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."
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