Waylon wrote so many letters to Lucy that at last he was neutral. He told her what he felt, what he knew she didn’t feel, what he hoped to one day feel again between them, and in the last letter, which he didn’t know would be the last but which he still felt was somehow special, he told her that when he was away from her, he appeared normal but was always having strokes of brilliance, and that other people around him sensed them and moved, some toward him, some away, but they moved one way or another, and that the air around him was never the same afterwards. Why couldn’t she see that? Or why wouldn’t she? After the last letter her considered writing an additional one. He would remind her of a moment. On their first date he had bought her a hat she had liked, a wide red hat meant to be raked at a severe angle, designed by someone famous, a lady with a French name, or maybe a knockoff of that famous lady’s hat, and he had given the girl at the shop a hundred-dollar bill and said “keep the change” with a tone as round and full as he could muster. He assumed Lucy still had that hat. He wanted her to feel good about herself when she wore it, or did he want her to feel good about him, or bad about her distance from him? He couldn’t solve that problem, which he filed under Philosophy, which meant that he couldn’t write about it before he had thought some more. Neutrality descended. He let the pen fall to the floor.
©2021 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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