You jerk off in front of the mirror, your mind wanders to the vague memories of tits fondled, mouths and cunts explored, and when you finish you think, for the first time in your life, that it might just be best to kill yourself.
“Mom,” you say, later, when you talk to your mother, after you’ve talked about the weather, “what did dad say when he saw you for the first time?”
“I don’t remember,” she says, and adds, “I think he might have been drunk. He liked to get drunk. He liked to be drunk with his friends and I think he met me when he had a girlfriend.”
“Did you mind that, him having a girlfriend?”
“No. He liked me more than whoever she was. Why are you asking me this?”
“I was curious,” you say, and precariously add, “I had no one else to ask.”
She frowns through the phone and you tell her you have to go.
Seven miles away, three hours or so after the talk with your mother, in the depth of asphalt fields, you encounter silence from a wall. The neon winding mural of the girl is silent to you. She doesn’t talk but you wish she does. Seven miles away, beneath your bed, is an old box of condoms, about nine months expired, now the color of the crusty white paint at the base of the wall beneath the neon girl. You encounter worrisome people who walk out in unstable unison, shadows, the two of them, one shoulders the other, like trees in a field, trash in the heap, wild geese in the magnificent flying V.
Inside, you find a seat and wait. They see you before your eyes adjust. The girls and their bare tits find you, trained.
Nearly three hours later, several unfulfilled erections and one hundred twenty-three dollars disseminated between three girls and a bartender later, you walk out and begin to walk home. Your car cries out to you from the darkness of the unlit parking lot, cries out for anyone, begging not to be left alone.
The walk is seven miles too long, two thousand four hundred thirteen miles too short. There are no sights save for the flash of logos and the occasional CLOSED sign. The steps are even, sober. In twenty-eight more years there will be more people, by far, than your imagination will handle. There will be more people that passed through your life than the population of Tahoe City, California, where you once drank a large cup of coffee and ate a thick slice of gorgeous, glistening pumpkin bread, topped with chopped almonds and made with obvious care. It occurred in a youthful state of mind, a less concerned one. Time does away with it, in one way or another, and even the careless adults become careful, or die.
You realize the girl in red slippers, the one from two years, three states, and dozens of pounds ago, was sweet on you. You swear. You remember the purple cat ears on her hoodie, the seriousness of her tone, the flex of her wrist. A mysterious sound echoes from a carport, somewhat distant, several hundred feet away, perhaps, like screeching metal, or a mouse’s death cry.
“Mouse’s gotta make a noise. Everything does.”
You pass through the tunnel, along the narrow strip of asphalt, your footsteps fill the space. The cars refuse to interrupt you, letting you scamper along, suddenly, momentarily, giddy, the flash of white, wrinkles you never show come out, stretch wide, up higher than reasonable, until you tire, and lower them down, and eventually exit the tunnel only to discover you did not go anywhere, but only walked into the same place you were before, with the same darkness, the same screeching, and again, cars.
When you are nearly home, the fucking dump, though it is not, you stop, and take a seat in front of a bus stop, on the curb, because the bench is dirty, and that still matters.
You don’t hear a thing, and she says “hello” to you, carefully. You look up, irritated, but it’s a girl, so you slowly smile, and think of her neon outline. Her coat makes it seem more angular than she is. Dressed in pants, sneakers, looking more normal and unexceptional than any of your memories.
“Hello,” you reply.
“It’s kind of dark here, to be sitting alone.”
“I know.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“There are more dangerous things to do.”
“I see.”
You have nothing to say, and lean back, stretching yourself out across her path.
She says, “Are you waiting for the bus?”
“There’s no more buses. It’s too late. I think you missed it.”
“I’m not waiting for the bus. I live close.”
“Me too.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“Nothing. I just got tired.”
“You shouldn’t sit alone out here.”
“Nothing will happen.”
She remains still and looks in the same direction you are, into dark apartment buildings and empty cars.
“You don’t have to stay,” you say. “You don’t have to stay, you know.”
“Do you want me to stay?” she asks. You look ahead and then nod.
“Okay.”
She sits beside you, slides her hands along her legs to tuck her coat beneath her thighs, takes a seat, sniffs and quietly watches the ghostly cars float by, one after the other.
“It actually is kind of nice. Like an empty mirror.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the same street I see all the time, but it’s not the same. Everything is reflected differently. I don’t know, it just feels strange.”
“I can see that. Which do you prefer? This reflection or the other?”
“The other, I think. I like seeing a place busy. It feels more natural.”
“I suppose. I think this is more natural than anything else.”
“Maybe. It’s not too warm on this side, though.”
“It is kind of cold.”
“Yea.”
You stare at your boot, scuffed, work from months of consistent use, but still capable.
“Let’s find someplace to warm up” you say, and she does not reply for a long time, long enough for doves to fly through and around, a space so large the world could fit inside.
“No,” she says, “I don’t want to. I better go.”
“Oh. Alright.”
She stands and holds her oversized purse to her side, looks in three or four directions, assesses what is to come, and before she walks away she asks you, quite plainly, “Will you remember me?”
“Of course,” you say.
“Then you’ll be okay, even when you forget.”
“I won’t forget.”
“You will, if you have to.”
You watch her walk toward the twist in the wind, and when she disappears you swear, you utter “I swear,” and begin to wonder about the number of hers that exist in the neighborhood, then the city, and because you can’t stop, every place you never knew existed. When you stand again, you feel a song come on. The summer wind comes blowing in from across the sea, pushing you home and then further along, another few miles.