fiction by joseph doyague

She Holds a Martini

She holds a martini. Raising the drink first to her nose, she takes a small sip. Perched on the arm of the couch, her gaze turns to the window—she could reach out and touch the glass. Cold, gray light insipidly illuminates her drink. She takes another sip. The apartment is silent. 

“It was a black bird. A marvelous little bird.”

“A little black bird?”

“A little black bird. Flying right where I was looking out from the L.”

“It was flying at the same speed as the train?”

“Yes, it stayed right there with me. Flapping its precious little wings. Rising above all those nasty brick facades. My hair stood on end. The city was a blur all but for this one little bird, keeping right where I was looking.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just a pigeon?”

“No, I’m telling you it was a little black bird. Flying alongside me. For a moment I was flying, too—with the bird.”

“Flying beside the bird?”

“No, the bird was me.” 

“You? The bird was you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s been a long winter, hasn’t it?”

“Winters are always long. Why won’t you believe me?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you. I just don’t see anything very special about this bird.”

“For once, without my begging, something came and stayed just how I hoped it would.”

“Well, is this little black bird flying here with you now?”

“The train had to slow down at the next stop, naturally. It flew ahead. But it flew with me long enough to make me feel something. I saw myself.”

“In the bird?”

“Yes. In the bird. I was the bird.”

“Would it have been as equally marvelous had the bird been a pigeon?”

“Why does that matter?”

“I feel like it matters.”

“I’m rather fond of pigeons, actually. But I love them in groups. I love how they disperse all at once in a clumsy, chaotic wave. I love the beating sound their wings make when they rise up from the ground. When they drop down from a rooftop. I love to watch them dart past my window in a stream of gray and purple. I love them in groups.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“You would’ve found an answer had you been listening.”

“There’s no need to be rude. I don’t have to be doing this, you know.”

She veers her eyes from the window and peers down into the glass before taking a careful sip of her martini. Her gaze returns to the window.

“What else would you be doing?”

“A thousand other things you’d never realize unless they happened to reach you in your dreams. A shame.”

“I wish this was a dream. I wish I could just wake up and—I don’t get why my life. . .” 

“Don’t cry. Please, don’t cry. Yes, take another sip of your martini. Now tell me what was so special about this bird being black?”

“. . . I don’t know, it just is. I guess it’s something I’ve never really had to explain. I mean, look at me. My skin is the color of milk. My hair is blonde, very truly blonde. My eyebrows are blonde, even my eyelashes. Black is my opposite. My. . . antithesis.”

“Yes, but that’s what confuses me. The fact that you wouldn’t have felt this marvelous feeling for a white bird, a dove.”

“I never said that.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“I’m so blonde that people often mistake me for an albino. But I’m not albino, just very truly blonde. I’m too blonde to be blonde like the rest of them. I’m so blonde that I may as well have black hair.”

“The whole world already has black hair.”

“And the whole world thinks that they want blonde hair when in reality they only want to be a certain kind of blonde. Blonde is rarely ever blonde. Meanwhile black is black. Don’t you see? I have more in common with black hair than with blonde hair.”

“If you say so. Does this explain the black cat?”

“You’re not supposed to know about that.”

“Yes, that’s right. I don’t see any cat.”

“That’s because he’s dead.” 

“Oh, he’s dead? That little black cat in the framed photograph you have set up beside the house plant is dead?”

“Yes. He died very prematurely.”

“I’m sorry. What was his name?”

“Jacques.”

“And those are Jacques’s short little black hairs littering the sink?”

“No, those are Saul’s hairs.”

“Who’s Saul?”

“My boyfriend. No—”

“Oh, terrific. Does Saul live here with you?”

“No, he doesn’t live here. He never lived here. He left me. My ex-boyfriend. You didn’t give me a chance to correct myself. ”

“Well, because—oh, I’m so very sorry. . . .”

She says nothing.

“. . . I’d love to hear more about this little black bird. Can you tell me more?”

“You know, I was always comforted by finding Saul’s little black hairs all over the place. They reminded me of Jacques. Back when my sweet Jacques was still alive. Those little black hairs comforted me. I told him that.”

