The clock rolled over from 11:59 to 12 am faster than expected, almost as if one would expect slow motion, but received a swift, purposeful act from the universe instead. Thankless, but necessary the job of time is as was this transition from March the 14th to March the 15th. As it slipped by someone seated in the back of a car gently twisted a closed pocketknife which was conveniently located in their pocked in a clockwise direction. It was the best way for them to express a well hidden discomfort at the possibility they were the only person who knew how to handle any situation they were in. Now she was alone for the most part, so there was no worry about the reactions of other people. Somewhere, in the nearby vicinity, was a white guy named Matt who had found out she was selling cheap drugs, which were squeezing his market. It got complicated, but she had learned from Matt’s source (who was her source and who was probably more in love with her than Matt) that Matt was pissed; the kind of desperate pissed where he’d do anything to get what he wanted. The three of them were supposed to meet at Tommy’s for breakfast, but Matt’s source cancelled at the last second, so it would be her and Matt.
She wanted to believe she was holding all the cards, that she would know exactly how to handle the situation. It wasn’t like she hadn’t done it before. Unease set in like a dense god; the haze of human aura; the kind of energy that once can feel walking into a house where there are too many people packed into one space, clutching cups that reek of fermented earth; the kind of smell that corrodes your values. The only thing that explained the feeling was that somewhere nearby was Matt. She sunk down in the seat. She normally wasn’t afraid, but there was one piece of information she was holding onto. Four men had been recently seen prowling outside her house; hanging out on the street corner, talking multiple laps around the block. Though she couldn’t prove it, she determined they were connected.
Just like she knew of Matt before she saw Matt, her brain made the connection between the rusted, red Blazer at the end of the street and the car that sat in the almost parking lot at the end of the street where she lived. Everything she knew echoed as she turned her knife and it meant the knife was a safety blanket only. Matt would be better at fighting like that anyway; it was the way she was thinking.
Matt made the first move, so she studied him. He was wearing a button down shirt, which was missing a few buttons and one earring in his left ear. It belonged to a former girlfriend who’d left it when she moved out. That pointed to the fact that Matt had a hard time moving on from basically anything. When he was within five paces of the car, she ducked down allowing him to walk past into the restaurant. It was better he didn’t know how close she was parked. She was getting ready to sneak out and meet him when she received a few short buzzes on her phone followed by the vibrations that signified a phone call. Agitated, but still willing, she answered the call. Nine am, was someone supposed to call her then? “Koni?” the voice was her mother’s, a woman who preferred an exclusively phone call relationship; a woman who had her own family living comfortably in a suburb on the edge of Ann Arbor.
“Good morning,” she said.
As she spoke, she made plans. Matt was probably hungover so he could wait a few minutes before getting upset. She just didn't like to give him the time to get familiar with his surroundings. Good thing Tommy’s was a place they both knew well. She would always give her mother time, even if she didn’t deserve it. It was one of the few constants in her life. She’d half listened to her mother tell this story about how her two kinds half brothers were taking dance lessons and had a recital in a few days. “That’s great, mom.”
She launched into something else with such energy and vigor, it could have been infectious if it wasn’t so selfish. Her mom was so, so excited for these bits of her life. She’d talked for a half an hour last time about the new couch they had just bought for the living room. A smile crossed her lips as she listened to her mother’s voice. Even in the way the woman spoke, there was fundamental difference between them. The boundary between knowledge could not be traversed. Her mother played by the rules and the world delivered everything she would ever want in a guided package; love, wealth even the right to live the way she wanted, but our hero would never be able to live by these same rules. Not counting the events of today, she had no less then six near-death experiences. The world went out of its way to make her life difficult; to step all over her. She’d broken the rules of society more than once and so, the rules of her reality could be set. Don’t be broken; don’t let anyone fix you. For her mother, because she could not rebel against her reality, she rebelled against her mind. Most of the time, her common sense and reason were not taken into account and the woman made irrational decisions. Marrying her dad and having three children was probably one of them. For some reason, though, there was always time to talk to her.
Five minutes passed, so she ended the phone call, having gained so little from the conversation, she wondered if it as worth trying at all. It provided a nice distraction from her current reality. She grabbed enough money out of her wallet and sat up, then rolled out of the backseat of her car and sneaked over to the entrance of the diner.
Matt was at a seat facing the door when she walked in, and she didn't like that. She would have paid extra to see the door, but chance doesn't work like that, so she said in her three out of five chance that someone as going to sneak in the door and shoot her right in the head. People were crazy like that. She studied Matt’s face knowing that he was living in the state of mind that is in between love and hate. It’s the part of our mind where the void we constructed is the deepest.
There were a lot of things about Matt that she knew, one of those things being he tried very hard to patch the void in his soul. Most of his identity was lost in that vacuum, however so he could never really separate himself from the absence of soul we all had to deal with on a daily basis. That was where his love for and hatred of our hero lay. The strongest personal connection with someone: the kind where you’d rather destroy someone then have to live without them.
“Try the pie,” was the first thing Matt said to her.
“Am I allowed to know why?”
“It’s fucking pi day. They have a special.”
She sat down and looked at the chalkboard on the wall. Cherry, key lime, apple, banana creme, strawberry rhubarb, and pumpkin were being offered. All pie half off, it read.
“No, I’ll order an omelette,” she said. She knew what she wanted before she even set foot in the place.
“Suit yourself,” Matt said and sunk into his routine of looking people over and muttering insults.
“I know you want something.”
“Sure I do, sweetie pie.”
“What’s five dollars worth to you?”
