Kimberly had layers.
“Do you think life is short or long?” she asked.
“Life is short. Suffering is long,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
She tapped the book as she shut it.
“I used to think of books as little miniature lives that I could live for the price of a number of hours,” she said. “When I was a kid, I would dive into each new one and imagine that it had a particular lesson to impart to me, regardless of whether or not the author intended it. Dreams are simple rehashing of the day’s events, giving us a chance to regard them with a fresh perspective. But books are so much more powerful. They’re the rehashing of someone else’s experience. That’s a rare gift.”
I’ve never been that into reading. I said as much. Narrative storytelling has moved on. We have movies now—literally and figuratively, they can show us so much more.
“So you’re a ‘life is short’ person.”
“Life is short. Suffering is long. Is this what you do on your lunch break? You contemplate the meaning of life?”
She smiled.
“Not the meaning. Just the duration. This book is long. Maybe it’s too long—I can’t tell yet.”
I nodded.
We ate in silence for a little while. I tried to think of something deep to say. I wasn’t trying to impress her. I just thought that she would appreciate something deep. My friends at work hated anything philosophical. It’s not that they were anti-intellectual, it’s just that… Actually, I suppose they were anti-intellectual. There was this whole thing with our pompous boss and it had… It’s not important to the story.
“What do you think now?” I asked.
“Sorry?”
“You said that you used to think books were mini lives when you were a kid. What do you think of them now?”
She raised her eyebrows and took a sip of her drink before she answered.
“I think that very few books are intentionally about anything. That’s not to say that they’re empty of meaning. People sit down to write a book that’s interesting to them. When they’re done, maybe they go back and strengthen the obvious congruencies into a coherent theme. Maybe they just punch up the plot so that it moves well.”
“So why are you still reading? Why haven’t you given up on books?”
“What’s interesting to the author is also interesting to me a lot of times. It makes me think. When I’m done, I’ve learned something just by the process. Whether the lesson was preconceived or not, a book still has something to teach.”
“That could apply to any art,” I said. “Why books?”
She picked the book up and waved it. “Portable.”
We laughed.
Kimberly had layers.
It wasn’t that she knew a lot of stuff—she did, but it wasn’t about that. It was that she was curious and always trying to learn new things. I had become pretty cynical and mistrustful of the world by then. Pessimism works because it’s almost always correct. You’re not going to win the lottery. Studying hard is not going to make you ace the exam. Staying away from cigarettes doesn’t mean that you won’t die of lung cancer.
Optimism takes too much strength. You have to learn to live with being wrong most of the time.
Kimberly was strong, curious, and thoughtful.
She was also really interesting.
That’s the part that I didn’t expect.
Every day we were together, I felt myself becoming more and more optimistic. Every bad thing that had ever happened was fine. It all served to help me understand how blessed I was to be with her. Even the bad days we had together were just the shadows that helped the highlights sparkle even brighter.
When she died, I finally understood what had really been happening. I wasn’t learning to be an optimist, I was poisoning her with my negativity. Light can’t last forever. Darkness always wins.
I pledged the opposite the last time I held her hand. She had no idea what I was saying, I’m sure. I told her that I was going to raise our child to be happy and positive all the time. I was never going to let our child go to sleep upset. Every morning the sun would shine new light into their life. This was before I found out that our child was dead as well. Things took somewhat of a sour swing at that point, as you might imagine. I had no more promises to give and nobody to protect.
Coming
(It's three o'clock.)
It’s three o’clock.
The woman on the Mountain of Pure Rock tells me so. I think that her shift has just begun. She sounds both chipper and weary, if that’s a thing. We’re about to kick things off with some Judas Priest and Black Sabbath to ring in the witching hour. Underneath her voice and the background music that accompanies her, I hear a scratching sound. When I reach up and turn down the radio, I realize that the scratching sound is coming from beneath me.
The truck lights are still on. I can see that the knob is pulled out.
I awkwardly roll over so I can press my ear against the rubber mat.
It’s a rhythmic grinding sound that vibrates in the metal.
A horrible image pops into my head. Something approached through the weeds that have grown up in the opposite side of the culvert. Slowly, it squeezed into the tube of metal and pulled itself under the driveway, arching its back to stay above the stagnant water collected in the corrugated bottom. It emerged under the truck, safe from the light.
And now it’s sabotaging something under the…
“Fuel line,” I whisper.
I squeeze my eyes shut and extract myself from the footwell.
Sitting upright in the driver’s seat feels unnatural now.
I lean forward and cup my hands around my face as I lean towards the dash. When I open my eyes, I blink at the green gauges until I can read them.
The gas is below half and I can actually see it falling. Once the engine stalls, how long will the lights stay on? The battery has
