serial

Day 1

Amirah had felt okay when she woke up in the morning but now she was beginning to feel a little sad. She was starving and there was no more food in the apartment or money or anything. Her girlfriend Sarah was out of town for the week. Last night night she had left with her brother for a road trip to Phoenix. Amirah had the whole week to herself, which she found both frightening and a relief.

She was laying on the couch watching the ceiling fan spin on the slowest setting, her favorite setting. The faster settings caused the fan to spin so fast it seemed like it was going to snap and fly off and spin around the room cutting off everyone's head. It made her nervous.

Early that day she had talked to Sarah on the phone. She complained about her brother, his choice of music, his driving habits, his constant smoking. Amirah tried to imagine them, Sarah (who was tiny and fragile, a friend once described her as 'fetal') and her brother Jamie sitting in her car eating hamburgers or maybe them just sitting there in silence driving listening to house music (Jamie's choice) she could imagine them sitting but never what they were saying. Sarah rarely talked about her family and this trip had taken Amirah by surprise. She suspected that Sarah wanted some sort of break, and this outing with Jamie was no doubt the cheapest and easiest.

Amirah's phone started buzzing and she saw that it was Phil, her manager at Allegory, the terrible restaurant she waitressed at.

"Hey Amirah? It's me, Phil."

"I know Phil. My cellphone says your name on it when you call me."

"Oh well uhm hey I was wondering if you could come in tomorrow night. Peter called off uh he said he's sick and you know how Thursday's buffet is.

"Yeah, the Thursday buffet."

"Well can you?"

"Look Phil, can I get back to you in like, an hour two hours or something? I'm not really sure."

"Yeah thats fine but just let me know as soon as you can I mean we're already pretty understaffed as it is and for some reason I have a feeling that tomorrow will be really busy, I just got this like inkling you know?"

"Yes I know inklings."

"Well call me okay sweetheart? We'd really love it if you could come in?"

"I'll call you Phil."

She didn't dislike Phil but everytime she talked to him she couldn't shake the idea that she would never have met him or had to deal with him if she wasn't forced to because of her job where she had to work because she was forced to by "society". Sarah hated it when she talked like this, she always said it was stupid to think like that to be that pessimistic about life was just being self-centered and selfish. Amirah agreed but she still had a hard time.

a nice moment at the park

Lately as the weather has warmed I've been walking to the park by the beach and sitting on a bench watching families picnic and people walk their dogs. It's never as warm as I think it will be so I can never stay as long as I want. As soon as the sun is blocked by the apartments and trees I feel the chill in the wind a little more. But what can you do, you don't want to overdress.

The other day I saw two guys sparring with the masks and gloves and everything. They stopped pretty soon after I sat down though. Most of the afternoon I was watching this dad play with/coach his two sons. They were playing baseball. I liked watching them, the dad was an almost perfect dad. He was strict and encouraging in all the right ways. I kind of knew (know?) that those two boys would become wonderful beautiful young men. I was eating a bag of 79cents Salt + Vinegar Kettle Cooked Potato Chips from 7/11. A squirrel, probably hearing the rustle of the plastic bag jumped onto the bench, very close to me, as close as a wary cat would get. I shooed him away but I immediately wished I'd given him some chips. An old lady clasping newspapers to her chest was walking down the path. She was talking to herself, muttering about someone named Jacobson, the variety of cereals, dentists. She stopped directly to the right of me where I couldn't see her and I knew she was looking at me. For a minute I was afraid she'd come up to me and I'd have to humor her, I hate humoring people. She didn't though and went on walking down the path. I rolled a cigarette and smoked it. I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd thought. That's been happening a lot lately. I was kinda trying to write a short story. It was about this guy, Simon, who was sitting at a park bench, probably the same one I was sitting in. He meets his friend Amirah, who is an obese black lesbian, and he helps her look for her keys. I wasn't sure if Amirah was black, but she definitely was obese and lesbian. The only part I really had in my head was the ending. Simon sees something shiny in the grass, but I wasn't sure if it was the keys.