Doubt

Here's a short story I wrote for a class. Input welcome...

The street echoed hushed tones as Joshua ambivalently crossed the partially plowed road. He searched for other signs of lie, but all he found was the snow browned by dirt and oil. His heart always fell at the sight of the decaying snow, the way it defaced a comforting blanket of white always seemed a shame. The polluted snow absorbed all of the yellowed street light, unable to reflect the shimmer of fresh snow.
Joshua was close to his apartment, and he debated going home or continuing his walk. His fingers and toes tingled with frost, making him hesitate at his door. His legs, confused, chose one path, then another, nearly tripped over each other before finally continuing down the slushy walk. He blew fleeting wet heat into his palms and felt for his coat pockets, and again looked for signs of life. He hadn’t seen a car in the past hour. He imagined that he was the town’s singular inhabitant; the rest had given into sleep long ago.
He had attempted to be one of them not four hours before, but some compulsion raised him just past midnight. Joshua’s sleepiness shrank from his need to stalk the late night streets. Aimless wondering was his guide; he knew no destination, paying little attention to where his compulsion was leading him. Walking, he knew, invited reflection and clear thought, and it was clear thought that would bring him resolution on the day’s events. Joshua, though, could not catch the correct thoughts.
Sometimes, a thought would wander into his net, but they were random memories of no use to him now. Mostly, blankness shrouded his head, and his concentration was pulled towards the drifting snowflakes or his rapid footfalls. So he just walked, blank-faced. Empty too, he realized. He caught a thought that he had nothing but a ribcage beneath his skin. No thumping heart, no bellowing lungs, no tingling stomach, just a hollow trunk with a ribcage supporting it.
This thought rushed a pressure to his eyes, building up to tears that would not come. He wished for them, asked his brain to at least let him cry if it would not let him think. But he was denied his tears. The pressure slowly ebbed away from his face and dissipated. He took a deep breath, managing to do so without noticing his lungs. He blew on his hands again and turned right on a street he didn’t recognize. Finally, this street allowed him a memory that he wanted, that morning at the coffee shop.
Joshua’s fingers rapped the table, and his left leg rocked back and forth. He was finally meeting her for coffee. There had occurred a flurry of date changes and missed opportunities leading up to this point. She had not arrived yet, and he cursed himself for his propensity to show up early. He attempted to shrink away from the others in the coffee shop, but he knew everyone was looking at him, knowing he was uncomfortable. He convinced himself, somewhat, that most of the people there didn’t care one bit who he was or what he was doing there. This thought managed to still his legs but not the rattling fingers.
From behind him a scratched female voice hurriedly proffered, “Hello?” He turned and she stood tall, wearing heels and business attire. Her hair was slightly disheveled, as though she had attempted to put work into it and ran out of time. Her purse hung wide open and her hand clutched a pen that she was trying to jam back into her purse. When she was sure she had greeted Joshua, she said, “Sorry, I came in through the back, didn’t mean to startle you.”
No words came to him, just a sheepish smile, and he thought of making an excuse to leave, then in self defense said, “How are you?”
“Busy today, I’m not even sure why I’m here,” she creaked out before her voice smoothed and said, “I have to get so much done for tomorrow, but I really wanted to do something, you know? We never get to.”
“Yeah, I’m always busy too,” he offered in a small, fragile voice, without a trace of sincerity. He hid behind his coffee cup, taking in the now cold liquid.
“Yeah, but screw it, God forbid I don’t read a chapter for one class, you know?” rolling her eyes and smiling broadly. She leaned forward and said, “My life would be a hell of a lot easier if that was really my motto, you know?” Then she laughed nervously to herself. Joshua had been too nervous to laugh, and had instead flashed her a half smile. The brightness in her face had shifted and her head tilted down.
Joshua sensed her flagging confidence and trying to bring the brightness back to face asked, “So what’s on Penny’s plate today?”
“Penny’s plate, huh? Well, tonight’s probably a library night. I really need get shit done, because last night I ended up watching T.V. when I had no business doing so. I ended up reading a chapter of soc before I came here. So what are you so busy with?”
