The Short, Unhappy Life of Jack Everett [joshua]

One night he fell running into the field west of campus. The grass was wet and cold and the dampness made him wheeze. He once told a friend he hated wet grass, but there was no where else to go. For a while he stayed face-down on the ground. The girl came out after him.

Ivey called on him for five and a half months. He was happy to let her. One night she decided they had better prepare for her leaving. She told him it was over on a soggy night in the field west of campus.

"You're so dramatic," she said.

But she knew he meant it.

They trudged back. It was the beginning of the end of the night. They lived their lives entirely after dark. Time did not matter at the turnaround, the dollar theatre, the Perkins, or the utility hall in MEP. They never parted until daylight. They talked about her family and about sex. She wondered why his tone changed when speaking to dogs. He loved her accent.

When her leaving came, he took the picture of her on the beach in Massachusetts. He rode home in the wet and cold and the dampness made him choke. She rode home on a jet. That was the funny thing. No one else noticed but it was not the first time she flew away in the wheezing air. Time was when they both felt they were dating but couldn't let anyone know it. She never felt safe and he knew it.

"It's not that I don't want to get up in the morning," he told her, "it's that I just can't."

"You're over-simplifying," she said.

"You're all I've got," he said.

She didn't respond.

It went on like that for months. She traveled to Rome, Sydney, Istanbul, and Montreal. He spoke to her in Turkey. He told her that he had written her a letter thirty pages long. She said she didn't have time to read it so he summarized on the subway. He told her he loved her, that she was everything he ever wanted, how he longed to hold her again, that he was sorry for whatever. Her red hair looked like fire in the damp underground breeze.

He caught her the next year in Tangier. She was better dressed but her smile hadn't changed.

"Allo," she said.

He ached for her accent in his ear.

"How's the job?," he asked.

From the look of her, she was making quite a living selling custom handbags internationally for an up-scale New York company infamous for a 1995 scandal involving purses made from celebrity pets.

"The usual," she shrugged, "How are things for you?"

"Eh, been better," he mumbled.

He kissed her and it was reckless. Just as their lips met, she dropped her labrador valise. It landed right between the two grates on which they were standing and slipped through a crack onto the subway track below. As she reached to save it one of her heels got lodged in the iron mesh of the grate. He ran down the steps as she struggled to free her shoe. She reached the platform barefooted just as he reached the bag and the train reached him.

She collapsed in shock. She had hoped he'd finally propose.