note: a really really short fiction piece

The woman from the human resources department of my company told me that direct deposit would not take effect until the end of the month, so when I received my first paycheck, I found myself walking to the nearest Citibank to deposit my check into one of their ATMs. The nearest one was just four blocks uptown from my apartment, right next to a Starbucks. I decided I would grab a cool cup of iced coffee on my way back. It was sunny and warm outside, so I put on my sunglasses before embarking on my errand.

At the bank, I began to fill out the deposit slip and tried to memorize the amount on the check so I could enter it when prompted by the machine. I remember one time I had to deposit a check, I forgot the amount and had to tear open the envelope I had just sealed with the check in it. It only took about three recitations in my head to remember the sum. As I broke the sum in my mind – one, five, four, six and two, two cents – I noticed a young woman just a few feet away walking towards an open ATM. Her small, round face and straight black hair looked familiar and soon, I realized it was none other than Audrey, whom I had dated for a couple of months in college. Looking my way, I could see her expression change as she registered my face in her memory. Her eyes widened, and she soon came towards me.

“Dave! Oh my goodness! Is that you?” she exclaimed. We gave each other a quick embrace. “How are you? Wow, this is such a coincidence!”

“I’m doing very well. And yourself? Don’t you live on the West coast now?” I asked.

“Yep. Still living it up in Menlo Park. I’m just in town on a business trip and was just shopping in the area,” she said.

“Oh? I live just a few blocks from here,” I told her. She gave me a thorough look up and down.

“Did you lose weight?” she asked. “You look so toned now!” She was right. I had dedicated myself to a rigorous diet and exercise routine after years of sloth and junk food in college. It was nice that she noticed it so quickly. She looked her pretty and slender self, although it was different seeing her with makeup. She rarely wore makeup in college.

“Thanks, I’ve been trying to keep myself in shape. I guess I lost some weight after cutting down on the fried stuff.”

“Yeah, wow. Gosh, it’s been like what, four years, since we last saw each other?” she said. We had dated each other during our junior year after a semester of sitting next to each other in our British Literature lecture class. Our relationship, if you can call it that, lasted only a couple of months. We rarely talked afterwards and had lost complete touch over the years, only hearing about each others’ whereabouts through mutual friends.

“How long you here for?” I asked.

“Five days. I’m actually staying not too far from here in some budget hotel near Times Square. My company is so cheap – they always put us in these dingy one-star holes,” she complained. “What are you up to these days? I heard from someone that you had quit your job.”

“Oh, I just started my new job. I’m doing some copywriting for an ad agency. I’m pretty excited about the work,” I said.

“That’s great!” she said. “I’ve actually been thinking about making a career change as well, but the pay is too good and I don’t know if I can handle such a drastic move at the moment.”

“Yeah, it does take a lot out of you if you don’t have a job lined up right after you quit. I was unemployed for about three months and had to get by by writing freelance articles for some local papers.”

She nodded. We stood in silence for a few minutes. I probably should have asked her about her own job, not really having found out what she had been doing for the past few years, but I somehow decided against it and said nothing.

“How’s the love life?” she asked. I gave her a surprised look. “Are you dating someone now?”

“Me? Nope. I’ve been single for a while now. Haven’t really thought about dating since going through the job switch and everything. And I haven’t had much luck with women since graduation. Just a few dinner dates here and there, but nothing more,” I said. “How about you?”

“Oh, I have a boyfriend back in San Francisco but he’s in venture capital, so I hardly see him. We’re both so busy, but he’s a really sweet guy and hopefully we can make it work. I’m not sure I’m quite ready to settle down with anyone anyways,” she said.

I nodded and tried to think of something to ask or say, but nothing came to my mind. Just then, something rang from inside her purse. She took out her Blackberry and looked at the message.

“Sorry, it seems like my team needs me for an ad hoc meeting,” she said. “It was really nice seeing you, Dave.”

