The death of a writer and the birth of something better continued
The students paddled on about it. And the ideas got worse and worse and he was able to actually hear them less and less and finally he didn't hear a damn thing they actually said. He just heard the noises his red head and her blue eyes would make. The laughing noises, the sex noises, the noises, oh, the noises… she was somewhere right now in one of the Carolinas. She was sitting in dimmed rooms listening to the sound of snow floating down onto ice and sifting and weaving its way through oak branches while she sips chai tea made from the microwave. All this while he was on the fourth floor of some mediocre university library talking about a dirty brown lake. The sex noises and the laughter noises and oh oh oh the noises! What would their house look like when they were 26? What kind of dog would they have when they were 30? Probably none at all if he didn't cut the line of this slimy writing fish.
The students were STILL going over this fucking lake business. He looked at their mouths; all he heard were sets of words coming from the same monotone voice. Words like LAW and FORMS and FEES and INSURANCE (INSURANCE he must have heard 5 or 6 times over) INSURANCE! Damning and tempting and beautiful words all in all. He looked at the glass of the fourth floor window. The glass separated him from the lake, and from his red head, from LIFE.
Astounding. He didn't even need a running start. He should of at least have had to have a running start but he didn't. He just jumped up and forward ever so slightly and there he was, just like that. Surrounded by air and by the silly words of others getting evaporated to be used later for hot rain. Surrounded by air along the 3rd floor, the 2nd, 1st…then, on the grey walkway. Just surrounded by glass shards from that soft, soft window. On his way down, he hadn't noticed if any of the students had saw this spectacle. He wasn't concerned about whether they had. There was absolutely no impossibility in this.
He laid face down on the walkway. That blanket of glass that followed him to the ground kept him warm. He made it to the ground first… he was faster…heavier. The lake was orange with the ending of the day. Since the sun was so low, he wasn't exactly jumping into a high traffic area. There was one girl, just one, who was on her cell phone and approached the cluster fuck on the sidewalk. She didn't step over him, OR around him, she merely passed by him. Although such a scene should be difficult to miss, this wasn't so astonishing, as she was, of course, 7 minutes late for her business class.
(the world was simply overflowing with people who were constantly 7 minutes late for their business class.)
The sun had completely skipped town for the day. No one had swept the glass or the person, and the pile of glass and person was spotlighted by a series of lampposts. Still, he looked alive, radiant actually.
Or maybe it was just those lampposts.
Right then, his soul, or whatever it is that you're supposed to call the thing that is meant to keep pressing on after one does something along the lines of jumping out of a 4th story glass window and onto a concrete walk way…yes, whatever that was, got up as if just emerging from a 6 hour power nap. It was like what had just flown through the window was nothing more than a walking talking breathing bed.
That soul thing looked at his bed. There wasn't as much blood, as much red as one would think. In fact, it was downright spotless. The soul thing turned and started walking, damn near strutting down that hard grey walkway. Whistling as he walked away. Nothing really exceptional inside of this except that what had just jumped through the window COULD NOT WHISTLE. And he whistled his intangible self all the way down to the offices of grad school and he picked up a law school application for some school where that sun shined. It's after all, what the writer in him wanted. APP. In hand he strolled back to the spot on the ground where he first arrived into this easy (for him) world. Impervious to the glass, he fished around the pants of that old bed (the pants he was currently wearing. Odd.) and dug out the car keys to a Toyota. Grey like that walkway.
Later that night from the comfort of an actual bed. He filled out the application completely. It was to be mailed FIRST THING IN THE AM. He downed the most delicious glass of wine ever poured (a miracle.)
Ready to fall asleep for really the first time, he wondered if that girl on her cell phone ever made it to her business class, or if she just turned around. She probably made it, he thought.
There were no words streaming through his head. No insatiable urge to write anything down at all.
He got on his side, closed his eyes, and saw red hair and blue eyes. He saw those blue eyes lighting up.
The soul would sleep well.
END
