By Robin Herzog
That’s Frisco walking around the convenience store, and that’s Dream Girl on the other side of the desert valley, mirroring him perfectly. Frisco’s head is split wide open by the way, for the millionth time. He’s working, so he’s been smoking, dreaming, drifting. He sees pink clouds that want to lure him far away, he sees the moon beyond the world. He sees what he wants to see.
Frisco’s at the Cefco just a couple of miles south of where he grew up in Waco, or in Alto or in Limbo. Whichever you prefer, he could care less. Frisco’s young but he’s decomposing nonetheless and might even have crossed the Styx a while back without taking notice. He doesn’t work the day shift anymore. He’d have to put up with actual work if he did, greeting people, being nice. Like a crazy person. Nine to five is a lesser life, he thinks he’s better off. Customers rarely come by. What’s left is quiet time. The stars outside twinkle in the millions but Frisco’s used to it, he misses all of them as he gets behind the register. They don’t matter to him. He’s looking out the window searching for something else, humming a nuevo western under his breath. And as luck would have it, he finds it, and the disgusting peels of life blow a thousand miles away. It’s Dream Girl, she’s just standing there looking at him, at least he thinks she is. Is she? Her silhouette is a stick girl over at Texaco. He likes it. It’s almost not real. Frisco then does what he always does when they’re working parallel shifts, he flashes the store’s exterior lights. One, two, three, four, not thirty seconds later she responds by flashing her store lights. By then he’s all carnival hot dogs and confetti inside. Fireworks explode in his heart. After that the whole desert valley goes dark. Not in a literal sense, but in Frisco’s mind it does. There is a blanket over Texas, there’s only him and her close together in a starry-skied cocoon above the ground, fingertips touching. Acknowledgement, calm, joy and togetherness wrapped in possibilities beyond crude matter. All he’s ever wanted. It’s all there in the back of Frisco’s head. But it’s out of reach to him, locked away, he cannot see it, smell it nor speak of it. It’s too off course and too unlikely for him to comprehend. The blanket is pulled away. The cocoon shatters and the world returns. All that Frisco’s left with is a cloudy joy as he heads to the car wash. Although it’s not the same exact Frisco from a minute ago. On site he locks up the building in a stunning maneuver, work discipline suddenly in abundance. He doesn’t ponder upon it. He who knows who he is and what he does. He who knows what life is.
Frisco breathes the desert air that smells of cotton candy and watches the dancing moths that have turned into silver butterflies in the blueish lamp post light. But he will never ask himself why he stops to look at them while he is truly happy. Although in thirty minutes, on the drive home, he’ll be chasing his demons yet again as he still hasn’t approached Stick Girl after all their nights together. Frisco never gets the phrasing right so he has yet to walk over there. He looks across the valley again, but she’s out of sight, stacking bags of chips. Everything remains the same.
A little further south, still in viewing distance from Cefco, the Rio Minimale flows purple and honeylike and the moon is a big yellow saucepan. There have been a thousand nights like this one but there’s still something in the air. Smoking, quitting time and Shadow Girl, they’re what make it so, Frisco thinks, still in a good mood for a little while longer. They’re what it takes, he believes, as he walks back to the store to the sound of his footsteps and the chirping crickets. But it’s not the whole truth. Frisco doesn’t know it, but they wouldn’t mean all that much without the flashing of the store’s lights. He just did it one day. And then she did too. And now they just do it. Frisco doesn’t even know why. It’s not to say hi, they could wave, and it’s not to flirt, how could it be? It’s something else. It’s been on the tip of his tongue for an eternity, it feels like a promise, but is it? All he knows is that it’s important to him beyond reason. But if he knew why, he’d lose it forever.
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Robin Herzog is a Swedish writer whose short stories belong to literary fiction. They are often set in the style of magical realism and his work has appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, The Quiet Reader and Roi Fainéant Press. Robin lives in Stockholm, Sweden, he has a BA degree in Journalism and is currently writing a short story collection. He aspires to take readers on journeys far from the everyday.
writer@robinherzog.com