John Doe

The roads are slickest during the first rain after a drought. On the route between my apartment and the bay there are five right turns that I held my breath through, half expecting some blur of motion to mangle my car in two. Of course it didn’t happen. You asked about the crash when you saw the scratches on my bumper. I wonder who you heard about it through. 

One time when I was little you took me to the community garden. The plants on the trellises were already out of season and dead but in the soil there were pumpkins, cabbages, sunflowers. In the backyard there is a mulberry tree that you planted the month that I was born. I would raise silkworms in shoeboxes during elementary school and feed them handfuls of the leaves. The week I thought you went on vacation I asked you how to water it. You said that when you stopped it didn’t make much difference.

Over my right arm the weight of the makeup in my canvas bag shifted back and forth. The wind drifted the hem of my satin skirt against my ankles with a little uncertainty. I wasn’t sure which direction you would come from. You set down your cup of jasmine tea on the coffee table, hands wrapped around the ceramic. I ordered a double shot hojicha latte, but it came so watered down you couldn’t even taste the milk. I shouldn’t have asked for ice. 

Your phone case is dark blue. You have three older siblings and you used to fight when you were a kid but not anymore. You are wearing a blue turtleneck and a jacket on top. You wanted to be an architect in high school. You play tennis in the park (Thursdays, Saturdays). Your brown hair dye is poorly done and your skin seems much older than before. You listened to a Michael Jackson record sometimes in the living room. You really thought you would die from the paranoia in February and you could feel it suffocating you but you were wrong and there was nothing except what you made up. The paranoia didn’t really build up in that February anyways but in the five years before that, and I just didn’t know, but it was still mostly my fault, but you’re sorry now. Come on, you should be able to say it more convincingly than that. 

At Apple Books you stopped by to pick up this rare edition of some collection, Whitman or something like that. Who knew you read that stuff. Maybe you’ll get to self help soon, that almost makes me laugh. I sifted through a box of vintage postcards, taking out stacks of ten to read while you paid. In the back of my mind is the birthday party I ruined when you started singing. The card was a nice touch, better before I saw your signature on the back. In the shoebox in my closet where it rests there are sheets of paper stuffed into envelopes addressed and unstamped, drafts copied over and over.

I spent a week flipping the house over looking for the set of keys that you kept. A power play. Or you actually thought you’d visit. Nothing about it was particularly domestic, but when I’m almost asleep in someone else’s car and it’s sunny I remember wooden drawers and the thin white curtain against the window that overlooked the driveway. When I saw it hanging off of your purse so visibly I had to ask for it back, not unaccusingly. The expression on your face was a concession as you untangle the metal chain from the others, sliding it across the table. The copy and the original reflecting. 

…

The boardwalk extends three hundred feet from the visitor’s center. The navy underside of my umbrella blocks my view a bit like a visor. The coastline has been carved to sheets of rock, but in the fog in the distance there are cell towers and the start of one of those massive bridges that tethers the land together. Because there’s a thin layer of water over mud, when the white sky reflects down it gives the appearance of being frozen over, especially as the flocks of starlings touch down and lift off. Snail shells and empty glass bottles are lodged in. We do not know each other and where I saw your face it’s like the blurry parts of the Nikon photos that I left behind. The distance was for the better. Don’t leave a voicemail. Drive back safe.