Fiction Short Story
You Do You
She updates the simple bio on her dating profile: “looking for nothing serious. I am really into knives. Really, really into knives, ask me about it.”
For Catherine
All the old people say stars used to be brighter. Scientists find a hidden, emerald Jurassic world almost a mile beneath Seattle. The city gives more money to old green rocks and dinosaur bones than aid to the homeless. There are no more rainforests in the world, almost no more natural green coast to coast. What you see along the great expanses are manmade miles after the great fires, and flowers are more valuable than gold. I am more ruin than anything else, more heartbreak than muscle, Vincent says. He says, Every day, I see a ghost; I cast stones; I grow a motor. I want to be with you. He taps his phone, holding down the microphone icon, and records everything. He sends the recording to Hannah and hears a bloop. He watches dead leaves moving in the wind on the fake dead tree branches and thinks about the soft hairs on her neck, the way she smells when she holds him close. You can’t smell these trees, though, almost nothing fills the lungs. The air is stale. His hands are shaking from the cold.
On their way to dinner, Samantha points to some graffiti painted along a white Honda and asks, What does that mean?
Vincent smiles and says, Cash rules everything around me.
She says, You are A plus. Was that to Hannah?
He checks his phone, a small glow from his palms. The audio message goes from Delivered to Read. Tiny rain droplets collect on the screen and blink red with the speeding cars going by. His hands stop shaking. Samantha is walking close behind him. She touches his back. The pavement under his feet is soft orange from the street lamp. Three dots appear and then go away.
*
The reading goes on too long—each reader goes on for just a little too long. The stage lights glow soft purple, then a calming orange. The black box theater swallows the audience. People fidget in their seats, little knots start to tie inside their stomachs, a secret opinion forms. But Vincent finds something he loves in each poet. Sometimes it’s just a single line, or the way they address the waiting crowd. Or one word they say. A nod, a tell. A small glimpse into whatever grief remains. One poet said the word ‘though’ so softly, really using her lips, as though speaking straight from a past life—a past trauma that wrecks and changes Vincent’s entire evening, his thoughts quietly transported to the sad place she built. It feels like home, though. Though, though.
The famous poet, Cherry, looks out to the crowd from the microphone as though she can see right through the walls, right through everyone’s bones.
Hannah says the word ‘though’ like that too, Vincent thinks, talking out loud. There’s a rhythm there.
Jesus, man, Samantha responds, her face openly annoyed now. You gotta stop thinking about her. She says, You are a powerful person walking in the world with no attachment.
What you see along the great expanses are manmade miles after the great fires, and flowers are more valuable than gold. His body moves unseeing from old brick building to old brick building, walking out in more light rain, following Samantha, the young poets, and a small, tired crowd. Although cloudy, the sky is so gorgeous with red moonlight it hurts; some people are holding hands, small-talking in twos and threes. Heartbroken and feeling unfazed by the cold, Vincent imagines himself turning into stone.
Samantha collides into Vincent, leaning her weight into him as they head to the bar. The ground is torn dead leaves, a thousand puddles.
She says, Nonviolent communication. Observe. Feel. Need. Request.
Samantha blinks at Vincent.
Vincent says, No response yet.
Samantha says, Nonviolent communication, you dumbass.
She slaps his face just enough to hurt him and says, Okay?
Prone to nosebleeds, Vincent starts bleeding. Bright red drops kiss his nostrils. I want to write her another letter, he says.
You can write her a letter. You don’t need to give it to her, though.
Vincent says, I like the way you say the word ‘though’ too, Samantha. His eyes are a little glazed over, his posture a little crooked. They are the kind of dear friends that say first names.
She touches and squeezes his arm and asks, Holy shit, is your nose bleeding?
Vincent ducks his head backwards without missing a beat, still walking and crossing the street, taking out Kleenex from his jacket pocket.
I’m still kicking.
Bad timing, she says. I shouldn’t have slapped you.
No, no. This happens all the time, he says, you know that. You can slap me anytime. The Kleenex soaks with blood and rain and more wind hits them in the face. Bright head beams of speeding cars going both directions blind them too.
Really?
Cherry and a small crowd are waiting in front of Dead Pettirosso, looking down at something. Coming closer, Vincent can see everyone is surrounding an injured bird, and she’s shaking on the ground, unable to get up. Her eyes blink open and close in pain.