“You told Saul that?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He hugged me tightly from behind and kissed me on the neck. We had just finished brushing our teeth. We smiled at our reflection in the mirror as he held me like that. Then turning me by the shoulders he kissed me on the mouth. Suddenly, becoming very quiet, he kissed me again. And again without catching his breath. He tasted like toothpaste.” 

Gliding her hand across her neck she takes a small sip of her martini. Quickly followed by another.

“That son of a bitch. He had nothing to say. Do you think at that point he already knew?”

“Jacques died before I met Saul. He was always very sorry about Jacques.” 

“No, I mean at that point did he already know he was going to leave you?”

“I believe he may have seen the space left by Jacques’s death as an opening. At the very beginning, I believe he did. Or, maybe, I wanted him to see that. We were both very alone.”

“But do you think at that point he was already planning to leave?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know when he knew. Possibly. He wouldn’t tell me.”

“You asked him that?” 

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you wash away his hairs already?”

“Because they’re the last tangible thing I have left. The last remaining petals, those little black hairs. Petals fallen from a flower that will never blossom for me again. When I see them, for a moment I can make myself believe that my sweet Jacques is still roaming around here somewhere, hiding away in a loaf. That when I return to my bedroom, I’ll find him playing with the window blinds. Like in the photograph. He never left. I can make myself believe that. For a moment I can feel it. I’m almost happy. He’s still here. There are his little black hairs!”

“Jacques was a sweet little cat, wasn’t he?”

“Oh, he was such a sweet little punk. From this spot on the couch, I can see all of the tiny chew marks he left on my records and on my books. Funny how those things used to annoy me. Now they’re little treasures.”

She raises her hand and lays her fingers flatly against her lips—softly. She meets her fingers with her lips.

“What happens when you go to your bedroom and he’s not there?”

“I quickly make myself a martini.”

She raises the drink to her nose and inhales deeply.

“Have I told you how the scent of gin, the juniper I mean, makes me think of those pine bushes you come across in the dead of winter filled with a thousand chattering birds?”

“What? Sounds like something you made up.”

“They’re a natural wonder. The world is dead and frozen save for this little green place bristling with the tumultuous shouting of all these little birds. A cloud of steam spills out with each breath. It’s freezing. I can’t imagine the high-pitched commotion serves as a mating practice, not in the dead of winter. Why should they be screaming like that? Something is awoken, stirred. I imagine the same thing happening in the middle of some dense, snow-covered forest. It has to exist. A small pine with no one there to witness—far away and harboring scores of trilling birds like a solitary flame.”

She takes a sip. More than half of the drink is gone.

“You and your birds. Let me guess, they’re little black birds?”

“No, they’re brown. I don’t know what they are. Possibly little sparrows? It doesn’t matter, really.”

“Would you like to be one of them? Would you like to join in the ruckus?”

“I’ve never imagined myself as one of them. I guess they’ve never spoken to me like that.”

“I could’ve guessed. You’re very discriminatory when it comes to the color of hair and feathers.”

“No, that’s not it. How can I explain? Something like the last election perhaps. Once the results were finalized people drove around waving flags from the open windows of their cars, honking their horns, cheering. Cheering together when one car honked and passed another car waving flags. That same day the mentally ill man that inhabits our block, the ‘neighborhood loon’ they call him, posted himself at the corner of the four-way stop. The top half of his coveralls hung limply from the waist as he shouted something mostly incoherent in Spanish, his two bare arms vigorously thrusting up and down. A car filled to the brim with protruding arms and flags approached the stop sign just as I was walking past. They pulled away the very next moment holding down their horn and waving all their flags frantically, so frantically. But no—I wanted to tell them—he’s not cheering with you. He always yells like that. And so I think it’s best I never know why the birds gather together and scream their heads off. If I found out. . . But no.” 

“There isn’t anything wrong with showing excitement for things.”

“Look how some of the things I was most excited for turned out.”

“But sometimes—”

“Sometimes what?”

“Sometimes things won’t turn out poorly. You won’t always be left hurting.”

“But what about later on? Afterwards? What can we really expect? Isn’t the hurt fated to reach us sooner or later?”

“If you believe that everything will always lead to unhappiness, that’s exactly how it will turn out.”

“Unhappiness? Not that. Not necessarily. What I mean is. . . I don’t regret having loved them. In fact, I don’t regret anything. And there is a sort of happiness that comes from loving and having no regrets. Even still, all of this has changed me. I know it. I won’t ever love the same.”

