An Extraction
1
Wiping the sweat off her brow, she got out of bed. After splashing cold water over her pale face, pieces of her dream slowly came back to her. Trying to ignore it, she walked into the kitchen, groggy with sleep, rolling her eyes at the sight of an eviction notice slipped under her door. She had thirty days.
Driving alongside the Missouri river in Pierre, the October air was cool. Her left hand hung out the window, fighting the strong wind from the speed of the car. As she sat in an unnamed bar, a few hours passed, gently constricting her blood vessels making her weak and vulnerable with the sting of a hug. She turned her attention to the young bartender. He looked like the type that was clean-cut despite the fact he didn’t want to be. Every morning shaving away the promise of a better career all in the hopes of keeping his present one. Each day for him became an attempt to distill the memories of a violent storm outside the window of a third story apartment, the knocking and bumping sounds in the surrounding rooms often overshot the clap of thunder or a pesky attempt at protection by his grandfather turning up the volume on the tv. Never an explanation. Simply a practice of ignorance. Whether the old man was actually protecting his grandson or simply trying to hear the tv better is a question that still remains unanswered. The fact remains that the little boy still has memories playing back to him in his mind, attempting to share with him urgent news that has since been deeply buried in the dunes of his family history.
Several drinks later, a mysteriously shiny man approched her, urging her to leave. Images of her surroundings were too fuzzy to feel anything but indifference. The man reached into her purse and retrieved her wallet. He pulled out a card and said, “Ah, the Lakeside apartments. Those are nice. Let me take you home. I’m the bartender. We’re closing. We have to leave anyways.” The moon’s reflection on the river nagged at her eyeballs. Sometimes simple gestures become advantageous situations. Her attempt at gratitude for the ride home became pinestraw tattoos on the bare skin of her back. Her mind slipped off again to what the man must be thinking. Grasping at whatever is left of his confidence of safety and stability in the world. Angrily relinquishing his detest for the reality of this raw, sexual nature. Confused and offended by the thickness of her indifference, deperately hoping that this time, this girl, this place, will somehow make it different, make him feel in control.
Memories are too difficult to recall when they leave only a faint scar. Now, he was gone, nowhere to be found. Comfort. Relief. Slowly she sat up, her head heavy from drunkenness and fatigue. She was thankful that she had somehow made it to her apartment instead of being found as a bug-eaten half-naked portrait for early-morning trailrunners to take pleasure in viewing. The stench of alcohol and sex and cigarette smoke was overwhelming. She walked into the kitchen and discovered the day old eviction notice. Twenty-nine days. The fridge housed a few glasses worth of orange juice, sweet tea, and some old cheese. Slipping on the day’s newspaper, she read the print now tattooed on her foot. “Flo’s Fantastic Flowers” was in need of a gardener. No experience necessary. Talk about alliteration. Gay words and sing-songy titles most likely paired together to mask the dreariness of the location’s reality. What a name. She could just picture the annoyingly positive and upbeat owner, constantly smiling, bent on a newfound love of life after a recent accident threatened to tear away every experiential capability is has to offer. It would be disgusting if it were real. Merely an attempt to stay in business.
“Oh! You’re early!” A plump, flushed, bouncy woman popped her head from behind the main entrance to the store, wearing a smile of pure delight. Gross. Just as she suspected. She imagined the look of horror on Flo’s face as she was being ripped from the safety of life’s bubble, being torn from innocence possibly exposed to evil offerings of stale sexual favors.
A few minutes later she came back, taking a seat. “Hi! I’m Flo. It’s nice to meet you. Your resume?”
She handed Flo the form, watching carefully to see the expressions on her face as she reviewed its mediocre content.
But Flo was not real. Sitting day by day watching flowers die, stuffing her fat face with twinkies in the back room while watching re-runs of Saved by the Bell on an analog tv, in a misguided attempt to fill some hole dug up in her heart by the doings of a bored high-school bully. Eventually, she would liken herself to each character, pulling pieces from each personality, creating a broken and disturbing mirage of fantasy prep, living out a life of a recreated past.
Finally, she spoke. “Sophia Isabelle Newton.”
“That’s my name.” she stated with shame.
“Hmm…” her tone was not promising. “Very…interesting. Why is it exactly that you want to work here at Flo’s?”
“Well, I need the money.” As if there would actually be a real reason. “And, um……..I love flowers? They’re pretty….and I used to help my mother in the garden when I was younger. We would grow vegetables and we even had an apple tree, and we had a whole courtyard full of flowers. My personal favorite were the red roses.”
“Hmm…” Flo looked down once again at her resume and sighed. “So um…what happened with your last job again?”
“Well, I was in interest writer for the Pierre Capital Journal, but…there was a, um, definitive conflict of interest among the team there that I, um, chose not to be a part of.”
