Marionette

She came out of nowhere, but she fell into me as if she were on a collision course.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a laugh. “I’m so clumsy.”

You’re so drunk, I corrected in my head, but instead offered her a smile. “It’s all good.”

I turned back to my friends, who were all still engaged in an impassioned—and slightly intoxicated—discussion of the game, an animated statistical analysis and pantomimed play-by-play breakdown worthy of SportsCenter. I’d missed the context of their latest speculation due to the brief but aggressive impact. I could already tell it was going to bruise.

There was a resounding roar throughout the bar, and suddenly a sea of exuberant fists clutching drinks shot into the air. In the midst of a sea of blue hugging and jumping and screaming and celebrating, I felt a clap on my back.

“That’s the game! Next round’s on me!” Tuck said, and of course now he’d have plenty of cash to spare. Big bets had been placed on this game. “What are you drinking, man?”

“Ah…” I glanced down, swirling my glass, not even halfway drained. “I’m good for now.”

He hadn’t even waited for my response, already onto the nearest throng of revelers, repeating his question enthusiastically until the entire group gave satisfyingly fervent cheers. It was the ideal environment for debauchery, but my mind kept wandering back to yesterday afternoon, my boss’ words, “We have to let you go,” still ringing in my ears.

The celebration continued while I planned an escape. Once more shots had been poured than our team had scored during the game, I reached for my coat.

“Hey man, where you going?” Tuck yelled over the noise.

“I think I’m headed out,” I said, slipping my arms through the sleeves.

“No way, you haven’t even had any fun yet! Come on, let me buy you a shot.”

“Another time,” I replied.

“Dude,” he said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “This is your big night too! You finally stuck it to the man, you’re on to bigger and better and all that! Let’s celebrate.”

I hadn’t been able to admit to my friends that I’d actually been laid off, so I’d made up a grand story about how I’d quit in a dramatic fashion. I told them all about how I was going to book a flight out west and go on a journey of self-discovery, the whole nine yards. They thought I was going to make it big in San Francisco; I’d be the architect to design the next Golden Gate Bridge. It was a decision I was starting to regret in this moment.

Tuck handed me a tiny glass with a lime balanced on the rim. “Come on, you’re a hero, kid. Cheers!”

I couldn’t give up the façade now. A few drinks would help take my mind off of things anyway. “Cheers.”

A few rounds later we made our way outside, weaving through bustling blue-clad fans who had taken the celebration to the streets. Tuck pressed the button on the key fob repeatedly, and I listened for the beep to locate his car in the crowded lot. I was distracted by the sound of a different vehicle’s panic alarm followed by a round of giggles.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to hit that!”

It was the same girl who had crashed into me earlier, this time flocked by a friend. I watched as she fumbled to silence the car and then approached the driver’s side. I saw her stagger to the left as if she’d been tugged by the wind. It might have been instinct, or maybe just liquid courage, but something took over me.

I heard myself yell, “Hey stop!” and I lengthened my stride across the lot.

“Do you know her?” Tuck asked in trail, confused by the sudden change in trajectory. “Dude, don’t bother them.”

“Hey, yeah you!” I said boldly, watching her hand freeze, suspended in midair above the door handle. “You shouldn’t be driving!”

“Excuse me?”

“You fell on top of me like an hour ago,” I pointed out.

Her friend turned to her incredulously. “Have you been drinking?”

“No, you know that Lindsay,” she said, uncertain eyes flickering back and forth from the other girl to me. “I’m actually designated driver.”

I ran a hand through my hair anxiously. “It just doesn’t feel right to know you’d be behind the wheel.”

“You could breathalyze me right now, I’m completely sober!”

All of a sudden she lurched forward, as if she had tripped over her own feet. Caught off guard, I threw out my arms to steady her. “Whoa,” I said.

“I swear, like I swear I’m just a klutz!” she said, eyes wide.

Tuck looked hesitant, but he stepped forward. “Okay look, I have to take him back anyway, why don’t you let me give you guys a ride?”

I could see the doubt in her face. “No funny business, promise, but it would make me feel a lot better knowing you had a safe way home,” I added.

Her friend Lindsay, who may have initially been skeptical of the offer, directed her apprehension toward her. They exchanged glances.
“I’m fine,” she muttered.

She and I climbed into the backseat of Tuck’s car with Lindsay in shotgun. Her mouth was taut and forehead wrinkled nervously as she buckled the seatbelt. She gave her address in a flat, reluctant voice. “It’s a bit out of the way, you really don’t have to do this.”

“It’s alright,” Tuck said.

