The Contradiction of Solitude

by A. Meredith Walters

  “Yeah, I’m comin’,” I told her, following the woman who had so eagerly gotten naked for me just last weekend.

  Margie pulled a lighter out of her pocket and handed it to me. I lit my cigarette and took a drag before giving it back to her.

  “Thanks,” I said, my voice tight as I breathed out a lungful of black cloud.

  Margie tucked the lighter away after lighting her own cigarette, bright pink lipstick leaving a ring on the filter.

  “I hear Tate’s having a party tonight. Are you going?” Margie asked, performing an awkward form of fellatio on her cigarette.

  “I doubt it. I want to finish the build I’ve got going before George hands me my nuts in a sling,” I said, dropping my cigarette butt on the ground and rubbing it out with the tip of my boot.

  Margie pouted her pretty lips. “I’d like you to go, Elian.”

  I gave her a smile. I liked Margie. As much as I was capable of liking anyone. She was sexy and amazing in bed. I considered her a close friend.

  But that was all I was willing to invest in that particular arrangement.

  “Marg, our boy doesn’t do complications. Just ask his last three so-called girlfriends. Or is boink buddy a more appropriate label?” Tate cut in drolly, lighting up a stogie and sitting down on the front stoop.

  Margie flushed a deep red, her mouth flapping open like a fish. “I wasn’t suggesting—” she began. And because I tried to be a nice guy, I gave her hand a quick, comforting squeeze.

  “I know, Margie. I just can’t make it tonight. My head will be somewhere else,” I said, tapping my temple for emphasis.

  Margie gave Tate a less than friendly glare, though the look she gave me was all female longing.

  “Okay, well, if you change your mind, I’ll be there until this jackass pisses me off.” Tate chuckled and held his hands up in mock surrender.

  “This jackass is getting loaded. If the night goes as planned, I’ll be passed out in the bathtub by ten.”

  “Good to have plans,” I chuckled, shaking my head.

  Margie went inside without another word and I kicked Tate in the foot. “Man, give her a break. You really can be a dickhead.”

  Tate puffed on his cigar and blew smoke rings in the air. Needing something to do with my twitchy fingers, I fished another cigarette out of my pocket. Tate, knowing I never carried my own lighter, handed me his.

  “You were the one that dipped your wick in the co-worker. That’s just stupid, Elian. Weren’t you ever told not to shit where you eat?”

  “Your metaphors are really inspiring,” I remarked dryly, my lungs seized with the first drag of polluted air. For a man who smoked almost a pack a day, my body never really acclimated to the vice. My lungs still screamed in protest with every pull.

  My body knew there were limits to my fabrications.

  I licked my lips, picking at a piece of dry skin at the corner of my mouth.

  “You know what I mean. Margie will be hounding you forever now. It was a moron move nailing her. Even if she looks like an instant hard-on.”

  I didn’t bother to answer. Margie was a nice enough girl, and I had no doubt we’d enjoy each other’s company again. But I liked to keep things simple and uncomplicated. And if there were a chance for convoluted, I’d have to shut it down cold.

  “Are you still heading out of town to see your parents next weekend?” Tate asked, changing the subject.

  I nodded.

  “That’s a damn shame. I was really hoping you’d hit the lake with me and the guys.”

  I dropped my second cigarette on the step and ground it out with my toe. “You know I don’t do crowds, Tate,” I reminded him.

  “But this one will be low key. Nothing crazy,” Tate cajoled.

  I shook my head. “Can’t. You know I’ve got plans,” I said, giving him the same story once again.

  “Yeah, yeah, your parents’ anniversary. I guess that’s a good excuse,” Tate muttered, rolling his eyes.

  I smiled, something more akin to a grimace. The lie was so easy to tell. I wondered where the niggling guilt was. Where were the concerns of being found out? None of it was there.

  I was an endless void of feeling. The only joy I felt was in creating Elian Beyer—son, brother, friend, lover. Likable and loved, Elian Beyer was whoever I wanted him to be.

