Beloved Ice Cream Bar
It is late, nearly tomorrow, but I am awake in the dark of the bedroom. My brain is anxious tonight, for reasons which are both important and not, at the same time. Hunter is asleep in the bed beside me, but I don’t want to wake her, though neither do I want to keep staring up at the anxiety monsters that flit about like bats in the air above the bed. Instead, I pick up my phone and send a text to Viola, two time zones in the past from me, and certainly awake right now.
Tell me something, I text.
What do you want to hear? she asks.
Tell me something about college.
We had met at university in the last century, in the communications department. We’d bonded over a shared love of David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch, and there was no going back after that. Rivi says that she herself knows all of my secrets, but Viola is the one who actually does.
The Macs in the computer lab, she says. Remember how they were all named after historical dictators? Pol Pot. Idi Amin.
Francisco Franco, I text. Mao was the best. He had the scanner connected to him. Everybody wanted Mao.
The revolving door in the darkroom in the photo lab, Viola says. Where we could go load our film without having to use changing bags. Pitch black in there, warm like a blanket fort.
Where you used to make out with that boy, what’s his name.
Rob, she texts, and I can hear decades of eye-rolling in that one word. What a moron.
He was pretty bad, I say.
Not him. Me. For ever dating him in the first place.
What else? I ask.
Our optimism, she says. Our hopefulness. Our belief that things could only get better.
Howard Jones lied to us about that. We should sue the shit out of him.
Having a bad night, Sebastian? Viola asks.
How can you tell?
You only want to talk about college when you’ve got bad brain going on.
Remember in school where you would put your forehead against mine and tell me that you could read my mind?
Sure, she says.
I’m going to put my phone against my forehead. You do the same and you’ll know how I’m feeling tonight. I put the back of my phone to the space above my eyebrows and leave it there until I feel the soft vibration of a received text come through.
If I had a time machine, she says, I would take you back to the darkroom, and we could sit there together. I would hold your hand, and we could breathe in the plastic scent of undeveloped film and taste the photographic chemicals in the air. I’d put my forehead against yours, and we’d be optimistic and hopeful, and there wouldn’t be any anxiety monster bats over your head.
I don’t know why you love me like you do, I say, but I’ll take it.
I’ve known you since before you could grow a full beard, she says. Too late to stop now.
Hey. One thing. How did you know about the monster bats over my head? I ask.
Sebastian, she says. My precious. My beloved ice cream bar. I read your mind, silly boy.
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