Louis stared blankly, his thick, square-framed glasses lit up by the screen in front of him in contrast to the glazed eyes behind them. It was the height of his day, watching his favorite show on his computer days after the rest of the world had seen it. His tall, lanky frame sank so deeply into the couch that his yellow t-shirt looked like just another mustard stain on the worn old sofa. After running around for five straight days—class to basketball practice to work to the library to bed and then back to do it all over again—the clean, empty feeling that accompanied the blank look was pure bliss. It was Louis’ turn to watch someone else run around for a change, and he gazed on as the characters averted crises both national and personal, as they lived their two-dimensional lives and loved their one-dimensional loves. There was no room for gray area in that world, a refreshing change for an English major. How they managed to have enough energy to fall in love after negotiating for the release of dozens of hostages was beyond him; he barely had enough energy to respond to his girlfriend’s call for dinner after a week filled to the brim with the mundane.
Nevertheless, after a heroic struggle against both the laws of gravity and his own body’s inertial desire to remain on the old sofa, Louis found himself at the card table that passed for the dining room table in his dingy apartment, boxes of Chinese already nearly spent before him and Maddie, his girlfriend. Forks and knives working in concert broke the silence intermittently. The occasional clink of ice rattling against the glasses and napkins shifting in laps broke the rhythm of the utensils, the dog’s tail thumping against the table leg providing a steady bass beat for the proceedings.
He glanced across the table at Maddie, her bright orange shirt louder than the symphony of silverware that substituted for conversation. The muted tones of the scarf she had neglected to take off when she came in out of the November chill spoke even louder—it would not be a long visit. Louis noticed this, and was sorry.
Sure enough, five minutes later, she looked up at the clock as she finished eating.
“I’ve gotta run, sweetie, I was supposed to be there two minutes ago,” she said, as she rose from the table. She had a rehearsal—clarinet tonight, guitar tomorrow. Tomorrow, though, he’d be there, too, trying to keep up (and generally failing, although she insisted he was doing fine) on his newly-acquired bass.
“Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”
“Two o’clock sharp, yeah?” she asked as gave him a quick peck on the cheek before heading for the door.
“Yeah, Ryan’s gone for the afternoon, so he won’t be here to bitch about the noise the whole time.”
“Alright,” she responded, laughing as she disappeared out the door.
Ryan, his roommate, wouldn’t be back for another few hours—there was no such thing as free time as far as Ryan was concerned, because any time not spent studying was time wasted.
He dumped the dishes in the sink and wandered back to the living room. Settling into the sofa, he flipped absentmindedly through the channels on the new flatscreen TV (ah, the priorities of college apartment living—who needs a dining room table as long as you’ve got HDTV?).
As day after ordinary day slipped past in his life, Maddie’s presence was the only thing he found extraordinary. She was endlessly patient with him, genuinely supportive of each of his dreams as he jumped from one thing to the next—he had considered everything from accountant to rock star over the past three years—and, perhaps most importantly, understood at times like these that his lack of conversation meant that he was comfortable and content, not awkward or angry.
Of course, these days, Maddie’s presence was extraordinary simply because it didn’t happen very often. It wasn’t through any fault of her own, or because they were having issues—they rarely fought, making do with congenial disagreements most of the time. No, seven months from graduation into the “real world,” she simply didn’t have time for social interaction. He didn’t blame her, and if he didn’t so desperately need these nights free of mental stimulation, he was sure he’d find himself just as busy.
There was nothing on TV. Shocker, really, for a Friday night. He settled on a basketball game, not knowing or caring who was playing. He used the time to let his mind wander, needing the free time as much to try to figure out his future as to recover from the past week. He’d be graduating with an English degree from a middle-of-the-road university—not exactly a résumé that would have employers knocking down the door for the chance to hire him. Grad school had crossed his mind, but never seriously. He didn’t love literature, certainly not enough to spend the next few years of his life crammed into a corner of the subject writing a thesis.
He wasn’t cut out for retail or food service, those two stand-bys of the indecisive. He had worked each during various summers at home from school, and had made his escape from each well before the end of summer signaled the end of his term. No, the kind folks at Foot Locker would not be happy to see him again after he mixed up the $5 and $20 bill drawers in the register, resulting in a net loss of about $500 over four days (coincidentally, this also marked the end of his accounting aspirations). Nor would Taco Bell be likely to offer him anything after he accidentally served a chicken quesadilla to a card-carrying PETA member. He was pretty sure he could still see the faint outline of a handprint on his face when he looked in the mirror from where the woman had slapped him. Neither the PETA woman nor the manager seemed to think that had been punishment enough, though, and he had been fired on the spot.
So what was next for him, then? He and Maddie had been through the same conversation countless times—
Her: Okay, so if you could do anything, anything at all next year, what would you do?
Him: I don’t know.
Her: No, I mean…okay, so regardless of qualifications or experience or any of that stuff, what would you do?
Him: No, seriously, I have no idea.
Her: Well, do you just want to make a decent living? Or isn’t there something you really, really, really want to give a try?
Him: I mean…yeah, but…I don’t know.
And on and on it would go, Maddie rephrasing the question what felt like twenty million different ways, and him replying with some variation of “I don’t know.” He smiled at the thought—only she would keep coming back to that same question, thinking the problem lay in her questions and not his answers.
It wasn’t like he didn’t have dreams—his latest remained to delay said “real world” for a couple years and bum around the country with Maddie, playing music. Of course, he realized, to do that he should probably be at least proficient on his instrument of choice. He muted the TV, got out his bass, and started struggling through the music Maddie had written.
No comments:
Post a Comment