The ride began in relative silence, and with nobody speaking the music from the radio just seemed blaring and intrusive. I watched the yellow and white lines, highlighted by headlights against the darkness of the night, disappearing beneath the hood and popping back out in our wake. Every click of the turn signal seemed to echo throughout the interior. The little patches of uneven pavement we passed over felt even more jarring and abrasive than usual on the car’s old shocks. I cleared my throat.

“So why aren’t you wearing blue tonight?” I began, glancing over. “Don’t tell me you’re a Cardinals fan.”

“Hardly,” she said. I thought for a moment the conversation was going to stop there, just as quickly as it had started, but after a pause she continued. “But my family’s originally from Kansas. I don’t really root for the Cats either.”

“Kansas,” I repeated. “What brought you here?”

“Well we initially moved when I was really little, because of my mom’s job,” she said with a shrug. “She does research in equine science. I ended up staying local for college, graduated three years ago, and now here I am, I guess.”

I had seized the opportunity to go to college far away from home. It wasn’t as if there weren’t good universities nearby, because there really were, but I had convinced myself the only way to get the full experience was to pack the trunk of my secondhand sedan and brave the seven-hour road trip each semester. Things now weren’t quite as adventurous; despite what I’d let my friends think about my new job prospects. I’d found work with an architecture firm in the city and settled in there, until now.

“What do you do now?”

“I’m actually working at the same lab with my mom.”

I came from a family that consisted of a radio personality and a dental hygienist, and there was no way in hell I’d ever follow in either of those footsteps. But I didn’t say that to her.

“Nice,” was all I could come up with.

“What about you?”

“Well actually,” Tuck chimed in for the first time from the front seat, taking one hand off the wheel to gesture as he continued. “This guy here? He’s the man. We’ve been celebrating all night. He just called it quits! Tell them all about it!”

I couldn’t blame Tuck for his enthusiasm, but it made me shift uncomfortably. “Can you turn the AC down?”

He flipped the dial. “I’d never have the balls to do it personally, but my man here decided he’d just about had it, and so he told the boss man where he could stick it!”

“Really?” Lindsay said, turning to peer over the front passenger seat at me.

I laughed nervously, feeling my voice catch a little in my throat. “Well it wasn’t exactly like that.”

“Quit being so modest.” Beaming, he met my eyes through the rearview mirror. “He’s going out west. Gonna be a bigshot architect, take over the whole industry, build some skyscrapers, y’know, kick ass and whatnot.”

“Something like that,” I murmured. I turned back to her. “That’s my story. Architect extraordinaire, at your service.”

She smiled softly. I couldn’t tell if it was just my projection or if she actually seemed to understand the subtle hint that I didn’t particularly want to discuss it further.

Suddenly she lunged forward, clambering over the center console as her hand shot up to the radio dial, almost mechanically. She spun the knob to the right. “I love this song!”

As the silence save for music resumed, my eyes kept sliding over to this stranger in the seat next to me. I was puzzled. Her eyes seemed clear, none of her speech had been the least bit slurred, and given how distracted that made me, she was probably more alert than I was at the present moment. It just didn’t seem consistent with how she’d acted earlier. Maybe she was just really, really clumsy.

“Oh this is the turn!” she said.

Tuck stomped on the brake just a little too hard, jostling the entire group of us. “Sorry,” he said, slowing to a considerably more graceful stop in front of the house number she’d given us. “Is this it?”

“Yeah, thanks,” she said. Once again her hand hesitated over the handle, and she turned to me. “It’s actually… I don’t know, it’s actually really cool that you said something. Like I mean, even though I’m not—like I swear I’m… I wouldn’t have gotten into a stranger’s car if I weren’t sober to look out for us both.”

I nodded. This time I could almost believe her.

I climbed up to the front through the gap between seats, and Tuck cranked the radio dial even further up once the doors had shut, nodding his head in time to the now-reverberating bass. He toggled the gearshift into drive, and the engine revved as we took off.
“Oh hey, by the way,” he shouted over the music. I reached for the dash to turn it back down, but he pushed my hand away. “Nah leave it, it’s good!” he yelled, continuing on at a ridiculous decibel.

“If you ever need a plan B, I could probably talk to some of the guys down at the warehouse and pull some strings.” His voice raised even louder as he got more enthusiastic. “I’M SURE FEDEX COULD USE AN EXTRA TEMP, I KNOW IT’S NOT AS GLAMOROUS AS SAN FRAN OR ANYTHING BUT LIKE, ONCE YOU BUILD UP SOME CALLUSES IT’S NOT THAT BAD. Y’KNOW, THE HOURS AREN’T BAD EITHER, IT’S REALLY—“

“Dude,” I interrupted.

