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: : : —SO, DARREN SAYS. —I've been wondering something.
—What's that? asks Austin.
Darren leans back; the chair creaks under his weight. He looks down at the fiddle in his lap and hooks a fingernail under one of the strings. He holds it there for a second and then plucks. The sound seems to take a long time to fade.
—Did you sleep with her? he finally asks.
—With who? Austin answers, before thinking.
—With who, Darren repeats, contemptuously. —Who the fuck do you think with who? Austin's caught off guard by this hostility; he thinks where the fuck did that come from? He scrambles to think of what might be behind it. Protectiveness? Jealousy? Fact: Austin met Rose in the first place because she was a friend of Darren's. Is there something back there in the history, some attraction left unvocalized? Has Darren always had some sense that he would have been the better choice? What the fuck is going on?
—Um, Austin says. —No. I didn't. We didn't.
Darren, still looking down at the fiddle, nods once.
—We talked about it, Austin says. It's true, but he says it as sort of a test, to see how Darren will react.
—Really? Darren asks. His voice conveys neutral interest, that's all, and Austin begins to wonder whether he didn't imagine the hostility he heard a second ago—maybe Darren was just fucking around, that's possible, they're always talking trash to one another at these sessions.
—Yeah, Austin says. He strums the guitar, gathers it up out of his lap and sets it across his knee, looks down at his hands, and begins to play a chord progression as he speaks. —Yeah. She, uh— He gets distracted by what his fingers are doing on the strings and he drifts off. After a few seconds he slaps his hand down next to the sound hole and returns to his thought. —She hasn't slept with anyone since she left Chicago. Since me, I guess.
—Oh, says Darren. —Interesting.
—Yeah, says Austin. He begins to play again. —So, yeah, we talked about it.
—What'd she say?
—What'd she say, repeats Austin. —She said— He pauses to sigh before continuing. —She said that she couldn't sleep with me unless we were in a relationship again. She said that the idea of starting things with me again interested her. But she won't do it long-distance, and she doesn't want to leave Minneapolis because she's got, you know, this thing going there, with the counseling center and all that. So— he stops playing again —that basically means that if I was interested I'd have to move to Minneapolis.
—Are you interested? Darren asks.
—I don't know, says Austin. —I mean, I like Rose, I mean, I think I love her, you know? Or, I don't know, I loved her once upon a time, probably more than I've ever loved anybody. And Minneapolis is pretty cool. But I like my job here—maybe I could find some kind of community arts thing to do in Minneapolis, I guess, but I don't really feel like having to start a job search all over new. Plus, the music scene here is better, and we have our thing going, and, I don't know, I've got this thing with Lydia—
—Yeah, Darren says, —You and her really have something special.
Austin frowns. He tries out the idea. Lydia and I really have something special. And the first thing he thinks in response is OK, what? And he can't come up with an answer. Then he thinks of Rose. In his mind she burns with light.
He will recall this image tomorrow, in the morning, squinting out the window into the glare of sun-drenched winter. He will turn on his computer, sit there with his cup of tea, and write her an e-mail. For the subject line he will choose the phrase illuminate me.
: : :
:: Year entries
Index | << | 42 | >>
:: Austin entries
Index | << | 8 | >>
Further Reading:
Recent input in the Narrative Technologies weblog:
:: Gangs of New York, World-Building by Dan Hill
[fresh as of 1/21/03]
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