“Same here,” I said. I began to look down at my check again and tried to recall the exact amount, but I realized that Audrey had not yet left.

“Dave, do you want to meet up later today or something?” she asked. “We ought to catch up.”

I looked at her blankly.

“I would love to, but I can’t,” I told her. “There’s a movie that I rented this morning that I need to finish watching by tonight.”

“Oh.” She seemed both disappointed and confused at the same time. I knew it was either an insensitive or just plain bizarre answer, but I conveyed it with a serious tone. “Well, then maybe next time, I guess.”

I saw her walk away swiftly, her lean figure swaying left to right, right to left. I would not have minded a good-looking girlfriend like her at this point in my life. And yet, I felt good about the way I had turned down her offer.

You see, I had once fancied Audrey very much. She had a certain energy about her and was very fun and witty. I felt that we clicked very well and easily shared many laughs together. Our relationship, however, ended after a few months, when she began to take interest in another guy that she met while visiting a friend at UPenn. She abrupty told me one day that we should stop seeing each other. That was the last time we had exchanged more words than just the banal greetings that kept things civil between us. I had spent the last five years trying to forget about the disappointment and insecure feeling of being dropped for someone else.

A year after college, I happened to meet Audrey’s Penn guy while playing pickup basketball at a park near my apartment. The guy was a hot shot investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and I only realized who he was when he mentioned he was from Wharton and that he had dated a “pretty Korean girl from your school” for a year. He was tall and built, but his basketball skills were lacking. It felt good to score on him repeatedly, and throughout our games, I could not quite figure out what was so great about him that Audrey had found it so easy to end things with me in order to be with him. My two months as her boyfriend now seemed like a pittance compared to the whole year Audrey had been together with Wharton boy. I forget his name, but he said he hadn’t spoken to Audrey since they stopped seeing each other. That was three years ago.

I finished depositing my check and stopped by Starbucks as planned. It felt good walking back with a cold drink in my hand. I thought again about my encounter with Audrey at the bank. She looked great, and I’m sure we could’ve had a decent time catching up, but sometimes old wounds just aren’t worth exploring again. I probably should have gotten over her a long time ago. I realized that in light of the day’s chance meeting, I probably would not be in the mood to watch the movie I had rented – some classic Hollywood romance picture starring Humphrey Bogart not titled Casablanca. Instead of returning to my apartment, I decided to hop on the subway down to the Angelika to see if there were any decent independent films playing there.

note: a very short fiction story (and a bit strange)

“I’ll be sitting at Ella’s having a spinach and mushroom omlette around noon next Monday. Will you come?” he wrote on a piece of Starbucks napkin. He folded it up and put it in his pocket.

Later that day, he saw her walking to the corner grocery. She wore a flower print skirt and a light tanktop. She also wore thick sunglasses and carried a red bag. He walked up to her and handed her the piece of napkin.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“You’ll see,” he said as he walked away. He did not turn around but kept on walking.

***

Six days and three thousand miles later, he sat at Ella’s on Presidio Ave. It was foggy outside but the air was still very crisp. He had taken the bus and then walked about twenty blocks to work up his appetite. He had carried a copy of the Guardian that he picked up from the street corner back at his hotel in Nob Hill. He still preferred the Voice, but when it came to free papers, he never held them to a high standard. He read the latest Edible Complex column which talked about Thai food in the Upper Haight – he would probably swing by there later since he loved cheap Thai joints wherever he went.

“I’d like orange juice, spinach and mushroom omlette, and a side order of bacon please,” he told the waitress, a slim blonde with hazel eyes. She wore a maroon apron and navigated her way through the tables, all filled by the young professionals and senior citizens who frequented the place during lunch hours.

He looked through the classifieds and wondered how much rent went for, not that he’d move out here just yet. Maybe in a few years after he had saved up and could handle payments on both an apartment and a car. And maybe a decent job on the West Coast, he thought.

