Writing Off the Past Read online

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Cate Masters on Smashwords

  Writing Off the Past

  Copyright © 2011 by Cate Masters

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  For Abbey and Becca: Stay true to yourselves as you follow your hearts.

  Writing Off the Past

  Krista lay beside Ethan on the emerald lawn in Hidden Views Park, squinting at the sky. “Look, the sundog’s chasing his corona tail around the clouds.” The pungency of the late spring air infected her with joy, but then she always felt happy to be with Ethan, her professed and confessed soul mate. She could say anything to him, be her true self around him. His stoic reactions made him an excellent sounding board. Her comments bounced from him in their purest, unaltered form, unchallenged by argument, undistorted by rhetoric.

  Her life was spiraling upward like the sundog, each new day better than the last. On Thursday, for instance, she had landed a new job. Not her dream job in the ad agency, but she compromised with her ego and reassured herself copywriting could very well lead there.

  She smiled at him as he stared into the sky, oblivious to her. “Oh, Ethan, it’s such a gorgeous day. Just think, we have all weekend to spend together.” Bliss oozed as she cuddled closer. “What do you want to do tonight? A movie at the theater, or something at my place?”

  He turned to face her, gazing into her adoring eyes. “Actually, I have to be going. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you this, but, well, I can’t see you anymore.”

  Blinking, she couldn’t erase the smile from her face, even as her happiness quotient deflated several points. “What?”

  His face swam in a blur of tears, which she knew were contradictory to her smile, in all likelihood a lead-in to hysterics. Unless he was joking. She ventured that theory, rather emphatically: “Are you serious?”

  He stood, blocking the high noon sun, his face a mask of featured shadow. “Sorry, Krista. We’re done. If you want, I’ll drop you off, but I have to go. I’m meeting someone.”

  Her chin bounced on her words so that all that managed to escape was a blubbered, “But,” heavy on the B.

  “Do you want a ride, or not?” With a heavy sigh, he pulled his keys from the pocket of his jeans. Jeans she’d bought for him. Jeans she’d unzipped and slid down his legs.

  Closing her mouth to steady her chin, she feared any attempt at a response might result in something more resembling a shriek. It would be all downhill from there, though she already felt as if she’d tumbled down a rocky slope. The bottom, she knew, lay in wait for her, its jagged arms outstretched.

  Krista shook her head. If she got in his Civic (it had such a cute spoiler), she would find it impossible not to play with his hair, or trace a finger along his thigh. Likewise, not to beg and whine. She refused to lower herself to that. At least, not yet–she’d save that for a last resort.

  With a shrug, he jammed his hands in his pockets. “Okay. Bye.”

  The blur of his body became smaller fading across the parking lot. She heard his car door thump shut, his radio at full blast: each whump of the bass reverberating in her shattered heart, blackening the brightness of the sky, reducing the perfectness of the day to a perfect absurdity.

  A force within her, a thing out of her control, gusted from deep inside, exiting her in a gale of a wail that, had she been in the basket of a hot air balloon, would have carried her around the world on its power, in much less than eighty days. The need to inhale was the only thing that brought the wail to an end.

  A mother clutched her toddler to her while Krista faltered on her feet. The earth beneath her seemed to undulate like a funhouse walk. She found her land legs and stumbled to her apartment like a zombie fresh from the grave, not yet adjusted to the looseness of its wrappings.

  Her surroundings were overlaid by the interior video looping through her thoughts: Ethan shuffling his feet asking her out for the first time, Ethan stretching out her T-shirt when he plunged his hand through its scooped neck to fondle her breast, his look of rapture as she pleasured him.

  She found herself outside her apartment door. The neon sun, fittingly, intensified her shadow to the blackest of blacks. It loomed before her like a palpable presence, a darkness issuing from within, leaving a howling void. Her arms stiff like a battered Barbie doll, she pushed open the door, lurched into her room and collapsed onto her bed.