  The friends that I had made since moving to Brecken Forest three years ago were familiar with tales of my mother, Jane, a successful veterinarian and my dad, Kyle, who had just retired from his corporate gig. They knew about my older brother, Wade, who was married with three kids and my baby sister, Leanne, who was just about to graduate from college.

  I had created family get-togethers and holidays spent in front of roaring fires at my parents’ home in upstate New York. I used the excuse of my niece’s christening as the reason I couldn’t work over the weekend last month when instead I stayed at home fighting the ongoing battle against the very real demons I was running from.

  Tate, Margie, and George heard about weddings and funerals and birthday parties. Family reunions and Fourth of July barbeques. Happy. Normal. Typical.

  And I was happy to share the intimate details of my life with the people I had come to know.

  They had no idea that none of it was real.

  It was so much easier living in the make believe world I had invented than to allow myself to think too long on the ugly, misbegotten truth.

  Because Elian Beyer was a lie.

  I ran my tongue over my gums, already jonesing for my next cigarette. Tate was talking. I wasn’t listening. My eyes were trained across the street to the figure moving with an unhurried gait.

  She had her head down, staring with determined concentration at the ground. Unconcerned. Aloof. Mesmerizing. There was something appealing in the way it was obvious she didn’t want anyone to look at her.

  But it was impossible to ignore a woman like that. It was a crime against nature.

  I popped a mint in my mouth and stepped down off the curb. “I’ve got to go see a guy about a thing,” I said absently to Tate before walking out into the road, barely hearing the blast of a horn as someone swerved around me.

  I ran my hands through my hair, wishing I had gotten it cut at some point in the last six months. I had let myself go a bit. There was more cushion in my mid-section. My normally toned arms had lost some of their definition. Somewhere between running and putting down roots I had gotten comfortable.

  Comfort made eating Ding Dongs for breakfast and beer for dinner a common occurrence. I watched the beautiful girl walking in measured strides down the sidewalk. Following. Shadowing.

  I wished I had dressed nicer today. Taken the time to wash my clothes and comb my hair.

  Because then maybe my outside could mask my rotten core long enough to fool her.

  Layna Whitaker, the mystery girl from Denny’s, ducked into the used bookstore, The Lion and the Rose, on the corner of the street. I followed a few seconds later, looking around for her dark hair and slouched shoulders that tried to hide everything.

  I found her over by the counter talking to an older woman and looking bored with the entire exchange. I could tell she didn’t want to be there. She wasn’t interested in whatever the woman was saying.

  Whatever was going on in that beautiful head was more important than the world around her. I wanted inside that head. I wanted to see life in her Technicolor.

  She looked pained and unhappy. She wore the pinched expression of someone hating her life.

  I understood that feeling well.

  She fascinated me.

  I stood there, in the middle of the aisle, blatantly watching her. I wasn’t even trying to hide my obvious stalker behavior.

  Finally the older woman left, leaving Layna alone. She sat down on a stool and pulled out a notebook with a green cover, flipping through pages. She then produced a pencil and started writing furiously.

  I walked toward the counter, not sure what I was doing. I sort of just wa
nted to stand there and watch her for the rest of the day. I almost didn’t want to ruin the uncomplicated perfection of observing her with unnecessary conversation.

  “Hello,” I said, my voice jarring in the quiet.

  Layna looked up, coal black eyes, sad yet lost, bored into mine. I shivered involuntarily.

  “Hello,” she murmured, placing the pencil in the crease of the notebook and closing it.

  I stood looking at Layna, wondering if we’d stay like that all day, as neither of us seemed in a particular hurry to move or say anything else.

  “Can I help you?” she asked after a time, her lips curving upward in what looked like the beginnings of a smile.

  “I’m looking for a book,” I said unhelpfully, grinning.

  Layna snorted. “Any particular book? Or are pages and a cover your only requirement?”

  “What would you recommend?” I asked, enjoying the sound of her voice.

