Mike and me

Suzanne had called me a month ago to extend the promotion to me. I accepted of course. I may as well, since the only real option was to go up. I knew it was coming for some time now, and really it wasn't a big deal.

Training for Stadium of Fire was my first training as a supervisor. East gates, in case anyone was wondering. That means I had taken Brian's spot. He was a weird kid. I never really knew what to think of him. He is one of those people who you feel like is nice because they want something from you. That is what happens when you work at the Marriott Center--everyone starts to want things from you. Then they get insanely angry when you can't accommodate them because they aren't really deaf or don't use a wheelchair, or were simply too late for those Hannah Montana tickets. Too bad, better luck next time. But how do you express all that at training? You don't. That's just one of those life lessons that you have to learn on your own.

It wasn't until after training that I heard about Mike.

"He had a brain aneurism and he really likes Brooks and Dunn. I originally had him in the south end, but I'm afraid he's one of those people who really isn't going to do anything. I shouldn't have hired him, but I'm not going to fire him the day before, so I'm putting him with you as security, and just try to...I don't know, keep him out of the way."

Sure, Suzanne. Piece of cake, right?

She scheduled him for security all right, but not at gate 6 like I expected. She stuck him between 6 and 7 to make sure people aren't passing things through the fence.

Mike was about 40, but had the mentality of an 8 or 9 year old. He smoked and was overweight, and was growing a mustache like Brooks...or Dunn. He had big blue eyes that seemed to take in everything and yet missed it at the same time. I bet that if I had given him a holographic sticker he would have been entertained for more than half of the 6 hour shift.

When he got to his spot, he knew he was being put out of the way. I faced him and his clear disappointment, suddenly regretting having accepted the responsibility. In a sudden move to salvage my own humanity, I moved him to gate 7, telling him that he was to periodically move between gates 7 through 10 and help out the security already stationed there.

Boy was he a whiner. He needed a cigarette break, he was hot, he was tired, he wanted to watch the show, but he never told me any of that unless I asked. But I had to ask because I had already asked everyone else. "How are you?" I asked them all.

"Tired." "Fine." "Hot--by the way, Corbin Bleu asked for extra security detail so he wouldn't get mobbed when he left."

"When is he leaving?"

"I don't know, but can we do it?"

"No, but I'll pass your request on to Suzanne." Easy. Easy easy. But when Mike came up to me to ask for his third break, what could I say other than "sure"?

Suzanne checked on me, pointing out that Mike wasn't where he was supposed to be. I told her he was, and that he never went anywhere without letting me know first in the form of a question. "Send him home when you cut your first round of security" she advised. I nodded. It was protocol. It happens every game. Besides, he was hot and tired. He should have wanted to go home.

But when I asked him to, he almost cried.

"Mike, did you not want to go home?"

He looked at me, fear and despair reeking in his posture and expression. "All my family is here watching the show."

"You can go watch it with them."

"I....I don't know where they are!" The tears were coming. It was like waiting for a dam to break. The pressure of being sent home was almost overwhelming for him. No, I told myself. Suzanne said to send him home. Send him home.

"The ticket office can tell you. Go ask Suzanne and she can help you."

"Okay" he agreed, turning to go. His shoulders were slumped and his head hung. He stopped after three steps and turned, timidly, almost like he was afraid. He kept his head down, looking at me in stolen glances. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No, you did everything I asked you to do" I answered. I tried to smile but I don't think it came out right. He was unconvinced, I knew. I could see it. "We have more people than we need. We do this every game, all the time. We just don't need you here anymore." The words made me bleed. I almost winced at the sound of them, hoping he took them as gently as he could. Whether he did or not, I don't really know. He straightened a little and I told him where he could find Suzanne, and he walked away with the elation of being free from his taskless bondage easing everything that told me he was upset.

I hoped he found his family. I hoped the rest of the shift, then the walk home. His despair at the notion of failing so entirely at his one day $9 per hour job pushed against me as I lay in bed. I finally picked up my phone and went to sit on my front porch, which was loaded with furniture that my roommates hadn't wanted in the living room. I sat down and called home.

"Hello" a deep, playful voice answered on the second ring, almost singing. Pink Floyd played in the background, and I detachedly wondered how my dad was getting away with his music so loud at 3 in the morning.

"Daddy!" I cried as I let everything go, my story and tears flowing freely from me.

My dad's usual thinking look...and civilian shirt...and sunglasses.

Post postings and humor less

"I don't know, I may be wrong" she says.

You are wrong. Of course you are, you haven't said a single worthwhile thing all semester. Not that I'm really complaining--you're only wasting my time and tuition dollars.

While I'm at it, stop asking for my money. Talk about a lack of agency. I choose to give my money to me, and stop making me feel bad for not giving it to you. You waste it. Never, never. I began to pack up. I'm going to leave. I'm going to leave and my brilliance will fade into memory and you will wither from my absence. You will beg me to come back. You will cry at your loss, mourning the minutes in which you squandered what I offered.

How tripe can you be, you bug eyed brat? Is there really so little you understand? You poor poor girl. I stood, firing off a glare at her. She trembled in my wake as I made my way out of the room. She will quake from my leaving forever. My eyes will scorch her soul, and she will have no other choice but to mend her ways.

********

"I don't know, I may be wrong" she says.

Of course you are, but that's ok. Everyone in this circle is. Wrong, wrong.

