China

by Amanda Pampuro

“I remember, being a kid and carrying this plate.” Edith pulled at the corner of her eye to remove an irritating lash.

“I don’t remember what was on it, but it’s one of the first things I can recall. It was something my mom had spent a lot of time on, like a cake or whatever. And I was supposed to be really careful not to break or spill or anything,” she bit a dry lip. “But I wanted to.

“Just to see what happened. I wasn’t stupid. Like I knew that the plate would smash and my mom would yell at me and I would have to spend the next hour cleaning it up and probably picking plate shards out of my foot. I still wanted to. It was this urge just to let it go. Sometimes it was a vase or a doll with a glass face. But I always just wanted to.”

Edith looked when she was sure he wasn’t and scanned for an answer in his magic eight ball eyes. As she had just broken it down for him--what made her tick-- she waited, biting her thumb nail and looking for something else to focus on.

They had only known each other for that afternoon. Edith studied the table—the steam had barely left his coffee cup. It must have been less than that. Like a zipper caught with a mouth full of fabric, their conversation was stuck. Time was slothful. Glancing at the watch on the hairy guy at the neighbor table, she saw it had barely been half an hour since she stood in the thawing March air listening to music.

A few blocks away, from nowhere important, a bitter soft melody and awkward lyrics had pierced through her knit hat and reeled her in their direction. After a bit of aimless wandering, Edith realized the source to be a pawn’s move across the street.

She stopped.

The choppy chords picked and knotted at her insides as her stomach rose and threatened to take a broken elevator’s fall if she stepped any closer. Yet she was far too hypnotized to just turn around. All progress became increasingly difficult as her feet contently sank into the sidewalk.

From a canyonious crack, wove out a bonsai jungle of dandelions, crimson as the cold sun above. Around the valley, a brook of maroon ants marched to and from a pile of burnt bread crumbs. Edith stared at the sidewalk until blue sparks separated from the grey slab of cement. It was all she could do to keep from looking up, because once she saw the music maker, she would have to react. React with disappointment at his lack of teeth or pity at his missing shoes. There was potential in his voice and Edith just wanted to hold on to that before unveiling the Pied Piper.

The wind did not take kindly to her hesitation and growled with her stomach. Red ants, yellow flowers, blue shine. Red ants, yellow flowers, blue shine Edith fought to hold her ground until the wind sunk its teeth into her hat and catapulted it. The bumpy rows lumped to form a beehive shape and it had taken Edith almost a month to stitch, therefore she was quite fond of it. Too fond to give it up to some cocky ass force of nature.

Edith followed the hat, tripped on the curb and barely missed landing in the lap of the jukebox boy. Instead she hit his open guitar case, which flipped into the wind, creating opportunity for passersby to pocket the Washingtons and Lincolns he had been earning. Only the coins remained--treasure hardly worth looting.

Despite her fears, the guy had all his teeth as well as both shoes. Other than the stubble across his chin, he seemed clean and normal. Normal enough anyway. Sighing he handed Edith the hat which she pulled low to cover as much of her blushing face as possible. The trick did not work and instead made her hot.

Caught between the awe of being on the same side of the sea as the music as well as the knowledge that he had no idea what he just did to her, “So…” Edith attempted to make intelligent contact. “SO...” She glanced up the street as if his money was just hiding. “So how long you been out here?”

“Too long to bother counting.” Again, he sighed, tired and pessimistic.

“Can I pay--”

“If you have another eighty bucks to throw away.” Of course he was pissed. This chick had blown his day. Then again, maybe. Maybe he should make a grab at her purse, maybe he could guilt her into buying him a bottle of vodka. It’s all about how you play the cards they deal you. He shuffled and steadied his wrath, rephrasing, “I was this close to turning the electricity back on.”

Opening her wallet, Edith discovered seven lonely single bills. Now knowing what else to do, she offered him a warm cup of coffee. Having neither the motivation to retune his acoustic or pack it up, he accepted.

“Rob.” He told her, to which Edith pictured every girl before giving him a sad attempt at a clever pet name—Bob, Bobby, Bobert, RJ, Romeo, Roberto, Boberto—and once again her stomach flopped because she was nothing new. With nothing else to offer, she handed him her name.

“Edith.” To which Rob pictured his senior English teacher Edith Rose. They had affectionately called her “the Grammar Nazi” and it was rumored she had sold her soul, only to be eternally damned to teach high school. Not trusting himself to tell this without attitude, Rob sunk his hands into his pockets and followed her into a nameless café with a streaky glass door.

While waiting for the beans to brew, Edith stared at the menu and wondered what she should have ordered. Rob cracked his knuckles and drummed on the counter, studying her purse strap.

The drinks came and trusting herself to spill, Edith let Rob relocate them to a round table in the corner. A chess board had been Sharpied on and she wanted to challenge him to a game, but misplaced the words. The more she thought, the less she had to say.

