Something Apropos (Short Story)

            When her train pulled into the station on that cold morning, Sarah climbed up into it and found a seat in the near-empty car. Aside from her, there was only a man of about thirty, dressed in a black wool coat and gray slacks. He had a lean, hungry look, not aggressive but intensely dispassionate, and long angular limbs out of proportion to his rather average frame. He was staring relentlessly across the car and out the window opposite him, one row forward of where Sarah had settled in. When she entered, those cold, dry eyes had slid over her but just as quickly returned to whatever fixed point outside the train had bewitched them.

            Sarah gathered her navy overcoat over her legs, cold beneath a long skirt, and produced a slim volume by Kant from the recesses of her large bag. She opened the book and made attempts on it, but an agitated fidget thwarted her in each case.

            After a little while, she gave up and held the book absently on her knee, letting her eyes meander here and there without object. Whenever they happened to glide toward the staring man, he would return the look for a fraction of a second before resuming his strange vigil, his lips moving silently as though in murmured conversation with something unseen outside the train. For all that—and perhaps it was only the clean part in his black hair and the vaguely lupine handsomeness of his neatly shaven face—he did not seem to Sarah to be crazy or disturbed so much as deep in thought and self-forgetful. A sudden impulse made her rustle fitfully for a few seconds before relocating to the seat across the aisle from him.

            “Excuse me,” she said, twisting to see him from her new vantage. “I would never do this, ordinarily, but there’s something about you—and I have this thing weighing on my mind… Well, anyway, would you mind talking to me about something? Or even just listening. I mean, if you… If you don’t mind.”

            As she began, his head turned stiffly—almost mechanically, like a puppet’s—to bring his eyes to hers. His expression did not vary at all from its intent focus, but his lips fell still.

            “I will certainly listen,” he said. His voice was soft but somehow absolute, as if it could betray not one iota of doubt. “But I will not speak unless I am entirely sure that I can help. Because you seem to be troubled. And I will not do anything to add to that trouble if I can help it.”

            Sarah looked at him for a long moment before she had satisfied herself that he was serious.

            “Alright,” she said. “My name is Sarah.”

            “Eli,” said the man, and he clasped his hands and set them in his lap.

            Sarah inhaled sharply through her nose and let the breath out smoothly.

            “Okay,” she said, “the first thing to know is that this is about my work and my boyfriend. Unoriginal, I am aware.”

            “Real things are rarely original,” Eli said.

            “That’s true,” she said, and lapsed into an uncertain silence.

            “Please, continue. What do you do? What is your boyfriend’s name?”

            “His name is Tom… I’m working on a dissertation at Boston College. Kant,” she said, and waved the book vaguely in front of her.

            “What about Kant? Ethics? Aesthetics?”

            “Epistemology, actually. You’ve read him?”

            “Some time ago,” Eli said, and nodded to himself after a beat. He gripped one of the large, shiny buttons on his coat between two fingers and twisted it gently, back and forth. “Anyway,” he said suddenly, “please continue. What is this problem of yours?”

            “Well,” Sarah said, “I’ve been offered a teaching position somewhere else—the University of Chicago. I’m done with all my coursework, so it doesn’t interfere with my dissertation at all, and it’s an enormous opportunity…”

            “That’s a very good job for someone without a doctorate.”

            “Yes, well. They read a few articles I had in some of the journals…” Sarah grew pink around the cheeks and hairline.

            “Ah,” Eli said, and waited, looking at her intently.

            “So,” she began again haltingly, “That’s the crux of it. Tom can’t leave with me—he’s a lawyer at some important firm, just got the job. So, do I stay or go?”

            Sarah hung her head, a feeling of distinct embarrassment washing over her, further flushing her face and scalp with hot blood.

            “I’ll need a little more than that,” Eli said, and there was some soft amusement in his voice. Sarah was unsure if it were mockery or not.

            “Like what?” she said, lifting her head again. She rested it in one hand and fixed her eyes on his feet. She breathed deeply and finally returned his gaze. “Like do I love him?”

            “Fah,” he answered, and the fingers of his left hand flicked out in a somehow intricate gesture like a charm or some bit of sign language. “Who knows what that means to anyone else? No. Just tell me about him.”

            “He’s… driven. Ambitious. Worked his way through college and law school.”

            “Is he kind?”

            “He can be very much so, when he thinks of it, which isn’t always, but often. He’s generous, and a good friend. He likes to spend time with me. Responsible.”

            “How did you meet?”

            “Friends set us up. I’m from here, originally, and when I came back after grad school an old friend told me she had a guy for me… They’d dated for a while but it didn’t stick. She thought we’d be a better fit.”

