as yet untitled

Phury doesn’t want a bullet in her head. At least, not now. She knows that death is the thing we all have in common and some ways to go are better than others. For her, the ideal exit involves no pain and minimal anticipation. But today she is still young and hasn’t done very much yet, so for now she’d rather postpone the end. She thinks of the remaining half of raspberry torte sitting on the kitchen table. She’d been looking forward to it all day, the best motivation she has for going home. Although she knows she’d go home anyway, but it’s so much more pleasant when torte is waiting. If possible, she’d like to be on her way again. Instead of both feet planted on the ground, back to the graffiti stained concrete wall, waiting for the heavy Latino to make up his mind. His outstretched arms quiver, one hand clasping the other clasping the gun. His lips twitch, tongue sliding over them. His eyes are small. Or maybe just crowded by unnecessary bulges and flaps of skin. They’re dark brown, or at least she imagines them to be in the fading daylight, but not black. She doesn’t believe anyone could actually have black eyes.
         ‘What the fuck you want, hey?’ he shouts. ‘Go back to Eddy and tell him he can come show his ass-hole face himself, the next time. You tell him what we said before, what we always say. You tell him. Maybe I’m gonna put one through you right now, yeah? Maybe that’ll show him. You tell him, bitch.’
         The man is talking much louder than he needs to. The air in front of Phury feels so wide, so empty yet so complete in itself that it must go on for miles, past every neighborhood, slum, and street, uninterrupted, where it touches someone else with the same imminence she’s feeling now. Of course, the air always did connect her to everyone else in the world, but it doesn’t usually feel like it. She inhales the cool muskiness and thinning of the atmosphere she associates with darkness. All around her the air is calming down and spreading out. Sound must carry far tonight. Which is the reason she’s wondering why no one else hears the drunken man’s yelling. Maybe they hear and are afraid to get in the way of a bullet. Maybe they’re calling the police instead. Maybe no one gives a shit anymore. Maybe they’re closing their curtains.
         ‘You hearing me? You think I won’t do it?’
         Dark brown eyes dance in all directions, taking in everything he can see without turning his head. He sways heftily, shifting his weight from side to side. Every part of him seems to be fidgeting. A heavy foot comes down on a piece of garbage, crushing the plastic a thousand different ways.
         ‘What the fuck you looking at? You hear me? What the fuck are you doing?’
         She is, of course, doing nothing. This is a bad area of town, an area her mother refers to as a god-forsaken pit of lowlifes, addicts and carnage. The kind of place she’d have forbidden her children to go, had the thought that her children might go there ever crossed her mind. Phury doesn’t consider herself a lowlife and she didn’t intentionally end up here. She had only been walking, not caring where she was going but not looking for trouble. All the same, it gives her a twisted satisfaction to know she’s where she shouldn’t be, in a situation she’d never experienced before. She’s still watching the man, a statue compared with his restlessness. She doesn’t realize it but she’s giving him the creeps. He’s hesitating now: lowering his arms, glancing over his shoulders. Hurried footsteps around the corner: two more guys approach him. One takes the gun from his hands, the other talks rapidly in a language Phury doesn’t know, but knows it’s not Spanish. There is more yelling. A push. An attempted push back: instead, a restraint. She wonders how to leave. No one seems to care that she’s still there. Perhaps she can slip around the corner and disappear the same way the two men appeared. She risks a small side step. And another. Eyes still on the arguing men, whose argument continues to escalate. Another step, quicker and hurried. The man now holding the gun looks straight at her now, waves his gun as if to say ‘what are you still doing here?’, then smashes it against the side of the first man’s head. Phury doesn’t see him fall, she only hears the heavy, flat smack of flesh hitting pavement; she’s already around the corner. Running. One hand holds her shoulder bag to keep it from hitting her body awkwardly and preventing her from running faster. She dodges a parked bicycle, a newspaper vending box, and an overturned garbage can. Phury has never been athletic and expects each moment to collapse with a heart attack or whatever happens to non-athletic people. Somehow, she doesn’t. Maybe it was fear overriding her body’s protests. Or more likely, adrenaline. At the moment it doesn’t matter what keeps her going, as long as she’s going. She thinks, this feels good. It doesn’t last. She slows down and acknowledges the cramps forming in her side as soon as she recognizes the street she’s on. She turns back for the first time and sees no one. She manages the rest of the way home at a brisk walk, breathing fast. An itchy thirst only an ice-cold Coke will cure builds up in Phury’s throat. She doesn’t stop at a gas station, even though she has some change. The sun is all the way down now. Already. Damn northern November days.
         When she opens the front door to her house, Phury is an odd assortment of sensations. Odd, because she’s cold, panting, tired, alert, thirsty, and still wondering how afraid she ought to feel. She heads unthinking to the kitchen, throws her sweater on the table, rummages through cupboards for a cup and a plate and clears off a space of cluttered counter. Her blood is still pumping too wildly for her to sit down so she wolfs down torte and cold chocolate milk standing up (the fridge was full of everything but Coke), waiting for herself to calm down. Slowly her sensations wind down and something like rationality smoothes over the bumps of adrenaline, standing still to look back at what she’s run away from. As the situation replays in her mind, fuzzy images of shouting and running form into more pleasant, detached observations and impressions. It’s reassuring to be in control, remembering things in a way that’s not overpowering. The incident itself was no more than random coincidence, she thinks. I’m not the first person to be mistaken for someone else by a drunk man and a gun. But there’s a feeling still lurking in her stomach, something uneasy she can’t quite identify. Not fear, probably. More like the absence of something else, something comfortable. She’s thinking it’s more likely to go away once she figures out what it is, when the front door closes loudly and shortly after her mother walks in.