Rob took his coffee black, Edith took hers cold, between them sat a plate of cream cheese icing with a sticky bun hidden somewhere inside. Like usual, Edith ended up in a chair that three perfectly even legs, but one half an inch too short.

She sat. It rocked. It clunked.

In an effort to break the growing orchestra of silence, Edith played the woman’s wild card. “I have to go to the can” and without waiting for a reply disappeared.

The bathroom was covered in peeling orange paint and the pseudo clean smell of Pine-Sol. Not actually having to pee, and the porcelain goddess soiled like a call girl anyway, Edith lathered her hands with liquid soap and let the sink steam up.

What are you doing? Averting her mirrored eyes, she confronted her guilt. Or infatuation? Or regret? No that’s a waste. Forget regret. Make something good of this. Or at least watch what happens.

Despite feeling absurd and awkward, she tried to convince herself of reason whatever that means. It was not too late to leave. She did not have to sit at the table and talk to this guy. In fact, a lot of people would be on their cell phones right now, radioing for a cab. She would just have to forget the song she heard. The one that was caught in her skull. Edith was aware of the difficulties in telling her foot to stop tapping. Still, it was easier to tune out the squeaking angel on her shoulder.

Accidently meeting her reflection, Edith splashed it with dirty water. I already made a jackass of myself. Hell it’s almost something to brag about if I can actually make things weirder. She dried her hands on her jeans and returned to the table.

He had been curious, like the cat they pulled from the blender. And to be honest, he was still wondering if she was holding out on him. Even a fortune in loose change was better than none. Or spare stamps he could sell for loose change.

There had to be more than seven dollars in that purse. It wasn’t a purse-- it was a tie-dyed potato sack with a strap. It could be hiding some stolen art for all he knew, which he would sell for change and buy stamps with. Something like that anyway.

He parted the fabric and was shocked at what took up the bulk of the bag--books. Reading was for foreigners and street signs so he threw Fitzgerald and Sartre to the side and continued to spelunk. Finding little more than a bouncy ball, bleeding pens, paper fringe, un-stamped letters, chopsticks, and an empty wallet Rob replaced the junk.

The only fortune he found was in the form of a cookie. He greedily cracked it as Edith approached and sat down. Despite caution, the chair once again clunked. Her now vibrating foot did not improve her anxiety so she sat on it.

Swallowing the cookie whole and hiding the slip of paper in his pocket, Rob hoped she didn’t notice. He washed his guilty mouth with a swig of coffee. Oblivious, Edith smiled and began to defend the silence with aimless rambling.

Edith was fully aware of her verbal garbage. If she could, she would boucle-la. In fact, it was one of those things that had always bothered Edith about her mother, who would arbitrarily interrupt peace to inform Edith, who had heard the door open anyway, that she was home. Which really meant talking to herself for twenty minutes in Edith’s nodding presence. Even when she had become conscious that her mother’s plague was hereditary, Edith remained helpless.

“I had a friend who hated Subway because they offer both pickles and cucumbers. She would be like ‘pickles are spiced cucumbers and cucumbers are fresh pickles, it’s so redundant to offer both,’ so she refused to go there. Man, she was difficult. Same girl who smoked those cheap cigars they sell at the gas station counter. They taste like stamp glue, but they made her look cool or something. I had to buy them for her before she turned eighteen. That was a while ago. Feels like it anyway. Those were the good days. Things change so much, I have a friend who is a nun now. I would have never predicted it, but…”

Rob watched. He really wasn’t going to get anything from her. She had no money and she didn’t seem like the type to have sex with strangers. The coffee was turning lukewarm. First he was listening for easy entertainment, like she was a bad reality show.

Unaware of it, a smile began to sneak out. He was starting to find her funny. It’s not so much what she’s saying, but how. Or maybe it’s not how, but what. Or both. Actually maybe it’s just because she’s kind of cute. Relaxing a bit, Rob leaned back in his chair and fingered the lint in his pocket. Finding the fortune slip, he wrapped it around his pinky and accordion folded it. He wanted to know what it said and wished it had come in Brail.

In an effort to be nonchalant, Rob swept the table with his hand and knocked a spoon to the ground. As he ducked to retrieve the utensil, his eyes snatched the prediction off the paper and told his brain. He didn’t know what to make of it:

A conclusion is simply the plate where you got tired of thinking.

Although his editing skills left much to be desired, after a few reads Rob picked up on the error. Plate should be place. He was under the table a little too long. Edith noticed and had stopped talking.

Rob grinned Mrs. Rose would have had a fit over that one little letter. He pictured the old woman standing over the shoulder of a Chinese man at a typewriter, nagging about sentence fragments and comma splices as he pounded the buttons. The man would point and say “look over there” and while Mrs. Rose turned her head, he would create as many bad grammar cookies as possible.

