- G -

This Is Not an Interlude

         I didn't cry.
         Okay?
         I didn't.
         I felt bad, I'll admit that. I did. Who didn't? You?
         Was I supposed to? It wasn't that I refused to. No amount of refusal can avoid the inevitable. That's how I felt about it. It was only a matter of time. I felt that way. I still feel that way.
         I know some of you don't agree with me. And how am I supposed to feel about that? Hm? I saw you crying. I stood there and watched. All of you. I saw it. And if I had been you, I would have done the same thing. You had better reason than I ever will.
         But I couldn't cry.
         And I won't be the bad guy.
         I'm sorry.
         So stop looking at me like that.
         I mean it.
         Stop.

Are You Scared That One Day It Won't Hurt?

         In this latest War, death was no enemy, but a collaborator-
         The door rattled and opened with some protest, like it was on strike, refusing to do its sacred duty and allow passage.
         Lena looked up from her book, closing it with her thumb set inside to mark her place. She tried not to notice her suddenly rapid heartbeat, hiding a start of surprise behind a obviously feigned yawn. Jina stepped in and quietly shut the door behind her, like she was hiding from someone. Watching her friend, Lena got the idea she was witnessing some strange ritual, so quiet and deliberate were Jina's movements. She didn't even really seem to notice Lena's presence.
         "Hey there," Lena said, her voice a near whisper for reasons she wasn't very clear on. Didn't want to startle her friend. But that wasn't it. Talking louder just felt wrong.
         "Hey," was all Jina said in reply, walking around the couch and dropping her purse onto the cushion opposite Lena. Either she had already spotted Lena or was just mindlessly reacting to the greeting. All just blissful noise. Her jacket got draped over the middle cushion. Her footsteps were heavy but soft, slow but rushing to her destination, as if in a hurry to get whatever it was she was traveling, but not all that eager to get there.
         Lena followed Jina with her ears, staring straight ahead while Jina wandered behind her. Her blurred shadow crossed into Lena's peripheral vision, heading toward the kitchen counter and from there the refrigerator. The silence was brittle, daring to be broken by anyone brave enough to bear the shards that would follow.
         "Um, how did it go?" Lena asked, not exactly sure why she didn't say exactly what it was. She shifted in her curled up position on the couch, wincing as tingling blood fled back into her feet, dragracers determined to go all the way. At first she had tried laying on her back to read but she found it hadn't made her feel comfortable at all. And reading in bed had definitely been out of the question. So go with the devil you know. God, it was frighteningly true. So close. So close.
         At nearly the same time Jina abruptly stopped and glanced around, seeing the room for the first time. Eyes narrowed, she asked, "Why are all the lights on?"
         Lena looked around sharply, as if not realizing the fact herself. Truth was, she had forgotten about that, having gotten used to the stark brightness infusing the room some hours ago. For some reason she felt a small flash of shame. "Oh," she said lightly, "it was easier to read that way, my eyes were starting to bother me." Shrugging with a small grin, she added, "You know me, I'm getting old. What can I say?"
         Jina gave her a look that wasn't entirely believable, but didn't say anything. Lena tried not to bite her lip nervously, not wanting her friend to probe further. She wasn't even sure she could explain it herself. It wasn't something she felt particularly proud of, all told.
         Instead Jina dropped the subject and decided to answer Lena's original question. "It was . . . fine," Jina replied wearily, pouring herself something to drink. Lena couldn't see what exactly the drink was. Hell, weren't we all adults here? "I guess it was what I expected." She looked up at her friend. "But I really don't know what I was expecting. If that makes any sense."
         Lena tossed aside the notion to shrug. That just struck her as tacky for some reason. Events like this deserved words. "It does," she tried to agree, almost futilely. She didn't know how any of this felt at all. Everything here was just peripheral sensation to her, feeling slightly warm as someone threw her voodoo doll in a bonfire.
         "Yeah, I'm sure," Jina said, her voice bland enough that Lena couldn't tell if her friend was being sarcastic or not. She stopped at the kitchen table, resting one knee on a chair, holding the cup on both hands as if in supplication. "It was weird, that was all," she added quietly, not looking at anything. "Really weird."
         That wasn't the word she was looking for but Lena knew what she meant. Maybe. This was all guesswork to her, so damn frustrating she wanted to scream. Untouched by the contagion of grief going around, she was in a perfect position to help but there was no way to connect, the bridge was out from both ends. Talk to me, Jina. I don't know where to start.
         She had to try, of course. "Were there a lot of people there?"