  The sun circled tentatively around her apartment window, then slunk between two buildings in the complex, finally escaping altogether while Krista’s stare remained transfixed on her new emptiness. When the sun reappeared the next day, her eyes had closed in surrender. Only the hungry mews of Verisimilitude made her fling herself upward, tromp to the kitchen and snap open a can of food.

  She reached for the coffee maker, but froze. Ethan loved her coffee. Now he’d never taste another cup of her special blend. Tears cascaded down her cheeks and wet her T-shirt. She sloughed back to bed and crawled onto it, sobbing.

  The sun wound around the dial of the sky toward her bedroom window, slipping behind a cloud until it made its way past. The cloud went its separate way–just like Ethan–and the sun skittered toward the horizon in a mad dash.

  Words floated through Krista’s head. Shower. Food. Iron clothes. New job. Morning. They lit up in the marquee, flashed and crawled away without registering. Krista curled around her pillow and saturated the case with tears. Her synapses shorted out with the overload of grief and self-pity, and she drifted into a catatonic state. Consciousness returned, the bedside clock reading 4:03. Darkness comforted her. The sun would forever be a reminder of her loss. A daily, searing reminder. To avoid sunlight, Sweden occurred as an attractive alternative. Six months of darkness could be the remedy to erase the terrible memory. When the earth’s axis tilted and six months of sun were in store, she could journey to the opposite pole. Or perhaps back to New Jersey. The Garden State was her kindred spirit, having been battered and booed by so many.

  Verisimilitude leapt onto her bed and sat. His stare roused her at seven fifteen to shuffle to the kitchen again. Like an automaton, she fed him, then shunted to the bathroom and twisted the shower faucet on. Steam swirled around her, and her image muddied – her hair pointed at obtuse angles, her eyes rimmed in black. Formerly sweet, suddenly Goth. Maybe an exterior makeover would leach into her interior, change her from unassuming to aggressive. Passive to punk. Goth chicks only came out at night, didn’t they? A side benefit. No more sun. Perhaps her new job offered a night shift. She made a mental note to ask.

  Somehow her internal clock lagged out of synch with the alarm. Each minute dragged like five as she readied for work. She drove to her new office, distressed, by the clock skipping ahead past nine. Late on her first day. Out of habit, she flicked open her cell phone and speed-dialed Ethan while she walked across the parking lot toward the entrance.

  “H-hello?”

  His voice, even sloshed in shocked surprise, soothed her frazzled nerves.

  Thoughts spilled out from the pile she’d collected all weekend. “Oh, Ethan, I miss you. Everything’s wrong without you. I haven’t eaten or slept since you left, now I’m late my first day of work and–”


  “Who is this?”

  She blinked away the shock. “What? It’s Krista.”

  His voice came through the cell like a static hiss. “I’m at work. I can’t talk.”

  Of course. What was she thinking? She needed to get inside too. “Will you call me later?”

  “No. We broke up, remember?” The words were somehow amplified. He must have cupped a hand over his mouth.

  “I didn’t break up.” She laughed, pretending she’d meant it as a joke. “We should get together and talk about it. Rushing into this kind of decision might be a mistake. Don’t you think? Ethan?”

  Silence. The display read Call disconnected at 9:10.

  Almost a minute talking to herself.

  Her fingers flew across the buttons. Ethan’s cell phone rang once, then cut to voice mail. She tried again. Zero rings this time. He’d turned it off.

  Her mouth puckered, then quivered. A tear streaked from her disbelieving eye onto her cell. A horn blared beside her. Krista was blocking the lane.

  She snapped shut her phone and walked to the door, rifling through her handbag. Ms. Everhardt. She was supposed to report to a Mrs. Everhardt. Fifteen minutes ago.

  The glass door felt heavier than she remembered. The receptionist gaped, open-mouthed, as Krista stood beside her desk and sniffed.

  The click of heels alerted her to the approach of her new supervisor, whose expression quickly mirrored the receptionist’s.

