Issue 38.0

by Evan Iseli

Giancarlo and Sofia Argue in the Dark

The engine idles and the humming relaxes Giancarlo; he thinks of what his mom used to always tell him about the tide, that it is how human breath should be, but to him the idling of this car seems closer to it. He notices the woman outside smoking by the generator and wonders if this is the moment she has looked forward to all day.

Inside the convenience store Sofia is screaming and pleading with the pharmacist. Leaning, shaking, pacing. She disappears in the window, Giancarlo turns away. Lightning in the sky like daylight. By the time the rain comes down Sofia is sitting in the driver seat, stone-faced: “Are you still awake?” He doesn’t even have to nod. She starts driving and the rear-view mirror is awash with the downpour—Giancarlo couldn’t see behind him if he tried. At speed the drops reflect off all the windows, projections spinning across Sofia’s face like spectral tears.

They dance around conversation but neither can take their eyes off the road, the streetlights and brake lights winding about their sight. Talking and driving at the same time becomes too precarious, so they stop in another parking lot to talk about their dreams. When they leave, the concrete is still a river. Giancarlo combs the glove compartment for a toothpick and with it hanging from the corner of his mouth he feels like a movie star. Sofia smiles; she doesn’t know what he’s thinking but she knows he has gotten his mind off what he’s trying to forget.

“The only way we can sell it is if you call the realtor. All it takes is you picking up the phone and I only asked you a thousand times.”

An hour later they’re in the driveway and the porch light is barely hanging on. Giancarlo and Sofia argue in the dark.

“Don’t pretend you listen either.”

“This is the whole reason people talk to each other.”

Sofia plucks cacti needles from her jeans and the sky will never mend from the lightning opening the same wound over and over. Giancarlo doubts that lightning can’t strike twice in the same place. They decide he will sleep in the car this evening.

A reprieve from the rain, no such luck with the silence. As he reclines in the open trunk he sings and feels the heat. The thunder threatens him, but like he always said when he was a kid, he’s not scared of anything. Family vacations to the beach are on his mind, as well as his mother standing in the rain, waving her arms in the air with a once-in-a-lifetime smile. For him the scene unspools with certainty, though he knows that if you asked anyone else in his family they would say it didn’t rain that day.

Giancarlo wakes up in a cool darkness that hides the morning. The kitchen light is on and it reflects off the eyes of the fox watching him from the street. Sofia bangs on the window and it skitters away, but she also means come in for breakfast. He rolls out of the trunk but he rolls too far and the pavement is there to meet him. A small stream of blood channels out into the grooves of the concrete, joining the slow motion of the rainwater.

Sofia stands over him in the driveway, not to bring him breakfast but to stare at him as if this is the problem, the only problem, and then she goes back inside. He drives to work. He passes the faded, graffitied walls and a group of tourists, which is unbelievable because there is nothing to tour; hope you enjoy the junkyards and strip malls, he thinks.

Sofia phones him twice at work, and just as he thinks it’s about to be twice it’s three times, she’s calling because she needs him to pick her up, she has to go somewhere, she has to. It will be just like last night, he knows it, and he won’t be able to handle it. “No,” he says, and just for saying that, she’s not waiting for him at home, the lights are on but the house is empty. A walk down the street under the swinging century plants lining the yards, only to see that all the neighbors’ houses are dark too, and the bus stop is as quiet as it always is. Back in his driveway with his head in his hands.

An hour later now and the couch is warm against Giancarlo’s back, he stares at a worn journal so he doesn’t have to stare at the empty orange container on the table, or the second one, or the third. If you hold one up to your eye the translucent plastic warps the world until nothing makes sense, and nothing makes sense now. His eyes follow the curl of his mother’s handwriting in the journal, swells of ink carrying a procession of beautiful words, and so he fills his head with beautiful words because he could not find any before.

Sleep nudges him from time to time so it is time to go, now he is driving a little further than he meant to, a sign welcomes him to the next state and he slips through in quiet. He calls Sofia one more time but she doesn’t pick up. Wind coming from across these plains he can just feel it, it’ll be like a herd of something—even now there are surges of strong breath jostling his car. As the window rolls down a drop of rain finds his chin.

Resting, eyes fluttering open and closed, rain again—with the seat reclined, he lays on his back and watches it pour onto the sunroof directly above him like he is drowning. The spare blanket is rough against his soft hands. It’s barely holding together it’s so old. He scrapes it across his face, trying to find and wipe away the uninvited tear on his cheek. Sofia will not wake him up the next morning.

The sunrise comes blazing as he drives his car out of the ditch where he parked and up onto the shoulder. Tractor trailers rush by under clouds expanding into oblong shapes, and tomorrow settles over Giancarlo like a sickness. A hundred feet away a man fishes in a red pond.

