A Meeting of Two People in a Place by Izzy French
Somewhere, there are two ants, experiencing the sunset for the first time. They are happy that they do not experience it alone.
Elsewhere, we find two other ants, this time human, in a diner booth. The freshly clean-wiped wooden table reflects L and F, our two protagonists, amid coffee stains and the etched names of teenagers who once wuz here.
A fly flies clockwise in an attempt to feel a euphoria never before felt in its tiny fly life.
A warm light hangs overhead, creaking softly.
It had been raining, presumably. L looks damp.
“How are you.” A question for sure, but not phrased as such. It hangs in the thin air.
“Good, and you?”
A thumb is silently upped.
L twists a fork between their fingers. F plays with the salt shaker, un-twisting the lid.
L eventually reaches down and grabs a wooden crate. Inside: an old phone without its rotary holder, a GameBoy with ‘Mario Land 2’, something from Teenage Engineering, a mixer that looks like a bomb, those rounded Logitech speakers, a USB-A mouse and keyboard, knobs, leads, et cetera. Some lo-fi beats to study and relax to are playing from L’s phone. The crate is dropped onto the table with a gentle heft.
F opens their saxophone-shaped bag and brings out a saxophone.
“Where do you want to start?” F asks.
L adjusts their sunglasses. Through synths and drum machines, they reply “There’s this shorefront that reminds me of a dream. In the dream, I stumble upon some old apples. There’s no doubt about how they used to be crispy in the way apples should be, but now they’re crispy in a way apples should never be. I go to use my apple magic to magic the apples back to their appropriate crispyness. But they disappear before my eyes.”
“Maybe they were never crispy.”
“Perchance. I thought an object’s past should be evident within its present, but I was a fool.”
“Perchance, for sure. How does that make you feel?”
“Anew. Free of burden. A little bit embarrassed.”
They awkwardly pause their conversational sound to make un-conversational sound.
. . .
Eventually, they return to conversational sounds.
“Do you have any dreams?”
“Day or night?”
“Any that transfer from one to another?”
“There isn’t much cross-over; every-so-often I have a wonderful night dream that I try to go back to in the daytime, but it just doesn’t work. I mean, I do go back, but it doesn’t hit the same. When I was seven, I dreamt of riding one of those red roof-less Ferraris into a circus.”
“That’s awesome. No roof means infinite clowns.”
“That’s why I wanted to go back. Plus there were some elephants that needed to be rescued. But I never got to do it at night. So I returned to the circus in my Ferrari at 1PM, but the circus had since concluded. I did finish the mission, but it turns out that when you’re saving elephants, only three clowns can fit in the car, and the elephants weren’t even grateful.”
L sits awkwardly in their booth. They’ve rescued countless elephants in their dreams, all of which had been incredibly generous with their thanks, but it felt rude to mention now.
F pulls away from their saxophone, and exhales a cloud of smoke.
There’s now a crowd around the two. Mostly unfamiliar faces, and Matthew Pavlich, all listening to the sweet sound.
“Have you ever been winded?”
“Once to the point of fainting.”
“Oh, do tell.”
“Kyle throws this ball right into my sternum, my stomach convulses, and I get the wind knocked out of me. It was mesmerising, like a ripcord through my throat. I fell backwards into a pit of nothingness.”
“What happened next?”
“I woke up in the grass, in the recovery position, with my hands around the ball. It was the first time I had caught it that season.”
…
“I’m better now.”
“I hope you are. Winding doesn’t last that long.”
The crowd disperses, leaving F and L in the booth.
“Is this a dream?” F asks. “I don’t know how I got here.”
“It’s dream-like for sure, but I don’t have my apple powers.”
F checks out the window. “And my Ferrari has a roof.”
“So we’re probably not dreaming.”
“Do we have time for one more?”
L looks at their watch, and notices the football clutched to their sternum. Matthew must have left it there. It turns into a pear. They must have five minutes left.
“I think so. I have a love song, if you’d like?”
“Sure.”
F starts un-packing their saxophone, as L starts singing into the rotary-less phone, and not the well-placed microphone next to the booth.
“Blinking lights
Howling on down at midnight
Titanium with love in its might
Sways like a metronome
Steady as a dance floor.”
The fly stops flying in circles, for it has reached the desired amount of euphoria.
Art by Danyon Saxon