Free Fingerless Gloves by Nick Orsini Page A

across the windshield of Beth’s car. Behind its delicate body, it dragged a loose spool of silk, carelessly allowing it to flag off into the wind. Spotting it, she put the windshield wiper on a left a huge, chunky smudge across the passenger side window. Legs and body were smattered and all mixed together across five inches of glass. For the first time all night, I was actually thinking about James and the possibility that he was in worse shape than I thought. I slowly turned to Beth and, putting all heavy thoughts aside, made an excuse for my perceived lack of dance skill.
    “I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I couldn’t even see you, or the dance floor. You know, for downing a flask in 15 minutes, prom could have ended up much worse.”
    There was the Churchwood, and memories of Beth in her dress. It was strapless with the right balance of simplicity and ornate accents. That dress was the first piece of clothing that ever made me appreciate a woman’s shoulders. Before that, I was a classic ass and chest man. After that night, it was about little things like slopes of shoulders, protrusions of lips, smalls of backs. I remember James and Ashley, and how the two of them looked like the teenagers in the movies - the kind being played by 27- and 28-year-old actors. They weren’t the best looking couple, but they were grown up. They understood one another and the expectations the night held. James got exactly 16 votes for prom king, a far cry from claiming victory. Still, there were 16 people who thought he was deserving of the crown. I wonder sometimes, had he done things differently in high school, if maybe he could have won the crown. It was a situational loss.
    Beth’s car began to idle. That sound, for Beth and I, meant that our conversation had either hit an all time low for pauses and silence, or was filled with us yelling at one another. We had suffered through many nights, either in the aftermath of an argument or in awkward silence. I remember that quiet idling more vividly than the times we were too tangled up in each other to hear the car make any noise at all. Teenage love has no balance…no benefits of being put together. It’s a product of extremes manifested from Friday night to Friday night. Beth and I were no exception…just swept along through the times we cared about each other enough to pretend we were adults. Tonight, our conversation was no louder than the sound of the engine clicking off. The phone in my front hoodie pocket vibrated but I couldn’t figure out if it was appropriate to answer. It was a single pulse…a text message.
    Beth said, “I need to get back. It’s my dad’s sixtieth birthday tomorrow. You need to check on James and, if you hear anything, try to remember to call me.”
    Beth’s dad, for 60, didn’t look terrible. He walked a bit slow, but still straight as a board. He didn’t belong to a gym, but I remember being over Beth’s house and walking down to the basement for something, just in time to catch Mr. Fallow doing one-armed Army pushups. He had style that reflected his age: generic shoes, basic shirts and loose-fitting jeans. His hair retained some of its dark color, but not much. I had no idea it was his birthday, and no idea he was getting that old. To me, 60 seemed like this gigantic lifetime of working and paying bills and paying for one vacation a year and feeling your body getting creaky like an old house. It was at least 35 years spent in selfless irony, trying to get ahead in a world designed to keep you paying out for everything. I thought about my dad, and his mortgage and credit score…his car leases and 401k. We are choices, just one after another, that eventually land us, ideally, on a weird rung of the middle class. As thoughts of futures built up in my head, I just nodded at Beth and rolled the one-hitter between my fingers. I patted my front pocket down to make sure the baggie was still accounted for.

“Where should I drop you off?” Beth asked as