Glen Pourciau ~ Two Flash Fictions

Emanate

I’d had a good week. I’d gone about my busi­ness with­out run­ning into any­one I knew. No one had spo­ken to me or stared at me. When I returned home from the gro­cery store or wher­ev­er, I pushed the but­ton to low­er the garage door before I got out of the car, pre­vent­ing any coin­ci­den­tal con­tact with neigh­bors. The vaca­tion I’d planned was com­ing up, giv­ing me an excel­lent chance of not see­ing any­one I knew for anoth­er week. A tem­po­rary opti­mism dom­i­nat­ed my mood when the dri­ving ser­vice dropped me at the air­port. I was rolling my bag toward my gate, wind­ing through tan­gles of oth­er trav­el­ers, no answer­ing thoughts or words mount­ing in my head, when I noticed some­one tak­ing me in, his eyes stick­ing to me, a gri­mace appear­ing. I glanced at him, his name a blank, his con­nec­tion to a long­time ene­my com­ing to mind. I looked away, my gate vis­i­ble ahead, the star­ing man stuck in line to buy a bot­tle of water.

I took a seat where I could see him approach, if he did, not long till board­ing, many gates, many flights, his flight unlike­ly to be the same as mine. I slow­ly relaxed, no sign of him as board­ing start­ed. My bag in the over­head stor­age, I buck­led in, fourth row on the right, aisle seat, every enter­ing pas­sen­ger vis­i­ble. A few min­utes passed, and there he was, the friend of my ene­my, eyes drawn to my face, glar­ing as if a foul odor emanat­ed from deep inside me. He took the seat direct­ly behind mine, and I imag­ined the impact of his thoughts seep­ing through my skull, spread­ing their contagion.

I began to think what my ene­my could have told him about me, his ver­sion turn­ing every detail of every sto­ry against me, his friend now behind me repeat­ing those dis­tor­tions to him­self. The strength of my deter­mi­na­tion not to answer his look, not to say a word, fed my desire to address him. Would he lean over my shoul­der and make remarks? Would we be stay­ing in the same area or the same hotel, walk­ing the same streets? Would he con­front me? I stood and opened the over­head com­part­ment, grabbed my bag and maneu­vered upstream against the oncom­ing pas­sen­gers, push­ing back thoughts of can­cel­la­tion poli­cies, telling one of the atten­dants that I had an emer­gency to deal with. I argued with my ene­my to myself, lis­ten­ing for foot­steps behind me as I pulled my bag up the tunnel.

When I reached the ter­mi­nal I stopped at an emp­ty space along the wall and watched the jet until it left the gate. Had I stirred up more trou­ble by flee­ing? He’d tell my ene­my the tale, and it would be added to his store of dis­parag­ing accounts. I kept still, eyes on the gate, mak­ing sure the friend of my ene­my did not emerge, a hint of a smile reveal­ing the plea­sure he took in my reac­tion to him.

 

Talk

My friend Wyman and I are sit­ting at a table with our beers at the bar where we meet month­ly. We’ve agreed not to speak to each oth­er dur­ing our meet­ings because we almost always dis­agree, even about our rea­sons for dis­agree­ing. Our pref­er­ence for not speak­ing is one of the only things we agree on. We dis­agree about var­i­ous peo­ple we know, about who’s annoy­ing and why they’re annoy­ing or not annoy­ing; about whether remarks we’ve heard were fun­ny or sar­cas­tic or fun­ny and sar­cas­tic and whether they mask some deep-seat­ed anger or resent­ment; about who doesn’t have a sense of humor and whether the things those peo­ple don’t laugh at are actu­al­ly fun­ny; about the mean­ing of some­thing a per­son said or what the per­son who said it meant or didn’t mean; about whether a person’s facial expres­sion revealed or con­cealed what he or she was think­ing; about whether Wyman thinks he’s right all the time and whether I think I’m right all the time; about our dif­fer­ing opin­ions of our ex-wives, I hav­ing a high­er opin­ion of his ex-wife than he does and he hav­ing a high­er opin­ion of my ex-wife than I do; about which books are bor­ing and over­writ­ten and about which char­ac­ters or peo­ple in them deserve the most empa­thy; about whether it’s a bet­ter use of time to read so-called fic­tion or so-called non­fic­tion; about whether we have bad will toward var­i­ous peo­ple we don’t like; about who talks too much, espe­cial­ly between the two of us; about which one of us is the most judg­men­tal and which one of us is wast­ing more time think­ing about the things we think about. As we sit in silence, ten­sion mounts between us, both of us imag­in­ing our dis­agree­ments on every sub­ject that enters our minds. I can’t shake the feel­ing that he’s keep­ing me qui­et, and I strong­ly sus­pect he thinks I’m keep­ing him qui­et, though he might dis­agree with me. Our imag­ined con­flicts esca­late, the urge to speak bulging beneath the sur­face. Wyman looks at me as if he doesn’t want to hear any back talk. We rise in uni­son, winc­ing at the fric­tion of our chairs against the floor. We shake hands abrupt­ly and depart, Wyman lead­ing, our beers unfinished.

~

Glen Pourciau’s fourth sto­ry col­lec­tion, Under, was pub­lished in September by Four Way Books. His sto­ries have been pub­lished by AGNI Online, Epoch, New England Review, The Paris Review, Post Road, and others.