He searched for some assignment he needed to complete in the near future, and finally responded, “Oh, uh, this paper for my 151, I’ll probably be at the library too, there’s some books I need to read for it. It’s not due until next week, but I want to get a head start on it. It’s something like thirty percent of my grade.” Joshua was fairly sure that he had a 151 this semester.
“Is that a history class?” Penny asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Yeah, with Schwietz,” he said, but then realized that Schwietz taught his 220, and Cahill taught his 151, if that was the right number, and corrected himself, “wait, no, that’s Cahill.” He remembered that the paper due was actually in the 220, but decided to spare her a rambling explanation. He could already sense she didn’t care about which numbers corresponded to which assignments.
She fixed her eyes past his head, out the large window facing the street and seemed to say to someone standing behind him, “I’m going to get something to drink.” He nodded and she stood up quickly and went to the counter. He sunk into the chair a little and rubbed his temples. His skin was clammy and felt cold. He reached for his cup of coffee and forced the cold bitter liquid down his throat. Penny soon returned with a pint of chocolate milk, and returned to her seat. Her eyes darted around the room, but finally caught his eyes, and the right side of her mouth drifted upward. They both leaned forward and Penny slightly opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything. Joshua broke eye contact and stared at the table. He searched his brain for other pleasantries to exchange, but instead gulped another mouthful of coffee, the last of the cup. His eyes remained fixed on the table, until they found her hand, white and small, with slender fingers. Without thinking, his body arched towards that hand. The pointer finger bent slightly at the middle and pulled him closer. He broke his gaze at her hand and renewed eye contact, and the deep blue told him to come closer.
He scanned down and saw her pale lips in a flat smile that parted and said, “I got to go to class soon, want to walk there with me.”
“Yeah, I got time,” he said, “what building?”
“Ozment, it won’t be real long,” she said, her voice scratchy again. She didn’t lie; Ozment was hardly two minutes from the coffee shop. He got up and quickly pulled his coat over his shoulders, she hadn’t taken hers off. The air cut at their skin, but the sun warmed their backs. Neither talked, just occasional glances back and forth during the walk, expecting words to come out of the others mouth.
When they reached Ozment, Penny spread her arms and stepped quickly to Joshua, putting her arms around him, and said, “It was good to see you again. If you need a study break tonight, call me.” He never got a chance to put his arms around her. She scurried up the walk and entered the building before Joshua could respond. He turned away slowly, and, his eyebrows rose, set for home to go back to sleep.
When he woke up just after noon he sat in bed thinking of something to do, but nothing came. He looked at his phone and moved the cursor on his address book to Penny’s name. He constructed a conversation in his mind between himself and Penny in which they talked about Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata. He’d read the story a week ago from a dusty book he’d bought at a library book sale entitled The Complete Shorts Stories of Leo Tolstoy. He imagined that the story affected Penny as deeply as it affected him. He went to his bookshelf and took the book out, studying the blue cloth cover. He opened it and found The Kreutzer Sonata on page sixty seven. He searched for his favorite passage, the murder scene. He wondered if Penny would find the intensity of the scene as moving as he did, or if she preferred the description of jealousy suffered by Pozdnyshev over his meandering wife.
He sensed that his imaginations were absurd, and that Penny had probably never read The Kreutzer Sonata. The only other person he knew that had read it was his friend Alex, but he didn’t care for it all that much. A hope crept into his heart that if he talked to Penny tonight he could steer the conversation away from mindless chatter about homework to something closer to his heart. If not The Kreutzer Sonata, perhaps some other book they had both read. He thought of good conversation, ideas building back and forth, creating new ones. The thought of having that with Penny made him look longingly at the phone, desperate to call, but knowing that she had said, “Tonight.”
