The plaster ceiling dripped white, crusty flakes into her coffee pot, papier-mached her hair, dusted her tables and chairs, fell into the cracks of her skin until she was white, lily white, and packaged for retail sale. The apartment was rented to her as a death trap for plasterphobians. She ignored the constant snow; she couldn’t afford to move. All she could do was dust herself and sit down to write.
“Are you lonely?” he’d asked once over the phone. “Your characters are.”
Just like that, he’d cracked through the plaster-covered marble exterior of her soul and clamped his greedy fingers around her humanity. Was she lonely. She’d laughed when he’d asked the first time, via e-mail, and laughed harder the second time over the phone.
“Fiction,” she’d told him, “is fictional.”
Have you ever heard the songs, she’d asked. Do you know the band? Because these stories come from some other poet’s soul, she said, I just transcribe them.
“Oh,” he’d said. He’d sounded disappointed, like she should have screamed, “Yes oh yes, I’m so lonely... So lonely. With no one to love me but you.” And he’d probably hoped she’d cry a little so he could reach through the phone wires and brush away her tears.
She thought about his mediocre face trying vainly to be as handsome as he really was beneath his self-loathing and wondered if he’d tried that line before and gotten a better response Wondered, as the plaster rained down on her head, if she could have been something better than she was right now. If she’d lied and said she was lonely, lonely, just like him.
“You don’t do the normal things people our age do,” he’d said.
And she’d smiled because, no, she didn’t. She did her own thing her own way and that’s why she was alone. Partially choice, partially not. There’s no way to prepare a dish the same way twice, to twice-bake-potato her life again to fit someone else’s recipe. She was OK with being alone because she wouldn’t have to feel beyond herself. She could flirt with the guy behind the sticky coffee counter, could strap on her tall boots and walk into a bar. Or she could curl up in the graveyard of youthful thought and childish prattle and read a book about the merging of cosmic thoughts or she could stare through those she saw. She could live the ambidextrous life of the “girl who has it all -- except for what everyone else has.”
“I don’t believe in love. It’s all about sex,” he’d said.
She’d said nothing and closed her eyes. Partially because she didn’t agree and partially because she couldn’t agree more. And her lips had started to quake with an “I won’t be your whore” response, but she’d changed the subject to something more abstract than sex or love, and he brought it back.
“I’ve seen a girl naked,” he’d said, and he’d laughed.
“So have my mirror and I,” she’d wanted to say, but her sarcasm was muffled by the stem of technology that connected them. “I know a guy who got a 1600 on his SATs when he was a freshman in high school,” she’d said instead.
“Wow,” he’d said.
The plaster shook loose from the ceiling as a door slammed shut and she stared at her blank piece of paper and thought about turning the page.
