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The End of Something

Rachel Peters

    He played “squid” on a double letter, triple word score, for a total of seventy-five points.
    “Impressive,” she said.
    “Yeah,” he replied. He leaned over and shuffled things in his bag. “Hold on,” he said. “I have to tell someone about that.”
    “Who?”
    “Grace.” He opened his phone.
    “Grace,” she said. “The same Grace who made you take this scrabble set with you when you left?”
    He nodded.
    “You’ll make her cry, you know.”
    “She tells me stuff like that all the time.”
    “Because she wants you to be jealous.”
    “Damn girls,” he muttered.
    She smiled. Nodded.
    “I’ll just tell Jeff then.”
    “I’m just letting you know. But still tell her.”
    He said, “I’ll tell Jeff.”
    She shrugged. “Your call.”
    She did not recover the seventy-five points, and when the pieces were packed away, she watched him light another cigarette.
    “Do you ever wonder,” she said, “How you got where you are?”
    “Me?”
    “Yeah.” She brushed her hair behind her ear. “I mean, just in general.”
    His lips pursed. He stood up and began to walk.
    She followed.
    “No,” he said.
    “Oh.”
    “I mean,” he said. “I started to once. But I stopped.”
    “That’s probably smart.”
    He ran his fingers along a bus stop bench as they passed by, and she looked up at a cigarette billboard.
    “Ask me something,” she said.
    “Hmm,” he said. “Something in particular?”
    “No,” she said. “Just anything.”
    “Okay.” He scratched his head.
    She ran her finger around the rim of her coffee cup.
    ”If you could go anywhere in the world,” he said, “where would it be?”
    A siren passed a few streets over.
    “Back to Rome, I guess.”
    He nodded.
    “Is that too easy?”
    He shrugged. Shook his head.
    “Or the moors of Scotland. That seems fitting.”
    He smiled.
    “Where would you go?”
    “I’d like to go to England.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.”
    She followed his gaze along the dingy skyline.
    “Hey,” he said. “Did you hear they’re going to turn the old John Marshall hotel into apartments?”
    “No,” she said. “But that’s awesome.”
    “Too bad I’ll never be able to afford to live there,” he said.
    “No,” she said. “Me neither.”
    “Weird how expensive it is to live around here, considering there’s absolutely nothing to do.”
    “Yeah,” she said. “And that nobody actually wants to be here.”
    He laughed. “This place is a damn black hole.”
    “There’s a thing about that, right?”
    “There are probably a lot of things about that.”
    “No,” she said. “There’s a curse. Something about once you call Richmond home, the only way to escape is to walk backwards out of the city. You have to face east, but leave the city going west.”
    “I’ve never heard that,” he said. “Where’s that from?”
    “Edgar Allan Poe?”
    “Hmm,” he said.
    “Either him or Chief Totopotamoy.”
    “Poe or Totopotamoy?”
    “Correct.”
    He smiled. “We’re walking East,” he said.
    “That seems to fit.”
    She took his arm and they continued walking east down Broad Street.
    “What’s up?”
    “What?” she said.
    “You sighed,” he told her.
    “Nothing.” She inhaled. “Just wondering what I’m doing with my life.” Exhaled. “Again.”
    He smiled. “I wonder that all the time.”
    “Do you ever feel like you just can’t keep doing what you’re doing?”
    “Yes.”
    “But you can’t do anything different either?”
    He said, “One time I just got up and drove to the beach. I didn’t want to swim. I don’t even like the beach.”
    “I remember that about you,” she said.
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.
    They slowed as the slope of the hill changed.
    “Okay. So tell me why you went.”
    “I wanted to get to the end of something.”
    She looked down.
    “It kind of worked too.”
    She brought her cappuccino to her mouth.
    “I know it’s my turn.” She turned to face him. “But I’m going to pass. Ask me another question.”
    “Is that how that works?”
    “Seems like.”
    “Okay.” He was lighting another cigarette. “If you were going to get a tattoo, what would it be of?”
    “Easy,” she said. “Dum spiro, spero. While I breathe, I have hope.”
    “That’s a good one.”
    “I did consider the reverse though. Dum spero, spiro.”
    He smiled.
    “You?”
    “The cover illustration from Grendel.”
    “I remember you liked that book. I never read it.”
    “You should.”
    “Maybe I will.”
    They came to an intersection and turned left without crossing the street.
    “What’s on your mind?” she said.
