So the results are in for the 3rd contest on FirstLineFiction. I took third this time. Hooray! It's gratifying to place again. I love having stuff to write about that is guaranteed a read. Although, I have to say that the story that placed 2nd is one I didn't care for at all and that stings a bit, but congrats to them anyway. Anywho... if you are interested in reading my story from this contest, well, it's below. Enjoy!
The Review I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work.
“A delicate dance on the tongue.” That was what the review said about my ex-husbands new Merlot. I couldn’t believe it he had actually done it. I stared at the black phone on my desk like it was the killer in a b-list horror movie, stunned at the news. I don’t know how long I sat there, in my 22nd floor corner office staring at my phone. It could have been no longer than a minute, or it could have been three hours, the only thing I knew was that it would ring, and so I stared; waiting for the call that would inevitably come, but never did.
For years he had talked about owning a vineyard, it was his lifelong dream. Ever since that vacation in California when he was six, he never forgot the smell of the grapes or the way the sun shone over the fields like a blessing. It was childish awe that never left him; I used to love that about him. Me? I loved numbers. In school I excelled in math and history, I never forgot a formula or a date; I was in Advanced Placement programs and a member of the mathletes tournament squad. I was a geek. By the time high school came around I was severely aware of my social status, I was not aware that I was pretty until college. Pretty. No one had ever called me that until I came stumbling out of the science building my freshman year, tripping over the bag I just dropped on the ground. He caught me.
“Careful pretty one.” He said. Then he just walked away, leaving me staring after him thinking pretty? That was ten years ago, it took me a full semester to find him. All I knew was that he was an artist, because he was covered in splattered paint. I knew it was stupid of me to stalk the art buildings the way I did, but I was compelled, I couldn’t help it. I needed to know what he had meant by that. When I finally did find him on the second day of finals, it was in the Quad, not the art building, and when I wasn’t looking for him, naturally. I was looking at my feet, trying to master an advanced calculus theory in my head when I heard his voice. I don’t know what he was saying, or who he was saying it too, but my subconscious knew that voice. I looked up from the ground and froze. There he was, the artist, right in front of me. My feet carried me to him without my consent and I stared. He stared back with a confused expression.
“Pretty?” I finally asked.
“What?” was his confused reaction.
“You called me pretty once. Do you really think that?”
“Think what?”
“That I’m pretty?”
“Well yeah.” He laughed then so easily, unaffected by awkwardness. “Why wouldn’t I?” I fell in love with him on the spot, he was everything that I wasn’t, and everything I wanted in life. I think he knew it too.
The sudden knock on my office door brought me back to the present, and forced me to look away from my phone. My secretary came in carrying a small rectangular package; she didn’t say a word as she placed it on my desk. I think she has always been sensitive to the moods of other people, and she sensed that I didn’t want to be disturbed. I watched her walk out the door, closing it softly behind her before I turned my shell shocked attention to the green box. I knew I wasn’t ready to open it, some instinct told me that I should ignore this unexpected arrival. If only I was good at trusting my instincts, instead I pulled it to me with hands that trembled, and without bothering to read the label I tore the green paper of the box, opened it, and looked inside.
It was a wine bottle. An empty wine bottle. The light from my window glinted on the thick green glass as I turned it to read the label. De La Fin Merlot 1999, and suddenly I was laughing: hysterically. 1999, the year of our divorce, “La Fin” the end in French and the last two words he ever spoke to me on the day our divorce was final. I laughed so hard I started to cry, and then to hyperventilate. I fell to the floor, the muscles in my knees refusing to support my shuddering, swaying weight any longer, and there I cried softly into the carpet beneath my desk, clutching the empty bottle to my chest.
I could hear his voice in my head, and mine.
“Come on honey, what’s so bad about California?” his eyes sparkled that day with a playful mask to feel me out, like they had so many times before when he was unsure of my response.
“There’s nothing wrong with California, I just don’t want to live there.” I said back, exasperated with the argument, we’d had it so many times before. “I know why you want to go to California, you want to open your own vineyard” I practically spit the word “you want to play with grapes and dirt all day.” I rolled my eyes, serious now in my argument; adamantly against his dreams in my own insecurity, so afraid to lose him to a business.
He stared at me for a moment. His eyes full of hurt and long sadness. Then he spoke.
“I can’t do this anymore.” His voice was so soft it was almost a whisper, the pain evident in his articulation. “I love you, but I can’t fight with you about our life anymore. I know you’re afraid, but you won’t let me in. You won’t let me help; you barely let me love you. I just can’t do this anymore.”
“What do you mean?” My voice seemed too loud
“I’m going to California, with or without you. I want you to come, I don’t want to leave you, but I can’t fight with you anymore, it tears me up. I can’t wait for you to be ready to live anymore.” Tears fell now from his glorious blue eyes.
