Dear Mom and Dad:
I want so very much to live.
Not just endure. Live. Not just eat and breathe. Live.
I want you, mother, to nurture me, and you, father, to teach me to play. I want you to love me just because I’m yours, for a little while at least.
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The wind kicked up all around me. I rushed to the top of the bridge’s stairs. The ocean stretched out beyond the horizon. My feet pressed against the concrete. The sound of a far off siren sounded. The bellow of a boat horn from the docks accompanied it. A gust of wind scattered a cascade of autumn leaves in front of me. Their colors whirled and danced off with the wind.
My eyes focused on what awaited me. She held her golden hair out of her face as the wind blew. Her white dress floated gently in the breeze. She pressed close to me.
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Any minute now, I expected that the man I was having dinner with would produce a letter typed on a sheet of yellow paper. I wasn’t too happy about it, yet I tried to enjoy my Hare with Chestnuts Parisian Style, sipping at my glass of fabulous Chardonnays d’Oc.
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I met Angel Baby in a coffeehouse, in that part of town where there are always shadows stuck to the streetlights. It was a cold night; she and I were both still huddled and shivering, waiting at the end of the bar for our drinks. Never Too Latte was always dim, smoky, and full of the smells of percolating coffee and steaming milk. We both ordered Americanos—hers had a shot of caramel syrup, mine didn’t—and we mistakenly grabbed each other’s cups.
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It had always bothered me, the smell of smoke, for as long as I could remember. It didn’t matter what kind of smoke: cigarettes, wood-fires, matches, they all made me feel antsy, full of energy desperate for an outlet. Other smells bothered me too, but none gave me such intense reactions.
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It should have been me, not Katerina. I should have been the lead singer for the Broadway premier of Moulin Rouge—I was perfect for the part of Satine. Instead, I was stuck in the chorus as the stupid understudy. Like Katerina would ever miss a performance. What rotten luck.
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Five-hundred-thousand screaming InterWorld Football League fans undulated in the two-kilometer-long stadium, like windblown grass—waves into waves, around, and up-and-down: waves not colliding with, but passing through, each other. Lights bright as mini-suns blazed in multiple arcs across the domed ceiling. Announcers squawked and the team bands blared. Melba, a sleek chrome-and-red cyborg defensive tackle, tuned it all out. She was a cyborg player’s player, sometimes wearing her full football mech-gear (which went on over her cyborg body) around the house, feeling naked without it. She lived and breathed football.
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