Thursday, May 15, 2008

• Novella Part III

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  Four O’Clock.  Lyla felt a resurgence of energy on her way down to the basement bathroom.  She flicked on the cylindrical sodium light over the decaying sink and sat down on the toilet.  The plumbing breathed beneath her, humming an ethereal chant in its dark underground abyss.  She thought about Jaclyn and Shelli in the dark windowless room.  She was surrounded by cracked concrete walls with brown-black soot wandering from the upper corners.  She picked up her polka-dotted mini purse from the cold, peeling cement floor and fished out her cell phone.  She selected Shelli’s newly-inserted name and stared at it for some time.  Running her left hand through her curly brown hair, she clicked the call button.  The unmotivated dial tone came once, twice, three times.  ‘She won’t pick up’ she thought over and over again.

          “Hello?”  Her voice sounded dry and blunt like her younger sister’s.  Lyla thought it may actually be Jaclyn for a second.

          “Hi!  Shelli?”

          “Yeah.  Who’s this?”

          “Okay.  Do you remember a Lyla Brantz from, like, lifetimes ago?”

          (A long pause)

          “Is it you?”  Said her unsurprised voice.

          “It is, yeah.  I ran into your little sister Jackie this morning and she told me you were coming into town soon.”

          “Yeah I am.”

          “Yeah, great, great.  I was wondering if you wanted to get together, talk about old times and stuff.”

          “Sure.  Yeah I’d like that a lot.”

          “Great.  Well then, yeah, give me a call once you’re in town okay?”

          “Will do.  Bye.”

          Shelli closed her phone.  The toilet’s pleasant humming ceased completely, giving the desolate little bathroom the feeling of a deep pond.  Lyla wondered what motivated that call, not knowing how to feel about Shelli’s reaction.  She expected something more lively, more giddy.  That was exactly how she was in the old times.  Lyla’s usually-infectious positive energy always flew around as though circumventing her like a boomerang coming back with an air of neutrality.  She just thought she’d be more excited.

  She took her place again behind the wooden counter in the main room of the store.  The place really didn’t suit her; she felt like a librarian hiding out from the world outside.  The place was both cozy and creepy.  The only people she imagined ever coming in were the ghosts of the old authors whose books decorated the tall bookshelves.  They were all lost in limbo, trying to channel what it was like to have been human by reading what was contained in their old words printed on musty, fragile pages.  Lyla wondered if she creeped Shelli out.  ‘How would I feel if Shelli Cho just called me up outta nowhere?’  No one came in for the rest of her shift.  She locked up with her little nub key. 

  • 7:53 PM
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