         Jina nodded, sipping from her drink in lieu of talking. "A lot. More than I expected. I guess . . . I guess that was the weird part, it was half the people I graduated high school with, people I haven't talked to in years. Our ten year reunion five years too early." Her face suddenly hardened into an unreadable mask. "With one person missing."
         Lena had almost asked You mean Joe? before catching herself and realizing just what her friend really meant. Too tired, girl. Have to watch what you say. In these delicate times even the lightest of sentences can hide a tripwire sharp enough to decapitate anyone foolish enough to blunder into it. Step lightly. Step lightly. But yet you have to go forward. There's really no other choice, is there now?
         "It really was a shame . . ." Lena said inanely, immediately kicking herself for even bothering to speak. But she didn't want to make Jina think that she wasn't paying any attention. If Jina even really cared by this point.
         "Tell me about it," Jina answered. "I was there and none of it felt real . . . it felt like everyone around me was crying for no reason or talking like nothing had happened and I didn't know which to do. So I just sat there." She tapped her glass with one fingernail, the tinny clinking strangely loud in the apartment. "The others . . . everyone else, they were getting together in a diner afterwards, for, I don't know, one last toast or some stupid thing . . . but I just couldn't go. I probably should have, but . . ." she rubbed her eyes, scrunching up her face as she did so, "I didn't really feel like it. Too tired." She didn't elaborate further. Sighing, she let her leg slip out from under her rear and sat down completely in the chair.
         "This stuff is always hard," Lena told her, shifting to lean one arm on the edge of the couch, resting her chin on her arm. Too complacent muscles protested the motion but she ignored the signals. Considering her next words, she paused for a second and said, "I was watching the news before and . . . people are really jumping on this . . ."
         "That was Don," Jina said without looking up, "don't do anything if you can't do it with style." She started to give a halfhearted laugh but stopped herself and let it peter out. Struggling to maintain flagging interest in the night, she asked, "Did they say anything new? About him?"
         "Not really . . ." Lena answered slowly. "They interviewed her family and they looked liked they were taking it really hard, I felt bad for them. They kept going on about how they couldn't believe she would do this and how they didn't understand how any of this could have happened . . ."
         "Did they blame Don?" Jina asked suddenly, sharply.
         "Not in so many words . . . but it looked like they were heading in that direction a few times." Lena shrugged. "What do you expect, it's not like they're going to blame their own daughter."
         "Yeah, I guess," Jina responded somewhat distantly. Then, with a fervor that felt out of place, she whispered harshly, "Bastards." It wasn't clear who exactly she was referring to, but Lena could make an educated guess.
         "They shouldn't blame him," Jina continued with a sort of muted anger. "It's not right. It isn't. I mean they're both barely dead, no one knows what really happened and they're going around pointing fingers and . . . they shouldn't. They should know better. It's not right." Her voice was directed nowhere, daring the world at large to step out and prove her wrong. Except it did. On a daily basis. To everyone. Every morning you wake up and vow to make it to the end of the day. One day you don't. You won't. Cheating or checkmate, the world always wins in the end. The house you can't bet against, no matter how much you stack the odds.
         Calmly, Lena said, "No, it's not. But they're upset. It's their daughter, can you really blame them."
         "Everyone's upset, we all are," Jina replied, pinching the bridge of her nose as if she had a headache. "And . . . God, I . . . God I don't even really care, you know?" That was said with a stunted laugh, the punchline with the babies burning in the street. The joke that isn't funny at all. "So they blame him. So what? He's dead, it doesn't matter anymore. He's dead." Her voice a monotone, Jina fixed her gaze on the tabletop and didn't lapsed into a shaken kind of silence, stunned by the bluntness of her own words.
         Worried, Lena was about to ask Jina if she was okay when her friend reached out and touched something that had been lying on the table. She gave another short laugh, the type where you escape the plane crash but seconds later suffer a fatal stroke. The only time the playing field is level is when we've all been removed from it. "God, it feels like so long ago . . ." raising her voice she said to Lena, "Did you see these? The pictures here?"
         Lifting herself up on the couch, Lena craned her neck to see what Jina was indicating. "Oh, those? No, I only glanced at them . . . what are they?"
         A ghost of a shadow of Jina's old grin appeared briefly across her face. "Don't say that in front of Tristian. You'll disappoint him so."
         "Tristian took them?" With studied casual interest, she got up from the couch and padded over to sit down at the chair opposite Jina. "I didn't know he went on vacation," she said as she reached to take them from her friend. In doing so she managed a better look at Jina, and was surprised to see the shadows taking root under her eyes, like she'd be awake for several days. Desperately she wanted to ask if there was anything, anything at all she could do but Lena didn't know how to shift the conversation in that direction.