    “I love buildings like that,” he said, motioning. “I’d love to live on one of these bombed-out-looking sections of Broad Street.”
    “I used to live on a bombed-out-looking section of Broad Street.”
    “I didn’t know that,” he said.
    She turned the corners of her mouth down. “True story,” she said.
    “When?”
    She thought. “After graduation. For a year or two.” She laughed. “Sometime after graduation and before now.”
    “I know how that is,” he said. “My timeline is pretty screwed up too. I don’t know if that’s me or the drinking.”
    “Probably a little bit of both.”
    “Yeah.”
    She laughed. “I love buildings like that too.”
    “It just could be anything.”
    “Oh,” she said. “That’s not why I love them.”
    “Well, why do you love them?”
    “Because it’s such a complete waste of something beautiful.”
    He caught her eye. His cigarette landed, burning, in the gutter.
    He looked down for a moment, and then caught her eye and held her gaze until she looked away.
    “So, where are you going to get your Grendel?” she asked.
    “Probably on this leg, in keeping with my theme—”
    “Copyright infringement?”
    “I was thinking literature, but yes. Copyright infringement.”
    “Brace yourself,” she said. “This is a tough one.”
    “Okay.”
    “Think of a book you want to read that hasn’t been written yet, and tell me what it would be called.”
    “Wow.”
    “I know.”
    “That is a tough one. Hmm. Let me think what it would be about.”
    “No,” she stopped him. “The question is what it would be called.”
    “I know,” he said, “but I was going to figure out what it would be about and go from there.”
    She shrugged. “Fair enough.”
    Leaves crunched under her feet.
    “It’s amazing to me,” he said, “that they decided to tear up all these streets at once.”
    She looked at where, in another city, in another time, there would have been asphalt.
    “Why wouldn’t they fix one completely and then start the next one?” he said.
    “See,” she said, “That’s where you’re wrong. Tearing up the streets was the whole project. It’s finished now.”
    He laughed.
    “Urban Renewal at its finest.”
    “You’re probably right,” he said.
    “I know I am. I’ve been around.”
    “Okay,” he said, “I’ve got it.”
    “Okay.”
    “Peanut Butter and Forties,” he said.
    “I like it,” she replied. She switched her bracelet from her right arm to her left.
    “Alright. What about you?”
    “There was this graffito,” she said, “outside my apartment in Rome.”
    “Go on.”
    “Well, not right outside. Down the street by the bus stop. It said—in English: ιI love you, but you’re dirty, baby.’ I want to read that book.”
    He nodded. “Which way?” he said.
    “I usually just follow the yellow man.”
    They turned left, crossed, and kept walking.
    “I read a book once called We’re in Trouble Now. I liked that,” she said.
    “That is a good one. My favorite is The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break.”
    “A literal minotaur?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Takes a literal cigarette break?”
    “Yeah. I mean, that’s not the central action of the book. But yeah.”
    “Well that sounds like an okay title then.”
    He shuffled things in his pocket, and she chewed on a fingernail.
    “So I’m thinking,” he said, “I might get a tattoo on my chest that says ιI hope we die.’”
    She raised her eyebrows. Frowned. Said, “That sounds good.”
    He smiled. “Understand—I’m not saying I hope I die. I’m saying I hope we die.”
    “Oh, I know.” She pulled her sleeves down. “I kind of hope we die too.”
    “I think it’s a good bet, the way we’re going.”
    “We in general? Or we, you and me?”
    He shrugged.
    “Probably both.”
    “Probably both.”
    “Sooner, rather than later, I think.” She looked down and watched gum wrappers, leaves, discarded lottery tickets and the lines of the sidewalk disappearing under her feet. “Didn’t we have a deal about that?” she asked.
    “About what?” He said.
    “Which of us was supposed to die first.” She looked up. “I don’t remember who it was, though.”
    “Well, I don’t remember either. I remember a different deal we made though.”
    “What was that?”
    “That we would have an affair someday. But not until we had children and they were dating.”
    “That’s messed up.”
    “Yeah, we were strange kids.”
    “Troubled, I think they call it.”
    He laughed.
    She unwrapped her scarf, and rewrapped it exactly as it had been. “Do you know how long it’s been?”
    “Since high school?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s got to be almost ten years.” He stepped forward.
    “Ten years.”
    She stepped back and around him to avoid the grate.
    “You’re still doing that?”
    “Well, you can’t be too careful.”
    He laughed.