            “And you liked him.”

            “Yes. He was sweet. He listened to me rattle on about my work and asked questions. He took me on a walk after dinner and told me I was beautiful. It was nice. It still is nice.” She paused.

            “So things are good between you, then?”

            “Yes. Essentially. We argue, of course.”

            “Of course.”

            “We fight sometimes, but everyone does. And when we do, he always tries to make peace, he—” Sarah frowned. “Whenever we fight, he buys the same bouquet. Half a dozen red roses, half a dozen daisies… He leaves them in front of my door…”

            Eli’s eyes glittered, and he flicked his fingers again on the edges of her vision. “Go on,” he said.

            “The same bouquet, every time. And he apologizes but never with— It’s just so stupid,” she said. “Like he can’t think of anything else to do. Flowers and ‘I’m sorry.’” She let a hard breath out, and looked down at the floor.

            “Why do you want to be with this man?” Eli said quietly.

            “It’s not… I didn’t mean I don’t love him,” Sarah said, reddening again. “I do love him. And isn’t that worth making sacrifices for? Worth pain and disappointment?”

            “All, das gross und schön ist…” Eli said, nearly under his breath.

            “What? ‘All that is great and beautiful?’ What is that supposed to mean?”

            “Forgive me,” Eli said. “Of course you speak German, studying Kant. I wasn’t thinking… Just a joke, for myself. Not a funny one.”

            “Alright,” she said, and let her eyes drift.

            Eli bowed his head and cocked it slightly, as though listening to something whispered.

            “I’m sorry,” he said. “You were being sincere. You say you love the man. Something to consider, certainly. But—something else to consider: Antony loved Cleopatra.”

            A quick anger came over Sarah: contempt for the opinion of a stranger, contempt at herself for having asked for it. She sat upright and set her mouth in a hard line.

            “That is a very unkind thing to say about two people you don’t even know, and one of whom you have not even met.”

            “You’re right,” Eli said. His eyes slid back into their strange, distant focus. “I apologize.”

            Sarah twisted to face forward in her seat and opened the book in her lap. She read the same sentence five times before conceding defeat and simply staring at the page.

            Some ten minutes or so went on like that, the train bumping and groaning over the rails while outside the window the muddy brownness of a snowless New England winter stretched on to the horizon.

            “I’m sorry,” Sarah said, not looking up. “I asked your opinion. I shouldn’t be upset that you gave it.”

            “That’s alright,” Eli said vaguely.

            Before long, the train was rolling to a slow stop at a little station in some suburban satellite of Boston. Eli stood slowly and steadied himself with one hand while the other slung a canvas satchel over his shoulder.

            “This is my stop,” he said. “And I’m sure this isn’t welcome—but you should go to Chicago.” He waited while the train crawled its last few yards.
            “Alright,” Sarah said, but his eyes again were caught up in the contemplation of invisible things, and as he walked away from her and off the train toward the bloody sunrise, she was not sure if he had heard her.

Okay? (Short Story)

            “Okay, so here’s what I was thinking—the first shot, the establishing shot, right? We see from his perspective as he’s driving, and it’s kind of dark, you know, we see by streetlight and headlights. Like, you see his hands on the wheel and out the windshield, but you don’t see his head or anything.”

            “How would you get that shot?”

            “I don’t know, man, strap one of those things to his head—a Go-Pro or whatever. That’s not the point. I’m just telling you the concept. Anyway, he’s listening to talk radio, and, you know, it’s real depressing stuff—the economy’s crap, war in the Middle East, that kind of thing, and then we cut to his hand turning the dial, and now it’s a top-forty station cranking out some pop song or whatever.”

            “So it’s like how entertainment is a crutch we use to avoid dealing with the real world?”

            “Well, yeah, dude, but damn it, let it have some subtlety to it. Show, don’t tell, geez.”

            “Sorry, man, but interpretation is the endpoint of all creative endeavor.”

            “Alright, alright, fine. Can I go on, now? So now we’re back to his perspective, and he’s pulling in to some mini-mall, he pulls into a spot, and he parks. He lets the song go on for a few more seconds, and then he shuts off the engine. And as he does that, we cut to a medium shot of him from outside the car, bit of a Dutch angle, right? And this is important, we time it so the sound of the engine shutting off happens exactly when the cut does. We’ve been immersed in his perspective, but now we’re invited to consider him as an object, as external.”

            “Okay, I’m with you so far. I’m thirsty—you want another Coke?”

            “No, come on, man, leave it for, like, five minutes, I’m serious.”

            “Fine, whatever.”