Vincent says, Really, without looking back at Samantha. His focus is all on the hurt bird now. The rain pours down and sideways. There is a steady flow of people walking down the street going from bar to bar, disembodied conversations right into the air.
What happened?
We don’t know, Cherry says. But we have to help it. We can call someone.
Cherry takes out her phone, her face turning to Vincent and his bloody nose.
She touches his arm, cradling the phone with her neck and shoulder.
Cherry says, I know you. Hello, Animal Control? The small crowd watches Cherry as they look back and forth from her to the sweet bird.
Cherry squeezes his arm and says, Your nose is bleeding.
Vincent says, This happens all the time.
Is everything okay?
No, Vincent says.
A complete stranger, a woman in a bright neon purple wig, pushes into Vincent and right into the circle, the small crowd of people. She looks down at the ground and says, Oh my god! She picks up the bird, holding it gently to her face and kissing it, as she takes out her phone and poses with it for a selfie, taking a few photos, a few kisses. The bird’s eyes open and close. The woman in the purple wig smiles and takes a deep breath in, as though coming to a new moment in her life, as though coming to an honest plummet, and she sets the bird carefully back down on the ground. She starts walking down the hill away from everyone and the sky clears a little. It drops two degrees.
Cherry says, No, nothing is okay. Hello, Animal Control? Can you hear me? The phone is still clinging to her face and left shoulder, and the bird on the ground starts trying to flap her wings, her eyes closed the whole time. Little perfect robin.
*
What a pleasure being hurt can be. Time and space, time and space, please take some personal time and space. This whole fucking year has been a knife, Hannah thinks, as she updates the simple bio on her dating profile: looking for nothing serious. I am really into knives. Really, really into knives, ask me about it . One hundred forty matches. Hannah twiddles her thumbs on the glass screen with bangs in her eyes. Her spirit is bored and exhausted. She has stopped asking herself questions. She has stopped doubting herself and there is a groove now. After living a year in New Seattle, Hannah still orbits and watches her ex boyfriend on social, checking his timestamps, his likes, all his new photos. She watches everything and leaves no footprint. She checks her bank account on her phone in the back room of the dead flowers florist shop, feeling like life is bad math. After her morning shift working reception, Hannah goes to the bar alone right at sunset, the autumn light touching the tops of the dead trees, her face hidden in her black hoodie. There is a sweet, deep reservoir of incandescent brilliance flowing carefully inside of her that she knows she still needs to tap into, there is a never-ending peace she can live if she can break herself open. The streets fill with booming music from passing car stereos, buzzing neon signs, and beautiful tattooed legs and stomachs. Hannah sings “Teenage Dirtbag” at karaoke, winking at the sad KJ, swaying left and right on the cheap-use stage with her neat whiskey in hand, her eyes never leaving the glowing screen. She feels her shoulders, especially, are magic—healing magic. Slime green lyrics, bright pink letters. She lets her hair down. She tips thirty percent for every heavy pour. Big, strange men talk to her and big, strange men lean into her, offering more drinks, asking for a walk, calling her pretty. A fist of blood forms in her chest and she makes one with her hand, too, underneath the bar counter. She says, Please leave me alone. She does a line of coke in the bathroom and pops a Percocet . Percocet , Molly, Percocet .
Now living paycheck to paycheck to scrape by, Hannah misses the warm bodegas back home, and she swipes an old credit card for a bean and cheese burrito at the late night gas station close to her apartment. The clerk here never makes eye contact with her, which she likes. Enter and exit the dragon. The night time is her time to get right and grounded. You can redeem an entire life in one evening, she thinks. Her body feels calm under the canopy of the buzzing orange street lamps. The globes glow heaven. She imagines rows of street lamps exploding when she walks underneath them. Walk with a lust for life. Have a silly mantra. Be gentle and patient. Stab rip stab stab. Kill the game. Hannah walks around the city as though she can see through the dark, as though she can see all the glowing predestined routes everyone else is walking, the steady flow of strangers. No sleep, no cap, no problem.
Hannah walks to her art studio, but first, she heads to her street locker just around the corner. She is getting her new swords and her new knives, just delivered, and the swords go straight on her back, wrapped in special black cloth, strapped on like a backpack, in a big X. There are no more cars on the road, there is no one else waiting with her at the blinking crosswalk, but she can hear the train in the distance. Drowsy with delight. Impervious to nonsense. What pain she feels she doesn’t show, something she tells herself. Nirvana is being blunt and a little dead to the world. Her headphones sing sad pop songs. Trap music.
