A Short Story.

He let the car roll slowly to a stop in front of her apartment building. There was plenty of room on her street, but that green Jetta was in his favorite spot again. This was already not going well. He had never gotten a ticket in that spot, and it wasn’t right in front of the front steps of the building, just a little off center. He had gotten tickets in this spot before.

He drummed his fingers on the steering well. Everything would be fine. He had already gone over what he wanted to say in his mind, hundreds of times. He would knock on the door, and she would open it, and then he’d spout off all his carefully rehearsed nonsense, and she’d just sit there and listen to all of it, and even though she wanted to interrupt him she wouldn’t, because she was just that fucking considerate. So she’d just wait for him to finish, and then she’d say whatever it is she wanted to say. It would all be fine, up until that point.

Sun-tzu’s words, or what he understood them to be, echoed around in his brain as he fumbled to undo his seatbelt: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” It was possible that all his forethought, all the sentences so carefully constructed would be torn to ribbons by her very first word. But this wouldn’t be a battle, would it? It would be a pact, an accord, a treaty. It had to be. For that matter, she wasn’t the enemy. She had seemed like it, sure, when she had first told him that she wanted to go on a break. He was pretty sure the break was just an excuse for her to fuck that guy with the fauxhawk from her graphic design firm. That guy, always with the smug smile and the firm handshake and the mercurial Photoshop skills. His entire wardrobe was surely purchased from Banana Republic and not H&M, even though the clothes were similar quality, H&M was just a lot cheaper.

He stared down at his dark grey H&M slacks. It wasn’t that bad that they were on a break, was it? Jennifer and Robbie had gotten married last year, and they’d been on at least two breaks, so it wasn’t that bad. That was a good wedding. She’d gotten too drunk and he’d had to take care of her. They kind of wandered around the streets of Banff because he wasn’t entirely sure where their hotel was, but Banff was small enough that eventually they’d get there. She threw up in an alley and was worried about her nice dress. He hadn’t seen her wear it again. They’d gotten back to the hotel room and had awkward sex, awkward because they were both too drunk to do it properly, but awkward also because of the wedding afterglow.

Taking a deep breath, he finally got out of the car. He staggered ever so slightly. He’d had what he judged to be the perfect amount of scotch: not so much that he couldn’t still legally drive, but enough to bolster his previously flagging courage. The stagger made him think he may have misjudged the “perfect” amount, but it was too late now, wasn’t it?

He looked up at her apartment. All the lights were off. He had another brief moment of panic. What if fauxhawk is up there? He knew it was idle panic. It was Sunday, and she wouldn’t jeopardize her important job by having fauxhawk guy over late tonight. That was both good and bad, though. She’d be pretty mad that he showed up at this hour. She’d understand though, right? I mean, sometimes you just have to tell someone how you feel. Sometimes it just builds up, over days, over nights, and eventually you just have to let it all come rushing out in one big flood, and sometimes that flood happens on Sunday night at three in the morning.

It was okay too, if she fucked fauxhawk, because there was that night that cougar had taken him home and they’d fooled around a bit, before he realized that he cared about her too much to actually have sex, and so they’d just looked at the cougar’s record collection. But they’d fooled around. Maybe if she admitted that she’d fucked fauxhawk he’d lie and say that he’d fucked the cougar too, just to see her get mad. It wouldn’t be anger so much as disappointment though, and no one really likes to see disappointment. He wanted anger. Also, he’d already told his friends what had actually happened, and she was close with a few of them. She probably already knew.

He made it up the steps, growing slightly more confident with each one, and opened the door leading into her apartment vestibule. For some reason, surely because he was stalling for time, he double-checked that her buzzer number was 47. Of course it was; he’d punched that number in hundreds of times. Tonight, he felt the need to double check. He was hoping that someone – maybe a bartender coming home late from work, or a drunken couple, or a guy on a weird night shift – would come home, and they’d have a conversation about being stuck in the vestibule, and he’d convince them that he was harmless, and they’d go in together, and he wouldn’t have to buzz up. It was easier to shut him out from down here. He held the antique phone receiver in his hand, ready to punch the buttons. This was the hard part. If he could just make it up there, to where he could knock on her door, and he’d hear her actual voice through the door, and she surely couldn’t refuse to see him. But down here, in the apartment vestibule, that was a world away. It would be awkward, like a long-distance phone call to relatives that you never see, and he’d have to go back to his car, his car that he was no longer sure he was legally able to drive. Maybe he could tell her that; that he was too drunk to drive and that he’d need to stay at her place. But no, that was just pathetic, that was how he’d gotten into this mess in the first place, being pathetic. He was not pathetic.

Then he saw it. Hope. Salvation. Everything would be fine. The inside door had stuck and it was open a crack. It did that sometimes. She’d always worry about it when it happened. She’d talk some nonsense about people coming in and taking all her stuff, somehow transporting her leather couches downstairs and into their vans without anyone noticing. He’d calm her down. It only happens once in a blue moon, he’d say. What a time for it to happen. He swung the door open with vigor, his courage redoubled. He strode confidently up to the elevator doors and pressed the button for the fourth floor. Then, he waited. This elevator was always too slow. It was like that first night, when they were making out like sex-starved rabbits in the apartment vestibule, waiting for the elevator to come so he could get her up to her apartment and tear all her clothes off- not that the making out was bad, but it was to be a prelude of the amazing things to come - he couldn’t wait for that, and just as it had happened on that first night, any and all thoughts of sex were ejected from his mind by the loud bong that announced the elevator’s arrival.

He hated that noise, too. It was pitched lower than most elevators, and as such seemed to shake the very foundation of one’s soul. At least it had done so to him on this occasion. But he was not deterred. The scotch flowed through his veins as the elevator rose, slowly, past the second and third floors, to the fourth. This was waiting, again, but at least he knew how long the wait would be, he’d been on this elevator, taken this route, hundreds of times. Everything would be fine, too, because he’d be able to knock on her door. The fact that the downstairs door was open was surely the work of fate, of kismet, and was a good omen. He strode towards her door and stood in front of it, waiting. Everything would be fine, except that he realized he didn’t believe in fate, kismet, or good omens. Up until this point, he’d thought all that was bullshit. Everything was in his hands now.

He raised a clenched fist. He was wrong; he was not in control anymore. He watched his fist slowly, with a sense of amazement, moving towards the thick wood of her door of it’s own accord. It slammed lightly into the door, once, twice, three times. He had knocked. Everything would be fine. He waited.