Nicole Who Drew Blood
The black hole compresses my body. I am thousands of miles long. I am shrinking. As I recede from the sky, the crescent returns to the moon. I am pressing into human proportion. My eyes catch the light, and the tunnel recedes. The air sucks into my lungs. It hurts. It hurts less. I feel fine. My head aches. The blood draws back into the wound. The snow is red. The snow is pink. The snow is white. The wound at my temple seals as my head drags backwards and up. Sliding in the same direction, my elbows ache until I am up and over and gliding, and for a moment, I think this feels wonderful. Then the fear surges. The fear recedes into confusion. My heart has been beating so fast. I settle back on my bicycle as it tilts upright, at which point my eyes focus on the opposite end of the park. I live at that end of the park. I cannot see my building through the trees, and, besides, my building is a few blocks down. I am thinking about my cat. I am thinking that she must be missing me. My bicycle slides across the patch of ice, wobbling left and right until it reverses to pavement. I panic, pulling at my handlebars until the bicycle slows to the steady beat of my feet on the pedals, at which point, confusion recedes entirely. Although, I worry that my path may not be as safe as I remember it being in the afternoon. The sun has melted some snow, and some of that has refrozen. I worry about that until I have yet to notice it. I am pedaling and watching my breath. It is a fog around me. This has always been pleasant. I am smiling at it. I am smiling because I remember being young and smiling. The man on the bench reminds me of my time. The bench is a few yards away from the path that I bike through. The man seems old and young at the same time. I cannot make out his age from this distance, and he seems to be asleep, which worries me. Siting on the bench asleep. Someone should wake him. This weather is deadly, I think as my wheels wobble on the ice. The man slips out of my line of sight. I look down to straighten my wheels. I am worried until I reverse off of the ice and everything is fine. I admire the Christmas lights in all of the buildings around the park. The neighborhood is radiant, and I am glad to be here, I think as I reverse through a half-frozen puddle. I know that I should pay closer attention to the path ahead of me. The fingers of dense, cold water retracting into the well in the pavement are mesmerizing. They are glassy and glittering all of the way down until they ripple and still in the black pool. My bicycle tire retracts out of it. There are shrubs on either side of me. They are lined up in a row and getting longer. They look blue in the moonlight. I might have children someday and take them here. I imagine their little hands running along the pointed ends of the tear-shaped pine needles on the shrubs. This would be in spring. We would build snowmen in the winter. Motherhood is tricky, but I think I can do it. I look back at the auto accident I am pedaling towards, grateful that I am off of the roads. Slowing down, I dismount, pressing one leg back to the earth with force and swinging the other off of my bicycle. The argument gets louder as I walk my bicycle back towards them. I try to make it seem that I am not listening as I glance out of the corner of my eye at the front end of the second car, looking over its body to the broken rear and the first car thrust into it. The two drivers are arguing in the street. One screams that he is almost home. He has to get home. His girl is sick. He does not explain what that means. If he has a daughter or a wife or a girlfriend or a pet. His girl is sick. The other man is shouting expletives. What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? Walking back behind the incident, I see that the first car has its hazard lights blinking. There are two people arguing in the street. My anxiety recedes as I walk further back along the fenced perimeter of the park. I remount my bicycle, swinging one leg over it. I am up over my seat, pedaling until I am gliding. I reverse from the pavement to the street on my left. Going through the intersection, I see my light counting up from three. I think that I am going to make it. Then, less confidently, I think that I have just enough time to make it. Then I am on the other side of the intersection, slowing down, thinking that I had better speed up if I am going to make it. I am being careless, looking neither left nor right, but I have the light. I have it for a moment. I am not thinking about the light. I am pedaling for a few blocks, and I feel grateful that it is such a quiet night. There are few cars and fewer cyclists. No pedestrians. I am alone with my fantasies. My thoughts return to the attendant at the pet store. Maybe, maybe. Maybe next time. Maybe I will ask him out. Though I slow my bicycle, my heartbeat quickens. My bicycle slows to a stop. I kick my kickstand down. I swing a leg over and off of it. I touch my head and am embarrassed to find that I have not removed my helmet. Walking backwards to the pack at the