She unlocks the deadbolt and pushes the heavy door open into her dark studio. The early morning light milks in. Her rats scurry around in their tall cages, her birds fly to the high ceiling. The cat is nowhere to be found. It’s a fucking zoo in here.
Hannah turns on music right away, low volume, more trap music. She finds her favorite green welder mask and puts it on, and flips her new swords in the air, catching each one at the handle like it’s second nature. Nine inch blades like toys. She catches one by the dull blade by mistake and it cuts her a little, a surprising amount of fresh blood drips down from her hand to the concrete floor, and she doesn’t grimace. Her cat runs out from under the couch to the blood and starts to scream.
Hannah looks down at her cat. Not to be fucked with, her cat looks up at her. The cat screams.
She says, You’re such a vampire, Americus.
Hannah bends down and pets Americus with her other hand, taking a deep breath to not get too lightheaded, and the cat stops screaming.
The cat says nothing. Horrible communicator. Avoidant, dismissing attachment style. Americus’ favorite spots are behind the ears, below the chin, and sometimes, the belly. Tonight, though, not the belly.
Hannah is really exhausted, all of a sudden. The long day catches up to her and latches on to her shoulders and lower back.
Her phone from her back jean pocket blinks alive with notifications. Red dots, lighting bolts, and exclamation points. She has a new match on the dating app, a boy named Vincent. Look at this boy and his cool shoes, she thinks.
Hannah shows Americus her phone, getting a little blood on the screen, and says, What do you think, Americus? His bio is just a pizza emoji.
The cat screams even louder now, his pupils dilating so big and black Hannah can see her smile growing in his eyes. She loves his stupid face so much. He must be starving.
Vincent sends her a live message, a pizza emoji. He says, Hi, I’m a writer & a teacher. What do you do?
Hannah types, That’s so cool. I’m an artist. What do you write?
I write poems, he says.
You’re a poet?
Guilty, he says. What kind of art do you do?
She ignores his question. She says, I love pizza. Let’s go get pizza sometime.
She types and he’s online on the other side. Three dots appear in waves. It’s so late to be awake still, she thinks. But I’m awake too.
Hannah wipes the blood off the screen.
He says, I would love that. He sends another pizza emoji.
This boy, she thinks. She doesn’t want to sleep with losers anymore, but she likes happenstance. Even forced happenstance. She sends her number, puts her phone down, and plays with her new swords and flamethrower. After a few hours, feeling lightheaded, Hannah takes off her welder mask, dripping wet with sweat, aching and sore, and the room returns and materializes back around her. Colors rush back, fresh air. Her pet birds, Cloak and Dagger, never come down from the ceiling, both either flying and circling this whole time, or perched on a bookshelf, looking down at Hannah while she works and sings to herself. Feathers float to the ground. The city moves on the other side, the universe blinks.
*
Make a giant out of a stranger, put all your eggs in one basket. Realize you are the only one left now. You are the only one that can help yourself, Hannah says. Most people are cruel. Some talks are premeditated. Some questions are loaded. I am done with all that bullshit, all the games, the back and forth, Hannah says. I’m a big believer in the ‘you are what you love’ thing. Let everything go. No strings, no hard feelings, nothing serious, Hannah says. She shakes and nods her head as she talks.
Hannah takes another shot, no chaser, her third, and Vincent follows suit, drinking tequila. Jeremih is playing on the speakers above them in the pizzeria. Right away, first date, synchronicity. Right away, after a few minutes, good questions and soft humiliation. Right away, he’s sweet on me, Hannah thinks. It feels as though they can talk about anything. He arrived there first, and Hannah could see him waiting patiently in the farthest booth in his baseball cap, not looking at his phone. He keeps looking at her hands and her mouth and she keeps touching her hair, looking left and right at no one else in particular with less and less frequency. There is something sublime in how sad he looks, how she can’t tell or pinpoint what he’s looking for or what he wants. But does she care? After one drink, Hannah lets the tension in her shoulders melt, and she opens a hole of curiosity from within herself and watches him. Steam rises from the gooey pizza pies and garlic bread, baseball plays on all the televisions, every booth is filled with conversation, blanketed in red neon light; the Mariners have not made the playoffs for over a hundred years. The dreamy ceiling Tiffany lamps above them dim as the bartender yells for final call.
Hannah looks down at her cat. Not to be fucked with, her cat looks up at her. The cat screams. Do you ever feel like you’re living in the wrong decade, Vincent asks. The wrong era?
