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| Unpredictable This was predictable. “You have a problem.” I told the woman. She was in her thirties, dressed in a pair of gray sweat pants, a navy blue T-shirt, flip-flops. We were standing in a library parking lot, around noon. I made an elaborate gesture of looking over my shoulder, then stooped down to fix the cuff on my jeans. I gazed up at her. “Do you know what your problem is?” She stood at the rear of a silver Mercedes, trunk open. She was setting down a stack of books inside. She had a wedgie. I had followed her out through the library’s front entrance. Her feet were clapping and smacking across the pavement, singing the repulsive notes of flip-flop music. It was so predictable. Newtonian even. P = ½ society/age + flip-flops + vt. Bending over the trunk now, she turned her head at my voice. She raised her eyebrows over a pair of dark brown sunglasses. “I’m sorry, what?” I pushed myself to my feet. “Are you asking me to repeat the question, or asking for my opinion?” Straightening, she slammed her trunk lid shut with a metallic rattle of the license plate. She turned and frowned at me. I was dressed as a cowboy — Wrangler blue jeans, spurred boots, white Stetson hat, a huge silver belt buckle. This wouldn’t be a strange picture in, say, San Antonio, Texas, but we were standing in the middle of a suburb near Chicago, Illinois. “I don’t have a problem,” she said. “Maybe you have a problem.” Around her shoulder, a brown leather purse hung by a thin strap. She pressed it closer to her side. Her brows knit together and her frown deepened into a scowl. “I have a problem? I have a problem?” My voice was reaching a crescendo. “Tell me what my problem is.” I loved repeating things. If you repeated things often enough people had no choice but to look at you from a different angle. I threw my head back and screamed at the top of my lungs. My eyes went glassy, widening as far as the sockets would permit. My hat fell off. Then I leveled my gaze with hers. She shot a nervous glance at her door handle. Her movements grew panicky. Kneading her purse, she swung her attention from my hat to the door handle, to the entrance of the library. She flinched in the direction of her car, but instead turned and ran for the library. People don’t realize how ridiculous they sound running in flip-flops. They look even worse. A security guard happened through the library’s automatic doors. The woman shouted, waving her keys at him. I knew this was going to happen, that she was going to sprint for help. Her car started honking and flashing its lights. And I knew that would happen too. Ducking into my Honda Civic with its duct-taped side mirror, I sped out of there before anyone could alert the police. I was disappointed. She could have laughed. She could have joined me in my scream. That would have been unpredictable. I would have been thrilled. Smitten. She could have kicked me in the balls. I would have asked her to marry me — after uncurling myself from a fetal position on the ground. But no, instead she fled. The more unexpected my behavior became, the more typical everyone’s response. I didn’t bother going back for my hat. *** That evening the air had a damp chill to it, leftover effects of a thunderstorm. It felt groggy out, as if the whole world had just woken from a long day of booze and sex in a smoke-filled motel room. I stood in line at the nightclub. At the entrances of nightclubs you can spot the losers — they’re the ones waiting in line by themselves. I hated nightclubs. Other than expensive sex, I didn’t see the point. It was like going to have a routine colonoscopy done. Where was the magic? Drunks all behaved the way you would expect them to. The off-kilter blinking of eyes, the clasping of shoulders and shouting in ears. Everyone trying to convince themselves of the fun they were having. Finally, a purpose in life — holler, drink, bob around, stop for a piss. P = m2/Heineken4 – IQ + ?†. So mechanical. An expansion pack for a life simulation game. The club was loud. What would it be like to walk into a quiet nightclub? Now that would be a surprise. I wormed a path through the tables, past the bar and its row of bar stools. I danced for a while. I went around asking girls to dance with me. I got rejected by all of them. Too much competition. Every time I leaned my elbow next to an attractive girl, some guy appeared and leaned his elbow next to mine, asking the same one-dimensional questions I had just finished asking. “You here with a boyfriend? You looking to have some fun? You live around here? You have a name? You want a drink? You want to dance?” Piss off, wanker! I wanted to snarl it in a fake Cockney accent. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I was thrown out by the bouncers as a result. They usually added a little punch to the mid-section, the bloody predictable bastards. It bored me, all of it — the punches, the reactions to my fake accents, the posturing around women. Every night at the club was the same old routine. I felt alone in the universe. “Hi,” I said to a guy wearing a red rayon clubbing shirt and black designer jeans. Nice colors. He looked like he belonged on a checkers board. His hair was a crop of gelled spikes so long and sharp I wanted to skewer some onions, green peppers, and beef medallions on them. He was trying to hit on a girl with enormous breasts. She also had pretty painted fingernails, but what man ever gave a damn about details? He half-turned to me, eyelids drooping. “Hey,” he spared, and turned back to the girl. I stood there smiling, staring at him, a bottle of Sapporo Premium in my hand. The girl glanced at me, looked back at her suitor with thinly-veiled amusement. The guy watched me from the corner of his eye until he couldn’t stand it any longer. Turning around, he looked at me the way someone with a mouthful of food might look at a waitress who’d just asked, “How is everything?” for the fourth time in a row. “What’s up?” he asked swallowing his imaginary piece of food. “You need something?” I didn’t say anything, just stared at him with a smile. He gave a quick awkward grin and turned away again. This couldn’t last for long though. After a few sighs he turned back for a third time, clearly pissed off, his eyes a concentrated pair of zeroes. “Go stand somewhere else,” he said. I didn’t budge. I didn’t say