The following is a fiction experiment I’ve been playing around with since the fall of 2001. It’s one of those ideas that just never seems to go away. Or feel finished. Who knows what it may end up being. Maybe part of something bigger. Maybe broken down and used as parts. Or maybe I’ll just leave it as is. Anyway, I’d love to hear what other people think of it.
“Meet-cute”
About six other cars are parked irregularly on the gray pebbles scattered about the gravel parking lot. I’m not really sure where I should stop my car. Will block someone in? Screw it, I’m parking right here. If somebody has a problem with that, they can ask me to move.
As I go through the ritual of getting out of my car (Keys in my front pocket. Lights off? Has my wallet fallen out of my back pocket and slipped through the opening between the top and bottom portions of the driver’s seat, landing on the floorboard and thus being lost forever, strewn about my car to God Knows Where? Are my keys still in my front pocket? Rearview mirror: Does my hair look all right? Yes, everything seems to be in place, I guess.) I keep looking at the building that belongs to this gravel parking lot. It looks like it was once a cheap motel. There are a number of doors and windows on its two floors and I can just make out some movement behind the curtains on either end of the gray building. Even though I’ve never been here before, I know exactly which door I’m supposed to use: Second floor, right in the middle. Two flights of stairs lead from the far left and right of the parking lot to that door. The stairs are an arrowhead pointing toward my destination. I lock my car door and head to the closest stairway: the one on the left.
Who am I meeting behind this door? I know I’m supposed to be here – plans have been made – but I can’t remember why. I may not know anything else, but I know this: The people I’m meeting on the other side of this door want something from me.
Am I supposed to knock or just go in? I knock. After a few seconds nobody answers. If I wanted to, this would be the perfect opportunity to leave. “I knocked and nobody answered. I didn’t think anybody was there so I left.” That would be a reasonable explanation for my absence. Even as the thought enters my head I turn the doorknob.
This is a large room: an auditorium of some kind. At the far end of the room there is a small stage with a black half-curtain drawn. On either side of the stage are doors leading backstage. The room is full of high school luchroom tables. Some are folded in half so that they can be pushed to the boundaries of the room to rest against the walls and free up some floor space. The have round seats: some blue, some red. There are three other people in the auditorium with me. A man is sitting on the seat closest to center stage looking up at two girls who rest on the boards with the black scrim behind them. The girls are reading to each other from pieces of paper that are stapled together. The man hears my footsteps or my breathing and spins around to give me a smile. He is blond and built like a surfer or maybe a soccer player: all tousled hair, calf muscles, and tan. The girls ignore us and continue to run their lines. The guy and I walk toward each other, navigating the sea of lunchroom tables. We meet in the middle of the auditorium.
“We’re glad you made it. Have a seat. I’ll be right back with Allie and we’ll get started.” The guy exits the room through a door to the right of the stage. When he opens the door I can hear music coming from some room that is, for now, hidden behind the stage.
I walk over to a chair closer to the stage so I can hear what the girls are saying to each other. They are quite lovely, beautiful even, but in different ways. One of them has black hair that hangs just above her jawline. She has smallish breasts; her shapely arms and toned calf muscles are signs that she works out. The other is a blonde that will never need to work out. She has a classic voluptuousness that will remain with her even when she is old and all of her friends have become maybe a little fat. Both of the girls have cold blue eyes. They stop talking and watch me quietly as I move to the front row center seat recently occupied by the soccer-surfer. When they are satisfied that I am comfortable they smile at me and resume their lines.
The blonde: “Where do you want to start?”
“How about 7a, right after your line, ‘What now?’”
“’Kay.”
For the first time I notice that the blonde is lying between the black-haired girl’s legs. She’s just reclining there with her back against the brunette’s pert breasts. Blonde turns to black and whispers her line: “What now?”
The black-haired, athletic beauty brings the other girl’s face to her red lips by grabbing a fistful of blonde hair. Blonde whispers, “Rose…” and moves her hand to that perfect jaw line, brushing black strands of hair away.
The surfer reappears from the stage right door with a new girl wearing glasses with black plastic frames, a white t-shirt, blue jeans, and brown hair. They walk over to my table, the new girl sitting next to me, surfer-soccer sitting across from me. They don’t even notice the scene being acted out on the stage not three feet from their heads.
The guy says, “This is Allison… well, Allie. She’ll be your guide tonight. Show you the ropes, you know?”
Allie has the darkest brown eyes I’ve ever seen. They are almost completely black. I can’t help but stare. I am looking into two black holes that reflect my face, caught in an immense gravity. The she starts talking to me. “I’m sure you’ll like it here. Let me show you around. Get you acquainted.”