“You’re going? You’ll leave me here?” disbelief made my voice small, and then the pain kicked in and I went from scared to angry. “THEN WHY DON’T YOU JUST LEAVE NOW!” I screamed the words, practically shrieking, and then with cold malice as the tears came “Just pack your bags and go. I’ll leave so you can have some privacy, but don’t be here when I get back. Don’t come back. Just go.”
He watched me walk away in silence, his face frozen in confusion; one hand reaching for me as I slammed the door.
I went downtown, and found a lawyer. The papers were drawn up within the week, and he was served within the month. The court appearance was a formality, everything had been peacefully divided and decided, and we just needed the judge to make it official. I felt both heavy and empty as we said our goodbyes on the steps.
“Well, now you can go, you can leave me and not worry because I will fine. Free to make my own way now.” I said
“I didn’t want this, I DON’T want this.” He said
“Well, this is what you get, in exchange for your dream. I hope it’s worth it, although I don’t think you have a chance.” I laughed then, cold, hard, and short. “Tell you what. The day you make your wine a success, if I’m not married, I’ll remarry you and come to California. You just give me a call.” I rolled my eyes as I said the last, so sure that he would never be any good at it, so certain that my word would never be tested.
“I will.” He whispered, and it sounded like a promise. “I guess this is it, then.”
“What?”
“La Fin.” And he turned and walked away from me.
I trembled as he walked away, I knew I would never see him again, never hear his voice again or feel his hand in mine. I knew it was my fault. “La Fin” I whispered to his retreating form before slowly walking down the steps to my car. I forced myself not to cry until I was home, alone, safe.
The sharp pain in my head returned my focus to the present. I looked up and saw that I had slid under my desk and hit my head on the back. My fingers ached with the force I was using to grip the empty bottle. The cruel reminder of what I had given up. What I would never again have. I wondered if was laughing to himself, congratulating himself on such fiendish creativity. It was so unexpected, he had never been cruel. Not even to my self-absorbed parents who had disapproved my choice in him from the very beginning, he was never anything but kind and warm and polite.
“He was” I whispered. My voice sounded dead in the office, surreal and not correct. I didn’t sound like me. The sobs came again, dry and heaving, but quiet, like they knew they weren’t welcome, but couldn’t help themselves. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I was missing something, a meeting, or a conference call, but try as it might, it couldn’t force its way up to the surface, it was not match for my despair.
“I don’t want to do this anymore.” I said the words at full voice as I realized that I had just been biding my time, waiting for him to come crawling back to me. Ten years I had wasted, and now it was over, now he was laughing at me. Like he knew I was waiting for him, missing him, even though I didn’t know it myself, and it must have been funny to him. I could hear his laughter in my head. I scooted out from under my desk, still clutching the bottle. Its green glass caught the sun again, glinting in my eyes. I flinched away from its brightness and blinked. How long was I under there? I thought to myself. I sat up on the floor and looked up at the window. How the sun shone through it, highlighting the streaks that the cleaning solution left.
I was up and moving before it really registered. Watching myself from above, as if I were dreaming, I opened the window and climbed onto the ledge. I could hear the music from our wedding playing in my head as I took the final step, Pachelbel's Cannon in D. As I fell, everything seemed to slow to the rhythm of the dirge-like march, my hair whipped around my face, freeing itself from the tight pins that normally held it back. My shoes fell off and went past me, urgently trying to reach the ground. I could see the people below me, looking up. Someone screamed, a woman, their looks of horror were almost comical, and then there was only pain, for an excruciating moment I felt it all. The heartbreak, the broken bones, the blood oozing from my head, the glass from the wine bottle that I still held, breaking through my skin, and that was it.
The clock on the office wall ticked the seconds by as the wind blew across the desk, ruffling papers. The computer buzzed normally and when the knock sounded, it echoed and absorbed in its usual way. On the desk, there was still the box, but unlike the wine bottle, it was not empty. There in the bottom was a single diamond ring taped to a small note. “Marry me” was all it said.
Below on the street a single mother dialed the paramedics and reported a suicide, she knew already that it was too late to save the pretty woman who had jumped or fallen from the building. She wondered to herself what would make a woman like that want to die. There was a ring of spectators now, and when the ambulance came blaring up most of the people from the office building had joined the ring. So many people were crying. The woman who had made the call noted each grief stricken face in the crowd as she made her report to first the paramedic and then the police officer who had arrived only moments after the ambulance. She had a strange sensation as she took it all in, looking once more at the women as she was covered and then lifted from the sidewalk. Her spine tingled and she looked up.
The black phone on the desk lit up on the side, a green flashing light, once, twice, three times, and then rang. It rang again, and once more, before going to voice mail.
“I love you” was all he said to her before hanging up in disappointment. He didn’t know about his lover, who had jumped from her window in despair because she had lost him, but he would read about it, in a cab, on his way to work, in tomorrow’s paper.