Remember that time you misread the warning label that said 'do not use this product in the bathtub' so you immediately headed in, rose scented bath beads and all? You got lucky you know. Next time, Provo Power might have record of your paid bill and they will not have turned your power off.

I know it's a touchy subject--I'm just saying is all. You'll forget it until you look at the container of bath beads and shudder at the thought of your almost death. I know it really doesn't have anything to do with sexual connotations in Joyce, but you can pretend, I'm sure.

**********

"I don't know, I may be wrong" she said.

I know. I smile and close my eyes. I wonder if she knows her socks don't match and that the boy to her right has a crush on her. Poor girl. I also wonder if she knows her sentences don't make sense. Probably not. She is gone now though, without waiting for an answer, and I am on my way to peace.

************

"I don't know, I may be wrong" she said. I told you not drink and drive.

************

"I don't know, I may be wrong" she said.

Affair of Abandonment

Author's note: I originally wrote this July 31, 2007. It's posted as a note on facebook titled "That Old Familiar Feeling" if anyone really wants to see the original. This has been drastically revised, so do not expect the same thing if you have already read it (ahem, Makayla). I supposed I would also note here that the names could be changed.

**************************

The day I fell in love was the same day I came to dread falling in love. Warren was a brat, and those are people best kept well away from. But it happened, and I fell hard, only to hit the ground and break. Eventually you get put back together. It was not necessarily a Humpty Dumpty case, you know what I mean? It sure wasn't a joyride on the way down from cloud nine though, let me tell you. But that story belongs in a different time, to a different man I refused to recall. He faded as the months passed into a shade that haunts those memories, which is a time I specifically do not think about.

One morning long after that, I forgot how to breathe. I was just walking on the sidewalk. But that's what happened. I was walking with my sister and I found myself unable to remember how to breathe.

The odd thing was it wasn't as nostalgic as it was supposed to be. I saw the man I was in love with at the moment and he glanced my way. I was planning on swooning right about then, at exactly the moment when his hazel eyes met mine; but B-4, boom, I was hit and my battleship was almost sunk, and there I was with no idea how to respond other than to gawk at him. Gawk at his plain, scruffy face, his Cheshire Cat grin hanging almost six full inches above me, which was only present because it was ten in the morning and not a minute before.

He was gone in less than ten seconds. Come back, come back, I cried, but he heard nothing, because I couldn't breathe. I forgot how.

The world could have been spinning, or it could have stopped. I wouldn't know until I had realized time had stopped and the sun hadn't moved, whenever that would be. Does time move if occupied space does not?

Anyway, I ended up looking at some old drawings that day. They were just lying there, so out of pity and boredom I picked them up. They were sketches of athletes. Faceless, flat athletes from the discarded pages of ESPN magazine the year of the Riddick-Morrison rivalry.

I found myself in awe that once upon a time, I did those drawings. I found myself, even at that very moment, transported into a dream world, where nothing tangeable seemed to exist, watching, waiting, wondering exactly what kind of person would find figures, movement, and life so fascinating that they would copy it on a dirty piece of paper.

"You did that" he said. My heart screamed with insanity. I knew that place because I chose to leave it so long ago.

I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, reeling. There they lay, those tattered pieces of paper, right there in front of me. I faced a girl who gazed back at me, and I could feel within myself the sudden eagerness to discover the real reason for the disappearance of a once radiant self. I grabbed for her, catching the cold wisps of smoke, which almost felt like hanging on to a fairy tale, the one that I had exiled from remembrance.

I clung to the lines as they bent and curved. Swing batter batter, swing, I heard myself murmur as the pencil had wasted itself like a breath of song on a swell. Smudged fingerprints interrupted subtly, almost like the undertone chatter of background noise. Easily forgettable I noted.

Then there it was, like the sun breaking through in the middle of the chaotic thunderstorm. The warm, striking, yet isolated realization that they were never lost; but perhaps rudely pushed aside in the frantic rush that life's events tend to bring. With reverence to the all the forgotten things that make up my life, yet, overflowing eagerness to greet the found splice of my former self, I held out my hand in a practiced gesture of welcome.

It was almost like coming home, Warren told me. He was with me, talking to me, haunting me with smiles and brief outburst of joyous laughter. It was undeniably quite a settling feeling as the sound wrapped around me. One that is so easily forgotten, yet...so unforgettable. And how can it be? Dripping as it is with quintessential nostalgia. I easily forgot that it was him that I had banished and as the rest fell away into disregard, he came to possess them. Yet there they were, there he was, all of it as timeless as the the tire swing in the backyard or the dining room table that I'd eaten Christmas dinner at since my mother broke the glass one of my early childhood.

Warren was as handsome as ever.

My drawings became silent next to the scrapbooks and journals that told countless stories that I smile to remember, which Warren narrated to me, simply existing all the same. And that's all it was; that's all it had to be: just an old familiar feeling.

I smiled, but withdrew my hand. I kicked away, almost dreamily, as one would relaxing in a swimming pool on a hot July day. He stayed, saying nothing. He knew I would be back. Goodbye, I sang to him.

The air was hot, but I could breathe. I felt a pang of guilt as my eyes wandered the drawings once more. He was gone and they were simple sketches once more, and I was left knowing that if I never told, Warren would remain a shade and my tall, hazel-eyed tryst would never know. I laughed like a ten year old who had a secret.

Emma loves Warren forever.