  Yearning hot and molten uncurled in my gut, spreading outward.

  Lust and attraction were dangerous things. They could make a man rush to his death without thinking twice.

  Layna could easily be my death and I wouldn’t care. I wanted her. I lusted. I longed. I desired. I was a man thinking with his penis first and his brain second. But I was enjoying the unreasonableness of whatever this was inside me that painted itself as rational behavior.

  Layna came out from behind the counter and I took my time looking at her. She was thin but not overly so. Her legs were long and I could just make out the curve of her hips beneath her unflattering skirt. The bulky sweater gave no sense of what her tits were like but that didn’t even matter.

  Tits or not, she was lovely to look at.

  She didn’t say anything and I assumed I was to follow her. She climbed the stairs and walked between rows of shelves until she finally stopped and reached up to grab a book. She handed it to me and I smirked when I saw the title.

  The Giant Book of Nothing.

  “Huh. Looks like a humdinger of a read,” I replied flatly.

  Layna cocked an eyebrow. “Humdinger? I don’t think I’ve heard that said this side of 1950.”

  I chuckled. It was stilted and awkward. It didn’t seem to quite fit the mood or the situation. I didn’t know how to act around this oddly arresting woman. Smiling felt foreign. Laughing felt obscene.

  “Call me old fashioned,” I said, clearing my throat as she murdered my laughter.

  Layna didn’t move. She stood there, staring up at me with those big, sad coal black eyes. “So you work here, huh?” I asked lamely.

  If I could have jumped into traffic I would have. After being mortally wounded by total humiliation.

  Layna’s mouth twitched in that almost, but not quite smile that didn’t seem to belong on her face.

  “It would appear that way.”

  I looked around, the book still in my hand, struggling to find something to say. What had possessed me to follow her like an idiot to begin with?

  It clearly wasn’t to engage in witty discourse over the meaning of life.

  “I work across the street,” I told her after an infinite amount of silence.

  “I know,” Layna replied, surprising me.

  I swallowed, loud and thick.

  “Oh really?” I squeaked. Yes, I actually squeaked.

  “I’ve seen you go into the music shop twice a day since I started working here,” she explained, not seeming embarrassed by her admission that she too engaged in stalker-like behavior.

  It was straight and simple fact.

  It should have weirded me out. But it didn’t

  Not in the slightest.

  “I’m a luthier’s apprentice. George owns the shop and he’s letting me learn under him so I can open my own custom shop someday,” I found myself explaining, not sure why.

  “I don’t listen to music. It burrows too deep. I feel it in my bones,” she said softly, and I had to bend towards her so that I could hear the words.

  Normal people would have found her statement off putting. Odd. Uncomfortable.

  We were both way past normal.

  “Maybe you haven’t listened to the right kind of music,” I replied just as softly. It was such a cheesy thing to say. But for some reason, saying it to Layna didn’t feel like a crap come-on.

  It felt real. Maybe the realest thing I had ever said.

  Layna nodded as if she understood exactly what I was talking about. As though she heard me.

  Every interaction with this woman was beyond strange.

  “Maybe you’d like to come see my stuff sometime,” I offered, my casual confidence disappearing under the weight of her gaze.

  Layna chewed on her lip. Small, perfectly white teeth nibbling on plump, red flesh.

  “Tonight. After I get off work,” she said, seeming to make an important decision in her acquiescence of my suggestion.

  Typically I left the studio at six. But for her, I’d wait.

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  Layna inclined her head toward the book still in my hands. “Are you going to buy that?”

  I handed it back to her. “I’ve had enough nothing in my life.”

  Margie and Tate left two hours ago. Margie had asked three more times whether I’d go to the party later.

  “Thanks, Marg, but you know I can’t,” I told her for what felt like the hundredth time. She looked unhappy. I kissed the top of her head and patted her back. “Go get yourself a piece of ass and put a smile on that beautiful face.”

  She had flushed, and I could tell she didn’t know whether to be upset at my dismissal, or flattered at my compliment. But I knew that she would get over her hurt feelings and that we would be fine. I was good at keeping friends.

