This woman loves geraniums passionately

Melissa was the kind of woman who prided herself on her hard-boiled realism. How irresponsible, she would sniff, is it to let women continue to live in the patriarchal fairy tales that permeate our heterocentric culture. Her heavy-lidded eyes would dart to the left and to the right before she continued. She habitually threw back her head and stuck out her chin (like Popeye) daring any man to challenge her privately educated, liberated woman's opinions. Unfortunately it was as clear as the nose on her face that the lift of the chin was less a confident flourish than a preemptive block to an imagined blow. As a result, she was frequently undone by the kind of man who frequents the kind of party where speeches about myth and patriarchy abound.

Especially in Santa Fe, these parties always featured at least one of them. Usually, the bulk of the attendees arrived coupled: tanned climber woman with sallow, vegan men; boyish women in their late thirties, living together in a commune south of town; poncho-clad white men, with pleasantly corpulent wives in leather skirts. On the fringes, however, inevitably floated women like Melissa (haunted eyes bulging out of skin pulled taut as a drum) and men of dubious character (uniformly claiming to be in their early thirties, featuring dirty clothes, a “boyish”, lopsided grin, and faded, messy hair). These Dean Moriarties briefly let her feel like the glamorous intellectual she always meant to be, flinging aside her inhibitions, finally giving herself over to passion. A few weeks of missed phone calls and awkward, accidental encounters at the Aztec would give rise to a mortified reassessment of clothes, taste in books, and income level before coming to the conclusion that the wild child artist was merely a man child, supporting himself as a day laborer, not as a "freelance permaculture specialist".

Tonight was such a night. After a disastrous series of assignations, Melissa's sense of the injustice of the world and the worthlessness of men was burnished to a fiery glow. Her loathing was as smooth and impenetrable as a bowling ball. It was in such moods that she most strongly desired to fling her anger and hurt at the unstable pins of Callie's world of delusions.

“Hello?”

“Hello? Can you help me? I think I broke one of my chakras ha ha ha.”

“Hi, Melissa.”

“Hey Callie. Yeah, so is the sky gonna fall tonight?”

“No, not tonight.”

“Well that sucks!”

“It should happen this week, is what the book said, but I couldn't get the exact date.”

“This week like on Friday? Oh shit, payday, ha ha.”

“This week as in ending Sunday.”

“Yeah? Are you like on the right calendar? Shouldn't you be on the Mayan calendar for this sort of thing?”

“I'm just guessing it's using the Julian calendar, I guess I don't really know.”

“Ok so you know that Sunday is like tomorrow, right?”

“I know Sunday is tomorrow.”

“Well Jesus, don't get all mad or whatever. I just thought you wouldn't want to be all alone at the end of the world.”

“Well, then, why don't you come with me tomorrow night?” At this point, Melissa paused. Was she serious? Callie had never before invited her into this part of her life. Melissa hoped it wasn't a bluff. She could hear that she had gone too far, could see in her mind Callie staring sullenly out the window, flushed, wishing to hang up the telephone.

“Ha ha yeah well if that's cool, you know, then you should come over after work.” Melissa held her breath. She didn't know why she cared so much, but suddenly she desperately wanted to see her sister tomorrow.

“Okay, I'll meet you at your place. Good night."

In an American city at sunset the flags were all waving with crazy wind currents, dry leaves swept through the streets like fairies dancing on the end of flowers, the mortar burst and swelled between the red bricks, a yellow sun lowered in a yellow sky among red and orange and pink, and a woman stood on a corner in tall leather boots, a flared skirt of many materials, and a striped button-down top. Her name was Callie, and she was waiting for the meteor to fall.

As the sky darkened, Callie's eyes began to drift toward the ground. It would not come tonight. She trudged home through the swirling leaves, keeping toward the sides of buildings and away from the other pedestrians. Passing cars pressed her skirt against her legs and set her hair aloft. A driver honked at her twice and shouted out that she should lift her shirt; she kept walking, head down, until she reached her house. She lived on the side of an alleyway that rose up from the main street, in a house that had passed down to her from her dead mother. The neighbors had little flower pots on their porches, colorful wooden decorations, a bench and chairs. Callie had nothing, just an empty house front.

She pushed open the door. Her cat, a brown tabby, was sitting by the door with its face pointed upwards, having heard her key in the lock. "Hello, you little strumpet," she said. "Were you waiting here for me all day? Were you? It wasn't tonight, sweetie, don't worry. I came back." She picked up the cat and walked with it to the kitchen, wondering if there was anything in the refrigerator that she could make into a meal.

She saw a nearly empty carton of eggs, a few cups of milk, a wilting head of lettuce, a door full of condiments, a jar of peanut butter, a bottle of tonic water. Not much to work with. She made an omelet and ate it, sitting at her small wooden table with the tabby in the chair next to her. The phone rang and she answered.

"Hello? Hi, Melissa. No, not tonight. It should happen this week, is what the book said, but I couldn't get the exact date. This week as in ending Sunday. I'm just guessing it's using the Julian calendar, I guess I don't really know. I know Sunday is tomorrow. Well, then, why don't you come with me tomorrow night? Okay, I'll meet you at your place. Good night."

In her bedroom, the wind was blowing through the open window, pushing the curtains out toward her. It felt like they were beckoning. She walked over, closed the window, and lay down to wait for sleep to come.