    “I don’t particularly care if it kills me. I’m just worried about if it doesn’t.”
    “Hey,” she said. “That’s my dad’s church.”
    “I think,” he said, “I actually knew that.”
    “Impressive.”
    “My parents’ church isn’t too far from here,” he said.
    “Yeah.”
    “They keep trying to convince me to go with them.”
    “To church?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Your parents do?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Hmm,” she said. “Maybe you should. Maybe it would help.”
    “Help? Help with what?”
    She laughed. “I don’t know. People just tell me that.”
    “Oh.”
    “Last time I was in a church I got married. Haven’t been back since.”
    “I can’t remember the last time I was in a church. But it’s not like I believe in God,” he said.
    “I believe in God.”
    “I know.”
    “Don’t you ever wish you had someone to blame?”
    He laughed.
    “It’s got to be someone’s fault, right?”
    “I guess so.”
    “Might as well be God’s.”
    Cobblestone and brick changed to concrete and asphalt as they rounded the next corner.
    “God, that hill kicked my ass,” she said.
    He laughed. “Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of runner or something?”
    “Yes. I am. And I am tired.”
    “And I smoke a pack a day.”
    “More if you keep pace,” she said.
    He lit another. “It’s okay though, because I’m vegan.”
    “Does that repair your lung tissue?”
    “I don’t know about that, but how many dead vegans do you know?”
    She paused. “I can’t think of one,” she said.
    “Well, there you go.”
    She dropped a long empty cappuccino cup into a garbage can.
    “I had a nightmare one time,” she said, “that you died and no one told me.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. It sucked.”
    “I was actually thinking about that the other day.”
    “About what part of it?”
    “About if I died. If anyone would know. If anyone would care.”
    “I would care,” she said.
    “I know.”
    They started down a block where the streetlights had burned out, and he put his arm around her.
    “You know what freaks me out?” she said.
    “What’s that?”
    “When I look up, and I see stars.”
    He laughed.
    “You laugh,” she said, “but you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
    “I do,” he said. “I know exactly what you’re talking about. I looked up from my apartment the other day, and thought, ιwhat the hell is going on up there?’”
    She laughed too. “I know,” she said. “It’s bad.”
    They walked the last block in silence, and for a few moments their steps were in unison. He kicked an acorn, and then they were not.
    Then he stopped. “I guess we’re back to where we started.”
    A cigarette butt did not quite make the street.
    She looked around. “Yes.”
    “What?” he said.
    “Nothing.”
    “I should go,” he said.
    “Okay,” she said.
    He lit a cigarette and started to fumble for his bike key and she walked a couple of feet before she stopped and stared straight ahead.
    “You didn’t make it very far,” he said.
    “No,” she said, still looking forward, away from him.
    “What’re you looking at?”
    “Nothing,” she said.
    “What are you doing?” he asked.
    “Thinking,” she said.
    He waited.
    “I’m thinking about what’s next.”
    “Okay,” he said.
    “About if this is what there is, am I okay with that?”
    “There’s a whole world out there,” he said.
    She turned to face him. “Isn’t that the problem?” she said.
    He smiled.
    She shrugged. Turned. Started to walk, and turned back around. “Wait.”
    “Okay.”
    “Tiberius’ grotto.”
    “What?”
    “There’s this grotto. The emperor Tiberius had a dining room in this cave, right on the coast. He had all these fish ponds with jars for eels to hide in, and when he got bored, he’d throw a slave in there for the eels to eat. How’s that for dinner entertainment?”
    “Memorable,” he said.
    “And there’s an island in the middle where he and his guests would sit and there are statues, scenes from the Odyssey, looking out from the shadows.”
    “Hmm,” he said.
    “I would go there.”
    He nodded. “Maybe you should.”
    She closed her eyes and breathed.
    “Can I have that?” she said, and as she opened them, she reached for his newly lit cigarette, and he let go and began to move forward.
    “Wait,” she said.
    He waited.
    She kissed his cheek.
    “Thanks,” he said.
    She inhaled. She coughed.
    “Bye,” she said. “I’ll see you soon?”
    “Yeah,” he said.
    So they walked, and when he turned right, she turned left.
    She smoked his cigarette to the filter and she put it out on the brick wall outside the Baptist church. And then she tucked the remains away in her car with the change she hadn’t used since before she got Smart Tag.
    And she looked West, briefly, before she started the car, and then she drove South across the river.
    And at least that was the end of something.



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