When Jeremy Lambert kissed Rachel Nelson in the kitchen doorway of his two-bedroom apartment, he knew at that precise moment that the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with was not Rachel Nelson.
Jeremy and Rachel had spent most of their evening in and around the shopping center, and in that lively environment lit by icicle lights and teeming with the sounds of the holidays, Rachel made a very astute observation when a skipping girl, no older than ten, flew past them in a bright orange coat.
“Look at her,” she said. “I honestly can’t imagine being so happy that I would actually skip.”
Jeremy didn’t reply and Rachel forced a weak laugh as the girl pranced over to a group of children, presumably her friends and joined them in frantically scooping snow into their gloves. As the children prepared for their friendly battle, Rachel tried a new approach.
“Is that bad?” she asked, linking her arm with Jeremy’s.
“What are you asking?” he replied.
Jeremy’s trite response caught her by surprise. Rachel Nelson was then reminded of something: she was very unhappy that evening. She was unhappy about having lived a quarter of a century with very little to show for it besides a framed piece of paper she now kept in a cardboard moving box. She was unhappy that Jeremy constantly had a cocktail of medication coursing through him. And she was unhappy that her father continued to put several hundred dollars a month onto her debit card. But she was most unhappy that she remained dependent on someone else – someone who wasn’t Rachel Nelson. That someone right now was Jeremy Lambert.
“I’m not even sure,” she replied quickly.
She forced another laugh as Jeremy looked away. He was hiding a violent cringe that had just made its way across his face. He had always found masking his emotions difficult, but thankfully Rachel was someone who didn’t easily pick up on tell-tale subtleties.
It was getting late, indicated by Jeremy referencing his watch. He let out a sigh.
“Should we be going?” she asked. “What time is it?”
“Almost eight,” he replied.
“Time flies,” she said.
Jeremy couldn’t agree more. Had he missed it? All night he was looking for an opening – a brief pause in her barrage of hollow conversation that would allow him to finally speak his mind. So far nothing. Either Rachel had not given him the chance or he wasn’t brave enough to interject. He had found her comment on skipping disturbing, but chose in that moment to not use the statement as a platform for his much-delayed complaints. He feared her response. He feared her making a scene in a public place. He feared losing her. And most of all, he feared knowing that he needed someone like her to feel complete. But he wanted to complain – truly he wanted to interject and proclaim that he too was unhappy just like her. But he wouldn’t tonight.
He would instead return with her to his apartment as the ritual mandated and spend the next two hours lounging alongside her on his couch watching television. It was mid-December, so reruns of classic holiday shows would be playing. She would eventually claim to be too tired to stay awake. He would ask her to spend the night, but she would refuse. He would offer her a ride back. She would politely decline, insisting the walk wasn’t far and that she needed to clear her mind. They would make their way to the apartment door, kiss their goodbyes, and probably start over again tomorrow.
Mike could see Kelly in the sunrise – the way the piercing orange defeated the morning’s cold drape. The flatness of the road made for the best sunrises, he thought. He loved the horizon. He loved how the deep blue of morning was bested by the power of light and color at the start of the day. To him that was love itself, and therefore, he thought of Kelly. He could see her left eye hiding behind a veil of dark bangs and a dimple in her cheek. He could see her turning around to greet him as soft shades of violet surfaced. Mike stared into the emerging light and tried to imagine her there – somehow existing in the collage of color and cloud. He wondered if, by some romantic coincidence, she was experiencing the same mundane, however magnificent, natural occurrence as he was, and maybe – just maybe – if she was thinking of him. She’s not, he thought. The sunlight began to reflect off the hood of the car and he turned off the headlights. He had driven through the night and now the day had arrived, marking the thirtieth day since Kelly left him for “some douchebag back home,” as he had come to call him.-B
There was a romance to the Indiana interstate that Mike had fashioned in his mind. The fields of harvested corn seemingly longed to be replanted – to return to their desired state of blossom. In the late autumn plainness, Mike found beauty and, as he would call it, love. He loved the road and the passing cars. He loved his ’89 Chevy Caprice and the hours he spent last summer replacing the transmission. He loved how its maiden voyage had taken him out of the refuge of his parent’s garage and into the night, all the way to that diner off the twenty-first exit where he first met Kelly. She was sitting alone at a table, writing something in that tattered leather-bound journal of hers, occasionally looking out the window at that illuminated stretch of road.
It all started at that diner – one of those glorious, grease-ridden diners placed directly off the exit ramp. During his late-night drives, the twenty-four-hour diner appeared like a beacon, its muted fluorescent lights appearing in the distance behind a thin line of spruce trees. Mike had stopped there just hours before only to grab a quick cup of burnt coffee as he made his way south. He wished he had seen her there. Just like old times, he thought. They would be sitting in that corner booth by the window – where he first saw her – talking about old TV sitcoms and art history courses she was taking at the community college. Everything would be perfect. But that wasn’t the case – not now.
Water and Oil from Brent Clouse on Vimeo.
This is the short film I've been working on this fall semester.