“I don’t have nothing for you to eat. Hell, even if I had food I wouldn’t have nothing for you to eat.”

“That’s okay.”

“Haven’t caught anything in a while, I’m pretty hungry. Nothing could live in a pond this small anyway, especially a pond this dirty.”

Giancarlo doesn’t say anything, just settles into the silence and wonders how close in similarity two people’s thoughts are as conversation fades into observance. In such an open desert the question seems just as large, and he starts to understand how his gravitation towards places like this matches his yet-unfulfilled curiosity. And he can’t help but look back and try to locate the moment he started avoiding it.

“Why fish if the pond is empty?”

The fisherman’s protracted explanation is hard to follow, but Giancarlo finds it calming. It seems as though the fisherman’s mind wanders a good deal, flutters back and forth between thoughts, a flag blowing in the wind. Giancarlo recognizes it and misses when his mind used to drift around that same way.

“It’s trying, sleeping in my car,” he muses.

The fisherman dips his foot in the water and his sandal floats away. “It’s even more trying not having a home.”

The air ripples in the distance.

Giancarlo: “Tell me one more time.”

“It reminds me that there does not have to be something to work toward.”

Giancarlo nods, the cuts on his neck and chin flaring. He picks the tiniest fragments of gravel out and lets them fall into the water. “My mom and I started taking walks down to the pond by our house. Never went fishing, though.”

“Well, just sitting is nice, too.”

Giancarlo looks at the fisherman but he can tell that the man is lost in his own memory, something he is not ready to relive with a stranger in the desert. The fisherman finally nods back without looking, knowing that Giancarlo will never understand. The conversation doesn’t last much longer than that because Giancarlo needs to find Sofia.

The glare on the highway is all but blinding. The suspension buckles, just take a look in the mirror, Giancarlo—roadkill. Sofia would say something funny. He drives further, back into the state, alongside a ranch now. Alongside an elk, it comes out of nowhere but it is on the other side of the wire fence, galloping like a horse in the same direction he is traveling. “I’ll never be as carefree as you, friend.”

Sofia is waiting at the house and no she won’t talk to him, she only wants to talk to her mom but her mom passed away today and Giancarlo wouldn’t even take Sofia to visit her before she died. “I called yesterday, I tried to ask you, three times I called and tried to ask you,” she says. Giancarlo wants to explain but he knows the words will never leave his mouth as beautiful as they could flow from his own mother’s pen, but maybe it’s because Sofia is holding his mother’s journal, and with it, holding all the beautiful words on layaway.

“You’re damn lucky to have this,” Sofia says.

Silence in a humid house. Giancarlo takes his shoes off though he can’t say how long he will be staying. Sofia disappears and so does the journal; she will put it somewhere where he will find it, not immediately, but not after too long. Maybe he will never bother to look for it.

It’s later, neither knows what time it is, but someone has turned on the TV and thank God because radio silence might poison them both. The wake of the storm keeps the trees crying. Every conversation like an old car, starting and sputtering and dying out because there’s nothing left in the tank. Sofia gets up to leave and Giancarlo supposes he should go with. There is no argument.

Stolen glances on the walk because that’s all there is left to steal. Trust and faith were fenced a while ago, maybe at the same time, never recovered, and both of them know that as they walk with their hands close together but certainly not touching. The sidewalk is interesting, thinks all of their neighbors that pass them, their heads cast to the ground. Sofia quickens and moves steps ahead of Giancarlo. She kicks a beer can and sends it into the street, a car’s tire catches it as it flies. Good timing. The sidewalk fades into grass, not a tangible edge just slow change.

Tinny rattling as Sofia tries to climb the chain-link fence, not to get to the top, that’s not her aim. Giancarlo sits on a manhole cover, dropping coins through the holes to hear the splash as they tumble into shallow water. She looks at him, no hard feelings, just exhaustion with anything other than candor.

“I met someone at work,” she says, it’s not surprising, Giancarlo barely moves. There’s no forward to backward, just up to down, up the fence, down the manhole. Up with the wind or down with the rain. Fixed in this one spot, sink or swim as you’re submerged in the most hollow kind of security. The most painful.

“I also don’t know what I’m supposed to do about this,” she continues. Now she sits on a blown-out tire, sinking into its center. A grill a block away sends smoky incense past, smoky incense and resonant laughter. A man hollering across the street; the garbage can he’s talking to doesn’t holler back.