The juice and the food came. He ate slowly and continued to read the paper. He began reading articles that at first glance held no appeal. He checked his watch – a silver Seiko that his great aunt from Japan had given him for his graduation – and noticed that it was already a quarter to one. He paid the bill and left.

***

It was half past ten and the restaurant was fairly empty. An old couple sat by the window sipping on decaf coffee while a father and his son, about seven, shared a stack of pancakes and plump brown sausage.

She sat alone at the table closest to the open counter area, behind which you could see the kitchen staff preparing for lunchtime. Ella’s prided itself for its cleanliness and wanted its patrons to notice. She opened up her Chronicle and read the op-ed page. Definitely nowhere near the quality of the Times, she thought to herself. She decided not to read anymore, folding it up and putting it away in her red bag.

“I’ll have coffee – black, a bowl of fruit, and a side order of toast,” she told the waitress, whose short blonde ponytail and hazel eyes reminded her of a close friend from her college days.

She stabbed the last piece of fruit – a strawberry – and looked at it momentarily before sliding it off the fork with her lips and into her mouth. It was sour at first but eased into a familiar sweetness. She took out her cell phone and checked the time. It was almost eleven. She paid the bill and left.

It had been a nice trip. She loved Chinatown because it just felt older and more established than the one back home. She decided to buy herself a jade necklace because she felt that it would match well with her bluish green skirt. She looked through her red bag to take out cash when she noticed the Starbucks napkin lodged between her book – The Unbearable Lightness of Being (for the third time) – and her sunglasses case. She took the napkin out and read the scribble on it one more time.

She knew he would be there at noon, and yet, she couldn’t bring herself to see him face to face. She had come all the way out here on relatively short notice – the ticket wasn’t cheap – and she could only imagine, sitting by herself at Ella’s, what he would feel a few hours later. It would never work out anyway, she told herself. And yet, she was here, three thousand miles from home.

Her cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Meet me at a place called Lotus Thai at seven,” he said. He hung up.

She smiled. She hoped to get there by five for an early meal.

note: summer short #3!

Ever since he was a 2nd grader, Steve kept a journal. All the way up until middle school, he used marble composition notebooks – the ones with the dairy cow spotty covers and thick spaces to accomodate large handwriting. Then in high school, he upgraded to a Mead Five-Star ring binder notebook with mature “college-ruled” margins. Of course, his handwriting had become a lot slicker and he no longer had the urge to accompany his daily entries with doodles of his friends playing catch or a duck crossing a road with ducklings trailing behind. When he received an 800 on his SAT II Writing test, Steve proudly acknowledged his journal writing as the main reason for his excellence in writing skills. And to think that a little more than a decade ago, he was struggling to recite the alphabet in the trailer classroom where ESL students went each morning. True he still had a bit of Koreanisms – the L and R exhibiting tiny discomforts in the tongue and the delivery sometimes choppy – but he felt like he spoke as naturally as any white boy and he certainly felt like he wrote better than most of them.

College was tough. Steve was a history major, and he was sick of taking notes every single day for all the books he read. It wasn’t that he had to write the notes, but he was obsessive about making sure that he knew exactly what he read. Already a junior, Steve was proud of his 4.0 GPA in history – and none of that cop-out American history crap either – he specialized in Eastern European history, including perhaps the most geographically challenging area known to man – the Balkans. Of course, such dedication to his studies meant necessary sacrifices had to be made – besides imposing a no-drinking rule on Saturday nights to study at the library, Steve allowed his time-honored ritual of journal keeping to fade away. He was tempted to start up a blog since that was the new craze, but he didn’t believe in electronic journal entries and decided against it. Steve might not have the time anymore, but he remained a purist when it came to writing personal stuff.

It was another Saturday night at the library, and Steve squirmed in his chair as he read Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 1806-1914 in preparation for a midterm paper. He found the book pretty dry and noticed that his notes no more than a few scribbles. He looked around the large study room. His university library kept its reading rooms open 24-hours a day, seven times a week during the school year, so it was not unheard of to find driven undergraduates doing work at 2am on a Saturday night. It was only 12am on this Saturday night, and Steve hadn’t even finished half of his weekend special, a tall Starbucks caramel macchiato. About four tables down, he spotted June pouring over her organic chemistry textbook.

