Writing from 2006

I found this piece I had written while I was in graduate school. It was hidden in some random folder on my computer. Enjoy. 


life
Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Just in Time, Moon River, Dearly Beloved, etc etc. All my favorite songs played throughout the restaurant.

I opened the beer cooler with 30 minutes left to open and saw all the beer I needed to replace. Sighed and then Clinton followed me down to the big fridge and helped me bring up half of it.

No one came in until 11:30am, and so I happily sliced lemons.

When they did come in, they came in at lovely intervals, and I floated from one table to the next.

At noon Corey came in. Smile.

After five hours of work, I wiped down my tables and noticed that the usual aches and pains were missing. Smile.

I forgot my brother's diagnosis and learned how to make myself fried ice cream with caramel and chocolate. Before I bit into it, I remembered. Somehow it just tasted better. Ahhh the forbidden. . .

I walked out the front door of the restaurant into the brightness of the afternoon. All my obligations finished. I walked across the street and remembered my plan to pay my parking ticket at City Hall.

I looked up the street to see an ambulance blocking the street. The lights were off. The road was closed. A group of five or six people stood waiting in the street.

I looked up to see what they were looking at.

A woman hung by her arms from her windowsill on the fourth floor above the street. She wore a hot pink shirt and jean shorts. For a split second I thought--maybe she was trying to install her air conditioner. Somehow I didn't think that was the answer.

She was gripping the ledge. For a moment I felt hope. I felt like she would be able to pull herself up and into the open window. And then I thought that maybe she had decided to practice climbing up the side of the building, and this window sill was her last step. That image brought me even more hope. Surely if she could scale the side of the building, she would be able to pull herself up off the window sill.

And then she slipped. Or let go. I'll never know.

She fell down.

I never saw her land. Thank God.
I stood there with the others in the street. One man ran. Colleen stood on the opposite corner. A stranger asked what I had seen. I tried to be honest about what I had seen, not wanting to start any false rumors.
In the minutes that followed, the ambulance never left.
The hope and then the fall.
I came home.
Fell asleep watching tv.

Paid bills.

Drove to Lexington and watched a new singer play at a little vegetarian cafe.

I'm home now.

Perhaps I'll be more wary of hope in the future. The fall seemed further in light of the hope.