7 Love

They kissed. Two lips smacking against each other, like two dancers, intertwined, moving dancing in their mouths. I looked them. Katya looked at me. Katya and I sat next to each other. A bottle of vodka between his legs and nothing between mine.

"So," Katya said.

"So what?" I said. They stopped kissing. Anastasia looked at Alexander.

"Fuck, doing that reminds me of how much I hate you," Anastasia said.

"Why thank you. It also completely and totally reminds me of that too." They laughed. Katya looked at them. I looked at them. Katya got up the ground slightly crunching, I got up too.

"We're going to the liquor store," Katya said. We were going to the liquor store. We left the courtyard. Birds were chirping, men were smoking and I was walking to the liquor store again. We got there. It was the same as last time, except for a giant metal bar jammed right into the side. It was just jammed right into there. We opened the door. A familiar Spanish sitcom was playing on the little T.V. A familiar song was being tapped by a familiar foot and a familiar man sat there doing the same thing.

"Katya it's been so long. After your big important event, you stopped coming, I got so lonely my dearest. So terribly lonely." he said. We both looked at him. A feeble unknowing terrible person of wit unknown trying to approach. Trying to convince us to fall into his trap. No, he was none of those things. He just asked us a question. A simple god damn question you crazy person.

"I'm doing fine," Katya said. The old man looked at both of us. His eyes resting on the top of my head.

"What do you want."

"Some of your famously terrible vodkas," Katya said. I looked at the bottles upon bottles in the store. I looked at everything. It was so much, too much, too much everything. This was all too much. Alexander, Anastasia, everything was too much. This whole god damn situation was too much for me, it would usually be too much for anyone. And it is too much for me. I'm fucking done with this. I left the store. I down the street, I walked down and down and down, I passed my apartment complex. I passed Katya's house. I passed all of the town, it was the wilderness of cities. Countless buildings made of cement towering over small houses. Looking over down at gray streets and gray people and gray and gray. I walked out of the empty hallways of cities. Eventually, the city gave way to emptiness. To just a street that went out forever and ever. Houses dotted the sides with men tending lawns or smoking or drinking. Why does it happen to people, why do confident, intelligent, interesting people get everything handed to them. Is it just luck do they just happen to be all of these things for no apparent reason. One foot after another, one more and more and more. The roads sloped up and down left and right side to side. What happens when you die. Does it all just go black, does nothing happen, do you live your life in slow motion seeing all the terrible mistakes you made. Do you just constantly think for all eternity until even your thoughts disappear. Why think at all. Why do anything at all? People always are happier, smarter, better than you. It's all pointless. It was getting darker, the houses more infrequent until it was genuine country. A tree appeared every once in a while. The houses were less routine more exotic. The people stopped smoking and drinking and started playing. The children came out. The gloom of the city was gone. The paved road gave way to mud. Slush incomprehensible stuff that dragged and sucked against the soles of sad feet. Terrible unworthy unloving stuff. Slowing everything inside it down. Eating away at something about something. I stopped. I sat down in front of the house with a little red roof. The wetness of the mud permeated my bottom. I was hungry. Of course, I was hungry. Hunger, sleep, all of it never seem to go away. I closed my eyes. A breeze kissed my cheek, the mud grabbed at me, the darkness ate at me. The earth took me away, all of it. Anastasia and Alexander. They really do make a good couple. Of course, they do. That's not their fault. I got up, I stretched, wobbled my feet my wrist my everything. Yawned. I'm tired. I got up. I heard footsteps on gravel. I heard someone. Someone. They were heavy, but probably not fat. They didn't walk slow, they hopped along as if happy. I turned around. It was Andrei. From all those months ago. Resurrected from the dead brought back into the world of the living.

"Hey, Mikhail is that you, haven't seen you in like forever." I hadn't seen him in forever. He had changed his hair was longer, his body was leaner, his mouth seemed to be curved into a permanent smile. He was a changed man.

"Fuck me dry and call me dirty what are you doing here?"

"Oh well you know when I got married I moved out here to get closer to my wife's family."

"Oh. You got married when?"

"I swear to God I sent you guys all the invitations and you guys just didn't come. I was really a little disappointed but what can you do," he said.

"You invited us? I never got anything."

"Oh, really that's weird such is life though. Why are you here then?"

"Oh, I'm just going to a friends house."

"You have friends out here. Wish I could say the same about myself. I'm about as lonely as a stone in the ocean."

"Well, I guess you've got me now."

"Well, I guess I do now don't I." He was married. Andrei was always quite. Always meek, never talked over people, never did anything out of the ordinary but now he was just all of a sudden married. It could be said to be the biggest coincidence ever. A man a single man married in an instant.

"When did you meet this girl?"

"Oh a couple of years ago, we started dating when you and Alexander were both really interested in sports cars."

"Well, Jesus you never seemed like the type to get girls." He laughed and I laughed. He looked in the mailbox rummaged around a little bit. Got something then left to go back towards the house. He stopped at the door.

"Get out of the mud. It's nice enough out take a walk before your friend gets here." he said. He walked inside. I looked at his receding figure. Is he just blind luck? He was never good looking. Or confident, he was never skilled, never anything important. Yet he has a wife. I looked through the windows on the sides of his house. There standing in the kitchen was a beautiful women, smiling, laughing, with big eyes, long blond hair, and she just stood there laughing away. Not a care in the world. Just laughing at some random joke that I couldn't hear. Laughing not at me, just laughing. He was nothing, he is nothing, nothing at all. Yet he found it. Found and grasped it into his hands and made it his own. With skill and deftness as well. I got up. I walked away from his house. Down the roads, over the hills, looking at the trees receding back, the smells of nature went back, and the city appeared again. Watched as gray trees towered ahead with the smells of smoke and drink and I smiled and smiled and smiled. Smiling more and more. It was almost night out. Men were smoking, women were smoking, a great big haze of smoke had descended over the city and I was happy. Completely and utterly blissful and happy. The world is great, everything is true and good people are nice. Sometimes all you need is blissful terrible utterly incomprehensible luck. That's all there is to it. Luck. I skipped and jumped and twirled in the air not literally but a metaphorical twirl. A dance if it so be it. It was great. It's all great. Through the pillars of concrete around a bend. Wading through benches surrounding a great big fountain with water not even gushing out. Nobody was around. The city was silent save for a cough and a jerk. I sat on one of the benches. In my hands was a coin twirling, swirling, leaping about my fingertips. Sometimes leaping and jumping but never leaving my hands. I got up. I turned around. And I walked towards my apartment.