June was what Steve considered very pretty. She had pretty almond-shaped eyes, shiny-brown straight shoulder-length hair and a slender frame with hints of athleticism in her gait. While she didn’t have the same coming-to-america-at-age-five experience as himself, she was an American-born Korean and the Korean look had Steve rating her even higher. Steve knew June from their involvement in Urban Tutors, a community service organization that paired up college students with underprivileged elementary students to go over homework and study for tests on weekends. Steve gave up after a few sessions because he had been assigned to an unruly 13 year-old black boy who loved to curse and believed the only thing Steve could teach him was kung fu. But in those few sessions, Steve had been introduced to June and knew her basic information – sophomore, pre-med and chemistry major, from connecticut. He regretted giving up on Urban Tutors so soon in the off chance that he could have gotten to know June better, but he had seen her study more and more at the library. He hadn’t said hi to her in a while, so he decided now – in a relatively empty library reading room on a late Saturday night – was a opportune moment. He put his book down and casually picked up his caramel macchiato while walking towards her.

“Hey June, how’s it going?” he asked.

She looked up, a bit surprised, and took a moment to register Steve’s face in her mind and began scouring for the name. Nothing.

“Oh. Hey,” she said, “I’m so sorry. What was your name again? I think we’ve met before.”

“Oh yeah. We did Urban Tutors together. It’s Steve,” he said, a turbulent mix of regret, embarassment and shame brewing at the pit of his stomach.

“Hi Steve! I think I remember now – you had that really loud kid who wanted you to be Bruce Lee, right? Haha, I felt sorry for you,” she said.

Steve felt a bit better. Okay. Not totally forgotten.

“I’m doing okay. Just studying for my orgo midterm. How about you?” she asked.

“Oh, just doing some research for a history paper. How long you been here?”

“About three hours. I think I need to stay a few more to really catch up. Are you gonna stay much longer?”

“Well, I was going to read a few more chapters and maybe attempt an outline of some sort,” Steve replied.

“Hey – you wanna take a study break? I need to get some more coffee,” she said, much to his surprise. “Looks like you already have some Starbucks though.”

“Oh, well, I’ll still go with you if you’d like,” he said.

“Cool, let’s go.”

Steve was grateful that June was outgoing and incredibly nice. A minute ago she hadn’t even remembered his name, and now they were walking side-by-side to the deli across the street. It was too late for Starbucks – they closed at 11pm – so June had to settle for the generic $1 cup in that super plain blue cup with the white words – coffee – on it. The two of them hit it off on the way to the deli and back. They talked about their other extra-curricular involvements – June volunteered at the hospital a few times a week and also did some work for student council while Steve talked about his work-study job as an assistant editor at the business school’s monthly magazine. In their short time together, they became familiar with each others’ social circles, who they partied with and what they planned on doing for Spring Break, although it was still too early to make plans. When they came back to the reading room, they went back to their books and worked a few more hours. Steve was the first to give up, and he stopped by to say goodnight to June. He asked her for her screenname and got it, although she warned him that she was barely on.

“Shoot me an e-mail or something,” she said.

And that was how the seed of infatuation was planted in the mind of Steve. In no time, Steve entertained dreams of having a girlfriend and all the places he would take her on dates. He replayed in his mind the image of her sipping on her coffee while asking him what he liked to do in his free time – of course, free time was hard to come by and his best answer was – “oh, watch movies, hang out and just catch up on sleep i guess.” he wished he had been more original, but the answered seemed good enough for her as she agreed and said that was exactly what she did as well. they were meant for each other!

