Tea Party #17 ~ Fiction
Paz De La Calzada - All That Glitters Isn't Gold larger version
The Date | Shannon Gibney
The snow came late that year and one afternoon, as she was walking home from a meeting at a café, she saw him coming towards her. It was unmistakable—the broad chest she had come so close to leaning against that first night, the smile that came just a little too easily. She wanted to call out to him, she wanted to embrace him, but then she saw that it was not actually him in front of her but, rather, half of him. His hips, legs, feet—everything underneath his stomach—were just not there.
She hid behind a tree and watched as he passed her, oblivious to his own half-ness. His gait was normal, his arms swinging easily left and right, in rhythm with what should have been his steps. He looked relaxed, almost the way he had at the party, and could even have had a beer in his hands. She wanted to reach out to him, but she was afraid of what might happen.
When she got home, she told her dog about the incident, and her dog licked her lips. “We never even finished our date,” she said, the frustration filling her limbs.
The next time she saw him was approximately five months later, when the world was in the throes of spring and green things were sprouting up in the most unlikely places. She was walking by the lake, letting the heavy winds tangle her thick curls. Suddenly, a hand touched her forearm, and when she turned, he was standing in front of her, a look of relief clear on his face.
“Day love in frontlass never away,” he said, waving his hands excitedly.
She shook her head. “What?”
“Krestlecanyounot getuntothisjettison,” he said. His words reminded her of the sound that her brother’s tapes had made when he played them backwards in junior high. But it wasn’t just his words that were strangely off, carrying an other-worldly, out-of-time quality—his whole body rippled like a current, an ear appearing one moment, a thigh the next. Pockets of light snapped all around him, and the more he spoke, the more jumbled his body became.
“Zewquiheljkjahjkjenmnm,” he said. “Hnbnmasbdnbuwhrgujdfj.”
She tried to watch his mouth as he moved, thinking that she could maybe read his lips even if she couldn’t hear his words. But then, suddenly, his elbow jumped into his nose, his ankle onto his chin and she became frightened. She couldn’t look at him anymore.
When she stepped back, he reached for her again, and his hand—at least, she thought it was his hand—grazed her own for an instant. She felt herself spreading out, becoming less herself and more everything, and she realized that there was a rip in the fiber of space-time. It was too large to even describe, encompassing light and darkness and gravity. She stood there, alone, and let it pass through her.
All of this had happened, and all of this had never happened. You have loved him. You could have loved him. You will love him.
Suddenly, violently, she was shoved back into her body and she was beside the lake again, watching it not move, and it was the third Tuesday in July and she had never felt so separate from the wind, the sky, the narrow strip of path she had been walking on. Her hand moved sideways of its own accord and felt nothing.