They aren’t cheap. I paid almost fifteen dollars.” To Bill, that was a significant amount.
“I don’t eat them. Ever. You know that,” she roared. With that expression of gratitude, she stormed back into her house and slammed the door a third and final time. She had retired for the evening.
“I could have eaten them with you,” Bill said loudly to the red door, more grieved to see bought and paid-for chocolates lying in the grass, than to have had his gifts spurned; having his money wasted was more painful to him than any personal insult. “No need to throw them away,” he lamented.
Bill picked up the box of chocolates and began to replace the pieces that had fallen out. He stuck one in his mouth, then another.
“These are good chocolates,” he proclaimed, as loudly as his chewing allowed, in case Linda was secretly listening on the other side of the front door. “Anyone would be happy to have them.” Sticking another in his mouth, he announced, “They’re weally goo,” before he had to swallow or choke.
No one responded, as he coughed and gasped for air.
Linda had already gone to give herself an acupuncture treatment to discharge all of the negative chi Bill had induced in her body. In one of the rooms of her house where she saw patients for acupuncture and dispensed herbal remedies—she was a popular practitioner of both alternative medicines and had become wealthy through them—she lay down on a massage table that her patients would lie on. With the help of a mirror, she stuck needles into the proper places on her face and head, after covering her lower body. A recording of instrumental Chinese music played, which sounded sharp and twangy to Western ears, like a piano being tuned, but to Linda it was relaxing and soothing. She breathed deeply, in complete confidence that all the toxic energy of the evening would disappear, along with Bill. “That rice was terrible,” she muttered, before lapsing into silence.
The neighbors had begun to drift back to their previous occupations, sharing a laugh or commenting to a friend or spouse about what they had seen. Some shook their heads in disbelief and wondered what would happen next time. Children were much faster at forgetting. As soon as it was apparent that Bill would not choke and Linda was not returning to hurl more objects at him, the children lost all interest in them and talked about other things, going off to new adventures. No one paid any more attention to Bill.
Holding the rejected box of chocolates and the discarded bouquet, with the strap of the overnight bag over his shoulder, Bill walked like a player on the defeated team in an important match to the curb, where his ten-year-old dented and dilapidated car was parked. He wore brown slacks, an off-white dress shirt, striped tie, and a grey blazer. Nothing was fancy, nothing new.
Gene, the sixty-plus-year-old neighbor who lived with his wife directly across from Linda’s house, was watering the tidy flower border in his yard near the street, when Bill reached his car. In the year and a half that Bill had been seeing Linda off and on, Gene and Bill had become familiar and often spoke. Gene had a genuine sympathy for Bill and his romantic trials, although he couldn’t quite grasp his persistence with Linda.
“Another early night for you, Bill?” Gene asked in a friendly voice.
“Yeah, I don’t know what’s wrong,” Bill replied.
“Better luck next time,” Gene said.
“Thanks, Gene. I need it.”
With that, Bill tossed everything into his car and drove away, meditating on his presumed bad luck.
Chapter 2
It was still daylight when Bill drove into the surface parking lot of the modest, two-story rental complex where he lived and parked the car in his assigned spot, resigned to another night alone. In his depressed state, his apartment wouldn’t be any source of consolation to him or cheer. But that was not unusual. Even when he was in a better mood, it was hardly a joyous place. For him, it was only a habitation, a place to pass time in and satisfy basic human needs. It was not, strictly speaking in the full sense of the word, a home. There had occurred no events in it that he could look back upon with a happy rush of feeling. No shocking, heartbreaking, or life-changing experiences had ever taken place inside those walls for him. His residence didn’t stir much of any emotion, except a monotonous, muddled familiarity.