Two for Mirth

by Ella Bachrach

It has been an arid summer, the trees already yellowing under blistering rays. Leaves crisp up on branches and shrivel into fetal bunches. Grass crackles underfoot, snapping like too-dry hair. 

She usually rides her bike to work: the sun’s low position staves off the heat in the morning, and by the time she cycles home she’s ready to sweat out the day. However, a meeting notification has popped up in her digital calendar and her fear of showing up damp outweighs pretty much anything, so she leaves her helmet on the kitchen counter and grabs the keys instead. 

She holds her breath as she opens the car door and slides in. The leather blisters her bare shoulders—she pictures the skin adhering to the dark material, peeling off in uneven patches as she pulls away, wet and raw beneath. She leaves the door open as she turns the car on and fumbles for the air conditioning. It’s hotter still for a moment, and then cool relief floods the vehicle. She pulls out from the curb and the car beeps its alien warning until she picks up speed. 

An old country standard floats from between her lips. Something her father used to sing around the house, she and her brother stomping along in the kitchen. She mumbles, letting the tune take hold. She used to sing these lyrics while setting the table for dinner, doing the dishes; now the phrases fall just beyond reach.

For a moment she sees wide, soft pastures stretching out behind the glass, horses moving as if through water, manes rippling, clouds of flies turning the horizon iridescent. Heat like breath; blue above; tufts of grass, feathered. Telephone poles flickering past, the scene like a zoetrope, still images in bursts so they look like they’re moving.

Now an urban montage: rigid brick homes, couples walking, children, dogs. Marching on. Glistening foreheads, slick bangs. Neon advertisements for flavoured water and erotic massage. Busted cans and torn plastic bags and orange cones.

On road trips he always got to sit shotgun. Apparently two minutes of age and three inches of height justified complete dominance of the front seat. He and her father flicking through channels, talking about the news, singing along. She, in the backseat, watching her father in the mirror, waiting to meet his eyes, waiting. 

A sharp sound. Her eyes refocus and she turns on the signal, pulling to the side of the road. Waits for a second, purses her lips, is struck with a sense of divergence. Something is out of place. She is still in the car, blocks up, almost at the office, vision still soft, a moment divided. And yet: the steady click of the signal drills into her skull. This is now. 

She gets out of the car but doesn’t spot it immediately. It is farther down the road, past her initial glance, meters of pavement strung out like taffy. It lies half-submerged in a pool of water: disrupts the clear blue reflection of sky, a smudge of charcoal on stretched canvas. The pool grows and then drains, grows again. Soon it shrinks from existence, leaving the blotch smeared across dry concrete. 

When she’s close enough to make it out she pauses. Cars hurtle past, hurtle over. Their speed ruffles the ebon feathers, which twitch with false breath. She can see the spindly fractals, thin lines branching off again and again, infinitely smaller until they resolve at a frayed point.

A damp sensation near her ear. The bottom third of her vision fogs. Another car whips over the dead bird. She can make out the sly curve of its beak now, the lip glinting. The feathers are red in the light.

He collected things. It started with coins. A penny for luck. A dime for the time. (He always told her the same story about Roosevelt on Campobello Island and the March of Dimes; she always nodded as though it was her first time hearing it. He could recount FDR’s life story like it was his own. Hoarded presidential facts like paperclips.) Then it was women’s jewelry found underfoot, lonely earrings and broken chains. Stones that shone when wet and looked dusty and plain otherwise; bottle caps; Zippo lighters with blackened wicks.

Sometimes she dropped things on paths she knew he walked, areas he frequented. Small, shiny. Rusted rings and game tokens. 

The salad bar down the street from the office. She piles bunches of massaged kale and hard baby tomatoes into a paper bowl. When she lifts the tongs and reaches for the feta cheese, something bright flashes from among the damp blocks. She leans closer, squints, grabs the offending cheese and squeezes it. A red thumbtack emerges as the feta crumbles. 

She takes a photo, which she plans to post online alongside a scathing review, and then leaves without tipping the quiet, dark-haired employee. By the time she returns home her thoughts are groggy and humid; she lies down before dinner and doesn’t wake until the sun is low in the sky. The photo sits in her camera roll, forgotten, until the next day when she sends it to a coworker along with a pixelated image of an actress rolling her eyes. The coworker sends back a skull emoji. This is the most expressive conversation they have ever had.

The third floor bathroom. To the left of a conference room, adjacent to an abandoned storage closet. She splashes cool water on her face, attempting to calm the blistering red patches that have been pulsing with heat for days. Water drips steadily onto the floor. Eyes meet in the mirror: darker than usual, the pupils swollen nearly to the outer rim. Years of sun damage along the edges. Veins, twisting, straining, parasites beneath the surface. She’s never looked more like him.

