in case of emergency, pt. 1

You may have heard this story before, but it's new.

The first time I met Clara, she was falling-down drunk and her friends were mostly just laughing at her. It was at a party where I didn't really know the host but the girl I was seeing at the time told me to come. It was a pretty cliquish party. None of my conversation seemed to get anywhere. I was really just waiting for an excuse to go, but I hadn't even seen the girl--I honestly forget her name now. I felt like I had to at least say hello.

And then Clara shouted "fuck you," punched someone in the eye, and staggered out the door. From her friends the reaction was mostly amused. Someone asked "Shouldn't we go after her?" The consensus was that she wouldn't get far, and she probably just needed space. "Probably just going for a cigarette," someone said.

I decided that "a cigarette" was a good excuse to duck outside, but it's not like anyone was following me.

She was seated on the sidewalk not too far from the house, clutching her knees to her chest and crying quietly. It looked like she'd fallen and skinned her knees, and there was some blood coming from her left hand as well.

I sat down next to her. "You all right?"

"I just wanna go home."

"Is it far?"

She shook her head. "I keep falling down."

I glanced back at the house. "Can I walk you there?"

She shrugged, then nodded. I helped her to her feet and she leaned on me heavily as we walked back to her apartment.

driftwood

She took me to the Oregon beach and we burned driftwood and drank cheap wine out of the bottle and watched the darkness creeping in. She fell asleep on my shoulder when the bottle was empty, and I threw it out into the beach and watched the fire burning low. She woke up when I wrapped the blanket around her shoulders.

I told her I'm glad she took me here, and she nodded. "It's my favorite place in the world," she said, and she probably meant it. I said something about how I wished this night would last forever, and she didn't say anything. But there was something sad in her eyes. We spent a week there together. When it was warm we'd sleep on the beach with the blankets and the fire and each other for warmth. When it was too cold we'd walk back to the house we were staying in once the fire burned out, sleeping in our little bed, happy just to be there.

At the end of the week she asked me if I'd always think back on this as a happy memory, and I said I would. "Do you promise?"

"Absolutely."

We slept peacefully that night. She was gone in the morning, and I was alone and cold in the sunrise, trying to find her footprints in the sand. All I found was driftwood leading away from the rocks forever.

poison

When we got married, we had little cyanide capsules surgically installed, so that we could only activate each other's. It was perfectly foolproof, and it was intended as a gesture of trust. I always felt like saying things like "I trust you with my life" was cheap, and now we had a way to back it up. I didn't really think about it at the time. It felt like the right thing to do.

I always felt like if I had someone else's life in my hands there would be a power trip. Like I wouldn't be able to be trusted with it. Maybe it was because it was mutual that I never felt that way, or maybe it's because we really did trust each other, but it just felt so natural and perfect--like wearing new shoes. At first you're kind of aware of it and it's uncomfortable but then they get broken in and you forget you have them entirely.

I was on a business trip to California where it's warm and nice this time of year, and after the conference I stopped at the bar for a drink with a woman who reminded me of a girl I never quite got over. A drink or two, anyway. I don't remember a point where I could have not gone back to her hotel room. There's never a moment like that.

Later, still drunk, I confessed it all on the phone and my wife forgave me like the beautiful person she is. I knew it could have been my life, and I know she was just tired. Maybe she wasn't thinking. Maybe she'd want revenge.

Better safe than sorry, right? Safety was just the press of a button away.

I tossed the ring out the window and texted the other woman saying I'd ordered champagne if she was interested. This weekend would be ours.

yearbook photos

I hadn't met my girlfriend yet in any of my high school yearbook photos. I've been studying them intently for the past few days. I still have the same smiles: the same smirk for when I know there's a camera, the same crooked smile when I don't. I've aged since then, obviously, and lost weight, but the smile is the same. You can tell a lot about someone from their smile.

I'm between two girls with perfectly composed smiles in all my yearbook photos. Every year their smile is the same. In every photograph, even when they can't see the camera. The same smile. It's plastic. It's a smile that's meant for photographs. It's guarded. These are people who go far because they know how to give people what they want, instead of give them who they are.

In mine I just look frightened. I'm not sure of what--maybe that I won't be smiling anymore soon. Or maybe I'm just surprised to be smiling? Either way, it's the same everywhere. No changes after I met my girlfriend, or when we started dating. I'm still afraid of smiling, I'm still smirking at the camera, fooling only myself.

But she's changed me. I know she has. I'm happier now. Surely that has to come through in photographs? So I keep looking for little signs. There's nothing new in my eyes. There's nothing different. It's all the same.

the abyss

A massive yawning chasm opened up in town square last week. No one seems to know where it came from or why it's there, and there doesn't seem to be a bottom. It just goes on forever. It's perfectly round, and the police have roped it off with police tape, but nobody stops you from going up and looking down. Scientists keep saying it's impossible, and I guess they know more about that than I do.

My sister was in town today, so I took her down to the abyss and we sat at the edge and had a picnic. We just threw the garbage into the gaping emptiness. We didn't talk about the fact that our feet were dangling into an impossibility. That would be awkward.

Every night since it opened I've gone out and paced around its circumference. I never measure it or counted steps, but it takes about an hour to go all the way around and I can do it with my eyes closed now. It's so dark and quiet and smooth. Sometimes I'll shout into it and the echoes seem to last forever. And then they fall quiet and I'm all alone again.

It feels more familiar than anything I've ever known. I know its shape, its infinite depth. Everything about my hometown, my lover, seems like I barely scratched the surface before. Now I understand them in relation to the abyss, and it seems so much clearer.