So there she was; she stood on the shoreline. Gracefully ignoring the gray waves mirroring the sky that quickly toppled over her feet then retracted embarrassedly, her mind remained as still as her body, holding tirelessly onto a single idea.
Olivia, he said. He was a sales analyst at a small firm in upstate New York. Olivia, it’s cold outside. And you’re alone on this beach. Can’t you stare at the water inside?
She responded with an empty glance and a nod as she was struck by the wind from the water. She parted from the waves that had at this point become familiar with her feet, and followed the path her husband had made with his footprints. His back was far ahead of her, a small imprint on a background of green grass and a light gray house. The light blue on his shirt had become stuck to his body from the wind and looked shabby and washed out from the contrast with the sky.
She crossed the threshold into the house. She peered through heavy eyes at a living room that once held warmth, when he first brought her up to the house. The lightly used beach furniture surrounding a glass table, lit by the light that normally poured through the large windows surrounding the room; the open wall leading into the kitchen that held appliances drenched in white, all of which were encased by a bar that went into a small outset with a large dining table. That room led back into the expanded entrance through a small door frame that never held a door-something she always remarked was odd. To her back was a closet and to her left the stairs. The upstairs held three bedrooms and a bath, nothing exquisite.
He was sitting in a chair as part of the furniture laying siege to their coffee table reading a book, a literary trifle by Kurt Vonnegut repeating the phrase “So it goes…”
The book was a complete escape to them both. To him, the read was enough. But to her, the plot held more disparity with her reality than even she realized. The random jumps in story, the hectic timing conflicted with the overcast sky and vacation that lasted forever yet offered nothing but a change in scenery from their normal life; yet the morose phrase repeated seemed to bring the book’s escape back to its material reality.
Her stare was suddenly interrupted by her own sigh as she told him she was going to lay down for a nap. Her body pushed down on the mattress in a jaded way and she fell out of consciousness.
*
The two of them had met several years previous at a coffee shop in metro New York and had settled eventually on moving in together halfway between his work and her work in the city. He travelled and worked from home mostly, so the commute for her was mostly manageable.
Freddy had started an obsession with Kurt Vonnegut shortly after they moved in together, but rarely had the opportunity to read it. So when they vacationed, usually renting out the house they were in, his second escape was Kurt Vonnegut.
The book was his current focus, his eyes furiously devouring the pages, his mind making sense of what his eyes took in. The color of the book binding was paled by the overwhelming dreariness of the gray day, but his brain seemed not to notice. He sat motionless, his mind on the book, his leg on the table and his hands holding what seemed to be his mind’s greatest treasure.
He and Olivia had discussed books a lot when they first met. It was what their first discussion was over. They talked about Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye, etc until their coffees were cold and their work had become stale and uninteresting from sitting too long. At this point, though, he barely looked up from his reading when Olivia had said something or other about napping.
It seemed like something was different now between them. They used to be playful but now it seemed they just existed together.
Freddy thought he heard a noise in the closet by the front door, but it turned out it was just a broom readjusting itself under the burden of the coats in the closet. It was enough to rouse his brain into focusing on the present.
He looked at his surroundings. He never realized how stark everything looked. The white of the walls and the large windows letting in drab sunlight filtered by clouds lent little to add life to the room. The fans were off and the air was still-the stillness sapping the color out of the brown door mat, the paintings of ships on the walls, the wood of the floor and the ceiling lamps. The carpet leading up the stairs was an odd peppering of white and black, mixing together, flecking to gray.
He got up from his chair and went to the door. He wondered, what was Olivia thinking about earlier? Maybe it was the weather. For some reason it was colder than normal. Or it could be work, that was stressing her out.
Whatever it was, he thought, hopefully it wasn’t bothering her too much.
*
Olivia awoke in an empty city. She felt trapped in spite of the fact that on any side of her was a straight shot to the country side. Those large boulevards entrenched in the gaps in the buildings formed grayed carpets for anyone entering from those fields.
As newspapers fluttered around her in the wind she collected herself.
The streets were paved in a dull black and walled by cars that had been parked perfectly but left lifeless for longer than their ignitions could remember.
Lifeless as they were, their colors had faded with nonuse. At one point brimming with tenacity and fire, their color faded into something used and unwanted. It was obvious that Olivia didn’t know these cars, at least in this world, but she knew that each one wanted nothing more than to have their pistons pump again. Looking up from the cars and across the sidewalk they lined, she gawked at buildings that towered relentlessly, keeping the city from flying away; acting as massive paperweights to the streets below. The dirty windows punctuated gray cement to their tops which came to a flat landing instead of pointed radio towers or rooftop penthouses.
Olivia walked along the middle of the street, shrunk in comparison to the buildings surrounding her. Lampposts left off, light found its way to the street from somewhere unknown, following her slow movements.
She was the spotlight of a dream. And then a second light came on, fluttering over a door on her left. Running to it, she stepped into a bar she knew well. The open door showed a bar drenched in cigarette smoke, drowning in red light. It seemed more sinister than she remembered, but her path into the bar was followed almost by instinct. Her eyes never veered from the bar where an overweight bartender had on a vest and a towel in his hand continuously polishing a glass. His eyes met hers and seemed to communicate a Hello. His head began to nod in recognition, and as the bartender nodded to her, he motioned her to a chair at the bar. The chair had with it a drink already poured, and as she grabbed it a man across the bar raised his glass and got up from his seat.
He came over and stood next to her, introducing himself and putting his hand on the small of her back. She could tell he was saying something, but none of the words he muttered made any clear sense to her. What started as something exciting soon grew to something worn and tired.