She grips the tap handle and turns it off, subjecting herself to the echoing silence of the tiled walls. Reaches out and grabs the towel, rubs it harshly down her face— 

—Throws the towel down and clutches her left temple with both hands, compressing the miniature fire that has just erupted: burning pain, hot and fragmenting. She squints into the mirror and retracts her hands. Four deep scratches secrete blood; it pools in her eyebrow, threatening to spill into her eye. 

Two staples glint up at her, glinting, gripping the towel.

She steps on nails and slices her hands on the ragged edges of cans that dwell deep in the soapy water filling her sink. The chain of her bike falls off the rear derailleur in the middle of an intersection. She leaves the hall light on at night and watches the golden slit flicker at the bottom of the door. 

From coast to fucking coast. His Kerouac fantasy. She bought him another necessity on their birthday each year. When they were sixteen, it was a thick sleeping bag. Eighteen a repair kit for the car. Twenty two a set of four thrift shop watches, each set to a different American time zone. (She gave him Alaska and Hawaii for twenty three—just in case.)

He gave her books that she pretended to read. They piled up in the corner of her room. He would wander in and look at the stack with contempt, ask her trivia questions and laugh when she failed. His aimless sister. Not that he wasn’t, but everyone knows it’s better to be well read and aimless than the kind of person who takes up a lot of time on the landline without ever saying much. (Sometimes he would pick up the extension in the living room. She always heard the click. Paused for a moment, phantom breath against the transmitter.)

A small cafe near her apartment that serves Parisian croissants. Here she finds a marble in her morning smoothie. She chokes, gesturing wordlessly at the young barista; he lumbers out from behind the counter, eyes cool and dark, and pounds her back until the ball shoots out of her mouth. It rolls under a table, trailing spit. A slug along a dirt path. The sun heavy in the evening.

She tries to find the marble. There’s nothing under the table. Shining tiles. 

She steps outside the cafe and dials the local police. Lists in detail every attempt on her life and wellbeing. A woman’s voice, tinny through her phone’s speaker, drones on about jurisdictions and waiting times. She hangs up and dials another number, one far more familiar.

Later, in her therapist’s dimly lit office, she is told that she exhibits symptoms of paranoia and is likely experiencing a delusional episode. He sits across from her and speaks in a gravelly baritone. He does not soften the blow. He looks in her eyes and says: Medication. She looks in his eyes and says: Fuck you.

She took a year off. He couldn’t even wait a month: stuffed the Accord with novels and classic rock posters and took off in the middle of summer. Sent letters home once a week detailing his academic achievements, his social prowess, nights in underground venues watching underground bands, days lounging in the grass. Her father read them aloud at the dinner table like he was holding mass. She moved the books into her closet.

Her office. Hunched over her desk, upper lip damp. She bites into a sandwich and a crack rips through her skull, the sound coming from within her ears rather than outside them. Spits out blood and chipped enamel. And something else. One of those lemonade lids with a fact on the inside. Calvin Coolidge is the only president born on July 4th. Bile pools in her throat. 

The back hallway of a dive bar, selected for its rundown facade and distance from the neighbourhoods she frequents while the sun is up. The floor pulsates with the amplified bass of a song that reminds her of his rocker days, his face vicious as he strummed. She always pictured him like that; it was years after he moved out that his nose started rotting and his left nostril carved down towards his top lip. 

She can feel dark eyeshadow pooling in the wilted creases by her eyes. Can’t remember the last time she’s attempted a smokey eye. Among the university students and underaged fakers flooding the bar she feels thorny and misshapen. 

A figure appears at the end of the hallway. She squints through the chalky haze of artificial fog. The person comes closer: a girl. Young. Probably burning off steam after a long day at an internship, hours of waving her mouse around languidly and ending emails with Warmly. Smudged mascara makes her black eyes beady. Long, dark hair hangs limp over her shoulders. The girl tilts her chin towards the bathroom, a question. 

It happened smack dab in the middle. He didn’t even try for one of the coasts. Rough concrete. Dry grasses rippling like the surface of water. Flat plains in every direction. 

They said it was noon. Ten in the west. One in the east. A moment divided.

Flashes: a flickering light. Yellowing sinks. Graffiti spelling out song lyrics. That’s how it starts. Black eyes narrowing. Rough, ineluctable. Thick breath. Hands in her hair. Nails against her scalp. Sharp. Claws. Something shining, reflecting the light. Sharp.

The girl places a razor blade on her tongue. It sits there, perched on the flesh. Glints. Out of place. A keen edge among rounded shapes.