He wanted to distract himself until it was a reasonable time to call, so he opened The Complete Short Stories of Leo Tolstoy to The Death of Ivan Ilych. He read it absentmindedly, and found himself having to read pages multiple times before he could concentrate on the words. He decided to give up on Tolstoy for the day, and went to his living room and turned on the television. He found “Animal House” on some channel and watched it without laughing. He fixed some macaroni and cheese, and slowly watched the clock tick by. He finished “Animal House” and then moved onto a basketball game between UNC and Florida State. About halfway between a second basketball game, Missouri trouncing on Colorado the clocked turned to six, and he figured it would be safe to call Penny now.
His body resumed the earlier demeanor of the coffee shop as he pressed the call button. It rang twice, and then a third time, each ring making him worry that the call would not be answered. But halfway through the fourth ring, the phone clicked, and a voice said, “Hey!”
“Hey Penny, it’s Josh, um, what’s up?” he said hesitantly.
“I’m just at the library, but I only have one more chapter to finish. I didn’t really have as much as I thought for tonight. You working on that paper?”
“Oh, no, I ended up just watching TV,” he said, and added, “well, I did a little reading too, so I wasn’t completely lazy. So, you, uh, feel like watching a movie later?”
“That would be nice,” she slowly let out, and then added distractedly, “but, I think I need to finish this chapter first. How about I come over to your house after I’m done? I’ll pick up a movie if that’s okay.”
“Yeah, or I have movies here,” he blurted out too quickly, making him wince.
“Alright, well then I’ll just come over, it’ll be about a two hours or so, I’m a slow reader, you know?”
“Cool, I’ll see you later then.”
“Yep,” she said quickly, and hung up. Joshua set to cleaning up his apartment, picking up aluminum cans scattered amongst pieces of paper and food scraps. He eventually moved a mass of boxes and paper bags and found the vacuum cleaner. His desperate cleaning of the living room distracted him from the clock long enough that when there was a knock at the door he was in the midst of emptying the trash can. He swiftly made his way to the door and found Penny there, still wearing the outfit from earlier in the day. Her dark hair, though, was pulled back in a bun rather than the failed look she had attempted to pull off earlier.
Her thin eyebrows raised and she said, “Hey, what movie you got for us?” He hadn’t thought about which movie to actually watch, so he pointed to his shelf of DVDs and said, “Your choice.”
She scanned the cases and finally picked out “Annie Hall”. She explained that she had never seen it before. Joshua said, “That’s a good choice, do you like Woody Allen?”
“I can’t say I’ve seen any of his movies before, but my sister keeps trying to get me to see ‘Annie Hall’,” she said, and shrugged, “I guess this will appease her?” Joshua nodded and put the DVD in the player. He sat on the couch and she took a place next to him. As they watched the movie, Joshua nervously laughed at some of the jokes hoping it would rub off, and Penny stared and forced a chuckle here and there before she began to drift off. She found a comfortable place on his chest and gave herself to sleep quickly. Joshua looked down at her and a smile crept across his face. He reached his arm around her waist and watched the rest of the movie.
When the movie ended, Joshua sat and watched Penny contently until she stirred and looked up at him. He smiled and asked dryly, “Enjoy the movie?”
“Mm, once I fell asleep,” she replied, a broad grin spreading across her face, then she looked at the clock, reading ten-thirty and said quickly, “I should get home though, tomorrow’s another early morning.”
“I’ll walk you home,” Joshua offered.
“Okay, where’s my coat?” she said, searching the room. He found it in his room and brought it out for her, and put on his own. On the walk to her house, he wanted to ask her something interesting, to finally have his conversation, but he didn’t know what to say. Any thought that came to his head stuck in his mouth. Penny, too, didn’t have much to say, and the girl who had slept on Joshua’s chest felt that comfort slipping away. Both wanted the walk to end quickly, the nervousness growing and the moments of eye contact making each shake with doubts. When they finally reached her house, they stood in front of each other, strangers once again. Impulse moved Joshua to try and put his lips to hers. He knew that she would accept this, but something pulled him back. He opened his arms and gave her a soft hug, and said goodnight.

Welcome

Well, I thought I'd try this thing out. I'll use this to publish my short stories, non-fiction essays, or whatever pops into my head. You know, this whole blogging thing's supposed to be changing media right? So I'll change the world, somehow...

ZTK