Her eyes command attention, so voluminous and intense, a light gray blue partially fogged from drugs and apathy.
“I always start craving cigarettes third hour.”
Unable to stand a moment’s hesitation, she drops her pleading stare to inspect her nails. Though at a glance her fragile hands could remind one of a porcelain doll, a closer look betrays carelessness, ragged skin framing chewed nails. These hands shift constantly, searching for something to hold, something to steady her nervousness.
Like always, her presence fills the room, and I am surrounded with the scent of alcohol and stale smoke. She is a diminutive force, wearing a dirty sweatshirt and old black shoes with heels to give her the height she never had. Her pants hang loosely from the weight she’s lost; she is 88 lbs and dropping.
“I guess I eat. Sometimes. Most of the time I forget.”
She will laugh a silent, ironic laugh without any real hope. She laughs like one condemned.
“Dying young sounds so romantic, though. I want to die in the snow, with the one that I love.”
Under unnaturally black hair and pale skin, she stares at the world weighing everything in comparison to her story. Each moment has the potential to make her life more exciting to share, each person she talks to is deliberately selected for the most dramatic or satisfying effect. Days are chapters accumulating into a novel that will one day be read by millions. Her life will be envied by all.
As she rests across the couch from me, telling stories about her sixth lover in two months, a realization begins to form that her ideas burn out like cigarettes. When the ashes begin to fall and she can no longer use a situation she lights another, chain-smoking her way through life.
“I have goals. I want to live in a van and travel across the country. Well, I mean. I have to get a van first. Wait, I know I had other plans. Just give me a second to remember them.”
Her voice trails off as her trembling hands reach for another cigarette. The lighter clicks and she inhales awkwardly. Smoke slides from her lips and again she can focus on the abstract “story of her life”. The image of a perfect autobiography guides her like a moth flying unsteadily in the darkness towards a light. Even though her attention strays and her thoughts lose their luster, she retains the vision of a life unwasted. Her drooping eyes gaze in my direction, and I, too, am written into the memoir of our generation.
| "One AM at the gas station" by Erin Frumet.-> |