We walk to the door at the left of the stage. The pair onstage has apparently ended their exercise and are intensely studying their stapled stacks of paper. The guy stays in his seat and starts talking to them as Allie and I make our exit.
There is a long hallway going off to the left and right behind the stage. Along this hallway are many doors on either side, some are open with music and loud voices coming from inside rooms, and some are shut. However I get the feeling that every room is occupied. I wonder for a moment how so many people could so obviously be here with so few cars in the parking lot outside.
Occasionally people come from one room and go into another or turn right back around and go back into the same room they just left. They are dressed in all sorts of styles. Some are wearing dirt- and oil-stained flannels and others are wearing evening gown or tuxedos, even wedding gowns. And every style in between.
I turn to ask Allie about the wide variety of fashion but before I can get a word out she asks me first, “Have you ever been to the northwest?”
“Like Oregon or Washington state? Mt. Hood, that kind of thing?”
“Right.”
“No. But I’ve always wanted to go. It seems nice. Far away.”
“But it rains a lot.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
As we are talking we turn right and start to walk down the hallway. We pass three or four doors on our left and stop at the one with the loudest music coming from behind it. Allie turns the knob and we enter.
Seven people are sitting on comfortable-seeming giant beanbags or on reclining chairs. At one end of the room is a massive sound system and there are expensive speakers up in every corner and against the walls. The people in the room are talking to each other about the music. As Allie and I walk in, everyone turns and looks at me with smiles on their faces. A couple on the floor to our left make room for us. We sit down on a huge pink beanbag and settle in. Allie is sitting very close to me. Her gum smells like strawberries.
A man in tan pants and a button-up shirt is sitting in a chair next to the stereo asking everybody in the room what they thing about the music. He looks at me. “What do you think?”
“It’s all right,” I say, really only paying attention to the music for the first time. “I mean, I wouldn’t spend money on it or anything. It’s a little, uh, edgy for my tastes I guess. Which is fine sometimes, but I have to take it in small does at the right time, you know?”
“So you don’t like it?”
“Well, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying it’s not something I would usually buy at a record store or whatever. But it has its place I suppose.”
“Right. You don’t like it.”
A guy on the other side of the room hands the man in the tan pants a CD and says, “Pat, let’s give this a try.”
Pat, which is obviously the man in tan pants’ name, ejects the CD that is playing, cutting the cacophony off abruptly. He places the new CD in the tray and presses a button. The girl sitting next to the who picked out the CD squeals, “Ooh, I love these guys!” And the music starts.
The song is all rhythmic, jangly electric guitar with a simple drum part and a slightly off-key male vocalist. In most ways it’s the opposite of the CD that was just played. Instead of an angry, screaming, incomprehensible front man, the new song is simple and about loss. In the middle of the song the simple structure breaks down and a lush, warm orchestral arrangement takes over. The off-key vocalist is still singing his lament with all his heart but with the new orchestration I get a hopeful feeling. The fact that the singer has so perfectly identified his situation means that he is now above it.
I am the first one to speak when the song is over. “I like it. It sounds like something I would have listened to yesterday.”
Allie turns and her face is very close to mine… strawberries…
She whispers, “So you wouldn’t listen to it today?”
I think about this for a moment. “No, I don’t think I would. But I can imagine listening to it some time in the future.”
Allie wrinkles her nose. “Hmm…”
Pat is saying, “Fair enough,” as Allie lies back on the beanbag and puts her arm around my waist. The next song on the CD begins with the same lush symphonic sound. It’s all strings and tympani rolls and it’s just about the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. It’s like the soundtrack to a twenty-first century Fellini movie. The big finale scene on some Italian beach and everybody you’ve met so far is there. I smile and lean back on the beanbag, getting even closer to Allie. She says, “Why don’t we let the new guy pick one? He’s had to sit here and listen to our stuff. Give him the list, Pat.” He hands me a typewritten list of artists and names of discs. The list is huge – at least 20 pages long.
I say, “What we’re listening to now is good, actually.”
“Look, you have to pick something else out. Otherwise how are we supposed to judge all of this music?” Pat shakes his copy of the CD list at me good-naturedly.
So I pick out some trip-hop. Lounging on the beanbag with Allie seems like the perfect time for some jazzy loops and a Roland drum machine. A female voice sings abstractly sexy lines behind a wash of distorted guitar. The tempo is languid and strings start to swell in the background. Impossibly, Allie moves even closer to me. The beanbag protests but she finds a way to get closer. As she is burrowing each of the other people in the room starts to leave. The are all smiling and telling me they are glad to meet me.
Within moments Allie and I are alone. The slow throb of the music seems to come from everywhere. “You know,” she whispers to me, “we’re all going to Greece tomorrow. Want to come?”
Fin.
