Story Excerpt: Interesting Times

There are two types of people: those that divide people into two types, and those that don’t. I was one of the former. Meghan Leid was one of the latter.

It’s funny, but Meghan was once quite friendly, beautiful, and great in bed. She was also once alive. Meghan also possessed peculiar fertility, having borne a child before losing her virginity.

Fascinating, fascinating woman.

When we were alive—she physically and I emotionally—we had this thing between us we would do. When one of us said something in anger or in unhappiness, the other would try to make the first “promise” the statement to test if the assertion was meant or not. For example, we once argued about where we’d spend Christmas Day—either with her ding-a-ling family or my ding-a-ling family. It was only November 12, not yet the end of the month, but Meghan was nothing if not prepared. I, as it turned out, was not.

So, we argued, and I said, “May you live in interesting times.” This is, of course, an ancient Chinese curse, and one she found particularly disturbing for reasons I’d never learned.

But I did know the power of the curse over her. “Promise me you mean that,” she demanded beautifully. Really everything she did was beautiful, be it yelling, conceiving, or lying dead.

Nailyn, our three-year-old daughter, spelled snow aloud. Snow did not fall. It was November, for Evil Genius’s sake!

Of course, I did mean it, because at that time the best parts of life to me were interesting, so I told her the truth. I said “I promise,” damn it.

But just because I believed it doesn’t mean that’s why I said it. I wanted to provoke her. I wanted to upset her. I wanted to hurt her.

She slapped me quite hard. And even that was beautiful. Damn it.

Then she went outside and died. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, So it goes.

As Vonnegut would say, Listen: Jerrico Leid became unstuck in time.

That was me. That was my name.

Truth be told, I didn’t become unstuck in time. I was actually too stuck in time. When everyone went from Monday to Tuesday, I didn’t. I went from Monday to Sunday. I bounced against some temporal wall and started down the other way.

Of course, I didn’t know that at the time it started.

Here’s how it started.

There are two types of people: those that are psychotherapists, and those that aren’t. Dr. Krause was one of the former. I was one of the latter.

I was staring at the inside of my eyelids, something I’d picked up right after I found Meghan a mile away, fused in the windshield of an SUV she hit when she struck it with her Ninja.

Did you know motorcycles make up one-sixth of all vehicular deaths, but only half a percent of miles driven? I sure didn’t! I learned so many motorcycle factoids over the following forty-eight hours. Everyone had some trivia for me!

Anyway, I hadn’t opened my eyes from the moment I saw Meghan’s body until two days later, when Krause walked in to psychotherapize me, or whatever it is psychotherapists do. Sometimes I’d see splotches of color that would evade my inner eye’s sight when I focused on it, but when I used my peripheral vision. I’d see that they’d coalesce. Into what?

Into what?

But Dr. Krause entered the room I was in and interrupted me. He didn’t ask how I was, was I okay, did I want something to eat, would I like something to drink, what was I thinking about, and would I just open my eyes for one damned second? Well, no one said that last thing, because why would you say that to someone who had a nervous breakdown?

But he did something that the other psychotherapist before him, Salazar, did that puzzled me. “I’m Dr. Krause,” he said.

Who cared? Not me. Not Meghan, six feet under and a hundred miles away. Maybe Nailyn, but then again, she cared about the insides of her nostrils, excavating them for hours at a time. It puzzled me because you would think a psychotherapist’s main concern would be psychotherapeuting the patient, not saying his own name. Who cared?

Eyes still closed, I looked to where the light didn’t meet my eyelids (and hence where he had to be standing to block the light), and said, “Do you know what you call someone who graduates at the very bottom of his medical class?”

“No,” Dr. Krause said.

“Doctor.” This amused neither of us.

It was the same depreciated joke that I told Salazar, and he fell for it, too. I had imagined that at the very least he would have mentioned that the guy with the lame eyes tells lame jokes. Maybe they did, and Krause wanted to see if I’d do it again. The thought made me even angrier. I could feel my pulse in my head.

Maybe they were testing me. Maybe they thought the joke was some sort of defense mechanism so that I didn’t have to deal with Meghan’s death. Maybe they thought the same thing about my eyes staying shut.

That last was a defense mechanism, but not from Meghan’s death. Were that it was that simple. Truth was, I wanted to open them; I was tired of bumping into stuff. But I also didn’t want to, if that makes sense.

Dr. Krause cleared his throat, which is really all the joke required, and said something the previous psychotherapist didn’t. Namely, “You mumbled something in your sleep. Something about ‘interesting times?’”

My last words to Meghan. A curse. May you live in interesting times. She didn’t live for any time at all, only the time it took to speed off on her motorcycle and introduce herself to the rollbar of an SUV.

“‘May you live in interesting times,’” I said aloud to Dr. Krause. With any luck, he’d do the same as Meghan. I really wanted it.

And just like that, my eyes opened of their own accord. I wasn’t even trying to. They just opened. There went that defense.

Jesus Christ, Krause was well-fed! Someone should’ve psychotherapizzled him back when he could still fit into a motorized shopping cart scooter. Surely, there had to be something wrong in the head for him to be that obese!

And just like that, I began the day over. Just…

…like…

…that.

Hey, it was no Immaculate Conception, but one takes what one can get.