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Future Perfect

Posted on December 22, 2006
Filed Under The Stories |

She was wearing her hair straight that night, even though it was easier for the curls to frame her round face. She was holding her glass of vodka-lime close to her face, as if the cold from the glass was her only refuge in that hot, steaming party room. She was engrossed in conversation with another girl her own age when he walked up to her. There was nothing to herald his presence by her elbow, no chorus of angels or people complaining because they had been shoved aside but suddenly she knew that she was the object of someone’s attention. She turned to look directly into soft brown eyes framed by almost womanly eyelashes and her eyes flickered with interest. She wouldn’t know until much later that his mouth was always framed by stubble. Her friend paused, mid-sentence, because she knew that her words were bouncing off a sudden, invisible force-field that she was outside of.

Inside the force-field she suddenly remembered that a girl is supposed to act aloof so she willed an impermeable film to come over her eyes. So his eyes flickered, in surprise. Her spine angled imperceptibly away from his intrusion into her personal space and he was forced to lean that same immeasurable amount inwards so that he could say, “I think we might be able to have a short but passionate and extremely dysfunctional relationship.” Her lips parted and a laugh escaped her teeth. Her friend could not believe what she was hearing. But then, it wasn’t she who was the rock star who would live, love and suffer heartbreak on the edge of sanity for several years before the death of her child pushed her over the edge into the unyielding abyss that is madness. People would always claim that the poor reviews and flat-lining sales of her last album drove her to the combination of drink and pills that finally accorded her in a rock ‘n roll finale. Others would claim that the government was involved in clamping down on escaped secrets that politician’s wife had shared with the rock star in her excitement to get the goddess’s attention. Others still would claim that she didn’t really die and that her ‘death’ was simply a way to avoid paying taxes on the album sales that shot through the roof the moment word of her passing began a media frenzy.

No her friend was not to know any of this would come to pass. All she could do is shake her head and walk away as the rock star and her latest infatuation began announcing their intention to consummate their first encounter in plain sight of everyone at the party.

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