         Mrs. Beth LaFortune has a heavy walk. She is by no means a thin person but Phury has always thought her steps carried more weight than was necessary. Her eyes are darkly outlined in indigo and this morning’s lipstick has all but disappeared onto the rims of several coffee cups during the course of the day. She’s dressed smartly, black leather jacket loosely wrapped around a burgundy skirt, off-white blouse, and big bones. Her clothes are never gaudy, or at least they haven’t been in the past decade, but there is always something eye-catching about Beth’s person. Jarring, even. She’s not the sort of person one can forget about in a room. Even when not looking at her, anyone within twenty feet  could sense the weight of Beth’s presence proclaiming itself. Beth. Phury had always wanted to call her mother by her first name, like some of her friends back in junior high did with their mothers, but could never dream up the nerve. She couldn’t even bring herself to address her friend’s moms as they did. It was always Yes, Mrs. Podolski. No thank you, Mrs. Gunther.
         Mrs. LaFortune sighs loudly as her purse hits a kitchen chair with a heavy jangle. ‘Why doesn’t anyone ever clean up around here’, she exhales, her eyes on Phury. ‘I don’t have time to clean up everyone’s mess before making supper. You girls should know enough by now to help out once in a blue moon. I can’t always do everything.’
         Phury has no desire to hear about the unbearable stress and unfairness of her mother’s day at work, so she does not ask. ‘Hi, mom’ is what she says. She carefully stacks her empty dishes on one of the smaller piles by the sink and turns to leave.
         ‘Where do you think you’re going? You can at least do a load of dishes. It’s probably your sister’s turn but who knows where that girl is at. Phury, don’t walk away from me!’ (At this point, Mrs. LaFortune’s voice is slightly louder than usual: not enough to be considered yelling, but strong enough for her annoyance to smack Phury in the ears.) ‘I’ve already put up with enough crap today.’
         But Phury is already past the door, in the dining room, on the stairs leading into the basement. The unpleasantness in her stomach has grown into an itchy irritation. At the moment she’d rather risk a disagreeable conversation later to avoid being with her mother. The basement air is cool, so nice, and she spreads out on a couch and closes her eyes. She doesn’t exactly know why she’s irritated right now, except that it happens sometimes around her mother. No one else grates on Phury like Mrs. LaFortune does, but then again, no one else is her mother. After a good ten minutes laying there doing nothing, Phury peels off her bare arms from the leather couch and wipes the cool sweat on her jeans. She’s caught her breath by now but still feels restless. And still irritated. And irritated for feeling irritated, because she’s hardly ever that way, especially for a vague and unidentifiable reason. Not in the mood to hang around the house where she might run into family, she gets up with the intention of doing something. Closing her eyes once more, she ignores the irritation and tries to figure out what she feels like doing. An idea comes to her, random but not unexpected, and she decides to follow the random impulse. Usually these ideas are best left uncompleted possibilities, but today she’ll make an exception. The house above her is quiet, so she goes up, hoping no one is around. A thought comes up, something involving consequences and doing bad things and angry parents. She puts this thought on hold. She walks to the china cabinet and stares at the three survivors of an eight-piece crystal wine glass set. A gift for her parents on their wedding, years ago. When they had first opened the box, her parents had found one glass already chipped. Phury had broken one when she decided to put every dish she could find through the dishwasher, back when she was a kid still trying to make a serious effort to please her parents. Carol broke two when she was eight and liked princess tea parties that involved ballroom dancing. The other glass disappeared years ago; no one knew where. Phury had loved not knowing where it went, enjoying all the possibilities of what could have happened. Of course, when guests commented on the missing glasses her parents would laugh dismissively, wave a hand, and say ‘Oh, you know how the girls are. It’s a wonder they haven’t burn down the house already!’ Guests would laugh along like they understood completely, and smile at the two sisters. One of the few things Phury knows irritates her is patronization. Phury hears out what her conscience has to say and dismisses it, sliding open the glass door. She grabs the three glasses in one hand, each stem cool and firm at the base of two fingers, closes the china cabinet and walks out of the house.
         It’s colder and darker outside now and she regrets not bringing a sweater, but doesn’t turn around to get one. She walks down the block, down another, turns right, and keeps going until she feels far enough away. She’s at the other end of the neighborhood, at an empty small park with dead brown grass. She looks up at the streetlight beside her, into the yellow circle of light, and smiles. Then she realizes that children must play here, and admits to her conscience that she doesn’t want them stepping on broken crystal. She settles on a streetlight further down, on the edge of a back alley, and positions herself about ten feet away. Phury smiles again, somehow pleased with her idea but unconcerned with the vagueness of the pleasure (it’s not as necessary to justify pleasure as it is to justify unease) and throws the first glass. It’s a good hit. The glass shatters nicely on the middle of the streetlight. She can feel the vibrations of the break as if the glass had shattered on her, which is somehow satisfying. The sound it made was pretty, all hard and tinkling. It was louder than she expected, loud enough for someone to hear, and Phury shivers pleasantly to think that someone would. The next two glasses hit the streetlight just as beautifully, sending tiny pieces everywhere, catching the light and sparkling as they flew. She stands there for a moment, enjoying the satisfaction she feels, before putting her hands in her jeans pockets and turning back home. She doesn’t understand why throwing the glasses felt so nice. She considers the idea of rebellion, but doesn’t think that fits her present mood. The connection between now and what happened earlier this afternoon also doesn’t fit, or at least it doesn’t seem to. She’s open to the possibility of her subconscious expressing itself in strange ways, but doesn’t attempt to think further on it. What she did may have been wrong, or stupid, but likely not very much of either. As she reaches the front steps of her house again, Phury realizes she’s in a better mood, now. She decides the rational thing to do is to let it be.