She suddenly became annoyed at his advance, and her look apparently mirrored her mind’s reaction. The man developed a look of understanding and retreated.
Overhead she heard The Who sing “Only love can bring the rain…” and the bar’s haze began to grow. The bartender looked up, slowly putting his glass down while lifting his arms from his stomach, and pointed to a door at the back of the bar. The door had painted on it something that resembled flames, seeming like warmth and comfort and something familiar yet unknown for a long time. Though she thought it was a crown of some sort. Olivia reluctantly followed the instruction and made her way across the bar.
She opened it into darkness and stepped back into herself, the woman asleep in bed. A sudden flush of warmth ran through her body, then as quickly as it came, it left. She was then just newly awoken, in bed, realizing the dreary day once again.
*
The room had grown darker; the shades in the room blocking much of the remaining light fighting to fill the room. In the punctured darkness a green glow was visible from the alarm clock that read 6:03. A quick investigation revealed that it was indeed still night, not morning the following day.
Downstairs was much better lit, though the remaining sunlight was aided by two lamps at either end of the living room; one in the kitchen, and one overhanging the dining area. Her memory guided her through her sleep haze to a chair in the living room, next to where he sat still reading his novel.
As the chair sighed under her weight her eyes settled on a bush outside, moved slightly by the wind but remaining stolid in comparison to the grass at its base. She could feel the wicker in the armchair beginning to make a slight imprint in her arm, so she shifted slightly. She thought she caught something out of the corner of her eye and her husband mumbled something. Having not heard what it was her mind started to wonder wildly what he could have said. It could have been her daze from waking up or just a hope that the dreary day would show excitement, but it could’ve been anything.
Did you say something? she said.
Yeah. You seemed impatient. So I asked why?
Disappointment swept over her, followed by a wave of cold from the house through her body, and she shook to try to evade the chills that proceeded.
I’m going to go for a short walk, try to wake up, she said.
*
The air outside was brisk by this time, biting her behind the ears as the wind blew back her hair. Her eyes were watering and she pursed her lips, as if she were trying desperately not to let any of the cold air inside of her, if she could help it. Her steps kicked up sand and the beach grass around her seemed to point her back in the direction of the house.
Olivia and this Freddy had come up to the beach house as part of a tradition, continuing it for a third year. This year, though, it seemed to be more to rekindle something that had not been for a while, and not for pleasure as it had been in the past. And as she passed a large rock on the trail she remembered a time their first year, a picnic they had shared on top of it. The sun was out that day, and the weather hot. The waves from the lake were pounding the shore but at this distance their sound was only heavy if you focused on it. The wind was light but constant and the two seemed to be the only two for miles.
Just as a slight smile began to crack her lips a strong breeze blew and barraged her mouth, causing the smile to become pursed lips once again. And her mind returned to the present day, where the horizon was unrecognizable-its end melting into the lake’s beginning. For a moment she considered not turning back, looking at the path ahead and not finishing what had started at the beach house. But at this point there was still some fight left in her. So she turned back, walking ahead with purpose, letting the day play itself out, and not having much to concede to the survivalist inside her.
*
Freddy had hardly noticed that week Olivia’s distancing herself, or at least had trouble recognizing it. It was slowly showing itself more, but all gradual changes are harder to see.
He methodically got up from his seat and placed the book on the table, where it relaxed and spread on the glass with the same relief the cushion expressed from Freddy’s getting up. His eyes caught the gray sky in their peripherals and he realized suddenly how cold the house was. Walking to the kitchen he began water for the dinner and methodically prepared the rest. The meat slowly turned to gray in the black pan but then began to take color.
The old house had in the dining area had a wood fire place on the wall parallel to the bar and the long sides of the table, which he filled with wood and kindling and lit. The fire ignited quickly, but then receded just as quickly, once it hit the density of the wood. Some smoke started rising, when the wood began to catch, but the fire was slow to react and not yet burning in full.
The door opened and she stepped in from the cold, the two glancing at each other’s presence and then returning each pair of eyes to the tasks at hand. She removed her coat and shoes and tucked them both in the closet in the entrance. She went upstairs without a word and may have done so without intent, perhaps just to continue the solitude from her walk. Freddy stepped away from the fire and turned to the table where, laid out from earlier, were candles and plates and glasses. Staring at the polished wood he reflected on their first meal at the house, a month after they had first met, the house seeming to glow with warmth.
*
He returned to the kitchen after a while as she came down from the second floor. He turned off the stove and noticed the gray from the window above the sink had been obscured by the condensation that had collected on it. The house was now lit mostly with light from the lamps.
Just as he put the dinner on the table and extinguished the light from the kitchen she walked through the kitchen wearing a dress which he recognized from their first dinner at the house. She smiled feebly at his pause and she sat down. The fire had caught on the wood and was now at the most intense the fuel would allow, warming the house and flicking a fire glow around the room adjacent the fire place.
His hand flicked a lighter and lit both candles on the table, and just as he did so he caught Olivia’s eyes and a rush of warmth ran through Freddy. The house was warmer now, comfortable, and the candles filled the lovers’ faces with whatever glow the fire did not supply; and for a moment they felt as if they were at dinner, two years previous: recovering from the entanglement of their arms hours before dinner, ignoring the clouds outside knowing the next day would bring the sun. Freddy’s lips crackled with a smile, mirroring Olivia’s, as his mind mulled over the words: “…so it goes.”
Fake Stories from a Real Person 