WAVES

Every choice makes waves.

by Liz Richards (writer)

 

She stands in the dark at the kitchen sink, fiercely downing tap water from a plastic cup. She pours another cup and lets the tepid water slide along her throat, tasting minerals and the staleness of late night after a frat party. Behind her, she can hear the hallow ping of her iPhone and feel the reflection of the cool blue light filling the room. Staring blankly, she pays it no mind. Just a crazy ex.

She hears from her ex in waves. Violent outbursts drop like rocks in the water – words like suicide and murder plunk down hard, so that her panic ripples until his mania sinks down, leaving long episodes of stillness. She’s learning to ignore him.

From the next room there is a soft stir. A voice calls, “Come to bed.” It’s a voice with strong and steady depth, a voice the ex says he’ll exterminate, though he’s never heard it, like this were the first threat he’s ever made. He’ll shoot the next man she touches he says, but it’s empty. She’s touched so many since she’s broken away. Like his threats a thousand time before. Like anyone would sell a bipolar a gun.

She fills her cup again and lets the faucet run. As the steady stream of water rushes down the drain, the pale blue light of the iPhone flashes again and again. In the spaces of that cold blue light she smiles into the gentleness of her new lover’s voice, and heeds his call.

In her bed he lies spread-eagled, shoulders too broad for twenty firmly squared and arms outstretched, head still buzzing from beers and the afterthought of her touch. He thinks briefly of the girls he touched in high school and community college in small-town Western New York. Mousey, insecure girls, mostly uncomfortable in their own beauty. They were hundreds of miles and nights away.

He thinks ‘How’d I bag such a hottie?’ The room is still in contrast to the crashing loudness of the party. The sheets are soft and smell like her shampoo – the tropical, flowery kind that’s always on sale at drug stores – and the fertile way she tastes. A million miles away from classes that start on Monday, he calls to her toward the kitchen. In a few moments she enters, crawls across the bed and lets him wrap his arms around her.

A pounding knock at the door wakes him, but she’s passed out from drink, head at his chest, slender arms across his torso. With care he unwraps her and folds her to the other side of the bed. He fumbles through the dark for his briefs, and as he pulls them tightly up, the elastic snaps crisply at his waist.

As he walks across the small apartment he stretches limb from limb, slumber burning in his eyes. He opens the door to a stranger, and as the sound of the gunshot reverberates it crashes in waves, hundreds of miles away, in small-town Western New York.