annual family Christmas picture. Dad called him every few weeks. In his absence, I grew curious about him.

I never heard Grandma speak about Grandpa. But I did ask her – only once – what he was like.

“He’s lost,” she said. “Some men never will find themselves.”

That was that. As though she was telling me how to boil eggs or spell an unusual word. Matter-of-fact, with no emotion whatsoever. So, I never asked her about him again.

            As I grew older, Grandpa became “Grandpa Texas,” a larger-than-life name without a face. Grandpa Texas says hello. One of Grandpa Texas’s poodles died last week. Grandpa Texas started seeing his next door neighbor.

            During college, Dad began to visit him, flying down for a weekend to take him to dinner and to the beach. I heard the occasional updates about him, but I began to tune them out. Grandpa Texas got lost in the shuffle between work, school, Audra, and our family—which I decided he’d ceased to be a part of the moment he’d first crossed that state line.

***

            I didn’t see him again until my wedding day, which was nearly eight years ago.

            “Where is your girl, Deary,” he asks me for the third time today.

            “She stayed home with Oliver,” I repeat as patiently as I can, pulling in to the open parking space closest to the beach.

            “Well, she sure is a dandy,” he says, patting my hand. I’m not sure if he’s referring to Audra, or to Oliver, as I’ve already had to remind him that Oliver is a boy.

            I climb out and shut the door behind me. The waves audibly rush from the shoreline, a sound that reminds me of the way Audra breathes when she’s asleep. I can almost smell her perfume, feel her skin against mine… But she’s eight hours away. All I have is the salty air, the breeze from the beach, and Grandpa Texas in the front seat of my rented Chevy Malibu.

            The nurses helped me get him into the front seat; it’s no small feat to get him out and into his wheelchair by myself.

            “My lands! It is a beautiful day, isn’t it,” Grandpa says as I wheel him through the sand.

            He takes in the young crowd playing Frisbee ahead of us as I watch his wheels make deep tracks behind him. I find a good place to stop and it occurs to me that I didn’t even think to bring a lawn chair with me. Silently, I will the cheap green and white ones collecting dust and spiders in our garage to come to me on this beach in Galveston, where they will find me standing awkwardly beside a half-stranger in a wheelchair.

            “You want to know a fact about seagulls, Deary,” Grandpa asks.

            “Sure,” I say, focusing on the group of them he’s been watching.

            “When they’re hungry, they’ll stomp on the ground—in a circle—until earthworms come out.”

            “Really?”

            “Yes, Deary. I read that,” he says emphatically. “It is a learned behavior, passed on from generation to generation.”

            That’s one thing I do remember about Grandpa—he likes to read, about anything and everything. Dad was the same way. I’m sure most of their beachside talks were like this, exchanging factual details they found interesting while watching waves and seagulls.

            “I put in an application for another position,” Grandpa says.

            I look at him, confused, but then I remember. He’s sick.

            “You did?”

            “It’ll be a lot of work on high beams, but I don’t mind it,” he says.

            “You don’t,” I ask.

            The nurses encouraged me to go along to keep from upsetting him, so that’s what I’m doing.

            “It only takes one fall,” he says, holding up a crooked finger, “for your body to break apart into a million pieces.”

            His jaw clenches visibly beneath his thin, grey skin.

            “But that’s where I belong, you know. That’s where I’m happiest. Happy, happy, happy.”

            “Of course,” I say, careful not to call him Grandpa, as I’m unsure of my own identity in the havoc of his virus-ridden brain.

            I take in the variety of people on the beach around us—teenagers, families, retirees—and I wonder how we look to them.

            A pale young man. Mid-thirties. In a blue polo and khakis. A husband. A father. A loyal man. Who keeps showing up, even when he doesn’t want to get out of bed.

            Standing next to a frail ninety-something year old man with leathery skin who is wasting away to nothing, even as he sits in his wheelchair. Alone.

            And suddenly I understand that this is what Dad wanted me to see.

            Grandpa Texas isn’t a monster. And he isn’t larger than life.

            He’s just a man.

            A man who loves polka music and reads about seagulls. A man who’s tried all his life to outrun his transgressions. In a pair of cowboy boots.

            “Where is your girl, Deary?”

            “She stayed home with our son, Thomas Oliver,” I say with a smile.

            “A Thomas,” Grandpa says, surprised. “That’s a fine name for a Brewer.”

            “We thought so,” I agree.

