Free Screen by Aarti Patel Page A

Misha felt a little relief and continued,
“How can I help you?”
    “ Misha ,” the caller attempted, “this is Tsai.” Misha felt a softening of all her nerve endings, as if a
perfect breeze had picked up from underneath some window and had stripped her
of all rigid defenses with its ease of lightness. The name ‘Tsai’ catapulted her
years back to a time she could hardly recall, it had been so long. Tsai had
been the Taiwanese last name of her close friend, Ann. Misha had rarely called her friend "Ann," preferring instead to call her
"Tee- sai ," a mispronunciation of Ann's last
name. Tsai used to think it was funny. Misha's brain
tapped at her urgently to close the memory back up. Family members had
reconnected with her in years past, and friends had unexpectedly been in touch,
each time bringing back that familiar yet historical feeling of interaction.
Yet the communications that had been set in motion each time had somehow been
foiled, muddled and confused like a trail or a scent never to be traced again.
After all this time, Misha could not grasp who
destroyed the evidence or thwarted it after its very inception.
    “ Misha , it’s really me—Tsai. Please don’t hang up.” Misha had no intention of hanging up. She was just too
paralyzed to know what action to take next. The history between her and Tsai
was not easy to sum up, and after the movement of the world in its own
direction, it was hard to know what turn the friendship had taken. While plenty
of people still immersed themselves in social activity through the big screen, Misha’s social life was virtually empty.
    “Hi
Tsai…how’ve you been?” Misha was nervous and her
heart began to beat unwittingly as if clear and imminent danger were present.
Tsai was obviously nervous too, and she strung together a bunch of ums and uhs as she began to explain her reason for calling. Misha interrupted her abruptly, “Tsai, it’s okay. It’s been
a long time.” Tsai sighed and continued, “ Misha , I’ve
thought about you so often and I wanted to call you so many times. You’re one
of the only people who still has a phone, it would have been so easy. I’m
sorry, I chickened out. You’ve been on my mind. Can we meet?”
    Misha’s mind blasted to what she imagined for their proposed
meeting. Out of anyone she could see right now, she most welcomed a meeting
with Tsai. “Sure, how about one o’ clock tomorrow at Minnie’s, where Chestnut
meets the Embarcadero? It’s a real coffee shop, not one in the big screen. Do
you still live around here?”
    “I do—I
can meet you then.” Their conversation ended and both girls hung up, sitting
respectively in expectant silence wondering what tomorrow’s meeting was going
to lead to. For Misha , there was no need to eke out a
phone conversation that was fifteen years too late in its ability to be casual.
As a young girl, Misha would have described a lot of
her human interactions as both awkward and natural all at once. These days, she
didn’t know how to describe them and felt inept for it. Her family no longer
contacted her, as she seemed to make their lives scarier and more precarious
somehow. Not that she meant to.
    Poof
turned up at Misha’s knee as she knelt on the carpet,
rubbing against it like a cat. Poof had always been more like a cat than a dog.
He also had a keen sense for significant human moments when they broke the
monotony of days strung together, much like a cat. Poof looked at Misha inquisitively, asking for some sign of what it was
all about. Misha reached into a bag of dog treats
instead as the dog would be unable to process any human answer. She had managed
to skip her own lunch as usual, and it was already time to head back to work.
    --------------------------
    The big
screen loomed in the distance in her living room, never quite fitting into or
setting décor for the space. Its dimensions almost reached the proportions of
the wall it stood against, yet some homes had even larger ones