He was lost somewhere in himself, which meant Edith could get a good look at him. Again, she wondered why she was still there, still trying to talk to a deaf audience. She had messed up his day and should probably make an excuse now to leave. It didn’t matter that he had wooed her from blocks away. Zoomed in, she searched for her judgment’s flaws. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be like this. She had mistaken and ordered herself to accept the facts.

Rob found reality and was now staring back at Edith. Neither set of eyes attempted to line up with the other. There were words floating in the air, and not really knowing what she was doing, Edith grabbed at them. “I should go.”

“Hmmm?” This is not the plate for a conclusion.

“Yeah, I need to catch a bus home. It’s getting late, but I’m really sorry and all.”

“Now?” I am just starting to think.

“I’m sorry.” As she scooted her chair back, Edith’s elbow knocked over her own coffee. Despite the brew having been consumed, the melted ice flooded the table and smeared the checkerboard pattern.

“Gravity mess with you much?” Rob blotted the table with his sleeve.

“Basically.” He paused, hinting that she should continue, but she only stacked napkins on the puddle to dam it up.

“You seem to be used to it.”

“I’ve come to realize that maybe it’s me, not really gravity or the wet road or the wind” she studied the way his hair fell on his ears. Did I mention how I sometimes enjoy my avalanches? Not knowing how else to explain it, she smiled “It’s like when I’m driving. Just after the rain’s stopped, and the sun’s starting to dry everything.”

She had said a lot already, but Rob noticed this to be the first time she really mentioned herself. Something in her voice was new. A note of melancholy, he related to.

“I’m driving, and the road’s all slippery but not really. I get consumed with what if.” Edith took a long drag on his coffee like the cigarettes she said she would smoke when she stopped biting her nails.

“What if?” he echoed in comprehension, but she took it as a question.

“What if the car swerved or if my hands slipped off the wheel for a second. The sound of the crash. Crunch, but not like leaves, just loud. Echoing. I clench by jaw and brace for the crisis, but would I feel it?” Edith smiled and remembered why she didn’t talk about herself anymore “I guess I’ve got some things to sort out.”

“Don’t we all?”

“I wouldn’t know. I can only remember being me.” It felt good to confess, so Edith continued. She’d decided to leave anyway, so if she scared him then fine. She had never seen him before in her life and had no reason to run into him again. “It’s not just in the car. I just wonder. My mind wanders. Could I dive out of this window and would the ground catch me? The stove is hot, but I need to verify it. There is an urge. Not to feel pain, just to feel something. It’s twisted.”

“Rocks at beehives. Biking fast” he offered, still expressionless. Which made Edith uneasy, and remembering her exit she searched for a punch line. A purpose for still being here. Instead she told him the most honest thing she could. About how she liked to just see what happens.

She drew an invisible plate on the table. It had been blue with a lacey pattern on it, the kind of fancy normally locked in the cupboard. After narrating the urge to destroy and lack of strength to follow through, Edith stopped.

It was not a pause, she was done.

Out of steam.

There was nothing more to offer the guy, for without the music it was all he really was. Some guy. Well he could at least respond. Tell me I am psychotic. Ask me to leave. Excuse himself to leave. She waited, trying to be practical, but could not completely stifle the hope that the song she heard was not dependant on the guitar.

The wall behind Rob was half green and then separated half way by a boarder of ribbed molding where the wall was white. A homemade watercolor of a skeleton rib cage hung crooked. It was all she could do to not look at him, because once she did she would have to say something and there was only one phrase left on her tongue. The bones were not white like they should have been, they were blue and the frame red and the whole thing had been splattered with yellow. No, it was not the picture that was splattered, but the whole wall after the picture had been hung, someone took a loose brush and shook it. Or threw coffee in a heated debate. Or she was imagining the speckles. Doesn’t matter. She narrowed her eyes and tried to telepathically peel them off the wall to figure out whether or not she was making them up. Red frame, yellow spots, blue bones. Red frame, yellow spot, blue bones. Like a camera with ADD, Edith tried to focus.

One thing Rob knew he and Edith had in common was their lack of answers. Intrigue now punched out all resentment. Which created interest based questions, but finding concrete to stand on seemed impossible. He felt a spider spinning threads across the table. We are connected.

Frankly, Rob had never known how to speak. If necessary, he filtered his language through Em and G#. She was waiting and it was clear Edith had no intention to say anything now except maybe another apology and adieu. Time was melting. I’m not lazy and this is not the plate for conclusion, I just don’t know how to say I’ve been there, I am there. Maybe I don’t know you, but I get it. Maybe. I can’t just say that, can I? Shit.

Finally he caught her eye; she flinched but did not look away. Occupying the space between them was but a white dinner plate, littered with the remaining crumbs of a sticky bun. Hesitating, his pointer finger bounced on the edge keeping the silence in time like a metronome.

He pushed the dish to the edge of the table and watched it fall.

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