A Beautiful Accident

Jimmy and Olivia swap life stories and Jimmy whines a little.

I wake up in a fog on Sunday morning, in someone else’s bed, in the same clothes I wore the night before, with a monster headache. Olivia is asleep next to me, her slender frame curled around a pillow, lips parted, she looks like a painting, or something. (I am still not a poet.) She opens her eyes and they fix on me and I forget all about my sloppy simile and my lack of occupation.

“Why am I alive?” The words escape, like air from a balloon. Maybe they are a remnant from my dream. Maybe these are the words I fell asleep muttering. I regret them immediately, but the question remains unanswered. Of course, as a matter of fact, I know that I am alive because last night a beautiful girl convinced me not to shoot myself in the face. But why? Do you believe in God? Last night made me an atheist. How could an intelligent creator have blessed scum like me with this angel? Life can only be a random accident, a string of unrelated happenings. A beautiful, beautiful accident. 

She touches my face, calm like usual. “Because you are a strong person and you are doing the best that you can.” 

Her words sting like tiny splinters. Beautiful girls tell the best lies. I kiss her palm and every one of her fingers and she asks me to tell her about myself. 

“Like. . . Like what?” I am not complicated. I am the book you can judge by its cover: a road atlas, or the Holy Bible. 

She shrugs, eyes lit like Christmas lights. “Everything.”

“There really isn’t much.” 

“Oh, come on. Tell me your life story. I wanna’ know who your first kiss was, and what you wanted to be when you grew up when you were six. I wanna’ know your favorite color. Everything.”

So I look back at my life and try to think of a few things to tell her. “Well, my first kiss was Samantha Friedman, in the fourth grade. And everyone made fun of me for it for weeks afterwards because she always smelled like cat pee. When I was six I wanted to be a mechanic when I grew up, because I used to help my uncle work on his truck before my aunt divorced him and he became not my uncle. I don’t really have a favorite color, uhm,” I look up at her but she is listening attentively. “When I was seven I broke my arm and a bunch of people who never even talked to me signed my cast. . . I lost my first tooth riding bikes with my brother. When I was eleven our dog, Buster, got hit by a car and my brother cried like a b***h, so my parents never got us another pet. I tried out for the basketball team in high school, which was seriously so s****y. I figured, hey we lose every game anyway, they might as well let me play. Katie, you already know about Katie, I took her to the county fair for our first date and we went on one of those spinny rides and I threw up, a lot.” I chuckle and she laughs, “I did alright in high school, but I didn’t apply myself. When I graduated I went to community college to get a degree in computers. I got a job at the liquor store and started dating Tasha, who was a women’s studies major who dumped me when I flunked out of school. After that I. . . Started drinking, and it, sort of, got out of control, so I quit my job and got sober and decided I wanted to die. And that pretty much brings us to now.” 

She doesn’t bat an eyelash, simply continues looking at me the way she has been and says, “Hm.” Then she rolls onto her back, stretches and asks if waffles sound good for breakfast. 

After breakfast, I help her do the dishes and she says she’s going to go get groceries. She puts on a pair of jeans and slip-on sneakers, but pauses in the doorway, her purse on her arm and looks at me for a moment. 

I look back at her. “I’m not gonna’ shoot myself while you’re gone.” 

“I know,” She adjusts the strap of her purse on her shoulder, “I hid your gun.” With that, she leaves. 

While she’s gone I pace. I cannot surrender to the beautiful fantasy where this is all okay now. No magical transformation took place overnight: I remain useless. I remain unemployed and untalented and uninterested and a burden on the rest if the planet. Any form of happiness is simply a momentary distraction from reality. I still don’t understand Olivia; I don’t understand why she is choosing to spend time with me. She could be with anyone. I am literally the least appealing candidate. A stray dog would be a better companion. I am not good looking, I have no money, my car belongs in a trash heap. Furthermore, she hasn’t made any formal attempt to claim me as her “boyfriend.” We simply exist, separate but inches away from each other.  All at once, she is warm and affectionate, but also aloof and distant. I don’t get it. Is she really that lonely? Or is all of this just because she pities me? 

My headache is much worse now, so I go in search of a distraction to eat up my time. I watch infomercials for a while, then I dust Olivia’s horse collection. I am done by the time she gets home, I help her cary in and unpack the groceries. 

“I rented Back to the Future.” She says, holding up a grocery bag with three dvd’s in it.

I laugh, “Don’t you think that’s too much 80’s sci-fi?” 

She blinks, “Is that a joke?”

I shake my head, chuckling.

“You don’t have to watch it with me.” She turns to put away the cereal.

I roll my eyes, but when everything is in its place we sit with the popcorn nestled between us and watch almost six hours worth of Back to the Future together.

“I haven’t seen these movies since I was like ten.”

She smiles, “I’m sorry.” 

When the movies are over we have a late dinner of stir fry, which is delicious. After dinner we sit out on her back porch for a while together, and she smokes and I stare out at the woods and think about my empty grave. 

“You should tell me your life story.” Because I don’t know what I’m doing and I really need something to take my mind off everything. 

She laughs, coughs a little. “What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know,” I’m suddenly embarrassed for asking. “Who was your first kiss? What’s your favorite color? What did you want to be when you grew up when you were six.”

She laughs, shakes her head. “My first kiss was my older brother’s friend, Nate. He moved away before things got awkward. My favorite color is purple, when I was six I wanted to be a veterinarian when I grew up. I smoked a lot of pot when I was in high school, lost my virginity when I was fifteen. All my friends got pregnant our junior year so I got in my car and left. I waitressed for a while in this stupid little town right off the highway, fucked a different guy every night for a year. Then I met Randy and. . .” She taps the ash off the end of her cigarette and her eyes get sad. “Goddamn it.” 

I wish I could kiss her and make her forget I ever asked, but I can’t.

Author's Note

there are two more chapters which are complete, but I have not put them up yet because they are not titled. =P if you're interested in seeing them let me know and i will toss them up untitled.