The Universe Laughs

Kira was a planner. She composed a future for herself like a sequence of musical notes—each step a natural succession to the next, no surprises or dissonant chords.

By the time Michael asked her to junior prom, Kira had already begun writing up plans for their future together. Her journal was small, but it was more than enough to hold everything she asked of the world.

Michael would be a doctor. A big wedding after his residency. Kira at home, caring for their children. Vacations to places with palm trees. Retirement on the West Coast. A spot where she could see the ocean from her bedroom window.

In her tiny, neat script, Kira filled her journal's margins with details of their future lives—vacation itineraries, the layout of her dream kitchen, potential names for their future sons (she wanted three).

*****

The days pass slowly when you are waiting on better times to arrive.

At twenty-six, Kira waited tables at Applebee’s and worked weekends as a janitor at Lincoln Middle School. All while Michael finished up his last year at Albany Medical College. Exactly where they were supposed to be.

They both agreed Kira didn't need to bother with college. Michael would take care of them—just as soon as he became an MD. Kira worked two, sometimes three jobs, paying the bills so Michael could focus on his studies. Anatomy textbooks. Fraternity dues. Expenses for his semester abroad in Italy.

Kira buoyed herself along through those grinding years by planning for a future happiness. In mapping out a life in graphite and ink, she convinced herself that controlling destiny was as simple as willing it to be.

Blissfully unaware the threads of fate do not behave like puppet strings.

*****

The night Michael announced he was leaving her, Kira was reviewing plans for their wedding—scheduled to take place in three years on a beach in Maui. The journal had been full for years now, but she did this often—mulling over minutiae, escaping to these penned fantasies.

She was busying herself with the reception’s drink menu—should margaritas be served instead of mojitos?—when Michael gently squeezed her shoulder and ended everything.

Kira tried to listen to his speech—she really did—but her ears didn’t seem to be working properly. She caught only snippets, the rest trickling past like water escaping through cupped hands.

… over a year … Julie … fell in love …

Kira remembered Julie, a lab tech at the university. They had all gone out for drinks together only a few months ago. Margaritas, specifically.

… family money … she’s so generous … what you're owed …

Michael was trying to hand her something, a piece of paper. Kira was only vaguely aware of her hand reaching out to accept it.

… you can move forward … fresh start …

She glanced down. A check for $20,000. Signed by a name that stung like venom to read.

It was then that Kira sensed something catastrophic was happening. An earthquake. An explosion, perhaps. She looked around. Nothing appeared to be moving. Yet something was breaking, Kira was sure of it. She just didn't know what.

*****

Kira awoke to the taptaptap-ing of rain on a windowpane. Must be a tropical storm, she reasoned. We'll have to reschedule our surfing lesson. Oh well, Michael can order room service and we'll figure out another way to enjoy our morning …

A muffled voice loosened her from the vision of the honeymoon suite.

"Hello? Ma'am? You okay?" Fingernails tapping on her car window.

Blinking away the dream, Kira yelped in surprise.

The boy jumped back. "Sorry—didn't mean to scare ya, ma'am—it's jus', my manager's gettin' worried. Says you been slumped out here in the parkin’ lot for, like, five hours."

Kira squinted into the sunlight. She was indeed in a parking lot. Right outside of a restaurant with “Annie’s Diner” painted on the glass in curly script. A vague memory of pulling off the highway somewhere past St. Louis after sunrise.

She straightened her back. “What time is it?”

“Nearly noon, ma’am.”

Thirty-six hours since the ending of everything.

“Thanks. I’m just leaving.”

She turned the key. An obedient vibration thrummed through her body as the engine roared to life.

Before pulling out, Kira glanced in the rearview mirror. A red line snaked across her forehead from where she slept on the steering wheel, so exhausted when she finally parked that she hadn't even made it to the back. What's the point of buying a van if I don't even sleep in it properly?

*****

Michael’s betrayal had triggered a Darwinian alarm within her: DANGER. RUN. RUN. RUN. An ugly, squawking thing.

Kira didn't argue. By morning, her life was packed away in plastic grocery bags. She didn't own any luggage, unless you counted her old high school backpack. Having only traveled in daydreams, she had never needed any before.

She found her journal on the kitchen table where it had been abandoned the night before. Kira half-expected to find its pages mangled and bloody—she had always imagined death to be a gruesome affair. Yet there it was, looking untouched and innocent, still open to plans for a wedding.

She wanted to leave it. She intended to.

But as she departed, Kira gingerly tucked it into the inner pocket of her backpack, careful not to crease a single page.

*****

Before leaving Albany, the only goodbye Kira gave was to the stranger who dropped off the 1995 Chevy G20 she had found listed online. Kira didn’t need a test drive—she paid the asking price and started driving without knowing where to.

She felt nothing beyond a pointed desperation to get as far away as she could—away from the apartment, from the city, from the whole goddamn East Coast.

She didn't have anyone to run to, nowhere else to go.

All I’ve got is the money from Michael’s new me.

