“I’ve been cooking again,” she called from the kitchen, “I haven’t been like this since I was sixteen” “Sixteen?” He asked. “Yeah, that was when my uncle got sick and I had to learn to cook, take over the house a bit, you know?” She briskly chops up mushrooms, measuring the amounts by eye, her red nails clashing with the pale white with a startling clarity. “A wine sauce alright with you?” He’s fine with it, more than fine. He’s standing by her living room bookshelf, bemused to have been invited, trying to read the titles in the candlelit gloom. “I thought you didn’t like to have men over?” “We-ell, I thought about it for awhile, and realized I was being silly. No one is ever going to replace my husband, especially not over something as silly as dinner. This is my house now, I should start thinking about it like that.” He looks over to the mantel, glad she can’t see him, and sticks his tongue out at the picture of his dead friend.
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I hate it, the deadly crush of traffic, the people walking past, ignoring me. It makes me wish I was famous, it makes me wish that some of them would start to die, so I could save them. They could have heart attacks or choke on something or maybe need the heimlich manouuver and I would be there, stepping in bravely, sweeping people aside, knowing what to do. It could be like that movie where that guy slides under the truck and gives the funny looking girl the tracheotomy but instead of movie cameras, it would be the news, yeah. Millions of people seeing how brave I am. Then these idiots wouldn’t brush past me without a smile. What the fuck was that movie? Whadzisname made me go when it was playing at the bar, said we would meet chicks. He didn’t go home alone, but I sure fucking did. Didn’t fucking share at all. Fucker. Some friend, whatever the fuck his name was. Brad? Who cares, doesn’t matter, nothing matters. Not to these rejects, anyways. Corporate idiots, walking past me like I’m nothing. Bimbos and whores, the lot of them. Bet they’d want me if I had money.
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The lines of the motorcycle made her catch her breath. She held it, looking at the machine, an old Vincent Black Shadow, the best cliche in the book. She touched it, then realized that it was hers now, she could do what she liked. She lifted one leather boot over and straddled it, feeling her weight on the tires. She imagined tearing down an empty country road at breakneck speed with hollywood swirls of leaves flying yellow and red in her wake.