ms. tulsa

Rachel is telling this story, not showing. Because she believes that telling is showing in less words. Words are sacred to Rachel, she uses them sparsely, but wisely. She believes that we only have so many words to use in our lives. Scarcity, she thinks, the economics of life, of words. Everything is scarce to Rachel, life is scarce. Time itself is scarce, because it marches-as they say it does-blindly, into a lethal trap, fooled like a laughing seventeen year old; driving as fast as it wants on an unfamiliar and sinuous road. Entropy always wins, she says. She found a bumper sticker with those words on it, and stuck it to her car. Entropy always wins, she says. She’s right.

Rachel married Steve when she was twenty-five. He had been an English major, he wrote terrible dark poetry and drank “Writer’s Chai” from Starbucks. He loved Anthony Burgess, and his dorm had been plastered with still-shots from A Clockwork Orange. He always told a story about getting drunk when he was fifteen and skateboarding into the night with a bunch of friends. His mom found out and broke his skateboard, and he was never allowed to skateboard again. His mom was nuts. Steve was nuts. Rachel married Steve and he killed himself a year later, slit his throat. Afterward, Rachel looked through all of Steve’s Moleskine notebooks, read all of his poetry and counted the words. His poetry was elaborate, composed of some 2, 367, 976 words. That was Steve’s limit, self-imposed obviously, but he had said so much and could say nothing more. Steve took his life, and Rachel hated Steve. He slit his throat because he was such a showy bastard, he could have just taken pills, but he decided to make an unmistakable mess instead. He had written on a beige sheet of stationary:
“The sadness that drips from me is red and warm at last
It had been black for all my life, and now the storm has passed”
He was such a showy bastard, and a terrible poet.
Rachel is sitting now in a coffee shop. She peers into her pristine porcelain mug and ponders the swirls of oil in her coffee, she drinks french-press just for the oil. The experts say it’s bad for the heart and she hopes that they all go to hell.

Rachel is badass.

