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photo by per bak jensen

Smoothie

by ELLIS DENKLIN

He said, I treated you with respect. But for some reason, you could not give me the same consideration. In order to explain why that occurred, I must create a window in myself.

She waited for him to create this viewpoint within his own outlook, and when he had, she hung up the phone. She had noticed the device always passed along ill tidings, like how certain individuals messed up her order of Chinese food, or other collections of human beings celebrated their offspring learning to walk. She regretted ending the conversation that way, but it felt so bad to hear something sincere described insincerely.

She regretted even calling him, but something in her (not a window, perhaps more like a ceiling fan) generally had her returning to her apartment to check whether the stove remained on. (This being an old trick a writing professor had taught her, to replace a repeated instance of the verb "to be" with "remain." He had also told her the worst quality of any one person is her desire to outstay her welcome.)

He hoped she would call again. This time he would find it best to ignore her call. He could play her message over, marveling at its insouciance and temerity, and then gravelly explaining to his new girlfriend that once he had been hurt by a particular person, he would not ever get over it. But this was not strictly true. It depended on the woman; how much he would let her damage him.

Her father took her hunting. He ate a rabbit they killed, preparing it on the stove like a grilled cheese. Surprising herself, she asked him for advice. "Maybe it's just cultural," he said. "These types believe in their hearts that we are all from some abstract monoculture, but it's really not the case. On the other hand there is a terrible, universal urge to be with those who are completely unlike you."

He cheated on his new girlfriend without realizing he was doing it. Afterwards he became wracked with chest pains so psychosomatic that he found it a great disappointment when Tums left him feeling better. He listened to her voicemail when she left it. He planned to leave her one that said, "It's tough to go on without you. I miss your voice, your smell, your guitar," or one that said, "Go fuck a blender."

He had other women he treated with respect, but not nearly as much respect.

She saw a man fall, climbing a scaffolding at 78th and Columbus. He did not die, and she could see the man was ecstatic he had not cracked vertebrae on his landing. For her part, she was a little let down, realizing for the first time that trying to preserve anything fragile required the same kind of attention as making sure something broken stayed in pieces.

He did love her but when he had told her this last year she said it was a lie. Later, she accepted it, but on different terms, which he equated to those you might make with a landlord or an exterminator.

She called him to tell him about the man who fell, since waiting/discretion seemed to be getting her nowhere. It was all part of her tendency, her therapist said, to mourn the death of anything in her life in discrete, nonsequential chunks that allowed her to process the change on her own timeline. She left a message that said, "Hey, I know we haven't talked in awhile. I tried rabbit. I do miss you, maybe I never said that?" She prayed it would haunt him, and felt unsettled that she was not entirely sure what his reaction would be. Or, if merely hearing her voice meant nothing to him now, what his reaction remained.

Things returned to how they had been before she entered his life. Whatever affirming there was in his ability to continue being himself was wiped out by her casual messages. She said things to make him angry. It worked, but he was not the type to hold a fist up against an enemy. He resolved to forget she even existed. He deleted her from his phone, his gchat. He gave his blender to Goodwill. He did not call.

The light of an oncoming train.

She had never minded long stretches of time alone by herself. In a museum she felt protected, insulated: the opposite of a cat staring in a mirror. There no one ever had to ask why you were crying, because there was a recognition that when a present moment intersected with those of the past preserved in art, blowback loomed, unavoidable really. In one painting she could not tear from her mind, one child ran to a fence while her friend rested against it, composed where she was not. The difference between the two figures startled her.

It's pointless to trust someone you do not understand. And if you do realize what came to him far later, when the messages she left trickled to a stop, you are only more likely to do it again.

Ellis Denklin is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

Photographs by Per Bak Jensen.

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