The View From Below

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_4/Hung.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]

Maria had made a radical career change. She cut her hair with kitchen scissors, and had her dog put to sleep. But she still wasn’t satisfied. I need new friends, she said to her old ones, I need a new outlook on life. It’s still me. Her pals patted her arms and gave her gins and tonics. She still hadn’t told them that she had given up drink. When they were all on the floor, she erased their numbers from her cell phone—beep beep blooop, beep beep blooop—and got up to leave. Derrick, whom she had dated for a while, watched her step out. The barroom floor was sticky, but he decided against rising—why stop her now? True, he felt a little hurt, but he had been the one to break it off all those years ago. Yet it still gave him a pang when saw her shake both of her high-heeled feet, one after the other, as if she wanted to frisk off the taint of their acquaintance. Derrick never set eyes on her again. She changed her voice and then her phone number. No one remembered where she lived or whether her couch had been comfortable. When her old friends took pictures, they forced themselves to huddle closer together, as if to fill in the gap where she had once stood.