We’ve Heard So Much About You
(Normal, Illinois)
We look at our neighbors, wondering what they might be thinking. We watch. Mostly across the street, outside the church; across from the bakery; across from the two bars bookending the block, where Owen Trawley starts at one end and finishes at the other, flip-flopping six days of the week, then attending church on Sundays, ignoring everyone he drinks with during the week as he walks down Garvey Street, the trees stepping aside, the cars parked curbside slowly exhaling their fatigue, the sun climbing over the roofs as modern cars quietly pass.
We watch others, and wonder about their behavior, and then, just before we end our observations, we are about to say something about each other, because I can see us thinking about it, but then we say nothing.
Then, we consume.
We cook breakfast – pancakes, hash browns and sausage, and serve with tiny bowls of berries – while drinking cups runneth over of strong black coffee, furrowing our brows over the madness on every page of the world, what’s new in sexual harassment, what’s wrong with gun control, who’s to blame for why we keep attacking people, devouring the book review section, inhaling the travel section, pigging out on what the world says about the world before heading back to the world.
We rent. The house has been on the market for nearly two years but still remains far enough away from the city no one wishes to claim it. The owner is one of those sweet older ladies who passively and uncomfortably brings up the possibility of us buying it about once every three months, almost checking in like a grandmother to see if the kids are still doing well and need anything, only grandma wants to know if we want extra house with our milk and cookies. She’s quiet and likes to wear sweaters. Last year she wore a sling for the fall after breaking her arm while painting her back deck. I helped her get groceries and once bought her a plant. Dieffenbachia. Commonly known as “dumb cane.” Low maintenance. We cooked her string pasta as it was easy to twirl with one hand. She thanked us before and after every meal. Never wiped her mouth. I remember she once drained an entire glass of almond milk we poured her, and I thought in my head (but didn’t say aloud) That’s nutty.
We rent a car too. We used to take his boss’s car – a BMW – but his boss fired him for “being outspoken.” His words. To this day I supported him, but I’ve always been curious about what truly happened. It’s not that I don’t believe him, but—
Oh.
I almost forgot.
There’s a nice bakery only open Saturday mornings. It’s a short walk from the rented house. He goes out for a run and I’ll walk down for scones and the best banana bread I’ve ever had. A secret I am open to sharing: I get three pieces of banana bread, eating one on the way back to the house, so when I show up I am relatively satiated and more importantly not forced to share my banana bread. We still have two slices, so everything looks even. He has a bird’s appetite. I’m a little munchy munchkin. I get cravings at weird times and always always always first thing in the morning. I sip Moroccan mint tea and devour a pastry and think about which section of the paper to first read, the light of day kissing my alkaline lips, my shoulders evened, breathing curtained, remembering my dreams, the thrill of falling inside something, tumbling under waves, reaching out and controlling another living thing, only to have it bite me with venom, my body content in the present but so very addicted to suicidal sub-consciousness.
But.
I’ve never actually killed anyone. Instincts tell me I don’t think I could pull it off. If I had a knife in my hand and needed to kill something – a monster, a ghost, a wild dog attacking my lover – hesitation would be my undoing. I would keep so quiet, believing if I could be perfectly still, the silence might do the murdering for me. I did this as a child; hiding in hallways; under stairs; in the trees. The shadows were my favorite weapon.
I had another relationship. Before us. Meaningful, but then he became you.
But you know that.
Everything ends.
Like every flame burning across a cold black lake.
Like how, after a certain time in every relationship, when tolerance becomes wrath, we becomes you.
We sit up. Not exercise. We exercise but don’t gloat about it. Our arms occasionally tire. It’s not unusual. We went to the diner that one day, remember? One of us (not me) was craving steak and eggs. I thought it unusual, but was very entertained by the idea of watching you ravage ten ounces of flank steak, three fried eggs, and a rickety stack of home potatoes. You finished that, then ordered two pancakes with an extra – extra – side of butter. The couple next to us were whisper shouting, screaming at one another in slow motions and extremely low decibels, their tension louder than anything else in the room. Everyone else stopped eating. And I’ll never forget you leaning back in your chair, mid-meat chew, a wad in your cheek, holding up a Cuisinart steak knife into the air, calmly asking them – albeit a little unintelligibly, “Are you guys rehearsing a scene for a play or something?”
