by Scott Bolendz
We hear a city ambulance go wailing past the apartment building. Our spent bodies are tangled together in a bathtub full of steamy water. There’s candlelight. Red wine. Miles Davis. Me and my girlfriend, in for a Saturday night. She makes the sign of the cross, sees my raised eyebrows, says it’s for the person in the back of the ambulance. Tells me about the time she rode in one after a car accident. Shows me a small scar on her right wrist where a metal plate was inserted to fix a fractured bone. “Me too,” I say, pointing to a scar on my abdomen from a burst appendix in fifth grade.
She says, “What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?”
I tell her the story of how I lost my father, back when I was in high school, to a hit and run driver who was never caught. I tell her I still miss him. That I think of him every day. That I always worry bad things will happen to people I love. I say, “What about you?” She tells me about a campus shooting when she was in college. A troubled student entered the building where she was taking an English class. She heard gunfire. Screams. A fire alarm blaring. The professor yelling for everyone to run outside as quickly as possible. Even though it happened many years ago, she still has nightmares about it. Never feels safe.
We’re both silent. The low growl of the surrounding city penetrates the apartment walls, like a great beast lurking outside. The bath water turns cold. My girlfriend shivers. Her soft, creamy skin all goosebumps. The fine hair on the back of my neck tingling. We stand up, hold each other in warming arms, one naked body sheltering the other.
Scott Bolendz is a writer and award-winning fine art photographer. He lives in Bradenton, Florida. His stories have been published or will soon appear in The Bookends Review, Blue Lake Review and Flash Fiction Magazine.
Emerge Literary Journal 