Oh, okay, here we go, Hannah says. Do you want another?
Sure, I’ll take one more.
I’ve had a hard year, she says.
Why has it been a hard year? Vincent asks.
She holds information like ransom, and she owes nothing to anyone, but something happens. Ice melts in her glass, the song changes. She likes him and she trusts him, the easy gravity of his questions. The way he doesn’t lean closer to her. Boundaries are sexy, pushing them is risky.
Vincent watches her think.
If you don’t mind me asking, Vincent says. I’m sorry.
I don’t mind, Hannah says. I moved here about a year ago, and I’m still finding my footing. I just found work recently. I had a tough break-up right before I left New York. My sister killed herself this past January, two months after I moved here.
Oh my god, I’m so sorry, Vincent says. His face goes soft, his loud, chaotic mind goes quiet for her.
I don’t want to talk about myself anymore, she says, I’ve done that all night. Hannah takes her last shot and smiles, and Vincent looks at his shot glass, imagining a time lapse of her life flashing before his eyes. He looks at the glass and takes the shot too, his lips burning.
Are you close to your family?
Not really, Vincent says.
No, Hannah asks. Why not?
Do you really want to know?
Yes, Hannah says. Absolutely.
My mother was pretty abusive, Vincent says.
How was she abusive? Hannah leans in closer, her face lifts with concern.
Emotionally, physically, sexually, Vincent says.
Oh my god, she says, her hand touching her face. I’m so sorry. Do you still talk to her?
No, the last time we spoke was a few years ago. She told me she had burned all my baby photos.
She burned all your baby photos?
Yeah, says Vincent’s voice.
You don’t have any baby photos?
No, I don’t, says Vincent’s voice.
Hannah can see a wave move underneath his face. He doesn’t blink.
What?, she asks. She gets up and goes over to sit on his side of the booth, moving slowly in one motion, as natural as gravity.
There is a videotape of me somewhere. I’m like six or seven years old or something.
A video? Does your mom have it?
Vincent laughs. The smile rises from his chest to his bright face.
No, my first grade teacher has it. Mrs. Gilbert. She was really sweet. She was one of the first people to see there was abuse happening at home and tried to confront my mom about it. It actually made things much worse, but she was really sweet. I don’t remember it, but I put on a musical for her once, like a one person musical, or one kid musical, that I wrote, and she videotaped it.
Whoa, Hannah says. That’s amazing. She videotaped it? Hannah’s face lights up, blinkless. She touches his thigh.
Yeah, Vincent says. She read a poem I had published once, and reached out to me, saying hello, and she reminded me about the tape, the whole thing.
Wow, Hannah says, that’s fucking wild. Have you seen the tape?
No, Vincent says. I’ve tried to track her down, but nothing.
Does anyone else know about that?
My best friend knows, Vincent says. Sam—but no one else knows. Just you and Sam.
She pushes her glass to the edge of the table. She finishes his drink and pushes his glass to the edge of the table too.
What are you trying to do right now, Hannah asks. Do you want to get out of here?
Yeah, what were you thinking?
Do you wanna come see my art? Hannah asks.
Yes, Vincent says. Absolutely.
They walk through the tunnel of trees, one of the last few rows of real trees left in the city. They stop speaking, walking side-by-side in tandem, looking up at the ancient redwoods and breathing in deeply. He takes her hand. It is freezing cold.
During sex, his nose bleeds. She smiles in the dark and kisses him bloody. When they both come, she holds him like a parachute, and they laugh in unison so hard it hurts their lungs. She leaves a poem in his brain, a ghost on his skin. In the background, she plays a horror movie on mute. Santa Sangre.
When she shows him her art, her sword sculptures, he can barely speak. His body aches beautifully, his pupils are dilated, and he is in awe of the room she created. They look like women made of swords, hundreds of swords, each over twenty feet high. Each stoic figure drawing swords or other weapons and shields, ready for battle. They’re all looking up.
Vincent walks closer to one, and she’s gigantic. She’s holding a spear, and it looks as though she’s screaming into the ether. He looks all the way up at her, each blade sharp, some shining, some reflecting their faces in the little light that comes through the skylight. Although he can see Hannah’s calming face in the million reflections, he doesn’t smile or make eye contact with her. His mouth opens a little, looking up. The moon is almost full.
Can I touch them?
Yes, of course, thank you.
Thank you for what? Vincent asks.
For asking, Hannah says.