She looks down into her glass and swirls what’s left of her cocktail. The lemon swath spirals.

“No two loves are ever the same.”

“Nor are they free of suffering.”

“I never meant to imply it would be otherwise.”

“Then how is it that I won’t be left hurting?”

“Because someone will look at you and look at themselves and decide to stay. If that’s what you really want. Even after the train slows down at the next stop.”  

Raising the glass as if to take a sip, her hand suddenly stops, hanging in midair. Her eyes—facing the window and beyond—are fixed like two emeralds against the bleached light entering in from the overcast day.

“It’s so hard to imagine. Something different from the same thing happening over and over again.”

“I hope you can picture the story happening differently at some point. You tend to get exactly what you think you deserve.”

“How very cruel of you to believe that.”

She takes a sip of martini.

“Why do you always like to focus on the negative?”

“That’s not it.”

“It reminds me of this one time I looked up at the sky and saw these two jets flying right at each other. You know, those jets that you periodically see way, way up there, leaving long streaks of white across the sky?”

“Sounds like something you made up.”

“Oh, stop. These two jets were flying perfectly perpendicular to one another. The path of their trajectories would have to meet at some point. And suddenly I had wished that I had my phone in reach to take a video. I was afraid of what I might witness next. Fortunately nothing happened. Turns out they were flying at different altitudes. Of course that was impossible to tell from the ground. But I feel like you would’ve wished that the two jets had crashed.”

“To think of the pilots’ deaths and the resulting hurt felt by their family and friends upon hearing the news of their deaths. How sad.”

“But I’m not wrong in thinking that you would’ve liked to witness them crash, am I?”

“What about the long streaks of white the two jets left behind in the horizon? You don’t think I enjoyed witnessing a singular, perfect cross of white materializing against a crystalline sky?”

“That part was actually very lovely.”

“Well then.”

“Was I wrong or wasn’t I?”

“I may have enjoyed witnessing the two jets crash into one another.”

“I knew it.”

“Only because it’s ridiculous. They both had the entire, wide open sky and even that wasn’t big enough.”

“But they both would’ve died.”

“I’m glad they didn’t crash! It’s a hypothetical situation, goodness. I don’t enjoy witnessing other people’s failures. That’s not the point. Watching from below, it merely would’ve been comforting to see what rarely anyone ever seems to have the heart to accept—or, much less articulately, like some kind of secret passing only as a fleeting glimmer in their eyes—that maybe this life consists more of loss than anything else.”

“Now you’re just indulging yourself.” 

“Who knows. I feel better having said it. Plus it has me thinking, if two jets traveling in a vast blue sky crash into one another, and there’s no one there to witness it, does it make a sound?”

“The two pilots would’ve surely heard the collision just before getting killed.”

“Or get this, two jets break the sound barrier only to learn the hard way that honking their horns won’t steer them clear of air traffic.

“Get it? Since both of them had broken the sound barrier they failed to hear the other jet honking its horn just before the crash.”

“I’m not so sure that’s how. . . . Now be careful not to spill your drink with all that giggling.

“Really it wasn’t that funny.”

“Oh! If only I could keep it right here! If only the first drink could always last just a little bit longer. Another martini and. . . I don’t want to think about that. God, not at all. Not while it’s flowering. All of the petals still holding on. Both of them are here with me at the same time and how beautiful that would’ve been. After my first drink all those loose black hairs have me.”

“For how long?”

“For a time.”

She finishes the last of her martini. Lowering the glass she turns and gives a cursory look into the quiet and dimly lit depths of her apartment.

“So then.”

“Then what?”

“What today, tomorrow, or after?”

“What the very next minute?”

“I haven’t the slightest clue.”

“For starters—”

Her cell phone starts buzzing on the kitchen counter in the next room. She gets up and hurries to see who’s calling. It’s a spam call. 

“I think I’d like to try dyeing my hair a different color.” 


Joseph Doyague is a writer and photographer living in Chicago. Too indecisive as to whether his apartment is big enough to house a cat, Joseph nevertheless enjoys reading and riding his bike through the city. He is currently pursuing a Masters of Arts in Literature at Northwestern University. www.josephdoyague.com

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