original fiction
A Love Story
The clock on the far wall of the store read 3:55. Five minutes were left of his six-hour shift and Greg was tapping his foot against the linoleum tile. After two and a half stagnant hours, a harassed-looking woman holding a struggling child by the hand came in, carrying a battered envelope containing photographs to be made into a calendar. He chewed the inside of his mouth as he thumbed through each of the photographs, marking the sizes and months on each. By the time he assured her it would be ready by 11 AM the next day and she turned, tugging the child out through the automatic sliding doors, the clock on the wall read 4:12.
Carl arrived four minutes later to replace him. Greg barely mumbled a salutation before thrusting off his red apron in a hurry.
“What’s with you today? You got a hot date?” Carl called after him. Greg didn’t look back, only waved, quickening his pace toward the glass doors of the exit.
The daylight was fading and it was breezy. Normally, he’d stop and enjoy the fresh air after a long day while he pushed his ear phones into his ears, turning up the volume on his iPod to drown out the city noise. Normally, he wouldn’t mind a few extra minutes at work. Today, however, he was picking up Celine.
Jamming his ear buds in, he fumbled on the combination of the lock on his bicycle. It took another try to loose the chain from the post. He managed to press play on his iPod as he nudged the kickstand up with his foot and swung his leg over, peddling into traffic.
A song came up on random, one that he wrote and he and Celine recorded together clumsily with the built-in microphone on his computer. The quality was amateur and echoed a little bit too much, but Celine’s voice rang clear through the tiny speaker in his ear, and Greg’s peddling fell into rhythm with her melody, his shoulders relaxing.
He never made music like he did with Celine. An hour or two of juggling melodies around with her, and words flowed onto a sheet a paper from him like an inky stream. Even her little quirks and flaws dragged out something from within him that he couldn’t explain. She tugged the strings in him and together they sang.
He remembered when he first saw her in Sam’s, a hole-in-the-wall music store downtown. It was four years ago. She was behind the counter, ordinary-looking, plain even. It wasn’t until he heard her. He took his eyes off of the guitars that hung on the far wall, and looked. Once he listened, once he heard her cadences and her melody, he knew that she was special. He came back the next day, determined.
When they touched for the first time, it was just a simple brush of the fingers, but he still knew that she was the one for him.
Listening to their song through the earphones now, he smiled into the dimming evening, standing the bicycle on the curb, and clicking the lock in place, securing it.
He was anxious as he pressed the button at the entrance of the apartment. It had been nearly two weeks. There had only been one other time that he had gone for that long without being able to hear her songs, without being able to hold her familiar form in his arms. It was a year ago, about a month and a half after his father had died.
Greg’s father had given him his first record when Greg was nine, a copy of Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan and a turntable to play it on. By the time Greg was fourteen, the needle had worn it down. His father didn’t waste time in getting him a fresh copy. Greg tucked both copies of the album in the back of his closet when his father died. When he tried to write new songs, his hands shook too much.
Two months later, an ink puddle had long-dried on Greg’s desk from two weeks before when he broke his pen after the several futile attempts. The crumpled paper piled in his wastebasket.
Celine sat stoically against the wall in the hallway. After staring intermittently in silence for a long while, he gave in and reached out to hold her in his arms again. The feel of her familiar curves resting in his arms and her comfortable weight against his body, and most of all her sound that he knew so well stayed with him. With her, tentatively, he plucked out a song. He pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and began to write.
She sang with him to break the dam. Together, they translated into music.
He knocked on the door to the apartment. When it opened, Sam stood at the door.
“Come in, make yourself at home. She’s just about ready. I’ll get her for you,” he said, holding the door open for him.
Greg’s foot tapped against the futon in the living room as he waited.
Sam came back, a guitar case tucked under his arm. He set it down, unlatching it. She lay in the plush felt, his lovely Celine. Greg reached out, taking her into his arms.
“The tuners had to be replaced. They were rusted pretty badly. And I went ahead and changed the strings for you. But she’s good as new,” Sam said.
Greg fiddled with the new ivory tuners that were shiny in the lamplight of the living room, strumming. He finger-picked a few chords, listening to the sound echoing through wood. He smiled, running his hands along the curve of her glossy body.
“Thanks. She sounds great.”
As Greg peddled down the street, Celine’s weight on his back, the streetlights came on overhead.