Talk about bullshit. To sit back and knowingly be judged by an innertube who grows flowers and pathetic fake personas for a living…the only weapon of retaliation at her disposal was her own conclusions about Flo’s private life. Alone. Except for the flowers. Alone except for the always upbeat adjective and occasional adverb put to use labeling nouns never meant to be described.
2
The boardwalk was a horrible place for an open market. The stench of the dirty water and dead fish hung in the humid air and sunk into the skin of the fruit, ruining its taste, sickening the ignorant shoppers. Sophia clicked her heels along the wooden planks, occasionally tapping a nail sending a distinctive and signatory ring throughout the grey summer air. Physically, Flo was far behind, but the desperate cries of her pathetic life were still angrily ringing out towards Sophia, getting quieter and quieter with each step. Sophia was walking slowly away from this, gradually skipping away from that mindset.
She never bought anything at the market. Part of this was due to her inexplicable hatred for fruit. Anything bitter or sour tasting reminded her of bad news, flashing threats and harsh yelling, though simple memories, were still unsettling, and made any attempt at a healthy relaxing snack time nearly impossible. As time went on these flashing memories became more distinct, drawing on specific experiences and causing her to tremble within the reality of it all. Still, the pretty colors of the fruit and the angry looks of the unsuccessful vendor drew her back there from time to time, mostly to watch the people who actually buy the fruit: the careful manner in which he handles the fruit, treating it like an infant or a small glass figurine, cautiously inspecting each corner, looking out for bruises or scratches or bugs. Pulling it towards his nose, drawing a deep breath inward to smell the fresh scents it has to offer, but quickly turning away upon recognizing the lake’s dirty water stench.
Sophia wondered why, even after this experience, this man would choose to buy the fruit. He needs to fulfill some sort of longing for a “found treasure”—something he got on his own without the modern-day convenience of a grocery store. He would excitedly approach his wife at the front door, planting a kiss, handing her the fruit-bearing brown bag, and comparing its meaningful symbolism to her belly. His wife would look up at him, never knowing he was capable of saying something so contrived, but appreciating the fact that he’s trying, this time, he’s actually trying. She would smile knowing that the next morning when she is wiping vomit off of her lips and staring at her pale face in the bathroom mirror, her ears are turning red and her husband is in the city comparing the soft sky blue to her eyes or the pink wedding cake to her nipples or the long wooden planks to her fingers.
Maybe this man just needs fruit, and the grocery store with the untainted fruit is not on the way home.
Suddenly he spotted Sophia, and their eye-contact broke her out of her daze. The man was troubled by her staring and went to the counter to pay for his fruit. Embarrassed, Sophia entered the market with red cheeks, and was unknowingly being reminded of the flushed pregnant woman with red ears waiting at home for her husband. Sophia’s fingers skipped daintily over an orange, its scent begging her to feel disgusted by her dislike for citrus and the universal dislike for dead fish. To save face, Sophia remained in the market for a few minutes after the man left, mainly to avoid the possibility of running into him again and disturbing him even further. As she was beginning to make her way out of the area, she heard a great sigh of disappointment, and then a frustrated voice from behind her say, “Why you leave?”
When Sophia turned around, she saw a young man in China begging his father not to make him go. He knew he just wasn’t born with the skill that would allow him to survive at such a tough school. Still, his father was convinced he had been raised in a strict enough environment that it had somehow trained him to be smarter that he naturally is. Cheung Wei wanted to escape his father but being sent to an even harsher academic environment was almost less freedom, it was just his father’s way of controlling him from across an ocean. When he ultimately and inevitably failed, Mr. Wei felt that cutting the cord that attached his father to him would be the most appealing thing to do, even if it meant succumbing to the harsh realities of the “land of opportunity”. He always wondered why the boardwalk space was so cheap to rent. He also wondered why no one bought his fruit, freshly grown in his huge garden outside the city. Every time someone walked out of his market, the more his subconscious told him to face facts and go back to China. He kept staring out into the river waiting for the dorsal fin of a shark to break the surface of the water, signifying the danger that lurks below. The calm water quietly danced in the setting sun, mocking him, telling him, “No, not here. Not in South Dakota. You wish. You only wish this water meant death.”
“It’s the smell.” Sophia, now knowing more about him, was more comfortable speaking to him and took a few steps closer as she broke the news. Upon receiving confused looks from Mr. Wei, she explained further. “That rotten smell from the river, it seeps into your market and it affects the way the fruit tastes.”
Mr. Wei walked over to the lemon stand, picked up a lemon, and drew in a deep breath.
Sophia looked guilty. “It’s not that strong of a smell, but I think it affects the taste of the fruit ever so slightly and that’s why picky shoppers don’t buy it.”
Mr. Wei looked up at Sophia, and gave a tiny smile with a look of realization in his eyes.