“Sorry, I know,” he said. “It’s just—I dunno—We’re all gonna miss you, man.”

I bit my lip, feeling the frustration I’d been harboring all night boiling to the surface. The truth of the matter made me sound like a victim, and I hated not feeling in control. At the same time, it pained me to continue to mislead Tuck, especially given his enthusiasm. I took a deep breath and opened my mouth to confess.

“Is that yours?” Tuck laughed. “Dude why do you have a pink wallet?”

Wedged in the bottom of the leather backseat was a pastel pink clutch, bordered on one side with tiny rhinestones, lying face down. I reached back to grab it and turned it over. A clear patch of plastic over the front revealed a driver’s license with her face smiling through the flap. It was a rather unfortunate photo, but still recognizable.

“Huh, she must’ve dropped it,” I said. “Turn around, I’ll take it back to her.”

I turned the clutch over in my hand again. I slid open the zipper, flipping through the contents of the wallet. She was a sucker for rewards programs, apparently, and possibly a world traveler based on the two by two-inch passport photo wedged in between the other cards. As I looked down at it, she stared back at me, straight faced this time but still not looking quite like she did in person. She really wasn’t a photogenic individual. I found myself grinning a little.

To her credit the picture must have been pretty old, because I could see some sort of pixilation on the otherwise stark white background. My eyes flitted back to the license photo. The background on this one was a little distorted too on second glance, the solid blue interrupted by two thin lines that disappeared behind each of her shoulders. I think I preferred the smile.

I stood for a moment, outside her door, debating whether to knock and make my presence known or just drop the clutch through the mail slot in the bottom of the door. I bent down to check out what seemed like the more favorable option, the flap, but I realized too late that the door was getting closer. It swung forward, and in the second painful collision of the day, hit me square in the face, hard enough to make my eyes water.

She was halfway out the door, wielding a bulging trash bag as if it were a baseball bat.

“I was just trying to return your wallet,” I groaned. “You left it in the car.”

“Oh my God,” she said, dropping her trash bag weapon. “Oh I’m so sorry, oh you’re bleeding!”

“It’s okay,” I replied automatically, as I put my hand up to my throbbing nostrils. Yep, definite nosebleed.

“Here, come here.” She motioned inside, and I followed her into the kitchen. She hurried to the counter by the sink to grab paper towels and folded up a large wad of them to hand to me. She swung open the freezer. “Do you want ice? Here, take some ice.”

“It’s really not that bad.” I sat down on a barstool and leaned forward to stifle the bleeding. All I could see was her feet as she paced around the wood floor fretfully, but there was something awkward about her gait.

“I’m so sorry,” she said again.

I pressed the paper towels to my nose and straightened up a bit, handing her the wallet. “I promise, it’s fine.”

“I owe you one,” she said, and then added with a little laugh as she took the clutch, “Or maybe two now.”

I shook my head. Something still didn’t add up, and I felt compelled to know more. “You really were sober though, weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” she said. Almost as if on command, her shoulders rose in a slight shrug.

I felt an eerie sense of déjà vu as I stood up to throw away the bloodied paper towels. For some reason I couldn’t get her license photo out of my head. At first I hadn’t thought it looked like her at all, but now as she stood against the blue wall of the kitchen, there was an undeniable resemblance. I couldn’t put my finger on it, until she took a step toward me.

There it was—the subtlest distortion in the air behind her, almost like one of those visible heat waves on a scorching summer day. It was just like the pixilation I’d seen in the photo. I blinked, and suddenly I was certain that I’d imagined it.

“You still look a little pale,” she said. “Actually, I know what might help. Give me just a sec, I’m gonna run upstairs and put this away first.” She waved the pink clutch, and I saw it again, this time coming from behind her hand.

I watched her disappear into the stairwell incredulously. I leaned over the sink to splash some water on my face. I took a step back, and I noticed for the first time photos stuck by magnets onto the fridge. Sure enough, I could see the same minute blurs coming from behind her shoulders in each of the shots. I glanced from image to image, my eyes finally resting upon a Polaroid of her and Lindsay. My mind began to race.

Her shoulders shrugging. Her feet shuffling on the kitchen floor. Her hands poised above her head with the garbage bag. Her arm swinging for the radio dial. Her body lurching forward in the parking lot. Her hand suspended above her car door. Staggering.

If she hadn’t been drunk…

She came out of nowhere, but she fell into me as if she were on a collision course.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a laugh. “I’m so clumsy!”

I replayed our initial interaction in my head over and over, until finally I was positive I must have seen it then too. I strained against the limits of my memory, trying to zoom in and see the whole scene clearer.

