People stare as they pass me by.

24

And when we sleep, we sleep like a jigsaw. We trade off breathes as if each exhale was a cue for the other persons inhale. We dance; even in our dreams.

And when I wake I forget that she isn’t real.

And when I wake I don’t care if she is real or not.

And when I wake I hold her as if it were yesterday.

25

We’re arguing.

‘You need to get a job.’

‘I can’t.’ My voice is restrained.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know what I can do.’

‘Do what you did for the last one thousand years.’

‘No one is hiring. This isn’t a world that has new companies springing up every five seconds. We’ve gone as far as we can go.’

‘There has to be a job out there.’ Her voice is low.

‘I thought there would be. When I first lost my job, I thought I could find another one easily. I can’t. When you lose your job, you’re done for. People don’t employ you. People don’t even look at you. I might as well be dead.’

‘We need money. We need to get out of your parent’s place.’

‘I know. I don’t know what to do though. How the fuck are we supposed to get out of here? I’m half crazy as it is.’

‘Shut up.’

And we pause.

There’s a tension.

This feels like an argument we might have had before.

And she starts to cry.

She feels helpless.

I feel helpless.

It’s like I’m suffocating underneath a frozen lake. You can see the world above you, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t get to it.

‘What about your other friends that lost their jobs? What are they doing?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t talk to them.’

‘When was the last time you talked to Franklin?’

‘I don’t know. It’s been years.’

She looks at me in disgust.

‘You’re not supposed to abandon your friends.’

‘I abandoned a lot of things.’

‘You need to hang out with him again.’

26

I’m worried about myself.

27

Franklin’s got a beard and a smile. He lets me know that he missed me. I let him know that I missed him. We shake hands and we sit together and we talk as if we never lost touch.

The truth is that it is like we never lost touch.  Because relatively speaking it hasn’t been that long since we’ve talked.

I explain that I’m living with my parents.

He laughs.

He tells me he’s living off his savings.

He tells me that he’s still married.

Still cheating on his wife.

Still acting like the same person he was ten years ago.

Like the person he was five hundred years ago.

Franklin hasn’t changed. Franklin doesn’t plan on changing. Franklin doesn’t necessarily need to change.

His wife walks in the room. She wears a frown. She nods hello. She asks if we need anything to eat. We tell her no. She leaves. She goes about her business.

I don’t know if I’ve ever even been formally introduced to her.

‘What brings you here anyway?’

Franklin sounds somewhat curious.

‘Evaline told me I should get back in touch with you.’

‘Oh, she’s back?’

‘Well, yeah, kind of.’

‘Kind of?’

I fidget. I look at the ground. I run my hand along the counter in Franklin’sFranklin’s kitchen and pause and gather my thoughts and try to figure out what I want to say.

‘It’s kind of complicated.’

I don’t want to sound crazy.

‘How so?’

‘Never-mind.’

Franklin gives me a strange look. I can’t seem to make eye contact.

‘Are you sure everything is ok?’

‘I guess.’

‘You guess?’

‘I really don’t think you’d understand.’

‘Try me.’

‘I’d rather not.’

And it goes back and forth like this until we both sound defeated.

He asks if I want to go hang out at the bar.

I tell him yes.

He grabs his jacket.

We leave.

He drives because I can’t.

We go to the same bar we used to go to.

We order the same drinks we used to drink.

Our conversation plays with the same rhythm it’s always had.

We sit with our backs to the bar. We look at the people around us. Elbows up. Chests out. Eyes wandering.

Franklin spots a girl he wants; ’I’d fuck her.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

I get a strange look. There was a time I would have agreed. Things have changed.

I want to go back to Evaline. I left her at my parent’s house. She was eating an apple. We were talking about old times. It was nice.

The bar is loud and it makes my head hurt.

We take a drink.

We talk.

Another drink.

We talk.

Вы читаете Happy Birthday Eternity
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