I thought more people would laugh at that, but they didn’t.
But seeing someone’s life ending. Watching their breathing desist. Closing the book on their legacy. That’s got a hold on me. Where does it come from? How can people think up such things? And yet we all do it. I drive forklifts through people’s skulls. Pipe strangers across the head when they least expect it. Go fishing for some good old fashioned murder with a tacklebox of evil. Snare the cheeks of faces with poison-addled hooks. Spear foreigners in the eyes for looking at my land. Take my steak knife and cut a wide swath of sirloin and jam its bloodied end in my mouth and quietly approach the server who took my order from behind, taking an order from another table, and slit their throat from ear to ear as I triumphantly chew. Break a bottle of Bordeaux over the marble table, drink from the broken glass, sever my lips, then stab the sommelier in the chest. Walk through the gilded dining room located in a former bank and stop at the front host stand, where the maître d’ asks, smiling, “And how was everything for you tonight?” And hug them. Her. Him. Whomever. Hug them so tight their lungs pop like lightbulbs around their heart. They collapse in a clump as I wipe my dirty upscale-dining feet off on their Brooks Brothers slacks. Still chewing the meat. Or my lips. Unable to tell the difference.
But I’ve never actually killed anyone.
Not even in my dreams.
Yet when I look at you, I can honestly say, as though I’m speaking for everyone: We’ve heard so much about you.
We’ve heard about the collections you covet; how the forgetfulness of passion can leave tracks in the trails. We know where you like to hide and who we expect to find there with you, what the temperature will be, and when you will close your eyes, fragile, uncertain, your thoughts open and innocent, your soul encased in silver. We are careful when we meet eyes with you, and we have suffered your silences, made you text us back late at night when no one else was awake, held on to your sweater when no one else wanted it, and listened to that voice you like to occasionally use as an “instrument” in the shower.
We wonder if you’ve thought about how much we’ve thought about you. Have you attempted murder with love? Does it sting on you like it stings so fierce on us; like an open wound; a toenail ripping clean off; or running through a briar patch and getting that nice long thorn to slice away skin off a sweaty forearm.
We still burn. We’ve got that good love pain. Wrecking our sleep. No need for caffeine. Incapable of breathing. Incapable of understating.
Before we leave, we first have to learn how to arrive.
And yet we haven’t arrived anywhere. We’re still waiting for you. But have we arrived?
We’re not sure if we have arrived.
And there, again, we are the only mirrors in the room, watching each other, watching outside; watching everyone come and go as they please. Not yet fading. Not yet arriving; an echo inside the reflection.
I can tell. But I never say anything. I can see it so well each time we share food, and trust the appetizer that is conversation, the almighty carnivore. But how hungry are you? How many GMOs are in your thoughts? Are we thinking about the same thing? Are we staring at each other, right now, and connecting on the bridge of where dreams start and reality ends? Or is it the other way around? Am I standing on the street outside of where we live? Am I someone else? Watching you, watching me. Or is that you. And what are you holding in your hands. And what’s behind my back. And what are we waiting for. And now. Then. Just before. Right there. What. Were. You. Just. Thinking. About.
• • •
Brian Bartels was raised in Wisconsin. He has been a writer and bartender his entire adult life. His first book, The Bloody Mary, was published in 2017 with Ten Speed Press. He now lives in New York City, where he is a Managing Partner and Bar Director for Happy Cooking Hospitality. His writing has appeared in Fiction Writers Review, PUNCH, Vinepair, The Missouri Review, Lotus-eater, and China Grove Press. He is currently finishing up a new novel, titled The Country Has Been Drinking (Not Me), and working on a new book of short stories on irregularities, titled Normal. www.brianbartels.com.