Life & Liberty

This is a short story i wrote in December 2006 for a creative writing class i was in at RCC. It started out as a different story on humanism, based on a novel idea i had. I may still write that someday, but this story didn't want to go in the direction i told it to. What a brat, eh? I think i got an A on it though. I know i should get a picture for this post. I have a perfect story "cover" in mind, but haven't been able to make it yet.
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Outside a storm is raging. Rain beats against the windows of a high-rise apartment building like bullets from a machine gun. Thunder booms like bombs and the dark clouds fuse with the smog to form a smoky canopy over the city. Inside, there is a Polish grandmother making pierogies, the potatoes boiling over a stove that warms the kitchen. Inside, there is a single mom wrestling her kids into the bathtub, the spilled bubble bath and water splashing onto the floor only adds to her workload. Inside, there is an aspiring college student laboring over a term paper beside stacks of textbooks and take-out boxes. Inside, a man plays his saxophone; the resulting melody floats out into the hallway, where a pair of young girls play with their dollies. On another floor, four men play poker, the aroma of their Coronas and Doritos clash with the tamales wafting in from the adjacent apartment. Above, co-ed teens wander away from innocence. Higher up, a woman pours cocktails for herself and her male visitor, who she swears is like a brother to her, while her husband is away on business. Across the hall and three doors down, three girlfriends get ready for a night on the town. Down below, under all of this, in a small studio apartment on the first floor is Liberty, a late-twenties-something living alone. She heats up ramen noodles while sorting through her mail and glimpsing at whatever sitcom is flashing on the tube. She couldn't tell you the name. She had no sincere interest on anything on TV, but she is still hooked, watching it like a ritual. Her motive is unknown even to herself. Perhaps it is to learn something (unlikely), perhaps to hear something amusing to brighten her day (for as long as the laugh track lasts), perhaps to momentarily escape reality (this is most likely the case). It's not that her life is particularly bad. She run in the park, goes to work, runs errands, comes home, and usually goes out again. She's been to Broadway and seen the Nix and the Yankees play. She's taken cooking, painting, and even belly dancing classes. Nothing can excite her anymore. Temporary happiness is all anything has ever provided her.

At one time, she was one of the girls playing dolls. At one time, she was the passionate musician, making beautiful music on her flute. At one time, she was the aspiring student, working with everything she had to obtain the very best grades. More than one time, she wandered from innocence with a boy, but there is only so far a person can go before he or she has to drop the claim of innocence. She was almost the single mom wrestling with her kid every night. She's been one of the girlfriends getting ready for girls' night out plenty of times. The bouncers at one of the clubs would even recognize her at the newspaper stand, he saw her so much. She's followed this trend and that, but whether it was yoga, aromatherapy, or retro sunglasses, at the end of the day, she always found herself unsatisfied. She was definitely living the American dream, the Ms. Independent that every modern woman dreams of becoming, she was sure. She flipped to HBO to watch a rerun of a show about four women that seemed to have so much fun in the city. She used to idolize them, and can say with confidence she had their lives, maybe even better versions of them. She got tired of that life last night and is now looking for something else to energize her. It's always something new. The phone rings as her ramen just reaches a boil. She adds the seasoning and answers the phone.

"Hey Libby," her friend Felicity says in her usual, cheery, slightly ditzy voice. "So...have you, like decided if you want to go to Sway tonight?" Liberty sighs. Felicity, the self-elected group mother had made it a goal for her and their group of friends to visit every nightclub in New York.

"No, I think I'll just stay in tonight," replies Liberty.

"Uuuhn," whines Felicity, "that's what you said last night too. It took forever to convince you to go out. Why are you becoming such a prude al of a sudden?"

"I just don't fee like it tonight, maybe tomorrow night."

"You're not going to flake out on Vegas next week, are you?"

"I don't know, give kisses to the girls for me, much love, buh-bye," Liberty rushes the last few words, half-mocking Felicity by raising the pitch of her voice, and hung up the phone. Last time she went out with them, all the guys were the same, the drinks tasted the same, and the each song mix played was the same as the one before it. Each club looked like the last, and while Felicity's aim may have been to provide her friends with exciting, new experiences, for Liberty it wasn't working. She hears a sizzling, turns and looks at the stove and shouts something that would have offended the pierogie-woman from upstairs, even without knowing English. She turns off the burner as she reaches for a rag to sop up the water that had flowed over. Not feeling like making a new pot of ramen, she grabs her long, black pea coat and pulls it on, fumbling with the large buttons and wondering if the coat would be a sufficient guard against the rain. She grabs her scarf and starts looking for her keys. She heads out the door and begins her quest for food.

She walks to a nearby diner and enters with a ding-a-ling of the chimed door behind her. She notes the varied faces around her. Some are drooping with exhaustion, some are tight with stress, some are tired behind smiles, and some are full of youthful bliss, but those will disappear into weariness too soon. She roots through her pockets as she looks over the specials, then realizes she isn't in the mood for any of it, so she leaves the store, back out into the storm. She pulls the scarf tighter around her head as she walks down the street. Pizza... no... a hot dog... no... tacos... no... Chinese... She let out an exasperated sigh as she thought about the ramen she could have been eating in her relatively warm apartment right now. She continues on, further away from her apartment building. She ignored a beggar she passes sitting under a cardboard box with a tin in front of it. His problems are his own, what's in it for her to help him? Someone tells her "Jesus loves you" as they hand her something from beneath their raincoat. She laughs as she dropped the tract on the ground. Lots of guys have told her they love her, none of it means anything. Love doesn't exist; it's just like happiness, a passing emotion that satisfies only a little while. A car spews muddy water onto her as it speeds by; she screams obscenities ash shakes her middle finger at the vehicle already halfway down the block. Fuming now, she thrusts her hands into her pockets and walks faster and shoves the people with her shoulder as she passes them. She passes a darkened art museum. During the day it boasts of beauty and worth, but right now it looks the same as every other building on the street: cold, aging, dingy. It is nothing more than a quiet block of stone full of weak attempts at a theory called beauty. She passes a middle-aged woman, or maybe a young man, in vinyl boots under her (his?) trench coat. She passes a kitten with gray fur matted to its scrawny body. She passes some well-dressed teenagers swaggering into a cab. She passes an elderly man, with wild eyes to match his hairstyle, talking to himself, she passes a couple standing two inches away from each other so they can hear each other's shots over the howl of the storm. She passes meaningless life after meaningless life, people chasing happiness, looking for something they will never find. She passes buildings and signs that offer these things, but how could they ever provide something that doesn't exist? She found herself at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Shivering, she stands staring at the mammoth structure with cars, going nowhere, driving back and forth over it. Under the bridge, East River reflects her life, fast cold, and the falling rain gets lost in it, one big mass of darkness. Walking along the bridge now, she stops and leans over to get a better look. The river takes over anything that dares to enter its realm, not only the rainwater. Life is really no different, she thinks, slipping at first as she steps onto the railing. It absorbs things, she contemplates as she finds her grip on the thick wires, things like new experiences that people want to try out or old routines that they cannot let go of. She pauses, gazing down into the raven abyss, but life is always the same rabble, nothing ever really changes. She lets go of anything she ever held on to in her pitiable existence, nothing ever really matters.