Still Life at a Party

Still Life at a Party                                                                                                                           Dakota Morgan

What are we even talking about? You look at me with those lazy blue eyes, booze-hazed, sleep-deprived, red-rimmed and hardly lucid. There’s a touch of madness there too, the kind of madness that only comes on when 2 AM meets 3 and suddenly its past too late and just about too early and anything seems possible because the world is quiet.

But we’re talking and I can’t remember why. I haven’t seen you in eight months. Eight months and fifteen days to be exact. I figured it out when I saw you earlier, saw those long thin legs striding towards me like slim, young maples dug up and brought to life. The numbers popped into my head unwarranted, warm, buttery nuggets of information that I had long forgot. On purpose, I should add.

You’re here.

The words come out of me like a leaky faucet, dripping into the full bowl of party noise. She doesn’t hear. She steps to me like a hawk, focused on her prey.

Hi.

Her voice is quiet too, but I hear the word like a story, eight months worth of silence suddenly exploding into voice.

I nod, I can’t help myself. I want to stay quiet, I want to stay still, I want to stay away from this reality of you, showing up in front of me those long legs – those damn long legs – nearly touching mine as you lean down over me and you smile like it hasn’t been eight months, like it’s only been ten minutes and nothing ever happened at all.

Hi.

I say it back. Who doesn’t? I’m not that cold.

I was hoping I might find you here. Tonight. It’s-

She pauses. I wait.

It’s been a while.

I can’t argue with that. I can’t reply either. It has been a while. Eight months and fifteen days. The numbers, they’re just there, flashing in my head like a clock radio that’s been unplugged. I smile faintly, unintentionally.

Yeah, it has.

I’ve got nothing to fear from you, I tell myself. I’m just an empty envelope to you, a letter long since sent, received and tossed aside. You can’t pick me apart anymore, can’t open me up and tear at my insides.

You grab my hand and the skin prickles and my muscles tense and I feel the sensation run from my brain to my bones that says Repond and soon I’m standing and we’re moving and the crowds part like hair through a comb. I shiver. A different room, outside, the porch, lit by ridiculous tiki torches, mosquitoes wafting in the smoke. You bat one aside and look at me like I’m no different.

I think. That’s what I see.

I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been- I’ve been thinking.

Thinking about what, I think. Thinking about you? Me? The stars, the moon, the sun and all that lies in between? The beer in your hand, its refreshing coolness reflected in the way it perspires? My forehead responds in a similar fashion and suddenly I would give anything to be holding that beer.

It’s been a while.

I say this dumbly, knowing full well that I’m being repetitive. My tongue feels like it’s filled up my mouth and is beginning to spread into the rest of my head. I can hardly keep my lips tight. I want to lean back and drool like a toothless old man, asleep in the afternoon, hand resting on the tired ancient bloodhound that hasn’t left my knee in a decade.

You lean back against the porch, suddenly furtive. You glance around warily, as if the truth about us is going to catch up with you and leave you scared like I am. As if it could ever haunt you. That’s like being afraid of the dark while living on the sun.

I catch that glance and the eyes are sad and scared, but not because of us. I’m in there, dining on your corneas, relaxing on the retina, swimming in the great black pool of your pupil. Maybe there are some ghosts hanging around after all.

What have you been thinking about?

I can’t help asking, I’m curious. I’m angry and confused and scared and mad and worried, but most of all I’m curious. I know I’m in there, in that head of yours and I want you to take me out, shake me clean like a rug.

I’m not sure, really. Just maybe…

Maybe what? Maybe you shouldn’t trail off, maybe you should speak your mind and be done with it so I can know what these feelings in my stomach mean and whether I should vomit on your shoes or get up and dance. There’s a polecat in there, roaming around, looking for a place to sleep.

Just maybe that it’s time. Time for us to…talk. Again.

Eight months, fifteen days. The numbers flash again. Are they significant? What would Nostradamus think? I think maybe we’ve reached the end of the world. I lean back on the porch too and grip it in case a black hole rips time and space and us apart.

So that’s what we’re talking about. Those blue eyes, I am swimming in them, even if they’re hazed, crazed, half-drunk and half-mast. It has been a while. But maybe it’s been long enough.