            “That’s wonderful, Deary,” Grandpa says. “That makes me happy. Happy, happy, happy.”

            And for the first time in my life, I believe him. – ©️ 2021 Portia July

When I’m really scared, I think about the time you held a gun to my head.

I still don’t know if it was loaded.

I know now that it doesn’t matter if it was.

I wasn’t afraid of dying.

I was afraid of living.

There were boys who loved the Beatles and me. They had guitars, and big dreams, and the same stars in their eyes that I had in mine.

There were coffee dates, and Showbread shows, and songwriting sessions, and after-parties.

I said, “No,” because of getting pregnant. Because of STDs. Because I was “saving myself.”

For?

(This was before I understood words like “agency” and “autonomy.”)

I was scared of being “dirty,” or “used,” or “discarded,” and then “recycled.”

Because finding a t-shirt at the thrift store?

Cool.

Finding a bride at the thrift store?

Not cool.

(This was before I understood words like “love.”)

And then you came along. No guitar, no dreams, no stars.

There was coffee, but it was never a date.

I thought we were friends. But friends don’t do what you did.

And then I was the party girl – the “sweet” and “adorable” girl. The boys still loved the Beatles and me. They still had guitars and called me from tour buses and texted me pictures of places they’d always dreamed of going.

And I still said, “No.”

The stars in my eyes were gone.

I told one of them what happened. He read my message between takes on vocals in a studio in another state.

“Now I feel like a slimeball,” he said.

And I held my arms out wide so someone could tuck a hanger in my collar for the thrift store rack.

Consent is mandatory, but it was optional to you. A grey area. I said, “No,” but you took my voice away. Stole it. I didn’t trade it for legs or anything else.

And then there was another you.

You had a bass guitar, but honestly I didn’t care enough to ask if you had dreams or to pay attention if there were stars in your eyes.

You knew how to make me laugh, but I didn’t know if you loved the Beatles (or me). And you drank too much beer.

There was a bonfire and your friend talking about one of my friends’ bands. His girlfriend sat on his knee and pretended not to know me, but we used to be best friends.

When you were on top of me, I said, “No.” I tried to scream, but you put your hand over my mouth.

I wondered if she could hear me.

I wondered if she would come help me if I called her name.

She told everyone we knew that I was “a slut.”

You followed me for a while when I got Instagram, but I never followed you back.

Not one, but two girls called me after I’d become a mannequin at the thrift store. (They’d even put me in a wedding dress.)

“How did you get away,” they said.

I told them.

But I didn’t tell them about the time you came to that Butch Walker show, walked through during a ballad, and found me.

And the ensuing commotion.

The crowd parting.

The bartenders shoving you out the door.

You saying things that stick like barbs in my mind.

And then me collapsing into a crying heap in my date’s arms.

He just kept rubbing the back of my head and telling me it would be OK. I never saw him again.

Everybody wants to watch the train wreck to have something to talk about tomorrow, but nobody wants to sift through it for the gold they can’t see.

There were other(you)s.

One had a guitar and my best friend had a crush on him (you).

There was a show. We all snuck in through the exit. There was laughter and dancing and drinking. I was happy. Not sweet, adorable, “party girl” happy. An innocent kid having fun. Genuinely happy.

And then I woke up naked in his (your) bed.

I remember brushing my teeth in the bathroom with his (your) roommate, then falling asleep on the couch, and then nothing.

“Who took my clothes off?”

“Oh, I did that,” you said.

Twice? Sure, it might happen to a girl once. But not twice.

My best friend stopped talking to me.

“I would never put myself in that position,” your girlfriend said.

She’s happily married now, to someone else. It wasn’t a thrift store wedding.

I have no idea where you are, but I know you did to her what you did to me and to those other girls, and I hope you hang yourself with the rope you’ve built for yourself.

It was a leash for me, and then a noose, and then a necklace. But I finally took it off and I’m burning it. – ©️ 2021 Portia July

I thought you might be dead. You have a dangerous job and you hadn’t posted on Instagram in days. You didn’t answer your phone, you wouldn’t answer texts, and I began to wonder if you were dead.

I even Googled your name with “obituary.” Nothing came up, except your dad.

Of course, you weren’t dead. You had a mom who loves you to check on you. You had grandparents, siblings, friends, and coworkers. You were undoubtedly just drunk somewhere, talking trash or becoming someone’s blood brother, and left your phone in a ditch. But I was worried.

You would be flattered to know that I was worried. I didn’t know how to tell you I was worried without you asking why I was worried and what I was going to do about it.

