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Jessie sighed and gave Shelly a call. Past time. They hadn’t talked for ages. Seemed like… could it actually be years? Get it done before work.
Of course, he could text. ‘One of the great innovations of the new century,’ he thought. ‘Poor communication with the illusion of efficiency.’
His fingers fumbled with the number pad. Holding a ‘cell’ instead of a wall mounted phone felt strange. The device had no heft. Insubstantial, like a toy, he could throw it against a wall without a thought. He thought about this ‘cell’. Living quarters in a prison? Only portable? Or a disingenuous misspelling of sell? If it’s sell, who got sold? Considering the price tag, he figured it could only be himself. Who’s zooming who?
Overlooking the nondescript courtyard, he listened to the line ringing with mixed feelings. He could always leave a stilted message, or hang up and try later. Wash, rinse, repeat.
‘Too much to say. A text won’t do.’ He needed connection. Or closure.
Had she changed? He wasn’t a kid anymore, but he looked the same. No external scars anyway.
So many decisions. Need to adapt after such a regimented existence. Lacking nostalgia for prison life didn’t mean freedom came without peculiar drawbacks. Freedom isn’t free, as they say. What rehabilitation exists depends on individual personal initiative.
Now he had time to do as he pleased. Mainly. So much time and so little to fill it. Yet unused, it still passed. His one room apartment could not contain all the time he had. Time has no shelf life. Like trying to stuff bubbles into a safe deposit box. Use it or lose it.
He thought of inventing a clock which would run slow by day. Owners could fill the longer hours more productively. Come night, the clocks would catch up. Who actually sleeps a full eight hours? ‘Not me.’
The ringing continued. ‘Don’t tell me she doesn’t have a message machine.’ He laughed at his being more tech savvy.
He looked to disconnect when he heard a voice.
“Hello?”
Jessie fumbled his phone. “Shell?”
“Who is this?”
“Hi… It’s Jess.”
The silence felt interminable. She spoke tentatively. “Jess…?”
“Yeah. I thought you were out. I almost hung up.” Her voice brought her presence. ‘My Shelly.’ Tears welled up. He swiped them away with his hand.
“Where are you? Are you out?”
“Fairly recently…”
“Oh… Welcome back to the land of the living…”
“If death is that boring, I’ll pass.”
“Bad, huh?”
“Navigating arbitrary rules and random violence. Skill sets I never dreamed I’d need.”
“Wow…”
“This a bad time? I can call later…”
Had she been sleeping? Alone?
“No. Uhm, it is fine. Are you okay?”
“Considering. Did I wake you?”
“No, I’m… never mind. I hear stories. Are you…?”
“Stuff happens. It can be a horror show. But you learn to wade the… mainly boring routine.”
“What’s up?”
“We haven’t talked in… forever. I got a place. No curfew. Have a window. And a door on the toilet…”
“Good. Working?”
“Part time. Graveyard. I’m thinking it’s temp. Hoping…”
“Good.”
“I want to thank you for your help…”
“It wasn’t much…”
“It meant a lot, though.”
He felt his voice constricting. This shouldn’t be so difficult. He paced the small room. Three strides each way. Barely furnished. The mattress lay on the floor by a small reading lamp and some books. Bare walls.
Shelly continued, “So, you need something? Why are you calling?”
“No. Nothing like that. How are you doing?”
“Oh, you know, Jess… It’s been an ordeal. I don’t know… Maybe you do. What do you expect?”
“I just thought… maybe we could meet. Face to face… long time…”
“Yeah, I know. Let me think about it.”
“That’s cool, Shell. No big deal… I just thought… I don’t get out much. I’m so used to staying in, I have to force myself out. No ski trips planned…”
“I’m really busy... You know, these days. Can I call you?”
“Of course. Any time.”
“Yeah, I’ll save your number. Okay?”
“Wait, Shell. You have a minute? How are the kids?”
“They’re great. Like weeds. Kris is really smart.”
“Like her Mom…”
“Gordy’ll be in the Olympics any day. Can you join the Olympics before your tenth birthday?”
Jessie laughed. “Don’t know the age restrictions. Maybe height requirements, though.”
“He has your crooked grin, of course. Thinks he knows it all.”
This silence felt warmer.
“When could I see them?”
Pause.
“I’ll get back to you on that, Jess.”
“Of course.. They get my letters? I never heard back…”
“They’re little, you know… have their lives now. They’re happy, Jess. Don’t need a lot of drama…”
“No drama, Shell. I don’t need it either. But they could profit from my presence. I have something to offer…”
“Yeah, being present… Maybe you should have thought about that before. You know?”
“It can’t have been easy.”
“It’s easier now.”
“You could benefit from me…”
“Really, Jess? Don’t even go there…”
“That’s not what I mean, Shelly. I mean lighten the load some. I didn’t mean… I mean, I don’t expect…”
“You are smarter than the average…”
“Look, Shell, I made some bad choices. But I never intended to hurt you or the kids. Ever.”
“I know. I hope those choices were worth it.”
“After everything… I know I forfeited… You don’t owe me...”
She murmured.
“Be honest Shell. We’re in each other’s lives. Like it or not, we aren’t strangers.”
“Such a talker. I always believed you…”
“I’m just saying… I have no expectations… I assume you’ve moved on…”
“I don’t mean to cut this short, Jess, but…”
“Wait. I mean, since we have so much history, maybe find something to salvage… from the wreckage…”
“Your wreckage?”
“Sure. Mine.”
Jess didn’t hear anything. Had she hung up?
“Shelly? You there?”
After a moment, “Jess, yeah. I’m here. Distractions.”
“Did you hear me? I need you to know I’m not going anywhere.” Silence again. “What do you think?”
“Yeah, so… not this week. Coffee? Or what?”