anything either. I just smiled. No harm in smiling is there? He turned back to his girl, lowered his head, and started fidgeting with a bottle cap. He muttered something to her and she muttered something to him. “Let’s go to another table,” he suggested loud enough for me to hear. How ironic, if unsurprising, that silence would elicit the same flight response as screaming at the top of my lungs. I followed. Spinning around, he shoved me and yelled a string of obscenities that would have made a truck driver squirm. Beer splashed out from my bottle and soaked the front of my shirt. But it didn’t wash the grin off my face. A bulldog appeared at my elbow. Orange shirt, bold white letters spelling STAFF across his back. “What’s going on here?” he barked. “Good boy,” I said. What happened next? No surprise, that’s for sure. He opened the exit doors with my face. *** In the parking lot, I gripped my abdomen, still smarting from the bulldog’s fat paw. I climbed to my feet. Fell back down. The world spun around me. A rogue pinball, I careened across lawns and streets, ricocheting off trees and parked cars. I stopped every now and then through false alarms of vomiting. At last I reached my apartment complex—its glorious, pot-holed parking lot, rats, vandalized trash dumpsters. I howled into the night. A lone wolf. My cry carried across the empty parking lot, resounding off redbrick walls. Moths flew around lamps. Their wings tapped on the glass, the only sound I could hear. Everything smelled of dirt and decay. If only I could have sprouted my own moth wings and flown through the buildings, entering each sleeping person’s head. If I could journey through their dreams, where everything is wild and marvelous, sometimes terrifying, but always, always, unpredictable. I sat down to rest on a curb broken in half by someone who didn’t know how to park. The world was full of curbs broken in half. I was a good example of one. Why was I so miserable? Why had the beauty in ordinary things grown elusive? Why did I go around looking for astonishment? Imagine a universe full of people with questions just like mine. “Hey,” said an Asian girl, sitting down next to me on the other chunk of curb. “Hey,” I answered a bit startled. Probably not as startled as I should have been. “What are you doing here? It’s two in the morning.” She gave a furtive nod. Actually, I remembered it being two o’clock when I drank my last beer. I had no idea what time it was now, only that the sun hadn’t risen yet. She blew a large pink bubble, chewed it down to size, popped the rest of it inside her mouth. “I thought I heard a stray dog,” she said. “Sorry. That was me. I was trying to be a wolf.” She studied me as if trying to determine the color of my aura. “Your eyes have too much sadness in them for you to be a wolf. And besides, there aren’t any wolves left in Illinois.” “They have wolves with sad eyes in zoos. Maybe I’m one that escaped.” “Nah. Wolves escaped from zoos don’t have sad eyes.” Her hair was dyed blonde and brunette. She had a pale face. It reminded me of the moon reflected over the calm surface of a pond. She gazed at me with dark eyes, warm and intelligent. I didn’t recall ever seeing a visage that intriguing before. I wanted to reach across and touch her to see if ripples would form. “What am I, then?” I asked. “Nami!” shouted the dark figure of a man standing suddenly at the entrance to one of the first floor apartments. “Get back in here.” She stifled a yawn without turning around. “Is he your boyfriend?” I asked. She raised an eyebrow. “Ew. That’s my dad.” “Sorry. It’s dark. I’m a bit under the table too, if you know what I mean.” “You say sorry too much. You don’t have to. I knew you were drunk. That’s why I came out.” She looked over her shoulder and watched her dad go back inside. I opened my mouth, felt my breath escape. She came out because she knew I was drunk? What was going on here? “I-I don’t follow,” I stammered. “I’m allergic to alcohol so I can’t drink, even when I desperately need to. Like right now. Who knows? Maybe if I sit next to you it will rub off on me a little.” I could have asked her why she wanted to be drunk, what she was trying to escape from. I already knew what I was trying to escape from. Maybe she was running from the same thing. Maybe that’s why I didn’t ask her. Instead I said, “You’re pretty.” My brain had turned into a pile of colored alphabet blocks. She stopped chewing her gum and peered at me, examining my aura again, or whatever it was she was examining. Then she smiled. “Simple and sweet, I like that. Thank you. You’re pretty too.” I leaned over like an oaf and hugged her, kissed part of her mouth. Her body was warm. I smelled body lotion and tasted melon-flavored Chap Stick. She slapped me hard across the face. It stung. I recoiled from her, mouth yawning, my mind constructing some kind of response like, “Why did you do that? I’m drunk, remember? I can’t help it.” But she leaned back and smiled. Then, leaning forward, she clasped her hands around the sides of my face. She drew me toward her and pressed her lips against mine. I wasn’t sure where I was after she let me go. But I knew it wasn’t where I was a moment before. “Unpredictable,” I whispered in reflex. I shared a few more silent breaths with her. At last she rose, ran her fingers along the side of my face, and disappeared into her apartment. I stood up, fell down, stood up again, and somehow stumbled my way back home. *** I never saw her again after that. I couldn’t remember where her apartment was. I couldn’t even remember her name. I just invented one for her later. But it didn’t matter. In the end, the only thing that mattered was that I met her. |
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| Bryan R. Dennis |
| Bryan R. Dennis was born and raised near Chicago, Illinois, enlisted in the Army upon graduation from High School and then served his term in Germany. After the Army he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada and enrolled in UNLV’s college of business. It took a degree in Accounting, three years of daydreaming in cubicles, and a collection of stories piling up on his hard drive to learn that he is a writer and not an accountant. He currently resides in Las Vegas with his wife and two daughters and is currently putting the finishing touches on his first novel. |
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