A walk
November 16, 2008
My gloves ended at the second knuckle, and my fingers were cold; I shoved them into my jacket pockets. Me and Helen were walking through an alleyway all lined with dumpsters and telephone poles.
"Are you cold?" she asked.
"Just my fingers. It's pretty nice out."
She smiled in reply and looked at her feet as we walked.
The Sky was light blue, fading to a hazy white down closer to the horizon. There wasn't one cloud in the sky. The leaves on the ground were yellow and brown, swishing from side to side with the weak breeze that breathed down the alley. I looked at Helen. She had very short, black hair, and rectangular glasses with clear lenses and black plastic frames. Her scarf looked home made, roughly knit in earthy purples and oranges and blues. She had on a big brown jacket that made her look like a little girl playing with her fathers things, a short plaid skirt, and long gray stockings that ended in flat footed canvas sneakers. One of her sneakers was black and one was pink. I wondered if she'd bought both pairs.
"So do you go to school around here?" she asked, looking my direction for a moment.
"No. I work. You?"
"No. I was going to school to be a nurse, you know, one of those accelerated business colleges."
"Sure. You didn't like it?"
"Not really."
"I never liked school much either. I tried to go to college twice, but both times it just seemed boring and inapplicable. My professors used to remind me that people went to college in order to get something they needed to move on, you know a degree."
"Right." She said, producing a pack of Salem hundreds from her jacket pocket.
She was a few inches shorter than me, and had a round young face. Even as she put a cigarette to her lips and lit it, I couldn't shake the image of a little girl playing with her dads things.
"A friend of mine is going to school to be a doctor," I continued, "He told me that if you want to do something that requires a degree, you just have to stick it out, and remember that the end justifies the means. I guess I've never really felt strongly about a profession, much less one that requires college."
"Uh-huh." She said, blowing smoke out through her nose.
I smoked cigarettes sometimes, but I had always been embarrassed of it. Girls that smoked always seemed a little gross to me. I wished I didn't think that way, especially it being so hypocritical.
"Are you going to go back to school?" I asked.
"Probably not."
We walked in silence for a block. Her smoking her cigarette and me listening to the leaves rustle to one side of the alley, then the other. Trapped.
"What made you ask me to hang out?" She asked, looking briefly in my direction again.
"I don't know. I thought you were really cute. And I thought there must be something great about a girl that gets up before dawn to sit alone and drink coffee at the same coffee shop every morning."
She dropped her cigarette, half smoked, on the ground. It had little pink stains where her lips had touched it.
"If having to work early is something great, than I'm great alright."
"I don't know," I smiled, "I'm kind of a morning person. I think I like other morning people too."
The alley was reaching a cross street.
"Do you like movies?" She asked.
"I don't really watch them. I like some, but most of them make me feel kind of gross. Almost like I'm embarrassed to be watching them. It's hard to explain. Somehow they just make me feel really gross. All of the people are so fake. Even the ugly characters aren't really ugly. They just have these cliche ugly traits, like braces or bad clothes. Even the fat characters have pretty faces. It's just too weird I guess. It's like all the characters have to start as these perfect beings, and then characteristics get added to them layer by layer until they fit their part."
"I guess so." She said.
We were almost in the street.
"Do you want to sit down?" I asked.
"Where?"
"The curb? Anywhere."
"The curb? What for?" She looked shocked.
"I don't know. Just to sit." I said, surprised she was attacking a defenseless whim.
"I guess." She said, standing a little awkwardly and waiting for me.
I sat down strangely on the curb, feeling ridiculous and suddenly wishing I could just be back at home. She sat down next to me, keeping a little space.
"So why the nursing thing? For school I mean." I forced it, hoping that I sounded natural and interested.
"Why not?" She answered.
I looked at a scratched lottery ticket blown into the little crook the curb makes when it dips in to make a row of parking spaces. It's funny about lottery tickets. You are only supposed to scratch a particular few of the little spots to see if you won. If you scratch more than you are supposed to, the ticket is no good. Inevitably though, when people lose, they just have to scratch off the rest. Just to see. Just to know that they couldn't have done any better.
"Why not." I echoed.
Tags for this piece: fiction story hypocrisy anxiety alley