Prologue
It starts in the middle, with what Li said.
“You’re still in love with me.”
He said, “I know,” looking down, ashamed.
“But it had to end.” He sighed, looked up. “It had to end.”
It had to end. It had to end end endendendendend.
He repeated the words, first out loud and then to himself, to try and believe them.
“Then why did you call me again?” Li asked a valid question.
“Why did you dye your hair brown?” he asked instead of answering.
“To try something new.”
He soaked in the context. They were in a wet parking lot. The sky was thundering but no rain fell anymore. Had it ever fallen? Or was rain another myth? Whatever. They were in California, which was only weird because they were in Florida. Only Florida didn’t have mountains or this pizzeria where he used to work, so it had to be California.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Answer my quetion first,” Li said.
“I don’t know why I called. Because your name disappeared, and I didn’t think that was fair.”
“Fair for who? You or me?”
“Answer my question now. We’ll trade.”
Li said, “We’re between there and there. This is a dream, Grin.”
So that was his name. “Okay,” Grin said. “I didn’t think your name disappearing was fair for anyone. Especially not everyone.”
Li lit a cigarette. Grin pulled it from her lips. He put it back between her lips. Li stared at Grin.
Grin stared at Li. At length he said, “this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.”
“Who says?” she said with a sneer.
“The lexicon. The world of words.”
“I don’t see how words matter here,” Li said with a shake of her head.
“I don’t see how the stars matter, but they sure seem to. Why can’t you believe me?” Grin asked.
“You’ve lied too many times.”
“I never lied!” Grin yelled. The idea that he would use words to mean something they shouldn’t offended him. “How dare you?”
She smirked. “If you never lied, then why are you so offended?”
“Because you believe I did. I guess because you believe I’m capable of lying,” Grin said. He felt dejected. This wasn’t at all what he had in mind when he agreed to have this dream.
“You’re capable of anything, Grin,” Erika said. “Everyone is.”
“Slippage of meaning, dear,” Grin said sarcastically. “Capable doesn’t always mean ‘to have the capacity.’ It can also mean ‘to have reason to,’ poetically.”
“You
——————-are terrible.”
“Your poems
She said these words in tandem, under her breath, as she had said so many things Grin had unheard. The pizzeria’s sign cast a dull red glow on the wet asphalt. Grin looked up to a sky that had no stars or moon, but only a faint orange tint from the lights of an anonymous city over an anonymous hill.
“Who really ended this?” he asked while his jaw clenched and unclenched.
Li put a soothing palm to Grin’s temple. “A wind, and a terror,” she said.
Grin believed she was sincere. He remembered the wind, and he had felt the terror.
