Fragile: We're Only Human

Living, breeding, dying, decaying to dust. There was a kind of beauty in them. Wanted to be left alone like everyone else. Women stayed attractive and girlish so much longer these days. If there are any left, they’ll get nervous. They were smart, stealthy. October and it was still hot as a bitch. Global warming: that’s what people needed to be worried about but how many people had given a dime to save the rest of the planet. He’d always imagined himself in a nice house, a big corporate job, a pretty wife and well-groomed children. Thirteen years since he’d graduated from university. Though he’d always been frugal, had some money saved, partially from a generous inheritance from his grandmother, he doubted he even had enough for a down payment on one of these places. And he had never come close to marriage.

She was a pretty woman who wore a little too much makeup, dyed her hair a red that was a bit too brassy. She had a tight little body and a sweet, sweet smile. And lately he’d been wondering if she might like to have dinner with him. Woman might purr when you say you’re a doctor or a lawyer, or raise their eyebrows with interest if you tell them you’re a professor or an architect. But tell them you’re an exterminator, they literally recoil, wrinkle their nose in disgust. Most careers were just accidents, weren’t they? You wound up doing something after school to bridge the gap while you decided what you really wanted to do and thirteen years later, you still hadn’t figured it out. But what I’d really like to do is write.

For a woman looking for some indication that success might lurk in his future that was generally the last nail in the coffin. He loved the shade of a drawl he heard on her words. All he wanted to do was go home and was the stink of him and open a beer, forget about his day, his life or lack thereof. He was always thinking he might do that. Instead he’d go home, eat fast food in front of the television, and then go to bed. She wouldn’t bother me this late but she says there’s something huge up there, making a lot of noise. He felt a wash of disappointment. He’d blown it. She was just flirting to be friendly. Not interested. Now he’d gone and ruined their easy working relationship. He cleared his throat. He knew his voice sounded too boyish sometimes. Women didn’t always like that. When she spoke again, she dropped her voice down low. He felt the first smile he’d felt all day, maybe all week. Hell, maybe all month.

Service people were almost invisible to the rich. He’d heard people say and do things. Awful things, funny things, embarrassing things. Some of it he wrote down. Hoping his observations might come in handy for his novel, if he ever sat down at his computer again and managed something more productive than downloading porn. I love you. I hate you. Don’t touch me. I miss you. A face where skin hung like melting wax, thin and alert. Eyes that seemed to assess him from head to toe in a blink. Not in a judgmental way. In the way of the wise, knowing, accepting what is.

A real house, echoing with life lived, full of memories and irregularly shaped rooms. He wondered if she would really wait for him or if she was just being polite. Maybe he’d go in and find a note saying: Sorry, I had to run. Another time? He wouldn’t be surprised. He didn’t have much luck with women. After a few dates, they always seemed to want to be friends. He was already feeling the crush of disappointment before they’d even had their first drink. In waning hours of the day, it just served to create a field of shadows. Why didn’t people just get rid of their junk?

He loved the seasonal slide show of the north. The bright green springs and tawny autumns, the black and white winters. A beautiful single note that wavered only in extremes of weather, hurricanes, dramatic thunderstorms. Bright, hot sun and still, stifling air, or black skies and ferocious winds, sheets of rain. A couple of months of perfect, dry, seventy-degree winter weather. August turned to September turned to October and the weather still rivaled saunas and blast furnaces.

He didn’t have the sales personality, that ability to see a need, a fear, or a desire, and then manipulate it. He could only be himself. There were enough suckers out there. The difficult ones weren’t worth it, especially these days. It didn’t seem as tough as she’d appeared inside.

#Fragile