InkStains January

by John Urbancik

doesn’t know what happened tonight. He stops at a bar, buys a beer, tells a girl what he knows. She’s not interested. Later, when he’s alone, when he doesn’t know her name but knows he’ll never see her again, he’ll write her a poem. He’ll do this in his bedroom. The window overlooks the street.

  He feels the street’s venom in his veins. He stops at some other convenience store for a bottle of water. He’s not loyal. It’s just a paycheck.

  He walks in. The other two guys are here, about to do their thing, the same thing, to the girl working here. She’s young and tiny, and one good fist upside her heard could be the final bite of the snake. But everything pauses when he walks in. A bell on the door announces his arrival with a tinkle. The guys pause, caught. The girls slips back, out of their trap, only now that it’s too late even realizing it was there.

  The fist-happy thieves glare, but he only shrugs and smiles. It’s provocative. Dangerous. Like sticking your tongue out at a cobra. They’re coiled tight but losing patience. He tells them, “It’s not your night.”

  They’re about to launch themselves at him, they’re half an inch from lashing out, when the girl pumps her shotgun. The sound echoes over the convenience store’s cheap tiled floor, bounces off stale donuts and frightening hotdogs. She announces, “We’re closed.”

  It’s enough to take the sting out of their fangs. They leave, faking nonchalance, barely able to contain themselves. When they hit the street, they run.

  He goes to get his bottle of water but she swings the shotgun around. She says, “Out.”

  He nods once, sadly, despite a bit of thirst he’s got to bite back. He doesn’t have to fake calm as he leaves the shop. He’s on the street again, the snake. He feels its dangerous energy through the soles of his feet. But he doesn’t understand.

  30 January

  The temp arrived for her first day of work twenty minutes early. It was phone stuff, assisting people in doing things, which probably meant convincing people the thing they were being made to do was somehow better than they thing they wanted to do.

  The temp was one in a class of twelve, though it should have been thirteen. Already, before beginning, one was lost. The instructor was a young, enthusiastic man who believed all the things he said, even if he didn’t understand them.

  The temp learned well. She feigned interest. It was shortly before noon before the instructor realized something was wrong. Perhaps it was the way she smiled, or the way she wore her hair. Maybe her accent. But something about her was different than any of the others, different in an uncomfortable way.

  She called herself Jenny. The instructor wondered if that was her real name. Maybe it was Jennifer. Or Genevieve. Or something entirely different thanks to a witness relocation plan or because she came from a foreign country. Or another planet.

  He found himself watching her in the afternoon, waiting for her to do something to justify the attention, but nothing happened. The day progressed as any other. After a full day of instruction, the temp and all the other temps left, and the instructor stayed behind to go over tomorrow’s lesson plans.

  The temp was friendly, but didn’t actually make friends. Who does, the first day of a new job? She went to her car and went home just as everyone else did.

  He found himself thinking about the temp, this so-called Jenny. He couldn’t concentrate. He went home.

  The temp did not show up for the second day of instruction. It happened. One of the others also didn’t come back. The instructor gave the class anyhow, and in the afternoon sent his students to listen to working agents do their thing on the phone.

  The temp never came back. She didn’t run into him at the supermarket or in the bookstore. He never looked over at the car next to him in traffic to see her profile.

  It was her eyes, he finally decided, that he couldn’t forget. They were too far apart, or too narrow, or too coppery in color. She used them well, even when just in learning. He could get used to staring into eyes like those.

  Failing to find the temp in real life, he dreamt about her. He couldn’t remember her voice, so she never said anything. She watched him, just as he watched her. It started to get confusing. He didn’t know who was the dreamer. Who was the dream? He looked forward to sleep, knowing he might – only might, there was no guarantee – see the memory of her, catch a glimpse of an image, a reflection, an echo.

  He saw her dream image when he was awake. First, in his apartment, in his kitchen, standing near the stove and staring, simply staring. He blinked, and she was gone. Then in the classroom, standing in the back of the room, watching and listening, giving him the full benefit of her eyes until he looked directly at her. She wasn’t there.

