Blind hearts-ManxMan-boyxboy

Frowning

Alex considered the all-too-rapid decay of his memory. Images did not come catalogued according to time or place, or even with the stirring rises of emotion, but as reflections in misted mirrors or as isosceles shards gleaming hues that repulsed further engagement.  And cross-legged on the floor, waiting for the numerical analysis class to begin, he blinkered, straining for respite, from the offers of a wealthier and more rousing future posted over the walls. He sighed. This too would be forgotten. Sandy, smacking gum across from him, her head too bulky for her thin short neck, would also be forgotten, and happily so her assertions of sexual rejuvenation due to perineum breathing. Next to her, Joey, who, with the open wet mouth of an infirmed, would nod expectantly to Sandy’s tantric stupidities, now aloofly reposed over his phone, an arousing band of skin peeking from above his waist; he too would be forgotten. And also the past four years of torrential enlightenment courtesy of the State of California’s taxpayers, Dad’s pushing for a garish graduation affair, the peppery orange scent that cut short his morning jog, the high-powered interview he really ought to prepare for, and even Dimov’s Herculean hands pinning him to the bed—All of these would be forgotten in two, five, ten years.

Then distress beckoned with another irate text message from Frank. Would he forget Frank too? That was too horrendous a prospect for him to ponder.

On these numb planes Alex skated through math and computer science, even the cultural studies class that usually paraded a weepy coliseum of sensitive feelings, and when he came home to find Susan in the front lawn, stooping over a row of budding irises, with her bottom round to the grinning sun, his numb soul quickened with smiles.

“Planting some origami blue and white flowers would be nice,” Alex said.  

“What the hell is that?” said Susan, tottering upright with the help of her cane.

Alex came to her aid, but she, a scowl lending grit to her upside-down lips, shrugged him off.

“I think you’d like them. Blue and white, pretty all round,” he said.

“Whatever works is fine,” she said dryly.

Alex watched in a childlike awe as she, her cane picking at the ground, negotiated the front steps with a gruffness that well suited the dry plainness of her pulled-back red hair and her jeans bag dress.  But even with all her bandy-legged bravery, she could not appreciate the soft and the gentle—he felt—much less grasp it. A fucking shame.

The sky suddenly transmuted an ashen patina, a miraculous grey to those who despaired of the supposed desert undergoing a supposed drought, but Alex detected in the western reaches of the sky cragged with grey clouds a coming cyclone of discontent. The interview better not suck.  Bitterly resigned to a cosmic joke coming his way, he persevered through the day with mindless avidity. Bills were settled. Laundry was sorted. Susan’s medical appointments were scheduled. Then he plunged himself into the intricate task of preparing a supper that would tempt Susan’s particular palette.

When the evening descended, propping a gibbous moon atop the cypress tree outside, Alex was vegetating at one end of the sofa, the back of his laptop facing, at the other end, Susan quilting fantastic geometric designs.

“I’d have to look to wear for something decent for your graduation,” she said.

“Awesome, you’re coming? I’ll drive you around to the places you like.”

She gave a doubtful tick of the head. “Lianna wants to come. Rather she’s looking to me for free rent,” she said as an afterthought to a vicious needle prick.

“It’d be fun the three of us.”

There passed terrible sighs from Susan. “You should teach her how to boil water and maybe how to uphold certain standards.”