By Brad Barkley
She asks for a cigarette during a fire alarm. You want to be clever by noting the irony, but your brain is too panicked and occupied with its own alarms—her face, her hair, the way she looks at you. She tucks her hands inside her coat sleeves. She seems smart, but shy about it. You don’t know her. You give her one, light it, say clumsy things. Trucks roll up, lights flashing. People meander while you sit on the concrete steps, their voices a mixture of sound floating up into the autumn air. Safe now, a firefighter finally announces, only a drill. All dressed up for nothing, she says. You smile. You wish you’d thought of it.
Later, you’ll think about this moment, just a diversion, a pause in the work day, a fire in the break room that never started but could have. The microwave maybe, a spoon left in a cup of noodles, or a glint of foil that overheats and then sparks, ignites, and soon a whole building is burned away, and the next one too, an entire block left smoldering in ruins. But that never happened. The only spark falls from her cigarette dropped on the sidewalk. Just a drill this time. A shrug, more clumsy words. You look at each other. She thanks you for the cigarette, tells you she needs to quit.
A singularity started the universe, but not every moment expands. Not every spark ignites. This one will, but in ways you can’t know as you sit on those concrete steps, as you smoke and talk and shuffle back inside the building. You watch her until the elevator doors close. Time grows—over cigarettes and quitting, over years, over letters and silence. Over coffee and games of Boggle. Over fights and advice. Over affairs of the heart and a steak dinner, just one. You marry the wrong person, and then she does too. She’s somewhere in Florida, emailing photos. Your hair is graying some, as is hers. You imagine a kiss that never happened but might have. Or should have, you will tell yourself, more clumsy words, more silent alarms.
Universes expand as they will, and there is no rewind button. All this thought of universes makes you laugh at yourself. This is not cosmology. Shiny things, tiny sparks. The loop of time. It’s just a girl, just moments, just a cigarette.
Just concrete steps and a fire drill.
Just a lifetime, just two hearts, just distance.
Just love.
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Brad Barkley is the author of the novels Money, Love and Alison’s Automotive Repair Manual, two collections of short stories, and three YA novels with Penguin. His fiction has appeared in Southern Review, the Oxford American, Glimmer Train, and 30+ others. He’s won numerous awards, including a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His new novel, The Reel Life of Zara Kegg is forthcoming from Regal House.