  Head full of wine on a Saturday night, he saw her in the parking lot standing beside his car, waiting, smiling mischievously, those eyes catching the light. But she was only mist. Smoke. A wisp of nothing, and not even that.

  Eventually, he got another job in another city, packed up his apartment, and left. He hoped to leave the temp, too. But hope isn’t currency. He saw her on the interstate and he saw her on the side of the road, hitching a ride, except she wasn’t really there. No one was.

  He met a woman in the new city and they started dating. Her eyes were arresting. She was smart and strong and excessively real. For a time, he didn’t see the temp anywhere.

  Then one night in a dreamt-desert, she said to him, “I’ll never leave you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You won’t let me go.”

  As he aged, the temp did not. She was a moment of frozen time. She looked nothing like she’d actually looked, he was sure. He didn’t remember her, he only remembered the memory of the temp.

  He never told his wife about her. He never told his children, though she’d been there for their births. He wasn’t sure if he was cheating on his wife or on the temp. He tried to convince himself he wasn’t being dishonest.

  In his 60s, a stroke struck him down. He couldn’t see properly anymore, or think right, or speak at all. It was unpleasant from the start, and it only got worse.

  The temp would visit him in the hospital, after hours, late at night, after the nurse did her rounds. She’d stare at him with those eyes. She said, “So sad.”

  It was a struggle to speak. “What?”

  “Everything about you,” she said. “I saw it from the start. You’d had dreams. What happened to them?”

  “You stole them.”

  She shook her head. “You can’t blame me. I’m not real. I’m not even a figment of your imagination. I’m a misfired synapse. I’m a faulty brainwave. You got stuck on me. I didn’t stick myself to you.”

  He tried to apologize, but words were hard for him.

  “Don’t apologize,” she said. “It’s too late for that. Release me.”

  He tried to tell her he’d never had her, but his tongue refused to cooperate.

  “Let me go.”

  He thought that would be a good thing. He had a family. A life. Something of a life.

  He died in the night, wife at his side.

  The temp took a long, deep breath. It was her first in almost four decades. She shook out her hair and walked out of the hospital. She disappeared in the night, swallowed by the moonlight, in search of her own dreams and the girl she’d been.

  31 January

  It is a big house built of dream stuff and whispers and champagne bubbles. It’s at the end of a long, winding drive flanked by mythical statuary and numerous hedges and flowers and the occasional video camera, all behind ornate iron gates topped with gargoyles and barbed wire. To put it simply: one does not arrive here inadvertently, but by invitation.

  A line of fancy cars and supercars and limousines lead up to the doorway. Bored chauffeurs lean against their empty vehicles smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap whisky. The good stuff’s being served inside by tall, thin models and muscle-bound youths wearing dog collars.

  Stephanie arrive in her sporty red BMW. She wears a mass of thin platinum s
trings about her neck and a gown designed by next year’s top name. She ascends the stairs to the front door like a movie star, but there are actual movie stars here so almost no one seems to notice her.

  “You look wonderful.”

  “Such a lovely display.”

  “Have you tried the eel?”

  “Have you met the Maestro?”

  It promises to be a long night. There are plenty of faces to see, and the artwork – museums’ envy – on the walls, and the wandering violinists, seven or eight of them moving about like smoke on the mountain.

  Stephanie accepts an offered glass of something that tastes like lost innocence. It’s very sweet, and potent.

  There’s no reason for the party. Reasons are always over-thought. She dances briefly with a banker and listens to a poet’s crude jokes. She doesn’t know how to pass judgment; it’s just something she does, though she never means anything by it. She hasn’t yet met the host. She’s not sure who’s being rude, and she’s not sure she cares.

  Deep into the night, Stephanie finds herself on a balcony, dangling bare feet over the edge, staring out across a blue-lit swimming pool under a star-pocked sky. A violinist serenades her from the room behind her. The music shifts this way and that as the player dances, alone, in the broad library.

  She reminds herself to focus. She’s here for a reason, or something like a reason. Right now, this moment, as she sits, it’s a frosty night in hell.

  A woman steps onto the balcony. She doesn’t notice