REHEARSAL
fiction by Todd Grimson

She doesn’t want to have any problems. She doesn’t want any trouble. She doesn’t want anyone following her around. She thinks you have to be ready for trouble all the time. Walking across the bridge, she looks at the cars, the faces and hands in the cars, and then up at the sky. There’s not much color to this day. The sky is low and reflects the water, which is green and gray, dark green with nodal lines and ripples and waves, which show up bone and ash in shards of light.

Her hair is red. It’s not a natural shade. Her boyfriend likes it. She looks good. She washes her face in his bathroom. It’s a dangerous bathroom. Her face is in his mirror. She puts on some blush. She likes to look different to herself, or to those other people; it’s better than being so indifferent all the time. And Billy just plays the same beat over and over on the piano: he’s thinking about it real hard, making it more and then less staccato, varying an emphasis here and there, thinking about it and hearing through his hands and eyes and ears. Frowning, he looks pale, and he hasn’t combed his hair down really slick like he does when he goes out. The room is blue.

She looks around, listening to him play. The music makes her hungry. The only thing she’s had to eat today was one of those plastic things of yogurt. She doesn’t know what flavor. It was red.

Sometimes she wishes she was an animal, though she understands animals have their problems too. She’s gotten sort of addicted to having sex with Billy lately. It isn’t just fucking. That’s the problem. It’s almost everything he does. If he finds out she likes one of his records, he’ll stop playing it so much. He takes no responsibility for other people’s actions. He’s got enough to worry about as it is. The piano has some broken keys. In the middle octave he can’t play D-natural or A-flat. He’s learning to live with this, but it’s a problem now and then.

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