I wrote you a note on the dry erase board in the room that you keep your lizard in and I regretted never telling you. I wondered if you had seen it. I wondered if you’d erased it, or if you kept it around to haunt you the way I’d watch Cillian Murphy, whose chiseled cheekbones and piercing eyes reminded me of you. I wondered if you missed me and I hoped you weren’t dead.

I know you think it wasn’t, but it was a coincidence that we got stuck in the same elevator at the same hospital.

You’d brought someone to the ER and left him with the married nurse you’d had an affair with four years before we met. (I know she didn’t tell you she was married at the time, or whatever – sorry to bring it up.) I was there to visit my sister who was in the ICU on the seventh floor. I said things I shouldn’t have and you said things you shouldn’t have and then we parted ways. Except we couldn’t because we were stuck in an elevator.

You accused me of doing something awful – something I would never do. Not even to my worst enemy. It hurt. A lot. I didn’t forgive you and I don’t forgive you. And I didn’t listen to your side of the story because I didn’t care. And I should’ve given you a chance to say what you needed to say because there were things you wanted to tell me, but I didn’t.

Now, here we are. And you’re not dead. But you won’t speak to me, so I wish I was.

You keep pushing a button that just rings and rings. No one answers. But you keep trying because that’s what you do. It’s what you’ve always done.

It’s what you did when you were six, or seven, or eight, or nine years old and your dad was so drunk he could barely drive. You took the wheel to keep him from crashing his truck with you and your sister next to him in the front seat.

It’s what you did when your college girlfriend cheated on you with one of her friends and you found out because you had a gut feeling and you checked her phone.

It’s what you did when you rescued your little sister from the cops the night she and her boyfriend were high and drove the wrong way on the highway and had drugs in their car.

You feel like nothing you do is ever good enough, but you keep trying anyway.

“I won’t settle,” you told me when we first met. And I understand why now. The goal posts keep moving. If they’re ever stationary, you move them yourself.

All of these are signs that you are someone who is miserable and incapable of loving someone without hurting them, but I’ve watched you feed your lizard even when you’re mad at her.

I’m not perfect. I drink caffeine too late in the day to be able to sleep well at night. I’m disorganized and always in a hurry. But I’m not clingy, whiny, or too good for anyone or anything, including you. If it matters, I didn’t consider settling down with you to be settling.

“Can you please stop,” I say.

Your piercing eyes look at the corner closest to me, but not at me.

            At least you stop though. There’s the echo of silence again.

            “Do you have service in here,” you ask.

Talking at me, not to me, as usual.

You’ve been trying to load the internet on your phone to look up the hospital’s number. You won’t dial 911 for obvious reasons. And you’ve mumbled about being able to climb out (because you spend hours in the gym every day), but we both know you’re too much of a gentleman to ever leave me here.

But then you also wouldn’t try to pull me out with you because that would require touching me and you’ve sworn to everyone who’d come if you called 911 that you’ll never touch me again. Ever.

            I’m staring now at the scar on your hand where you ran it across the blade of a stranger’s sword in the middle of a bar and thinking about how stupid you can be for a smart person.

            “I don’t,” I say. But I don’t even bother to check.

            I have places to be, too, you know? And you’d only be off to the next emergency you’ll never follow up on anyway.

You know what’s always bothered me? You risk your life to save somebody and then you never even ask if they lived. Does that still make you a hero? Sure. But the people you’re saving are faceless and soulless to you. Why?

Did you always not want to know? I doubt it. My money’s on you always caring. There was probably one time some kid or elderly person didn’t make it. And it broke you. So, you stopped asking.

            “Let’s get out of here,” you say.

            “No,” I say.

            You finally look at me. Your eyes rove over every inch of my face in a fraction of a second. I used to think you could actually see into my soul when you did that, but I know now you were probably just trying to gauge my worthiness to be so close to you. Was I pretty enough? Smart enough? Surface level questions. Nothing half as deep as I’d hoped.

            “It’s time,” you say.

            “I just need five more minutes,” I say.

            And I think about all of the things I love about you, but never told you. I think about everyone you’ve saved and will save, and the people whose lives will be better because you lived. I think about how brave you are when it comes to life, and about how scared you are when it comes to love. And about how I just can’t settle for that.

            “Okay,” I say.

            The elevator jerks up and the doors are pried open from outside. We emerge and go our separate ways, as on fire as we ever were.

– ©️ 2021 Portia July.