  Until my life didn’t allow for them anymore.

  George wasn’t surprised when I told him I’d be staying late. It wasn’t unusual for me to burn the midnight oil working on a project.

  As I sat in the darkened studio, smoothing the edges of the new fret board I had just finished, I felt as though I were waiting on the edge of the world. It was an odd sense of anticipation and disquiet that I couldn’t place or understand.

  I also realized I had never asked Layna when she got off work. She hadn’t offered any details, and I hadn’t thought to ask for them.

  I may very well be sitting in the shop all night waiting on a girl who never told me when she’d be coming.

  I looked at the time on my phone. It was just after nine. I stood up and stretched my back, hearing the satisfying pop of joints and bone.

  I picked up the discarded chip bags and the remnants of the burrito I had had for dinner. Tossing them in the trash as I walked out into the main store. Rolling my head from side to side, I rubbed at my neck, noting how sore I felt from being bent over my workbench for the last few hours.

  Then I stopped in my tracks.

  “Shit,” I all but yelled.

  Layna was already there, looking up at the guitars lining the walls. I hadn’t heard her come in. She had slipped in silently without my noticing.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said, her voice ever soft, glancing over her shoulder.

  “No. I just didn’t hear you come in. Have you been here long?” I asked, tossing my trash in the bin behind the register.

  She was studying one of the guitars intently.

  “This is one of yours,” she said, lifting her finger and letting it hover over the shiny wood. She didn’t ask, she stated.

  “Yeah, it is. It’s one I just completed last week actually.” I was surprised she could know that this particular instrument was of my creation. She didn’t know me. She had no idea of my style. Yet somehow, someway, she knew.

  It was eerie. It was flattering.

  I was unsettled.

  The acoustic guitar she indicated had taken nearly three weeks to complete. I had meticulously sanded down the rich rosewood that composed its body until it sheened. The Canadian spruce top shone in the dark.
I was proud of it. More so than any of the guitars I had made before.

  There was something personal about this piece. I felt as though I had bled myself dry when I had made it, giving it everything I had. There were elements of the real Elian within the guitar that were inconsequential to anyone but me.

  I hadn’t wanted to put up for sale. I had even argued with George about it.

  “My shop, my product. You used the tools I own to make it, it belongs to me. This will make us both a pretty penny. Stop being such a wimp about it,” he had barked, annoyed when I suggested we keep it as a showpiece instead.

  I had wanted to hit him. Smash his face into a dozen, bloody pieces. But I had swallowed my fury and backed off.

  It’s what Elian Beyer would do.

  The slopes and lines were reminiscent of the guitar my sister had left behind. Her favorite. The same guitar I kept in its case beneath my bed to this day. The guitar that hadn’t been played since I was twelve years old.

  I had fashioned the headstock from a recognizable symbol.

  A nautical star.

  The same symbol I now had tattooed on the center of my back for reasons that were mine and mine alone.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said genuinely. She carefully traced the line of the star, barely touching.

  Her appreciation caused something warm to unfurl in my gut. Hot and liquid it spread with the beat of my heart through my veins.

  “Do you play?” I asked, noticing the covetous way she regarded the guitar.

  “Never,” she said quietly, her fingers recoiling from the wood as though stung.

  “Would you like to hold it?” I asked, reaching around her to lift the guitar off its wall stand. My front pressed, ever so slightly, into her back. She stiffened instantly.

  My arms, encircling her body from behind, but not touching, held the guitar. “Here,” I told her. She slowly took the offered instrument, and I moved back, only a fraction of an inch.

  She held the guitar naturally. Her left hand clamping down on the neck, tips of fingers pressing down on the strings. She didn’t struggle with the weight, though I knew it was heavy.

  She lifted her hand and lightly touched the strings. I noticed that she was shaking and I wondered about it. But I didn’t ask. I wasn’t in the habit of prying into people’s business. I knew the importance of secrets.