Something to Live For
Max Lichtenstein
Saul awoke from unprecedented dreams with the new awareness that he was in love.
“Oh, hell,” he said.
He paused to consider this as the sun assaulted his sleep encrusted vision. “Oh, hell,” he repeated.
Consideration had changed nothing. Outside the window, birds flitted in the trees. Two chirped in honeyed unison.
“Give me a break.” Saul threw himself out of bed. “Bluebirds? Really?”
His irritation was a marshmallow pink at that point. Forty minutes later, when Saul was about to catch the bus, it had deepened to a battleaxe blood-red. He took a look at the cottonwood outside his window. The nests were huge and weathered. The bluebirds must have been there for years, and he’d only noticed them today. The crimson curdled into rotting pomegranate.
Sally, named for a fifties sitcom character by a widower welder, was never sure what to do when Mr. Summers came in late. She’d poured some fresh water in the A-for-effort centerpiece bouquet on the conference room table, though virtually no water had evaporated from yesterday morning. She’d put on coffee. Now she tried to play a few rounds of Minesweeper, but her heart wasn’t in it.
To avoid confusion, let me tell you that Sally was not the befuddling bonita that had brought aviary awareness into Saul’s life, though she would have been devastated had she known it wasn’t her. No, the sudden ecology lesson was brought on the previous night when, for reasons that will become painfully obvious, another Greenwich Hills resident with a knack for living in the moment went home to apartment 1 rather than 1 1.
Kara, named Caroline by a bank manager with foolishly high expectations of his daughter, was the one responsible for Saul’s bluebird-tainted morning. Her morning was little better, even though it was practically noon when the blender in her skull shook her out of bed. Eyes bloodshot, tongue sandpaper, nose bloody, long brown hair a telling sign of last night’s denouement. This was not the first time she regretted putting a mirror on the wall opposite her bed. In her usual morning ritual, she found her way to the bathroom via trial and error and popped a few Advil, swallowed a sleek pink pill in a dirty Ziploc bag she pulled from a pile on the toilet tank, puffed a few puffs of whatever greenery was in her little blue pipe in the medicine cabinet, then had a few more Advil. She took a shower and passed out halfway through. All this was par for the course. Then Kara’s by-the-numbers morning swung off balance. Daryl, named by well-meaning but nomenclaturally inept parents, shaved. He was extraordinarily careful not to nick. He fixed himself lunch, then cleaned all his plates and put them away. He made his bed, folded his laundry, and took out the trash. He dusted the coffee table and the dresser. He polished the sink. Then he took the revolver from the tiny box in the ceiling and clicked off the safety. He sat for nearly an hour, not vacillating but merely contemplating. Musing. Wondering. Anticipating. Much the same way a Japanese tourist might ponder the Grand Canyon before scurrying back on the bus to the next sweeping view of American rocks......continued in print edition.
