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“Stop manhandling the ice cream!”
That punchline did not deserve such a big laugh from the audience.
Esther craned her neck toward the back of the apartment to listen for her roommate as she rode the volume; the sound mixing on this sitcom was terrible.
11:11pm. Could have been midnight, or 4am, or 9pm, or the end of the world. Alone in the living room with all the lights off because she just didn’t feel like turning them on. The sitcom was so stupid, but there was nothing else to watch except this, and 200 other channels, plus the five different streaming services, not to mention stacks of DVDs, bought or burned.
Having so many choices felt like having no choices at all.
The hallway light snapped on behind her.
“Aviva?” Something about tonight made Esther paranoid.
“Hey.” Aviva’s flat affect became a comfort. “Huh. Thought you fell asleep on the couch again.” Her ultramarine tichel, which never showed a strand of hair, looked strangely vibrant between the yellow-orange hallway light and the white-blue glow of the television. “Everything okay?”
Esther turned back to the television with a groan she felt through her whole body. “I don’t know.” They were acquaintances mostly as Aviva was strictly a night owl. Was this really the best person to talk to?
After a few uncomfortable moments of Esther trying to focus on this stupid sitcom, Aviva’s low voice cut through everything else: “You want to sit outside for a little?”
Much as she loathed leaving the couch, she knew it would be good for her. “I’ll meet you out there.”
From the freezer, Esther pulled her comfort food: mango jalapeno ice cream.
The meager concrete square that served as a porch for the bottom-floor condo had two crappy-looking wrought iron chairs and equally crappy-looking round table. Aviva ignored the chairs to sit on a big milk crate.
Esther flopped into a chair with her ice cream pint and big spoon.They faced a dark and uninteresting forest, made exciting only by the fireflies that danced near them and around the edges. She set out her phone on the table and cranked the music player only to remember that she should’ve asked. “Um...you don’t mind, do you?”
Aviva shrugged and turned back to the forest.
Frogs chirping. Beetles vibrating. All in search of a mate and the closest thing one could get to immortality.
She liked this ice cream because the spiciness snuck up on her. Cooling and sweet, and then the tickling burn. Nothing else felt like this.
“You ever feel like time just runs together?”
Aviva turned. Esther couldn’t really see her eyes because neither of them had remembered to turn on the porch light, but she had never felt an intensity like that before.
“Yes.” Aviva tilted her head. “What about you?”
Esther tried blowing a couple strands of hair out of her face before pushing it aside. “I don’t know. Yeah. I just.” She put another bite of ice cream in her mouth. “It just feels like I’m not moving forward. Like I’m stuck and nothing is ever going to change. Like, ‘what’s the point,’ y’know?”
The song from her phone came softly. I love the feeling when we lift off....
Aviva turned the milk crate to better look at Esther. “The Hebrew calendar claims to start from the beginning of creation. But we know that’s not true. We think we know when the Big Bang happened.” The intensity of her invisible stare kept ratcheting up. Esther now felt it pressing against her chest and neck. “But we don’t. Entropy is time’s arrow, but only if we count from the Big Bang. Time is everything and nothing.”
If we suddenly fall, should I scream out....
The sound of the milk crate against the concrete as Aviva scooted closer turned Esther’s spine to shards of glass. The hairs of her arms were standing on end. Aviva’s voice remained quiet. “I feel like you get me.”
Relax? Yes I’m trying...
“Do I?” Esther reflexively smiled, a habit she hated about herself for all the trouble it would cause her. “We, um. We don’t really see each other. And only been living together for a year, right?”
Somehow she could feel her pulse in her ears. “Have we?” asked Aviva. “Just a year? Or has it been five.”
It must have been. She had moved in when the fireflies were out--wait, but the fireflies came out early last year and then there was a cold snap and then the fireflies came back--hold on, it was after she broke up with Shira--no, wait, there was that time they had hooked up and were dating again briefly. “Well, yeah, I mean. That sounds right.” It must have been.
“I don’t really remember.”
I love the quiet of the nighttime…
Aviva’s hand rested on Esther’s wrist and it was as cold as the ice cream pint burning her palm. “Biblical Hebrew has a prophetic future perfect tense, something that will happen because it is inevitable” Her grip was like a vise. “But it also has a cyclical present imperfect form for something that is happening over and over but cannot be completed.”
“Why--why do you think that is?” A firefly came close and she saw yellow eyeshine in Aviva’s face.
“Time is just a thing that humans created. Hashem doesn’t care. But our people were alone in the desert and we had to make sense of the wilderness.”
The weird sound of someone breathing through their mouth. A neighbor’s cat triggered the motion sensors on the back-deck lights two doors down. Did Aviva’s teeth always look that long?
She felt her own pulse in her ears. Her legs wanted her to stay and her arms wanted her to run far, far away. The hand on her wrist and ice cream in her hand were starting to hurt and she didn’t know how much longer she could last. Esther found her throat raw from the burn of the capsaicin in the ice cream.”...How. How long have you...felt like this.”
The sense of time catching up with me...
“I don’t remember.”
“...When did it happen…”
“I don’t remember.”
She wondered if this was how her namesake had felt upon learning that she must give herself to a king who cared nothing for her people.
She remembered lighting Shabbat candles before sunset--last year--no, wait, she hadn’t done that in years--she waited for Aviva and they lit the candles together for the evening prayers. But she remembered--or was that a false memory?
As people drift into a dream world…
“An infinite present.” Aviva spoke in the harmonious tones of a cantor. Was she singing a hymn? When had Esther heard it? “No expectations.” Esther forgot how mellifluous her voice was. “No attachments.”
“...Does it hurt?”
I picture my own grave…
“I don’t remember.”
“...Do you like it?”
“I love it. I just wish I had someone to share it with.”
Esther couldn’t remember anything before the freezing-burning which infected every tendon, down to the little bones in her fingers and toes. This is how the air felt. This is always how the air felt.
“...What happens now…”
Aviva caressed her chin and lifted it slightly. Amidst the freezing-burning, Esther felt the slight strain of her neck muscles growing taut. Aviva was cradling her. The fireflies illuminated the ivory of her sharp, sharp teeth.
“I don’t remember. Never tried this.”
Yes this fear’s got a hold on me....