end of my bicycle, I unbuckle the pack and remove my cat’s food. My palms are sweating all over it. I walk backwards through the store’s sliding glass door, waving goodbye to the attendant until I am back at the counter where he tells me that his name is Michael, and I tell him that mine is Nicole. He scans my bag of cat food and recommends me a book that I might like. I tell him that I have been reading a lot of Joan Didion lately. He asks what I have been up to. I greet him and resent that I sound so eager. He waves enthusiastically and says, “There you are,” as I walk away from the counter with my cat food wondering if the attendant that I like is working tonight. I can never remember his name, but I try to watch whatever he recommends to me, read whatever he recommends to me. I return the bag of food to the store’s shelf. I shuffle quickly along the edge of the store backwards to the door. My palms start to sweat a little. There are usually only two attendants, and one is very handsome and very interesting and very good to talk to. The other one is there to earn a paycheck. The sliding glass door opens behind me. Backing out of the store, I see that the attendant is not at their station. They may be cleaning up around the other corner. Outside of the store, I note its hours and that I have ten minutes until they close. My heart rate settles as I back myself off of my spot on the curb, lifting the kickstand with one foot, propelling backwards as I pick up speed and pedal again. I decide to purchase my cat a nice new food for the occasion. And it must be Christmas. I have never observed the holiday. Some stores in the neighborhood are closing early, though. I reverse to my left around a corner, asking myself why the streets are so empty and the small storefronts so dark. I try to keep my chin tucked into my scarf. It has gotten so much colder since the sun set. I am back in my body settling myself. I reverse over a fissure in the pavement, and I am out of my body. I am of the air around me, delighted to belong just so. I have lived here longer than some but less than others. It has been easier to make friends than I expected. To think that I moved here for work. Picked the community at random. I will never be so brave again, I think. I could never be so frightened again. I would never survive this twice, and I suddenly remember that I have been here for a little more than a year already. Just as suddenly, my mind blanks. Thoughts running back. I am only biking. I reverse right around a corner. The streetlamps are coming on. The sky lightens to purple. It lightens to pink. There is snow all around, but people here are good about shoveling it off of pavement. My wheels crunch on the salt strewn around. The caffeine plateau spikes. I am pedaling back into the white noise of my coffee, laughing at myself for having so much so late. I am slowing to a leisurely spin until I return to the coffee shop where I stop. I dismount. I remove the bike chain from the pack on the end of my bicycle. I fasten it to the bike rack. Walking backwards, I appreciate my bicycle next to Carol’s. The pink of the sky grows brighter, and although neither of us have pink bicycles, I wish that we both did. I unfasten my helmet from under my chin. I remove it from my head, place it in my underarm. The door to the coffee shop opens behind me. I grasp the handle on the inside of it and pull it back until it closes. Then I unzip my coat. I unwind my scarf. I remove my gloves and tuck them in the interior breast pocket. I put my helmet down on our table. I pull one arm out of my coat’s sleeve, waving goodbye. I pull my other arm from the other sleeve. I settle in at the table at which we have been sitting, returning my scarf to the back of the chair, draping my coat over that. I resume sitting, and Carol reassures me that she will return the mug from which I have been drinking. I ask her where to put it now that I have finished. I explain that I must get going, have enjoyed our time together. I realize what time it is. The laughter comes bubbling back up and out of me. Little tears condense at the corners of my eyes and slip back to where they came from. I am laughing. Carol is laughing. The sky shifts from pink to orange. A beam of light falls on us from the window. We are laughing so much and so loud that I wonder what other people think of us. The sun is on us. Carol is beautiful. She says the funniest thing that I have ever heard. I laugh so long and so hard. I laugh and laugh. I think to myself how unfair it is that things can be so good. I think to myself that nothing should be so perfect. I feel wonderful. I feel so wonderful.
Taylor Thornburg is an author and essayist based in Chicago, IL where he hosts the Factory Setting prose workshop and After Hours reading series at Quimby's bookstore. His debut novel, Agathe, 6:00 pm to 7:27, can be found at Lost Telegram Press. His other fiction can be found in The Garfield Lake Review, L’Esprit Literary Review, Thirteenth Floor Magazine, Valley Voices, The Heartwood Literary Review, Disco Kitchen, and elsewhere.