         "He didn't," Jina replied just as Lena began to flip through them. "You'll see." For a second the old impishness surfaced.
         "Oh," was all Lena said. "These are different." She really had no idea what she was actually looking at but she could get the general theme of it after a few shots. Once she got used to the setting, they looked very exotic. Exotic and yet utterly mundane. Because somewhere, in some place far away, these sights were normal. Everyday. "I take it these are real."
         "Of course they are. Think about who they came from. Nice, aren't they?" Jina's voice floated over to her.
         "Interesting, I'll give it that. There's some kind of story behind this, I imagine," she noted, trying not to see too curious. Questions boiled in her head. What did he tell you about it? What did he do there? What is that? What's the story? She didn't ask any of them, preferring to keep silent. She wasn't exactly sure why.
         "You'll just have to ask him now, won't you?" came Jina's tired attempt at a mischevious response. Her heart wasn't even into the old games. Lena kept her face carefully neutral to hide her concern. Not for the first time today she wished there was something she could do. But just like Jina was too close to the situation, she was too far. Watching these motions of grief like they were the vanishing rituals of a fragmenting culture.
         "Hm," was Lena's only reply. Even now she closed herself around her thoughts, afraid to give anything away. Afraid of what? This wasn't something she had ever thought of Tristian doing and yet it seemed so suited to his personality. She kept having to reinterpret her image of the man. Yet there was so much about him she didn't know. So much she found herself curious about. And what about him? Was he as curious about her? He seemed to be. He really did. And she didn't know at all what that meant. For her or for him. And no matter how much she tried to laugh it off, that uncertainty scared her just a bit.
         Across from her, Jina sighed again. Lena kept looking through the pictures, wondering if he had taken any with her in mind. But that was silly. And she couldn't help thinking it.
         And Jina was talking somewhere far away. "Tristian and Joe were both there . . . God, it's so strange seeing them together, especially, you know, now, knowing what we know about them . . . I see them and it's like they're in some of exclusive fraternity . . . and yet . . ." she paused. Lena thought she heard her give a sort of wet sniff, but the impression was fleeting and faded quickly. "They haven't changed at all. Joe . . . he looked really upset, him and Don were close for a while, you know, and I think he was really shocked and trying not to show it . . . and Tristian . . ." that stark short laugh again, a noise merely to fill the space between words. "I couldn't believe . . ."
         Something in the way her voice trailed away caused Lena to glance up. "Couldn't believe what?" she asked. "What happened?" For a second she had a vague image of an uninvited guest, a voice with an echo that went a million years in either direction and a rain of ground up gold. God, please, not again. Not tonight.
         "His sister, Don's sister," Jina began, and Lena found herself relaxing a little, though she wasn't sure what she thought about that, ". . . I don't know where she heard it from, but she practically begged Tristian to tell her why all of this had happened. They say you know everything, she said."
         "Oh my God, are you serious," Lena breathed quietly. "That's terrible. Did anyone notice?"
         "The whole room was watching the entire time. Tristian looked like a prisoner who didn't know which way to run. After a second he just muttered something I couldn't hear and got the hell out, which I don't blame him for. Joe left right after to find him, but I didn't see either of them again. I guess they found each other. I hope they did."
         "Geez," Lena said, making a face. "That's really bad. He didn't deserve that. That wasn't fair to him to ask that." The pictures suddenly felt unreal in her hands. How do you reconcile, Tristian? How do you make the pieces fit together so they don't grind and grate every waking second? How much weight can you stand before you're forced to go where there's no weight at all? "There's no way he can know. She should've known that." Lena felt oddly angry, like Tristian was going to delegate the task to her. "Even if she was upset, it's not something you ask. Not of him, not of anyone. It's just not something you do."
         "Except he'll try," Jina whispered to no one in particular, her voice the consistency of crumbling paper.
         "What?" Lena looked up sharply, eyes narrowed. "Did you say-"
         Jina stood up abruptly, saying, "I don't know about you, but I'm going to bed." The chair scraped back like a record needle gone terribly wrong. She wasn't looking Lena in the eye. Her hair cloaked her face, a follicular cage for her hidden expression. Lena peered in closely but couldn't pierce the depths. Perhaps it was because there was nothing more to see. Stepping around the table in the general direction of the bedroom, she continued, "It's really been a long day . . . and I just want to get some rest, okay?" With her hair clear of her face, it looked mask-like. And yet strangely fluid.
         "Oh yeah," Lena said, blinking in surprise. "That's fine. See you in the morning, then." On the short notice, it was the only appropriate thing she could think of to say. It didn't suffice at all.
         Jina murmured something likewise in return and disappeared into her bedroom.