  Krista stood. “Sorry I’m late. The electricity went out, and….” Her voice trailed away. The excuse sounded lame even to herself.

  “Follow me.” The woman led her through a maze of cubicles, pausing before an empty one. “Here’s your space.”

  During their brief tour Krista nodded, acknowledging the coat closet, kitchenette and break room, the offices of several key contacts. Mrs. Everhardt’s eyes widened as each statement met a silent response. At Krista’s cubicle again, the woman asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.” An attempt at a smile forced a tear from her eye.

  Mrs. Everhardt blinked as if slapped, her face pale. “I’ll send our IT person over to help you log in.” The woman scooted away, perhaps afraid Krista’s state was contagious.

  Krista slumped into her chair. A knock sounded outside her cube. The IT guy introduced himself as Curt. He was, she thought. His instructions came like Uzi bursts–short and quick. His fingers tatted across the keys, new screens ballooning onto the monitor and folding away equally fast, like a geek sleight of hand trick.

  “Is that clear? Are you all set?” His unblinking brown eyes reminded her of Ethan.

  She brought a tissue to her nose. “Yes.” The single word squeaked from her and elongated into a sibilant sob. A sudden awareness of her uncontrolled weeping horrified her to silence the sobs, but her chin refused to stop quivering.

  The phone on her desk rang. She lifted the receiver. “Hello. This is Krista.”

  Mrs. Everhardt said, “Krista, please come to my office.”

  This couldn’t be good. “All right.”

  A click and she was gone.

  Krista blew her nose and took a deep, ragged breath meant to steady herself, but the struggle to breathe alarmed her. Wheezing, she wound through the labyrinth of cubicles to her supervisor’s office.

  From behind her desk, Mrs. Everhardt gave a stiff smile. “Shut the door please.”

  Never a good sign. Krista clung to the handle for a moment.

  “Have a seat.” Her supervisor’s commands assumed a military air now.

  She sat, hands folded in her lap, and endured the interrogation as best she could. At the revelation that her condition resulted from a breakup, the woman leaned back in her chair.

  “A man? That’s what this is about?”

  “Yes.” The tentative response evolved into a two-syllable word with a defensive tone.

  “Really, Krista. How unprofessional. Such a display indicates a weak work ethic.”

  No good reply came to mind. Did she need to strengthen her work ethic? Or fortify her inner fortitude? Could she compartmentalize the two? Lock away her emotional pain until five o’clock, then allow it all the tantrums and affirmations it needed?

  Mrs. Everhardt drew her spine straight. “I’m sending you home. Consider whether you value your position in this company, and if you do, come back tomorrow. Tear free. If you don’t show up, I’ll hire another applicant.”

  As if she occupied an empty slot on an assembly line anyone could fill.

  “Thanks.” Her muted response seemed inappropriate, but it was a response nonetheless. Progress.

  * * * *

  The next morning, the alarm’s buzz permeated Krista’s bedroom until the noise integrated within the bedposts, resonating through the wood like it had been manufactured there. Krista readied for work and managed to arrive at the office tear-free. She foisted a simulated smile upon the receptionist.

  The girl shoved a slip of paper across the high counter encasing her desk. “Mr. Jarrett would like to speak with you. And Mrs. Everhardt said to tell you there’s a meeting at ten in the conference room.” The phone rang and the receptionist punched a button to intercept it.

  Krista took the message and walked to her cubicle. The desktop PC’s black screen belied its status, given away by the green glow. Still on. Hopefully she would be able to log on without re-entering a password.

  The screen flickered to life, displaying the message: Locked by user. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL.

  That proved the highlight of her day. She picked up the receiver to call Mr. Jarrett, whoever he was, but stopped before entering the final digit. Whenever anyone hovered outside her cubicle, she hunched over the phone, nodding and muttering Mmm hmm until he or she went away.