She looks up from her coffee to take a sip, and notices a man who has noticed her. He smiles, and she looks away quickly, but is too late. He’s a man who takes eye contact as an invitation. He takes a seat at her table.
“Heh, I thought you’d never notice me.” He says as as he scoots his chair closer to the table, with awful and familiar scrapes. Rachel smiles awkwardly, she doesn’t know what to say.
“I, um, I’ve seen you here often. Everyday at 11:00, like clockwork.” He notices the swirling oil in her mug. “French press, I see. What are you? Heh, a coffee snob or something?” He chuckles and takes a sip of his drip coffee. Rachel is not amused or impressed. She stares blankly for a moment, sitting slackly in her chair, one arm over the chair’s back and the other posed casually on the table, hand around her mug. She notices a silver cross around his neck. She considers the implications for a moment.
“You’re a Christian.” she says coldly.
“I also like Simon and Garfunkle, drive a Golf, oh, and my name is Ray.” This is obviously something he goes through often. He smiles. His eyes are blue, his teeth are white, despite his coffee habit. He must whiten his teeth, she thinks, superficial ass.
“I’m not a friend to Jesus, Ray.”
“You’re unhappy.” Ray is not looking at Rachel and Rachel glares suspiciously into his face, her expression poised viciously.
“And why do you say that, Reverend Ray? Let me guess, I need to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I need to repent, I need to believe!” This is obviously something she goes through often.
“No”, his eyes are apologetic now, “It was just an observation. How about we talk about something else… Quantum Physics.”
“Have you ever read Aristotle, Ray?”
“Yes, though I find myself more aligned with Plato.”
“Of course, you would, Ray.” She is repeating his name now in condescension. “Because you think that things can be things and not things.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“You wear your conclusions around your neck, Ray. I know exactly what you are.”
“Hmm.” Ray’s expression is now cold thought. He doesn’t move. He is a mouse in a python’s cage, being served to a snake who hasn’t had a meal in months.
“The cat…you know about the cat, right. Schroedinger’s cat?”
Ray straightens his posture, and his face lights with interest. This is a topic he could speculate over for hours.
“Dead.” Rachel cuts his interest with a cruel smile. “Schroedinger’s cat is dead.”
Ray is silent. He stares at his reflection in a mirror hanging near their table. He’s a leg shaker. “I’m addicted to you, I think.” He says finally, his tongue clings to every word as if he’s afraid he’ll lose them. “If anyone else spoke to me like you have, I would have walked away. What is it?” The question is rhetorical, but Rachel answers anyway.
“I’m a misanthrope.” She sips more coffee, and looks down into the swirling oil again.
“A philosophic misanthrope.” Ray smiles. “Why you be hatin’?” Ray thinks this is funny.
Rachel pauses for a moment. Aside from the silly improvisation, Ray’s question is viable to her. It’s a serious question with an answer she can’t quite grasp. She tries to formulate and answer anyway. “Paris Hilton wrote a book, and people buy it.” she says finally. “Given that incomes are fixed, that money is scarce, that every purchase assumes one that is forgone, people actually give up money to read what Paris Hilton wrote. While real people, real artists with something to say, with something brilliant and pure starve. They are waiters, they serve us coffee because the world is so full of morons who would rather hear about who Paris Hilton has sex with, than read something genuine!” She realizes that she’s talking too loud, and lowers her voice. “And those who do read, do so pretentiously. They read what they’re told to read by the leaders of their sub-cultures. Who knows what’s good anymore. The question ‘what is art’ has lost all validity. Art no longer exists to be identified. Somewhere the world lost its soul, Ray. I hate it, and this makes me a misanthrope.”
Rachel’s face is red, her eyes are glassy. Ray knows that he’s hit a nerve, he knows that he’s seen Rachel’s core, something he should have never seen. He has seen a volcano erupt, and he is watching the molten core of Rachel seeping toward him. He would be frightened, if he weren’t mesmerized by its beauty.
For a moment the air is silent. Ray stares at Rachel, his face fixed in her eyes. He means to say something inspired and profound, but he can’t move his face.
All he manages is: “I understand.” Rachel twists her face into an accusation.
“What? What do you understand, Ray?”
“You.”
Rachel’s face is blank. Ray can see two expressions canceling each other out. Rachel means to communicate arrogance in her face, but it registers as a thin veil over her genuine interest in what this means; what Ray means, and what what Ray means means.
“We exist in degrees.” Ray explains. The world is real, and we are only as real as our relation to it.
“Forms.” Rachel is whispering.
“Not exactly. Entities existing closer and further away from reality. The world is real for you, and thus you are more real than most people. You choose to exists closer to reality. A sort of ground-up existence. You deal with what’s given in reality first, and then the varying outward deviations from it. Paris Hilton is not real. She’s worse than hollow, or empty as some people categorize it. Paris is a ghost, and as such can’t even touch what’s real. She can’t touch us. She can’t touch you. We’re not forms, we aren’t some reflection of another realm of being. We exist fully in the only form of being that exists.”
Rachel is staring into her coffee again. Her countenance has changed. Her face is no longer accusing. Her eyes are soft, her manner is absent-minded. She looks up at Ray slowly.
“I, um, I have to go now.”
“Right.”
“Sorry.” Rachel gets up and puts on her jacket.
” You know…I never got your name.”
“Right, it’s Rachel.”
“Right…Well, Rachel will I see you here at 11 tomorrow?”
“Always.”
Rachel steps out onto the sidewalk. The air is damp and hanging over her, the buildings are drizzled with water and look like giant cakes covered in dark, runny frosting. Rachel is walking and notices her steps. She walks slowly, then more quickly. She’s careful to avoid the cracks in the sidewalk. She counts her steps, “One, two-one-one, two, three…” She feels biting cold air inflating her lungs, she pauses, and feels her lungs deflate and inflate again. She feels herself exist. The world seems sharp, like someone has adjusted the contrast, and she can see more clearly everything she’s seen everyday. She thinks of Steve.
“Steve”, She’s talking to the sidewalk, and smiling.”You never knew enough about what you left behind to know what it meant to leave.”

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