OVERHAND

It was a dark revelation that he’d had a moment ago, but a revelation nonetheless, so he felt himself smiling stupidly.  He didn’t understand this world.  That was the wonderful truth that popped into his brain having dropped the manuscript, staring at the container of yogurt, surrounded by the crowds of yuppies at Trader Joe’s.  The rest was just details.  Five minutes earlier, had you asked him the question he likely would have answered differently, some wishy-washy gray-scale answer involving parts of the world that were crystal clear, parts that felt learnable, and parts he suspected he was ignorant of even being ignorant of.  Now, though, with the yogurt in hand, he’d go with, “no.”  No, he didn’t understand this world really at all.

To some degree, Doug had hid the purpose for the trip itself from his roommate, who would have chastised him like a small child for the patheticness of going out of his way to meet Lizzie in this store.  It was all the way across town, usually crowded to the point where lines wrapped in circles around the aisles, and he didn’t even like their products.  Lizzie was his ex-girlfriend now.  She’d left him in the same manner that people rolling a bag through the airport leave it by the jetway and then fly to lands beyond.  The problem was Lizzie’s bag had never arrived at her destination, but she was the kind of optimistic girl who was incapable of seeing a lost bag as anything other than an opportunity to get all new stuff that maybe you’ll like even better than your old stuff.  It wasn’t that she grew bored or dissatisfied with the old stuff; it just failed to come with her one day by pure chance, so c’est la vie.

Well now she was back, albeit briefly, and her bag had waited around the airport for thirty-one months in one of those depressing gray rooms with one old computer running a piece of 80’s database software, where grumpy poorly-paid handlers toss about cargo with the intent to break the things inside.  It was in this place (and this is where Doug’s metaphor really degraded in quality) that the bag had written a novel.  Actually seven because someone had once told the bag that no one writes a good book on the first try.  It takes five before they’re good, and this particular piece of lost luggage wanted to be extra cautious so hadn’t started the novel it really cared about until six others had been conceived, born, read, and declared dead on the operating table.  The person who’d said that to the bag - one Lizzie Morton.

Doug found it hard to explain why he wanted to give this seventh and most important manuscript to Lizzie after all this time.  Walking in he had debated whether the term ‘muse’ was ever acceptable to use in place of ‘ex’ or ‘heartbreaker’ or ‘liar’ but hadn’t quite settled on the issue.  He was sure it would be easier not to explain his thinking to his roommate, however, about how it couldn’t possibly hurt to have just one more person read what he’d created.  He had precious few people interested, with or without Lizzie being in his life.  It would have been nice if she had gone out of her way to come to him and take the manuscript from him personally, (especially given that he’d spent $80 at Office Max just having it printed and coil bound) but he was trying to adopt more of her attitude that could be summed up by that French phrase Americans use more than the French.

Truthfully, he’d only had a moment to think about the matter at all because Lizzie had yet to actually show up at Trader Joe’s.  She was late.  At the time of the life-altering incident, she was late to the tune of forty-seven minutes and Doug was splitting his attention between looking for one or two overpriced grocery items to buy to have some half-excuse for having gone all the way out to this store in the first place, and flipping through the messages in his phone, debating whether a third, “Just wondering if you’re almost here,” sounded annoying or desperate and whether a smiley face emoticon would alleviate either potential implication.

He had his phone in his left hand and 287,430 words tucked under his right arm, trying to dodge people with carts who would have rolled over his corpse without a second thought, when it happened.

Someone threw yogurt at him.  Overhand.

He looked up just in time because the guy said the sort-of word, “sup” right before he chucked the sixteen ounce container.  Doug reared back, twisting his face into an expression so hopelessly muddled with emotions as to be indefinable.  He dropped the manuscript.  The pages crumpled awkwardly in a sticky puddle of poorly mopped-up pomegranate juice.  His right hand now free, he caught the yogurt before it struck him, in an impressive display of coordination and quick-reflexes.  Glancing up, Doug confirmed that he had, in fact, never seen this yogurt pitcher before in his life.

Revelation had - nothing about the world, nothing whatsoever - Doug handed the container awkwardly back to the man who took it and was shuffled to the front of the checkout line before he could offer up either an apology or an explanation.  Doug picked up his slightly sticky, slightly purple novel and patted it as if pomegranate juice was something that could be dusted off.  The device he’d prioritized beeped with a new message that read, “Actually, I’m going to Whole Foods instead.  Can you meet me there?”

Perhaps it was just a matter of cost.  The phone was a $200 piece of equipment.  His manuscript worth no more than eighty.