            “So we see him get out of the car, and then we cut to a new shot, behind him, maybe forty-five degrees from his shoulder, right? And he starts walking through the parking lot, he looks both ways, lets a car go by, all that. He’s got his hands in his coat pockets and his head down a little, yeah? Real serious-looking, like he’s deep in thought. We keep following him at that angle like a, what do you call it, a tracking shot, so we never exactly see where he’s headed, until finally he’s pushing through some door. And he’s in a fast food place. We cut back to his point of view, there, too. Looking up at the counter.”

            “That’s to reestablish his subjectivity as the controlling perspective?”

            “Yeah, basically. He looks all profound and high-minded, but he just wants some junk food.”

            “Which fast food place is it?”

            “I don’t know, man. Why’s it matter?”

            “The specificity of it is big. Gives you a sense of concreteness, really fleshes out the sort of ‘horror of banality’ thing you’ve been describing.”

            “Alright, hell. Taco Bell, okay?”

            “Okay.”

            “Wait, wait—no. Del Taco. It’s a regional chain, and it’s like a knock-off Taco Bell. That’s better.”

            “That’s real good. Del Taco’s good.”

            “Yeah, I think so. So we see him order—now we’re shooting from the floor at an angle up, he takes up almost the whole frame. We don’t hear what he says, really, just mumbles, because we have the sound of a ceiling fan or an air conditioner way up high in the mix. This is where we get our first major cut. Now we’re shooting from a booth, you know, one of those ones with the orange benches and the faux-wood tables? The camera’s at a shallow angle to the seat—not tilted, like a Dutch angle, just horizontal. The shot’s closed off to the open side of the booth.”

            “Okay, I think I like that.”

            “Good, right? So we see him slide into the booth with his tray of crap food and then start rustling in his coat pocket. He pulls out a book. I’m thinking either Notes from Underground or, like, Nausea or something.”

“Maybe, like, The Stranger?”

“Whatever, I don’t know. Something like that, anyway. So he pulls out the book and he puts it on the table next to the tray. He opens it and he holds it open with one hand, and with the other he unwraps some of the food. Oh, right, we’ve cut again, wider angle and a few feet further out. We shoot a quick top-down shot first to show the book, and then we’re going again.”

“I was about to say.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry, but I’m just sort of in the flow of it, you know? He’s got the book out and we see him turn his head to look at it, but he can’t keep it that way for long. He can’t really focus, even for a minute. He lets the book close, and he sighs. We never hear him talk, by the way. This is as close as we get.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, no dialogue from him.”

“Interesting.”

“Anyway, he closes the book and he pulls out a phone. He fiddles with it for a minute, then he takes a bite of the food. Then we start doing a series of cuts where we work around like a clock, each new shot showing time passing by the amount of food eaten and the discarded wrappers and stuff, right? And when we get to behind the other side of the booth again, we hold that shot, it’s a longer shot than the others. We see another guy walking into frame from behind the camera—first his head, then the rest of him. He walks up to our main character and he says something like, ‘Hey, brother, listen, I’m out of cash and my card got declined at the gas station. I need eight bucks or so to get enough fuel to get out of here, man, can you help out at all?’”

“Happened to you before?”

“Yeah, it has—details a little different, but basically, yeah. So our guy looks up from his phone and gives the dude a long look. Cold, you know? And a little hostile. Then he fishes out his wallet and hands the guy some bills. That dude counts it up in his head, he realizes it’s the full amount, eight bucks. He says, ‘Thank you so much, for real, man, God bless.’ And he holds out his hand for our man to shake. We cut to a close-up of his face and shoulders, we see he has this sort of tight, almost pained expression. After a beat, the shoulder moves, he’s shaking the guy’s hand. We hear the other guy walking away. And then our man looks back down at his phone and we dolly out and see his right hand on the table, clenched tight.”

“Huh. Okay, so it’s like—”

“Hold on, let me finish, I’m almost done. We linger on that image for a while, and he starts breathing deeper, audible and visible breathing. We see his chest and shoulders rise and fall. And now we get another major cut to the exterior, the parking lot again. We’re shooting from in front of his car, facing the building, but the background’s out of focus. Our man is walking up, eventually getting in focus. He gets into the car, and we watch him back out of the spot, then drive off out of frame. We refocus on the building. Then we cut again, now we’re looking up and over at him from the passenger seat. His face goes from dark to light as he drives through the streetlights. The radio is still on the pop station. After a few beats, he turns off the radio, and the motion is a little bit violent, he sort of stabs at the button. A few more beats and we just watch his face—light, dark, light, dark—and only hear the sound of the road. And then we gently fade to black. So? What do you think?”

I tipped my cup and chewed on a chunk of ice.

“Well,” I began.