She was right. Steve never saw her online and when he did, he never got a response and often waited until her screenname turned light gray (idle) on his buddy list. He sent her an email, but her responses were nonchalant: Hey, how are you? I am good. Sorry for the late reply, been real busy. Hope everything is good. Catch you later. Bye! -June.

He saw her from time to time at the library or just around campus, but it was never the same. She was with her own friends, and she always seemed so preoccupied – so busy that there was no space in her life for him. How could it be? Could this be the same girl who had asked him to come to the deli with her at 12am on a Saturday night? Steve knew he was counting on too much from so minute an experience, but nonetheless, he grew frustrated and even a bit saddened that she was not the person he wanted her to be but that he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

So he wrote her a letter. It began with a Dear June — the first five letters of that – Dear J – had been so natural to him at one great expanse in his life. Dear Journal. Dear Journal. But this was different. Dear June. He wrote to her, not about how his heart ached to be with her or how he thought about her every waking moment, but about more “intellectual” and “interesting” things like how one of his history professors had served as a historical consultant for a famous war film released recently or how you could get free donuts from the supermarket when you went a quarter to midnight, right before they threw out all the leftovers. He relived the finer points of his day and captured them with a cool, subtle style that skillfully disguised his screaming desire to be understood and liked. He sent it to her through campus mail, which only took a day to deliver. He waited three days to see if she would say anything to him about it. Maybe write back or drop a one-liner email.

Nothing.

He wrote her again, about more things dear and interesting to him. What do you think about the architecture of our dining hall? I find it a bit too claustrophobic and the way there are very few windows makes ventilation a problem…. The squirrels here are so fearless. I felt like one of them was walking with me to class today. I later held out an apple core and a squirrel came close and took it from my hand. He continued to write. He dated the letter. And he kept it.

He wrote her again. Dear June.

And again. Dear June. Dear June. Dear June.

He saw her around campus from time to time and said hi. She never mentioned the letter. They never exchanged more than a few words thereafter. She was a busy girl. He wrote her yet again. And again. He kept it all in a shoe box, neatly stacked rows of trifolded letters. He never missed a day and even wrote during summer vacation. He got himself a new shoebox when the first one became too full.

Dear June,

I really enjoyed the bbq that the student council put on for everyone the other day. I heard you did part of the planning. Good job! I think our campus can definitely use some of these community-building events. I liked how you got a bunch of student groups to perform. I really loved that a capella group – forgot their name – but the one that did the Maroon 5 song – that was spectacular! I sometimes wish I had some skill to contribute in the performing arts arena, but I guess if anything, I can learn to write a play or something. Anyway, I finally got myself a job — I’m going to be a research assistant at Goldman. Well, it’s not quite banking, but I hope this position suits me best. Maybe I’ll work my way up to research analyst one day and make recommendations that people will actually follow. But in the meantime, I’ll be doing some grunt work on Wall St. Hope your MCAT preparation is going well. See you around.

Steve

—-

The third shoebox wouldn’t take anymore. Steve paused while looking at the boxes. His midtown apartment was small, but expensive and cozy. The boxes took up extra space. It had been two years since he wrote that first letter to her – the one she never replied to. He had been out of school half a year already and a few months into his job as research analyst. Why had he kept on writing? He wondered if he was mentally stable. Well, I’ve been no good at getting dates or hooking up with girls, he noted. But besides his letter-writing habit, he hadn’t felt too weird or obsessed in any way. He still thought about her from time to time, wondering what she was doing and if she still remembered him. But he hadn’t ceased the letter writing. Now they took up space in his $1,500/month apartment.

He looked her school address up. She was a senior now. UPS Ground Shipping for three shoeboxes worth of letters. He attached a note.

Dear June,

I hope you’re doing well. I realized that I should’ve tried sending all these to you, but I decided to do it in one shot. It’s not anything creepy or stalkerish, so please don’t be afraid. I don’t have any use for them, so maybe you can take a look before you decide to trash them or do whatever. Anyway, good luck with senior year, and if you need advice in investing, feel free to ask me.

Steve.