Shrugging. Shuffling. Poised. Swinging. Lurching. Suspended. Staggering.

“I’m sorry.”

Then it hit me, impact harder than the other two collisions of the night.

“Okay so this is like anti-nausea stuff, I figured it might help, I don’t know,” she said. Every step as she came down the stairs was articulated, and I could now see with every twist and swing of her arms the slightest of movements in the space behind her. I had to get closer. I had to know for sure.

“You didn’t seem to be feeling too festive tonight,” she said, oblivious.

“Huh?”

“You know, since you quit your job and all. Now that you’re free.” She paused for a second and then smiled coyly. “Or were you upset over the big game? Don’t tell me you’re a Cards fan!”

“Oh,” I said, shifting ever so slightly toward her, frustrated that the closer I got, the harder it seemed to be to see. “No, I mean, it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“What do you mean?” When she turned back to me there was only about a foot in between us. I slipped a little glimpse over her shoulder before returning to her eyes. If I could just close the last little gap…

“I just told my friends that I quit,” I said, putting a hand on the countertop behind us so I could lean even closer. “Nobody knows that I actually got laid off.”

We were face to face. I snuck another glance behind her and finally I could see clearly.

Strings.

She turned and looked over her shoulder self-consciously, and I realized my eyes had betrayed me. “It’s not all a lie though!” I interjected, hoping to distract her. My mind was reeling as I forced myself to make eye contact. “I really do want to go to San Francisco, and I guess this is as good an excuse as any. I had just hoped it would be on my own terms.”

“I couldn’t even imagine,” she said, her voice now but a whisper.

I felt another sudden impulse tugging at me, just as I’d had in the parking lot earlier, and I was compelled to act on it. I drew my face in toward her, eyes never leaving hers while my mind stayed with the strings. “I mean, why not?”

She seemed a little distracted too, and I could hear a flutter of nerves in her voice. “So you’re just going to leave? Just like that?”

“I guess so,” I murmured, slipping my hand further forward on the counter, until my arm crossed behind her back. I watched her eyes flit to my lips. I could feel the air from her gentle exhale.

“But why?”

“Simple.” I took a deep breath and braced myself for what was next. “Because it feels good to be free.”

I heard her shriek as I swung the knife I’d grabbed from the rack behind her. It whipped through the air with a woosh as I launched my arm over her head. The strings attached to her shoulders wobbled and blurred from the force of the swing, but it was as if the knife had gone right through them without making any physical contact.

“You’re trying to kill me!” she screamed, banging into cabinets as she recoiled, her formerly curious eyes blazing with terror. “Oh my God!”

“Stop! Stop!” I said. “Listen to me!”

“Oh my God!” she screamed, hand over her cell phone.

“I wasn’t swinging at you!” I said frantically, as she began to dial. “It was the strings!”

She froze, petrified, looking up at me with wild eyes. For a moment neither of us moved, neither of us said a word. I let the knife drop to the ground.

“You can see them too?” Her voice was quiet, face pale.

“I do now,” I admitted.

She set her phone down and sank to the ground, arms crossing over her body protectively and hands resting on her shoulders. “And you tried to cut them…”

I sat down on the wood floor with her. “I don’t understand. They’ve been pulling you around all night. That’s why I thought you were drunk.”

She didn’t answer, and she wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“What’s on the other end?” I asked quietly. “What are they attached to?”

She gave the slightest of shrugs. “I don’t know. It could be a lot of things. God, maybe. My family. My job. Sometimes it’s like I’m being pulled in lots of directions.”

“Why are they holding you back?”

She looked at me quizzically, and once again I felt like I was missing something. “They’re not a bad thing,” she said.

“What about free will?” I scrunched up my brow, trying to comprehend. “How will you ever make your own decisions?”

“They’re still my choices,” she said softly.

“But… But how?” I said, disconcerted. “If you’ve stayed in the same place all your life, followed in your mom’s footsteps… How can you create an identity for yourself?”

She stood up with a sigh and paced toward the sink, strings gently tugging her along as she walked. I rose to follow her. “It’s not like that exactly,” she said. “That’s something that’s different for everyone. Maybe for you it’s moving across the country. But not for me.”

I followed her gaze as she looked down at her reflection in the dishwater. “Besides,” she continued. “You might find that it’s not as easy as it seems to just up and leave everyone and everything you know.”

“How come?” I said defensively.

She looked up at me, then back down at the water. I was confused to see a small smile spread across her face. “Well can’t you see?” she said, interrupting herself with a little laugh. “You have them too.”