bothered

1983 was hazy and sunny as i expected it would be. there was something sad and yet exhilarating about seeing all my friends as three year olds, running across the playground in swirling circles, all wearing their little striped sweaters and corduroy trousers. each one's hair was lighter than it is now. i looked up towards an oak tree on the perimeter of the schoolyard, and my boss was sitting up there, current age, salt and pepper hair, tapping into his blackberry. glitch.

walked across the vast soccer field by the freeway, over the splashes of gold-lit grass, thinking of mishima and his suicide for the sake of his nation. i thought about 2008 and the afternoon my best friend and i sat in the sushi restaurant and agreed we could never kill ourselves; we loved life too much.

1983 quickly became 2010 and i'm living in a crackhouse outside of charlotte. emma is sleeping on the tartan sofa and when i wake her up she is understandably pissed off. she softens faster than i expect, however, and soon we're walking down the road in light jackets admiring the crisp fall air.

we hitch a ride from a silver SUV, an obese woman with equally silver hair drives up front. she talks about the amtrak train that crashed off a bridge into the bayou years ago. she was on that train. she remembers seeing the water as it came closer to the window at alarming speed, waiting for the impact, the water's first touch on her dry hands. she said keeping yourself above water feels like doing sit-ups with a tire on your chest. the conductor was wading through the compartment, inexplicably calm, as if he knew this day was coming all along.

providence road was as far as she'd take us, so we stood on the side of the road again thumbing.

"i'm starting to like you again," i told her, brushing her hair to one side to fake karate chop her on the neck. we talked about which colleges we got into and which ones we didn't.

we both wanted to smoke, neither of us had cigarettes. the chill in the air became more pronounced as the sun fell.

a middle-aged black guy in a brown leather coat picked us up in his toyota avalon. it was spotlessly clean inside. radio tuned to a gospel station. he made sparse small talk.

we watched the trees go past and soon we were climbing a curving road into the hills. the sky was purple with those pink puffy clouds lit from beneath. i turned to look as the entire city spread out below us. the walls and roofs and roads were all tinted violet from the sky above.

"emma, look at that," i told her, turning her by the shoulder slightly. the sky on the horizon looked like an expansive ocean from another planet.

as the streetlights popped on we pulled into a large shopping center. we walked into a country-style restaurant. we met the man's wife, who was waiting there for him. he introduced us and she politely smiled and nodded. i offered to buy them dinner but the man waved it off.

i'm not sure what happened after. the machine ran out of fuel and i came to in the hallway with a car alarm going off in the street. it was 4:48 am.

showering, i remembered that i still don't like emma. there are things that were said that i won't shrug off. still, the future is another thing altogether.