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It's Monday morning. My brain isn't quite functional enough yet that I can type a clear entry. Instead, I thought I'd post something I wrote a long time ago. The actual name of the piece is "Worst Possible Scenario", which is also the name of a horrid little game I play with myself a lot. WPS involves looking at a situation you're in and imagining the worst thing that could happen as the real, actual outcome. Artboy and I had gone to see Jim Carroll do a spoken word show at Mama Kin the night before I wrote this. Jim Carroll's show was wonderful. The Artboy's and my show was not...
They turned down Lansdowne Street, where all the clubs were, even though the chance of finding a parking space was close to nonexistent, but there were spaces on the street, and someone was going to park in them, and remember how lucky they had been the night they went to see Shawn Colvin at Lupo�s and found the space right out front, so you never know, why not tonight? But by now, the only spaces left on the street were patrolled by valets, so they went to cruise around the block because, although he wouldn�t pay for parking, he wouldn�t walk too far, either, suburban-bred child that he was.
Turning right at the end of the street, they almost took out a pair of steroid monkey jock assholes and their big-haired, micro-miniskirted girlfriends. One of the jocks gave them the finger as he disappeared around the corner, headed no doubt to Top 40 dance night at Avalon, assuming his girlfriend�s fake ID was good enough to get her in. "Dickhead," he muttered, "sorry I missed him."
She studied him as he drove, this man who caused ambivalence in her such as she had never before experienced, love and hate so complexly intermingled that they had become a completely new feeling particular to her as directed toward him.
She was in a lousy mood, tired and depressed, with a headache coming on because she hadn�t eaten anything since lunch, short with him when he attempted to tease her (as she was only when she was tired and depressed and ill and hungry). She watched him from the far side of the truck seat, farther away than she had maybe ever sat while he was driving, instead of right up against him as usual, her hand playing casually up and down his thigh.
Tonight, she didn�t want to be that close to him, didn�t want to hold up the pretense of the happy couple to anyone looking into the truck cab, thank you very much. She wondered if her distance had even registered with him--the physical, let alone the emotional--or if he had succeeded in getting himself too stoned to feel anything, including surprise or wonder at her lack of proximity. He hadn�t acknowledged it, anyway, although she didn�t think he had smoked that much (due more to lack of weed than to sense or sensibility, she was sure).
No luck on that street, either. They stopped at the end, waiting to rejoin the Brookline Avenue traffic, an empty parking space just a short left turn ahead. "How is it your way?" he asked, not looking in her direction.
She glanced out the window, her mind registering a loud 18-wheeler barreling toward the truck, too close to stop for them, should they get in its way, just reaching the spot for maximum impact.
"All clear," she heard a voice say, though it seemed too far away to be her own. With no hesitation, staring ahead as if his concentration alone would keep the space empty, he stepped hard on the gas, moving, as she had known he would, directly into the path of the oncoming driver.
She couldn�t know if it was the blaring horn or the loud squeal of the brakes that finally got him to turn her way. She knew only the fear and confusion and misplaced trust in his expression as he looked, half at her, half at the ton of metal connecting itself to her side of the truck.
She smiled at him through the collision, thinking briefly that the crash must look spectacular from the street. "Just like a movie set," she murmured as her consciousness slipped mercifully away.
"Hey--spacey--all clear or not?" he asked again, laughing as he turned his head toward her, able to see for himself that the road was, in fact, empty.
"Yeah, we�re fine," she finally replied, taking the hand he offered her, moving closer to him across the vast expanse of vinyl as she shook the terrified face of the truck driver out of her mind. "We�re just fine.
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