“We’ll wait and figure it out, wait and see I guess,” Giancarlo finally says, dirt gathering under his fingernails as he digs into the ground. Sand in the air, now caught in his throat. Every conversation like this one the same, always ending the same. The last time—“Give this all a year” was how it ended, five years ago he said that, five years later and what had gotten better? The rocking chair scraping on the stone porch then, leaving cloudy arcs the same way planes leave contrails. She was fixing the railing and he wasn’t being much help with anything, sitting around and trying to read, alternating between the owner’s manual to his car and a cheap paperback from the dollar store. Stale gasoline on the air, joined by sound, Sofia’s father working on some venison in the kitchen. She threw a screwdriver across the yard, which scared the dog. “Your idiot brother lost the job. Where does that leave us?” was how it had started. Long day ahead.

His whole hand is covered in red dirt now, practically buried, and he looks at Sofia, who is still sitting in the tire, this odd moment. The years play out a few different ways, she’s matching his stare and he knows she’s playing it out too, all the different possibilities. A pale green taxi rolls by and he tosses a pebble after it. That car could take him somewhere else but he’s too worn out to hail it properly. Something stings his forehead; he looks over at Sofia and her face has hardened. She throws a second pebble at him and he knows she must think that he had been throwing rocks at her and not the taxi. He picks up the smallest pebble he can find and flicks it at her. They go back and forth but she’s got the better aim. Dust kicks up as they dig around in the dirt. After a couple halfhearted volleys Sofia gets bored and stands up.

“So—,” Giancarlo stammers. A bird lurches up from a mailbox and soars after her as she walks down the street but Giancarlo won’t follow, can’t follow the same way. Above, the traffic light shakes in the heavy wind and turns red, Sofia trips in a pothole as she crosses, then doesn’t miss a step. She sits across the street from Giancarlo on a bench that used to be painted blue—she stares down, reads her tattoo. Last year when she got it he copied the same decisive lines on his forearm in permanent marker. She didn’t think that was funny. Maybe because he misspelled a couple of the words.

The sun is hot in the afternoon so Giancarlo picks himself up from the ground, one last look at Sofia but he’ll be back in a few minutes. A newspaper blows against his feet as he walks, entangling in his legs, loath to continue down the sidewalk. The owner of the gas station eyes Giancarlo as he crosses the parking lot, maintaining his glare as he continues to pour ice into the big box out front. There’s a large cartoon polar bear decal on the glass door, peeling, but at least it's smiling.

Inside, wandering through the tight aisles, sense and direction washed away by the fluorescents overhead. A buzzing in his ears but it might be coming from the lights. The drink station is dirty, straws and lids and napkins strewn across the counter, a disaster of conscientiousness. Giancarlo fumbles with a cup and shoves it under the spout, hitting the knob and letting loose a steady pour of water. With his other hand he reaches for another cup then thinks better of it. No, get one for her. A short argument with her in his head, then something cool on his arm, the overfilled cup cascading down onto him. He sighs and breathes deeply and the radio plays something old and familiar but not quite familiar enough. Shuffling and laughter, he sneaks a glance past the drink machine and there it is, an old couple awkwardly dancing to the song, the aisle their wedding aisle, and they’re giggling and swaying and not completely committing to it because to them it feels like they’re getting away with something. Getting away with being young again.

Giancarlo rubs his head but it’s not helping the headache, he had to set one of the drinks down to do it, and now the condensation is running down the side and soaking the prayer cards on the shelf. He picks up the cup and says one of the only prayers he can recall, hoping he remembered the words right, then turns to walk to the register. He glances one last time at the biblical faces lining the aisle, who stare past him like he were nothing at all.

On the counter there’s barely enough room for the drinks between the boxes of cigarettes and keychains and items no one bothered to put back. The owner of the gas station dips his finger into one of the cups, then seeing that it’s just water sighs and waves Giancarlo away. The old couple, still talking and laughing, hold the door for Giancarlo on the way out, and he waits for them to disappear around the corner before he opens the big ice box, unties a bag, and drops a few cubes into his drinks.

The sound of construction a few blocks away dulls and quiets his thoughts as he walks, the thumping and humming slowly migrating across town. Sidewalk, curbs, familiar under the feet—the same route he would walk with his mother. To school, church, the pond, and eventually, walking alone, to the hospital where she was waiting for him. Waiting as long as she could.

Giancarlo smiles as he sees a silhouette on the bench, the smile is gone when it’s not Sofia, just a sad man with a briefcase and troubles. The sign above him, Giancarlo had not seen it before: blue faded to the same color as the bench, and an illustration of a bus. He drops his head and sets one of the cups of water down on the sidewalk. Briefcase man across the street looks up at Giancarlo but they both know they can’t help each other; everyone’s got their own problems and no one has the antidote for anyone else’s life. More cars drive by and eventually Giancarlo walks over and sits in the blown-out tire, sits and waits for the next bus.