A Phone

He stared at the cell phone for a moment. It had been a central part of his life for so long. The phone was like a living thing, it spoke to him and showed pictures from time to time. It had, by itself, become an almost indispensable part of his old life. Everything he was could be found, totaled, examined through a single piece of technology.

That was the key there - old life. All the pictures and sounds could do nothing to bring that other existence back again. Just seeing it in his bag made all the hurt and worry return to him. He was afraid that the old life would somehow catch him again. He worried that in all the fear he lost the ability to just let go of it all.

Now it was speaking in a different voice.

"I'm not happy about you laughing at me," Sandy said in a listless, petulant voice.  Again, the first words of the conversation were not about what was really important, just some mindless chatter.

"After three days, what did you expect?"

"Don't change the subject, why is this all my fault anyway?"

"It's always someone else isn't it? Your ex-husband did this or an ex-boyfriend did that. It was all you wasn't it?"

"Is this some sort of defense mechanism of yours? You laugh and leave to make me feel bad? Well, I don't. It's your loss"

I wasn't exactly worried at this point. We weren't together anymore (if we had ever been) and now I saw how pathetic she was. How she would never be able to realize what she had done or even care, did she know. It was always going to be someone else's fault.

"I would ask you where you were for those three days, but I know you'd just lie about it or just continue to try and blame me. Why don't you settle in that town? All the people have dead eyes like you do now. You belong there and as long as the pharmacy stays open you should be numb enough to survive.

"Can you hear me laughing at you now? Can you imagine how ashamed I am that I actually cared about you when you care nothing for me?"

"All these questions, and you think I am the problem? You should take a long look in the mirror"

"I have Sandy, and not only have I looked hard at myself, but at my life and our time together. We were never really together, you were always evasive and manipulative, even when we hiked together so long ago I saw you and knew inside that you weren't thinking of me. You dropped that stone I found after holding it by the edges for a second. Now, here we were with a chance to start over and we just took up where we left off, except this time I'm the stone to be tossed aside."

Sandy sensed the goodbye coming and decided to backtrack a little bit, "Listen, we still have time and no one is going anywhere today. Why don't we just set everything aside for now and just talk?"

"Sorry, I just can't imagine spending anymore time with you. Talking to you is like talking to an escaped mental patient - you just never know where the conversation will lead, but you are certain that in the end, you'll be worse off for it.

"Try to wean yourself off the drugs - they don't help you. They're just an invisible crutch that other people run into."

The line went dead then and everything started over. The people here had dead eyes as well. They too seemed shackled to a life that none really understood. He knew that they would accept her, her life, such as it was, would be a novelty for a time.