“Coffee’s great.”
“Let me see what I can do… next week? Thursday? I’ll call you.”
“Thursday then. I’ll clear my schedule.”
“Right. We’ll catch up.”
“Yeah…” He didn’t want this to end.
“Okay, Jess. I’ll call. Good to hear your voice.”
“And yours. It’s been too long.”
“I’ll call. Bye.”
She hung up. Jessie tossed the phone onto his mattress. He pressed his forehead against the window’s cool glass. The sounds of commotion echoed from below. Not his monkey...
He looked at the phone and set his jaw. ‘Better than I dared hope. I know how to wait.’
He checked his watch. Twenty minutes before his shift.
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This is some really well-handled dialogue. You don't run across a full dialogue story that works this well very often. Kudos.
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Thank you very much. From your comments and other's, dialogue seems to have become a strength of mine.
I appreciate the kind words.
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Thank you for writing this. This felt like it was taken out of real life and ever-so-slightly fictionalized.
I can really empathize with Jessie. He's trying to reconnect and make up for what he didn't do (or didn't do well) in the past. Hard to know if Shelly will give him a second chance. Maybe she figures she's already given him plenty of second chances and doesn't see any reason to give him another one. She's moved on and he's kind of stuck in neutral.
I know from my own personal experience that it's never easy reconnecting, especially with someone who was more than just an acquaintance or friend. There are always the rough spots that have never really healed or only with a thin scab to protect them from getting hurt again. And if you meet someone who's been hurt by someone else, they will always look at you as if you were a copy of the person who hurt them, no matter how nice and honest you are to them.
Just one editing comment:
But you learn to wade the [maybe add "through" before "the"]
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I really appreciate your analysis. It is so rewarding for someone to 'get' a story so completely.
I struggled with 'wade'. Whether I should use vernacular or correct form. It was a conscious choice but perhaps the wrong one.
Thanks!
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Glad I could help.
When you're as old as me (I'll be 54 in July), you tend to have more experience to learn from than someone in their teens does. (There are exceptions, of course, for teens who have gone through a huge amount before their even 20 years old. Refugees, for instance, experience things I couldn't imagine going through myself.) I've definitely made my share of mistakes and have tried my best to learn from them. I've reconnected with old friends, and sometimes it's a time for happiness, but sometimes they've forgotten all about you. You just have to accept the latter when it happens. People move on, they experience new things, they meet new people. It's mainly the historians, archaeologists, and paleontologists who study the past (not to dwell on it, but to learn from it).
I didn't know there were two different forms for "wade". I'm just used to spelling it "wade". Out of curiosity what are the differences between the vernacular and the correct form?
You're welcome.
I wish I'd had a website like this one when I first started writing stories in grade school and college. I did take a college class in creative writing, but it didn't really teach me anything I didn't already know beforehand (except that I get really nervous when I have to stand in front of a group and either speak or sing; I'm still that way 30+ years later).
What doesn't help is when people like what you write but won't tell you when they spot mistakes. I think they expect you to find those mistakes yourself. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. But if you don't, it's nice to have an objective reader who isn't afraid to say, "Um, you goofed here. And you goofed over there." and point out *where* the goofs are. They're doing it because they really want to help you improve your writing like a nice person would, rather than criticize it and make you feel really bad about your abilities like a mean person would. I try to do it the nicer way. I hope this made sense.
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Since I had the character say it, rather than in my description, he dropped the preposition as one might informally or perhaps less educated. The grammatically correct version would be 'wade through the stream'. But the character speaking might say 'wade the stream'.
Your comments are very welcome. Too few take the time to even click like, let alone put thoughts to paper. Thank you very much.
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I understand now. Vernacular doesn't always strictly follow the rules. It often uses a looser, less accurate version (like "bugger" is actually a corruption of "Bulgar", "Ottoman" is a corruption of "Osmanli", etc.). Maybe I *have* been too fussy in my owns stories, but characters tend to speak like I do or like people I know because that's what I'm most familiar with. With exceptions: I'm not fluent in Russian, French, or Italian, but I've had characters speak a little in those languages because I thought that it made them sound more realistic. I either use what I already know or I use Google translation (from English into whichever language I need a non-English term or phrase in).
(Here I go, being fussy again.) Btw, I would've said "across the stream" or "in the stream", not "through the stream". Because when I've been standing in a stream (or a shallow part of a river), I was either in the stream (going this way and that) or crossing from one stream-bank to the other (like fording a river).
Glad I could help. It's nice being able to share what I know, what I've seen, what I've heard, what I've experienced, etc. with others. And it's just as nice when people share those things with me. It lets me see new things and hear things the way they do.
You're very welcome. I used to give short editing comments, but sometimes there were stories that seemed to need more-detailed editing comments. In the latter cases, I've evolved from just quoting the word or phrase that I thought had a typo in it or maybe it needed some rewriting. I didn't originally list them in the order that they happened in the story, which probably didn't help the writer (they probably thought, "Great. Now I get to hunt for these. You weren't as helpful as you thought you were.") These days, I not only quote entire phrases (and sometimes entire paragraphs), but I go in order from the beginning of the story to the end. That way it hopefully is easier for the writer to follow along (and they can decide for themselves each time whether they prefer how *they* wrote the term or phrase or sentence, or if my suggestions helped them improve what they wrote, or maybe a mixture of the two did the trick).
I've noticed since I first posted stories here (last July) that the stories have gotten steadily better and better, and I'm certainly not so self-centered to say that I've been a major force behind that. I think that we writers on this website just naturally get better (with or without help from other writers). If you do something often enough, you'll probably improve ("practice makes perfect"). Especially if it's something you enjoy doing. The Chinese have a saying, "Find a job you like and you never work a day in your life."
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