Down to $14,100 after the van.

How good it would have felt to watch that check burn. To reject everything it represented. But with her bank account reading triple digits on its own, Kira couldn’t afford that luxury.

RUN. RUN. RUN.

She drove on.

*****

Kira tasted blood.

She had been chewing the insides of her cheeks since leaving Missouri. Gingerly, she poked at the wounds with her tongue. The skin felt ragged and raw.

Rooting through the mess of plastic bags in the back, Kira couldn't find her toothbrush.

… the best laid plans ...

Bright lights swam across her vision.

... of mice and men ...

For the first time, she was unprepared.

.... often go awry ...

Kira took a deep breath. Squeezed toothpaste on her finger and rubbed it across her teeth. Spat the minty, bloodied saliva onto the cracked cement.

In the back of the van, she wiggled into a secondhand sleeping bag smelling faintly of mildew.

Somewhere near the Colorado border, Kira fell asleep with her backpack clutched against her chest, surrendering herself to the dreams that were zipped away inside.

*****

No matter how fast she drove, anxiety was never far behind. The only remedy was to keep driving. To put more miles between her and all she had known.

The road’s median line seemed to stretch on forever, lending a sense of dependability. She let herself be hypnotized by its meandering. Is this what numb feels like? If so, it was wonderful.

Kira sped onward, through fields of wheat, mountains and deserts. Thoughts straying no further than the pavement’s next bend.

*****

The dashboard clock glowed 11:52 when Kira ran out of road. She parked at the jetty, its jagged boulders jutting out into the dark waves. How many days have I been driving? Dazed, she tried to remember the roads that had taken her to this place.

Barefoot, she made her way across the sand. The beach was quiet, broken laughter from a bonfire in the distance. The primeval scent of salt and decay on the breeze.

The Pacific shoreline advanced and retreated. Breathing like the belly of a slumbering beast.

Her backpack dropped to the sand. Clothes quickly followed. Kira charged the darkness, diving headfirst into a curling wave. The rush of cold delivered an instant headache. But she felt awake—the first time in days.

She swam, fighting her way past the break. Out in the calmer deep, Kira rested. Starfishing under the moonless night.

Kira floated adrift on the black surface, feeling like a planet untethered from its sun.

For the first time since leaving home, she began to cry. The first drop fell slowly, but the rest came quick, the way a storm descends on the prairie. Sudden. Violent. Consuming.

All she had been running from had caught up with her, and Kira couldn't run anymore. Instead, she wept. She wept for the man she loved—but sooner than she would have guessed, those tears were spent. The tears that followed were for herself—for the broken promise of who she could have been. Howling her ugly, private grief into the night, Kira mourned for a future that died before it was lived.

Drop by drop, she emptied that deep well of sorrow and saltwater within her, returning it to its original source.

*****

In the distant sea, a mighty swell was brewing.

Distracted by her tears, Kira drifted back into the surf zone. The whitecaps travelled toward her, growing in mass and speed.

A swollen wave lunged up into the night and folded, swallowing Kira in its collapse.

She summersaulted underwater. Gulping saltwater in surprise and pain.

Kira came up coughing just in time for the next avalanche of whitewash to crash down. Caught in the gyre, she barreled forward, twisting and streeling as if being sucked through a giant straw. The current making a spastic puppet show of her limbs—didn't it know she was almost out of air? Sea pounding to get in—hold it, hold it off just a moment longer, hold—a dam breaking, water rushing inside.

At the end, a flash of desire: to live. To discover what living could be.

That spark was soon doused—and nothing existed, nothing beyond the amniotic darkness and the fire in her lungs.

*****

Kira felt a cat’s tongue licking her face.

Sand—wet and rough—scraping her cheek. The next sensation, a burning in her throat. Spewing brine up onto the shore.

Kira crawled above the tideline and collapsed, relishing the solidity of dry land. She raked her fingers across the beach, feeling the wonderfully gritty texture of shells and pebbles and … and something else, smooth and flat.

Sweeping away the grist, she uncovered a small, rectangular shadow. A tiny black notebook, sandy but dry.

Kira looked around—the beach was empty. Gently shaking out the ivory pages, she opened the leather cover. The pages shimmered with a nacre sheen in the starlight. All of them blank.

Curious.

Clutching the notebook, Kira stood on wobbly legs. Wet underwear clung to her skin as she trekked the coastline back toward the jetty.

Her discarded clothes and backpack—her journal inside—were nowhere to be seen. Swept away by the rising tide.

All those plans ... Gone.

Kira was surprised to feel only relief.

*****

That night, Kira curled into her sleeping bag, grateful to give herself over to sleep.

A new hope was blooming within her—dreams of renovating the van into a home … driving down the Mexican coast … eating fruits with names she has never heard … learning how to paint or fish or even how to sail … perhaps falling in love once or twice, or maybe not at all …

Itching to jot down all of tomorrow’s possibilities, her fingers curled around the notebook as she dreamed.