  The meeting allowed no such fake conversation. Krista took a seat at the end of the table, as far from the center of any dialogue as possible. She wrote the date on the first line of the notepad on her lap, or what she estimated to be the date. She pretended to jot notes while the others entered the room and filled the chairs around the rectangular table.

  Mrs. Everhardt sat at the opposite end. She opened her portfolio with an authoritative slap. “Good morning. Before we begin, I’d like you to welcome our new employee. Krista, please tell us a little about yourself.”

  Krista flicked her gaze up and around the table. “Hi. Glad to be here.”

  Mrs. Everhardt arched one brow. “Would you care to elaborate?”

  Did she mean about yesterday? Krista’s neck and cheeks burned. “Well. I would have been here yesterday. I mean, I was here, but….”

  The room stilled. The conference table appeared to be occupied by mannequins, all staring at Krista with the same blank expression.

  She blinked. “I….”

  Mrs. Everhardt’s nostrils flared as she heaved a breath. “Moving on.”

  Krista sat through the meeting without moving, striving to attract as little notice as possible. At its conclusion, she fumbled with her notepad until her colleagues milled toward the door, then followed. Her insides were unraveling, organs coming loose from tissue, making normal body functions difficult. Her coordination seemed off kilter, her tongue disconnected from her brain. Opening her mouth to speak, what had seemed a reasonable sentence formed in her mind, somehow emerged as garbled nonsense.

  Thus Ethan’s abrupt departure had a domino effect on Krista’s life. He’d knocked her for a loop, out of balance. Out of touch with the world in general, and her friends in particular. Her communication skills retreated to the recesses of her cerebrum, hiding there waiting for some signal it was safe to reappear. Though her brain could formulate simple sentences, she couldn’t extrapolate these to a page or keyboard. Her budding copywriting career ended before it could flower into the ad exec job she had once dreamed of.

  Her phone rang before she could reach her cubicle Mrs. Everhardt’s voice crackled through the receiver: “Please come to my office. Now.”

  With a sigh
, Krista dragged herself to the woman’s desk. Two minutes later, she returned to her cubicle with a strange sense of euphoria. She’d been told to clear out her desk. An obvious mistake, since Krista had never put anything in it.

  Krista went back to her apartment, and sank onto the secondhand sofa. The couch wasn’t her style, but had been affordable–more accurately, free–and she’d reasoned it would soon be a throwaway for her too, once she moved in with Ethan. In essence, her sofa represented the limbo she now felt mired in.

  She didn’t get up until the next day.

  Verisimilitude’s insistence he be fed proved a powerful catalyst. With her mascara smeared under her eyes, Krista stroked the quivering body nuzzling against hers (a bit like Ethan used to do). “I’ll never love another man. Just you, Ver.” She scratched under his chin, lifted hers from her chest, and fought against gravity to draw herself up, walk to the kitchen and pry open a can of cat food.

  Head in hand, she sat alone at her bistro table for two, Verisimilitude’s sandpaper tongue lapping at the brown goo in his bowl. The goo struck her as reminiscent of her feelings for Ethan–ground into a substance resembling nothing like its original contents.

  Time shrank and stretched in an irregular manner. The cans of cat food dwindled from twelve to four, and Krista knew the rent would soon be due. She needed to find another job, though just the thought of going out in public, in the same city Ethan lived, and dated other girls in, almost caused her to vomit. In order to vomit successfully, however, she also needed to feed herself. Ultimately, her obligation to Ver propelled her to dress in a somewhat coordinated outfit, pull a comb through her hair, and force herself outside her safety zone.

  Finding no change in her purse, she lifted the cushions of the sofa and looted it of nearly a dollar. Enough for a newspaper, at least. Musing at the irony that the limbo sofa should fund an investment in her future, Krista walked to the café on the corner and pushed the coins into the news rack. She pulled out a newspaper, sat down at an outside table, and fortified by a cup of coffee, circled a few help wanted ads.