“Depends if you have something to sweeten the pot.”
She had eight birth control pills left, so she shook her head. “Then it’s gonna take a lot more than that for me to back down off of you.”
“Hmm. What do you think I’m doing?”
“Don’t try to be cute, alright? I’ve got a business to run.”
“Then why do I get business?”
“Because you are a fucking scam artist, that’s how.”
“Nine new customers this month, seven hundred dollars this week.”
“Gross, don’t share your profits with me.”
She smirked; it was another sign that she was winning and the fact that her back was to the door bothered her less. Nine breaths passed between them, absolutely empty of any kind of emotion communication. They stared each other down waiting for the other to betray the sense of fear; the kind where you lack the self confidence or actual ability to act on a situation and to manipulate it to a point where you have control. The waitress walked by and placed three glasses down on the table, two for water and the other for coffee. “What will you two have?” she asked.
“Pumpkin pie,” Matt said.
“Ham and cheese omelette.”
She walked away.
“Listen, I know you are smart as smart comes, so here’s what I’ll do,” Matt began, which is a weird way to start the conversation about your death. “I’ve got three nieces at Wayne State right now; they’re learning to be doctors. All you have to do is start pooling your business towards me and I’ll send you to Wayne State with my nieces, I’ll manage your tuition, everything.”
“I don’t like having my life managed by someone else.”
“Give me a better solution.”
“Does there need to be one?”
Her phone buzzed eight times. Someone needed something; that’s normally how it goes.
“Someone trying to get a hold of you?” he asked, baiting her.
She pulled it out of her pocket and checked the messages. Each belonged to a different person; each needed weed as soon as she could get it, some sooner than that.
“Not important,” she answered and put it back.
“Listen. You know what the number pi is?”
“No.”
“You want to?”
“It doesn’t affect my life, what is it?”
“It’s an irrational number that keeps on repeating forever and ever. It will always do the same thing.”
“Just like you.”
“Just like you if you’re not careful. You’ve got a day to decide, huh?”
The food came and we ate and paid. She left a four dollar tip just to get rid of the extra money in her pocket. It didn’t take long for her to get back to her car and drive away, still feeling the press of death on the edge of her consciousness.
Death has that kind of an affect on time; so she only prayed it would be quick and painless. She should really have gone back to school, but there were two problems she could solve right now. Someone wanted drugs and she needed money; all she had to do was swing home and grab the back of weed hid like an amateur under the mattress in her room.
She was having trouble believing that Matt really had been sincere in his words. It was more likely he was just scared of her ability to buy, sell, and hustle. By lunchtime, she’d made another four hundred dollars and spent it casually at her favorite gas station. Six guns showed up right behind her in line and she let them follow her out, back to her car where she felt the hairs on the back of her neck raise. There was the knowledge that she was the only person who knew what to do in this situation and all others were bystanders; people who would not ever engage with her story. All eyes were on her to save herself.
“Hey, girl.”
They said this and organized themselves into an offensive form. She was faced with the feeling that she had no words that would stop them from killing her. There would be chances to run if she chose to take them; four doors into her car and locks on all of them wouldn’t stop bullets.
“If you think you’re going to scare me, you’re wrong,” she answered softly, calmly assessing the group.
It was only three guys total, but that was a gun for each hand. She wondered why they needed so much firepower, but then it started to hit her that they were overcompensating. The difference between overcompensating and actually dangerous, she found, was the depth of pain. These guys all had something to lose; something within the void of their identity that tied them to reality. True, they weren’t playing by the rules now, but that didn’t mean they were free from the rules, it just meant they were running away. No, truly dangerous people were those who let go of the Earth entirely, just to let themselves spin out into an empty black oblivion.
“I’m going to count to three,” the leader said, though she couldn’t pick out who the leader was.
“No,” she answered as he spoke, interrupting him.
He did not like that, with reflexes like a cat he pinned her to her car and placed the gun up against her head.
“Jesus, I’m just selling cheap stuff. Jeez man, don’t waste that on me.”
“That’s not what I’m after.”
“I made money today, you can have it all.”
“You guessed it.”
He reached into her pocket and pulled out the coin purse where she was keeping the crumpled up bills. There was a little less than four hundred there, but she ended up giving him everything. He passed it to his friends and they looked over the bills to make sure they weren’t counterfeit and once they were satisfied, he let her go.
She sat down in her car and drove away as fast as she could. Out of reflex she went straight home. She was hoping the three guys were an isolated incident, but she doubted that to be the case. Her house was deserted when she got there and she hadn’t seen any unusual cars parked on the street, but she still felt nervous as she walked in. Matt knew where she lived and could get could get into her apartment if he wanted to.
She sat for three hours and worried about any visits by him or any of his other friends, but they never came. Two more texts came in of people looking for weed, but she wouldn’t leave. Not because she cared about her life, but because she worried about the futility of it. What if she just spent all of her life dealing, just to have the money stolen away from her? What if Matt had a point?
There were so many things she could be doing; so many different choices to be making away from all of this world; this life, and yet she was making the ones that would consistently hold her in this state. She had no friends of whom to share the good word of pie day and as midnight approached she wondered what she had missed by not making a conscious effort to eat pie.
Was there someone she could have called? Someone who would deliver in two minutes, seven seconds? It was a simple regret, she decided, a simple way to realize that life taken easily was not sustainable. The clock rolled over and she felt the sharp pain of a missed opportunity; was she looking for a way out of her life or a way to connect with the pieces of her that already existed? That would be a question for tomorrow.
