The Difference Between Landmines and Time Bombs
Reese Ryan was one of those girls. You know, one of them. She was the mere embodiment of the word “captivating.” She was infatuated with wearing skirts, scrounging for money, chance happenings, stargazing, the smell of coffee shops and baseball diamonds, moving mountains, awkward conversation and God. She danced around her bedroom in her underwear: one of those much talked about rituals that everyone says they practice but no one (outside of movies and television at least) does. She had never been fond of writing and didn’t, but if she’d recorded her thoughts – if only for a day – those thoughts would have been seized immediately for printing, translated into multiple languages, and sold millions – to say that least of her sapience. They called her the “time bomb,” a testament to her explosive personality and reckless spirit. Though she, being more of a landmine than anything, knew it simply wasn’t true. She was like beams of light: translucent and beautiful, but never tangible. Many a man had tried to catch her, but their attempts were in vain. You would sooner build a tower to the Heavens than catch Reese Ryan. Such was the nature of the girl. You know, one of them.
Sebastian Kelly, of course, was not one of those guys; he, by default, was one of us. One of those people who are good, but never attains true greatness. He tended to stagger toward colloquialisms like “barely breaking even” or “just scraping by.” He jumped from one low paying job to the next, functioned on beer and Monday Night Football, wove in and out of relationships indifferently, one desperate, intoxicated tramp after another. And this tragically mediocre heap of a man had the nerve and the gall to define himself as such: a hopeless romantic (who had, in all truthfulness, never experienced love), a travel enthusiast (who had, in a way, never left the confines of his house); and an adamant lover of life (who was, in fact, all but dead.) Would we go as far as to accuse Sebastian Kelly of living a lie? Naturally no, him being one of our own. People like us see themselves as skewed delusions of dreams: Who We Are and Who We Aspire to Be rarely coincide. Sebastian Kelly’s dream was no different than our own – he’d just fallen into that all too familiar trap of being, well, human. You know, one of us.
Sebastian found Reese the way one finds oneself struck with an epiphany: quite unexpectedly. A cool, clear Thursday evening found Sebastian outside the house he lived in with his parents (being the unemployed college burnout he was), lighting a cigarette and staring into the blackness. From it, Reese emerged, along with the proverbial beams of light that followed her, ricocheting every which way. And there stood our poor Sebastian, puffing on his cigarette, completely incapable of tearing his eyes from her. He heard himself call out to her, but she and her clamorous beams of light walked on. After a moment’s hesitation, he stumbled down the steps of his porch and called out again. But the elusive Reese Ryan would not slow down.
So he ran mindlessly after her, flicking the cigarette butt onto the pavement and bellowing, “Hey, lady!” The members of the urban community in which Sebastian lived stirred from their troubled slumbers as he galloped beneath their bedroom windows, shouting after Reese. The chase continued on for some time – how long, Sebastian didn’t know, just as he couldn’t pin a reason to his out-of-character scramble after the woman. The Sebastian we’d known prior to tonight would not leave the couch to change the channel, let alone dash through his neighborhood at four AM – and what can be said to rationalize these actions? One couldn’t be entirely certain, but for whatever reason, an alarm was sounding in Sebastian: every fiber within him was aching to catch this woman.
Reese eventually did halt – beneath the awning of a filthy and decrepit bus stop. The panting Sebastian gaped for some time, shocked that she’d halted at all, before inventing an excuse to casually approach her. And she stood there and studied the stars, so he lit a cigarette and nonchalantly sauntered by. “You know,” he attempted, “you’re going to get yourself killed walking around out here.”
It was as if Sebastian’s words had been deflected from her ears by those radiant beams. She hadn’t heard him at all; her eyes remained fastened upon the stars.
Frustrated that he had been so casually brushed aside, Sebastian shoved himself into her immediate field of vision and said: “Hey, listen, lady. I worked as a security guard two blocks away a couple of months back – and there are a lot of creeps and weirdos around here, okay? What’re you thinking, walking around at four in the morning?”
Reese gave him a hard, level stare (you know, one of those stares, the ones that just about knock you sideways), and when she parted her lips to say “Who are you?” he felt a tremor move through his insides.
“Sebastian,” Sebastian said weakly.
“Sebastian,” she repeated, laughing. (And her laughter was music.) “I love that name. Do you love it?”
“It’s fine."
“I’m Reese,” she said, extending her hand to him. Sebastian grasped it dumbly, his hand bulky between her thin, polished fingers.
“Listen, Sebastian,” she said, retracting her hand. “I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate your concern – because, truly, I do – but I’m entirely capable of taking care of myself.” And of course, she was right. “Give me a cigarette.”
“What?”
“You’re just going to stand there and smoke, and not offer me one?”
“I’m sorry – you just don’t look the type—“
“I’m not.” She smiled, white and clean.
“Well, okay.”
He gave her a light, and the two stood there, inhaling and exhaling and staring up at the endless night sky and its radiant gems.
-
“Sebastian,” she said, when she’d finished her cigarette. “Let’s run away together.”
“What?”
“Let’s run away together,” she said, laughing that melodious, sarcasm-tinged laugh of hers. “God, do you know how many men I say that to a month?”
