My boyfriend looks at my forehead and says, “Why do you say things like that?”
“I don’t think you’re joking, you’re always saying stuff like that.”
“I’m just being funny because I’m bored and tired of watching TV with you and I wanted to know how long I could talk without you stopping me but you didn’t stop me because you don’t care about anything and are a nihilist or something.”
“Let’s go for a walk, maybe.”
We walk up the street past the square apartment buildings and the AM/PM with the flat roof and cross a couple of streets, and then past the elementary school. I think about a gang of adolescent girl terrorists removing my eye and ear with a cleaver and with an awl. I visualize them in a tall ice cave. They are wearing white jeans and white t-shirts. They all have the same face and long hair and strange blue eyes and they don’t smile and they all are wearing cute hoodies with zippers. I tell this to my boyfriend.
He says, “I think we should go to the grocery store and buy sodas and walk to the park.”
At the grocery store, the cashier tells us the truth behind Jeopardy and how to win, which really is to watch the show every day and read current events in the newspaper and study a lot. His eyes are little marbles rolling around and he has a cold. We forget to get our Club Card savings and spend three dollars too much. We get our three dollars at the Customer Service desk and run into the parking-lot laughing. I stop laughing and my boyfriend looks at me like he wants to know why I’m not laughing and I pretend to smile but I know he knows I’m not really smiling and we walk out of the parking-lot not smiling and not laughing and not talking.
We sit under a tall tree at the park and watch the little children spinning on the merry-go-round and swinging on the swing-set. I don’t think that the little children are thinking about anything because all little children are selfish nihilists because they just want to have fun all the time and ignore the world and drink soda and eat candy, which is why the world is meaningless and boring and stupid. I tell my boyfriend but he is smiling at the little children and I don’t think he hears me. He holds my hand and I let him and then lean against the tall tree and feel the tree-bark with my hand. It is rough and comfortable and not sticky with sap.
“You should drink your soda,” my boyfriend says.
_
Ofelia Hunt