         By herself in a room still awash with artificial light, Lena turned back to continue to glance through the pictures. From an academically objective standpoint they really were pretty fascinating. Lena refused to go any further than that. Still, she would have to make a point to ask Tristian about them next time. And thank him. It was really nice of him to go through all this trouble. He was such a decent person and everyone . . . Lena stopped the thought. She wasn't innocent of any of those accusations either. For some reason tonight it was bothering her. And she didn't know what that meant.
         From the other room there was the sound of Jina climbing into bed, the rustling of sheets, shifting as she apparently tried to find a comfortable position. Lena halted her examination of the pictures and sat up straight in her chair, like she was listening for something. Her face grew briefly thoughtful.
         Then, slowly, gently, she laid the pictures down on the table. Silently she pushed back the chair and got up, crossing the room and going over to the doorway to Jina's bedroom. Silhouetted against the darkness, she stood there with one hand on the doorframe, looking in.
         There was a small, muffled sound that could have come from outside and might not have. An unreadable expression fell over her face. It may have been sadness. It probably was.
         A second later she went in.
         Darkness enveloped her.
         The muffled sound was heard again.
         Then a voice.
         "Hey, shh . . . it's okay, shh.
         "It's going to be all right . . . everything is going to be okay . . . shh . . . I know . . . I know, don't . . . shh . . . but it's going to be all right, okay?
         "Shh."

Mother?

         click and the video turns on.
         A picture fades in almost in reverse as the tube warms up. Body shaped image, crested in white, a silhouette of the bomb being dropped. Color invades, bringing features and details with it.
         The gentle roaring of air populating a cavernous room.
         Resolution.
         A girl. Short black hair pulled flush against a small head by an elastic band. Green sleeveless T-shirt settling around an attractively curved body. She's looking down, scribbling something in a notebook. Her face is intent, bent by the problem at hand.
         A voice. Falling out of the air. ". . . and here's the number one student at work . . ."
         Her face twitches, eyes widen. Her hand slaps down on the notebook as her head pops up. Her gaze seeks the peeper. Finding it, the viewer receives a dirty look, balanced with a pretty smile.
         ". . . don't you have better things to do . . ."
         The picture wobbles, shakes a little. A hollow voice speaks of nowhere. ". . . have to get everyone, you must have something to say . . ."
         Nose crinkles with her smile. Her hand still covers the notebook. The pen is tapping thoughtfully, silently. ". . . what makes you think . . ."
         ". . . peers are hungering for words of wisdom . . ."
         "From nerds like me . . ." Laughing. Accusatory.
         The view weaves again. "I didn't say that . . ."
         "But you meant it." The tip of the pen becomes a tiny circle as she points with it.
         ". . . going to have to edit this out . . . come on before I run out of tape here . . ."
         "Poor baby . . ."
         "Please?"
         Sighing without sounds, she rolls her eyes.
         "Okay . . . what do you want me to say . . ."
         "Hell, I don't know, something inspirational . . ."
         "Okay, okay . . ." a cheery grin appears. Arms folded neatly on the table. Posture perfect. "Good luck to everyone in whatever you're doing. Thanks for all the good times. I'll really miss you guys." A pause. Her gaze shifts past the viewer, to somewhere behind. "There. How's that?"
         "Terrific. Too bad you didn't mean it."
         Sly smile. "I might have."
         "Sure . . . just like me." Spider-fingers of aural static. "One more question then."
         "God, what now?" Brief flash of irritation warps her face.
         "One more . . . where do you see yourself in ten years?"
         Confused look. ". . . want me to answer that?"
         ". . . everyone else did . . . watch it at the reunion . . . . . . say anything, okay . . . no one is going to hold you to it . . ."
         "Sure, sure. All right." Proper posture again. Hands covering the notebook. "Where do I see myself in ten years? Doing something I'm happy with, I guess. I don't know, I mean it's really too far away to say." Sarcastic smile. "I'll find out when I get there." Pause. "And that's all you're getting out of me."
         ". . . fine, that's great . . . catch you later . . ."
         The picture shakes again. She's saying something. Her lips move with no sound. The view shifts quickly, distorting sound, smearing the colors like wet paint. She's gone.
         A shot down a hallway through open double doors. A blurred figure passes across the picture. Lights with ghostly halos, reflecting off polished floors. The sun shining in from somewhere. Voices blend into babble.
         It's pointing down toward the floor now. Fading.
         A fuzzed shadow gestures at nothing.
         Aimed at the floor now. Darkening faster.
         Shadow gestures again, blends in with the darkness.
         Unclear image shakes once more
         and then it's gone with a soft click