Sebastian shook his head no.
“Hundreds, Sebastian! And they all jump at the chance. Follow me down alleyways, stalk me into restaurants, run circles around me with their fantastic proposals. ‘A house in the countryside, you and the kids.’ Men see something pretty and they want to marry it right away, claim it as theirs. Piss on it -- mark their territory. You’re all dogs, you know that?” When Reese said this, she looked directly into his eyes, and with such fearsome condescension he wanted to throw up.
“I wasn’t going to propose to you,” Sebastian whispered.
“Oh, I know,” said she. “Maybe not right away, but you’d work up to it. A phone-call here, dozen roses there, picnics in the park, walks on the beach, anything to win my heart.”
Sebastian struggled for words, but the insufferable Reese pressed on.
“People see something in me, Sebastian, and I’m just so over it. They see something brilliant and they come crawling – these lonely people with their petty little needs and pathetic little wants – chasing me! Fed up with life, Sebastian? Desperate for fulfillment, are you?” She laughed, and the music turned bitter. “Well I have news for you: everyone has a void to fill.”
At this point in the conversation, such flames grew in Reese’s eyes that she began pacing, firing off words every which way. A speechless Sebastian watched with unhinged jaw and frightened eyes.
“They come to me and they say, ‘Reese, how do you do it? How do you live with such passion – what is your secret?’ I tell them to go screw themselves. ‘Get away from me,’ I say. ‘You’re all losers!’ Alcohol, cigarettes—“ (And having said this, she seized Sebastian’s pack of Camels and flung it across the street.) “Drugs, lies, violence, hate -- bowing to your condoms and cell phones, building altars to yourselves, offering your ‘friends’ as sacrifices – digging your own damn graves. You’re all monsters ... all of you!”
Tears welled in Reese’s eyes, and she looked to Sebastian, heartbroken. “I just don’t get it. College burnout, wasted on weekends -- you’re just like the rest of them, and I knew it the second you started following me.”
Reese wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her coat and awarded Sebastian a watery smirk. He watched her fumble around inside her pocket, eventually drawing a small object from it. “Good luck with your life,” she said, and pressed a single match into the palm of his hand. As if on cue, the 5:15 AM bus rolled up, and Reese stepped on. And as the bus pulled away, Sebastian swore he heard her shout, “Go ahead! Light something with it.”
The stars rained on Sebastian like bombs. They fell from the sky into the corroded expanse inside his chest, gutting his heart of its decay. And suddenly ... everything he’d thought to be true looked plastic and forged. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to breathe. He felt blood crashing through his veins, ripping up rotten spores that had taken root within him. He felt like dancing, weeping, screaming at the top of his lungs, he felt invincible, he felt refreshed, he felt alive.
For a moment back there, Sebastian swore he’d grasped the meaning of life. Reese had been beautiful. Now, the cold air tasted sweet. The match burned, tucked away in his pocket. And nothing else mattered but the bombs. Bombs pouring in him; bombs obliterating everything.
-
And the day pulsed on. The sun sagged in the sky as late afternoon drummed into night. Office buildings pumped streams of filthy bodies into stuffed streets. A misshapen city symphony thrashed on rhythmically. And there was Reese, chin lifted in defiance against a current of apathetic faces. Heads of billboards and buildings and businessmen turned as she passed, but Reese could not be concerned with them. Her mind was elsewhere.
She glanced at her watch and quickened her pace: such was the daily race to meet the bus home. Hurriedly, she stepped off the curb and into the street. A car screeched to a halt beside her, its horn blasting angrily, its driver shooting an off-color gesture through the windshield glass. Her heart raced. Dizzily, she breathed an apology in his direction – and did a double take.
“Sebastian?”
But the car had already moved on, burying itself deeper within the tangle of traffic.
And suddenly, her stomach was upset. The car had taken her off guard, jarring her from a place of elevated isolation into common city confines. And now she was opened and exposed and aware: everything about this moment, this street, that boy (and every other like him) resurrected feelings within her – feelings she’d suppressed – and now they came, smashing over her in tsunami-sized waves. The city began to reel drunkenly around her. Hard lights and sharp noises – she’d blocked them out for so long – were inside her skull, blaring inside her head. Her legs began to give way from under her, earth spinning, city convulsing. “Sebastian!” she gasped. And he was everywhere: in the lights, the smog, the symphony, and the slew of disillusioned faces – consuming her, suffocating her.
She pushed her trembling legs across the remainder of the street and collapsed onto a bench. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to take thick, hard breaths. Her chest rose and fell to the rhythm of the city as she fought its vulgar penetration. Slowly, she crept back into her skin. And finally, when her heart had calmed, she gathered the details of that morning in her mind –
Sebastian, with his intense, frightened eyes, and she, with her sharp, eager tongue; the scent of his cologne, the taste of her cigarette, his hands and her tears beneath a surge of exploding stars
– and erased them. She could not bear to be violated again. Besides, he had been desperate; she felt no remorse.
She opened her embittered eyes and flew from the bench into the crowd, alone.
(2007)
