Short fiction: “Ladies and Gentlemen, David Koresh Has Finally Quit Smoking.”

River of Tears (as in the town) is situated on the northern shore of River of Tears Lake (as in the lake). The lake, naturally, is named after River of Tears, as in the river that feeds its namesake body of water from the north, and provides a drain to the south (as in the direction).

The town’s more affluent residents tend to live on waterfront estates ringing the lake. Moreover, these properties are highly valued due to the fact there has been no need for outdoor lighting for quite some time.

I looked out my hotel window to the north. The calm of the clear evening sky was occasionally broken by searchlights mounted on helicopters as the frantic search for Buried Girl continued. Somewhere in the darkness of the distant bushes, tactical units were tromping around on foot, just as the newspapers had described the scene 29 years ago.

I could see the outer rim of the faint glow of River of Tears Lake emanating from behind the Old Saloon Hotel from a few blocks to the south. If I looked as directly upwards as I could, I could see where the glow dissipated sharply before surrendering to the natural evening sky.

River of Tears Lake was ablaze before me with the shimmering glow of countless blinking fireflies just below the surface of the water.

(How can fireflies survive underwater, let alone emit light, you ask? Well, these aren’t the fireflies you’re used to, and they don’t fall anywhere within the traditional system of biological classification. Let that be just enough of an explanation for now, curious children.)

Standing on the shore down by the boat launch, I shaded my eyes from the water and looked out across the lake, and once my eyes adjusted I could make out sundry people gathered on lawn chairs to take in the evening spectacle. (Stargazing went out of fashion a long time ago around here — watergazing is now where it’s at.) I’ve heard of people renting out extra lawn chairs to tourists, with some even throwing in a meal and an overnight stay. Folks in these parts are industrious, just like their lumber-crazed forefathers.

Before long, a skinny black cat brushed against my leg and mewed, and then took some tentative steps ahead of me, as if waiting for me to follow. And so, I walked towards the cat and let it lead the way.

I followed the cat through some trees at the far end of the boat launch to an isolated and overgrown patch of shoreline. The feline then leapt into an old abandoned rowboat that was tied to a distended branch hanging low over the water. I untied the boat, put one foot inside, and pushed us away from the shore off a jutting rock with my other foot. I settled onto the bench, took an oar in each hand, and started rowing out towards the middle of the lake.

While I rowed I looked at the little cat perched at the front as it took in the shimmering and undulating golden glow emanating from all around us. At first I thought it was some trick of the mind as my eyes adjusted to the all-encompassing firefly light, but with each stroke of the oars the cat appeared to change and evolve right in front of me. For a few strokes it appeared as some odd and unrecognizable mammal, but then by steps became more anthropomorphic, until at last what had been a black cat was now a thin, pretty woman in her early 20’s, with long, poker-straight hair, and a long flowerprint summer dress. She wore a scarf on her head that made her look like she was either from a commune or Eastern Europe.

Some things never change(?).

I knew exactly who she was, even if I couldn’t make out her facial features. It was like in a dream, where you look at something as hard as you can, but the minute details drift, mutate, and dance around before your very eyes — her face was pulling the exact same trick.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” I said. “I used to think I was in love with you, but I’d forget what your face looked like when we were apart. Sure, I’d settle on some approximation of you in my head, but then I’d see you again and realize how far off the mark I’d been.”

She tilted her head to the side and gave me what may have been a look of pity.

“Aside from a handful of times that one summer, we didn’t really see much of each other at all,” she said. “We can only be said to have known each other a very short time. And now you’ve spent nearly three decades struggling to remember what I look like, so it’s no surprise you can’t make out my face now, even though I’m right in front of you.”

“But I hadn’t said anything out loud about how you look now.”

“You didn’t need to. I could tell that’s where you taking this.”

She took another moment to take in all 360 degrees of the view now that we were in the middle of the lake, and then returned to our conversation. “Besides, this isn’t how I look now anyway — it’s how I looked back when you knew me, to the extent that you can be said to have actually known me at all.”

“Well, you didn’t give me much of a chance to really know you,” I said, feeling myself getting a little defensive. “It all ended so abruptly.”

“True, but even back then I think you were looking at me through a lens of your own design. At the very end, who I really was back then, the early stage of who I am now, was in a head-on collision with who you wanted me to be, or who you thought I needed to be to you.”

I allowed myself a minute or two to let this sink in.

“But why are you here with me right now?”, I asked. “I’ve been over you for a while now. What purpose does this serve?”

“This isn’t a preordained event,” she replied. “It isn’t meant to serve a particular purpose — it’s merely a chance encounter, just like when we first met.”

“Excuse me,” says a girl from behind me in the line-up at the beer tent. “Do you have an extra cigarette?”

I’m taken aback by how pretty and intelligent she seems. Compared to all the country girls at the Hermitage Hill Town Fair, there is a certain urbane quality about her that hits me all at once. “You’re not from around here,” I find myself blurting out.

Many cigarettes later, we’re lost in conversation.

“Before our next song,” says the front man for the cover band headlining the fair, “we have a special announcement.” He takes a moment, perhaps allowing for dramatic build-up. “Ladies and gentlemen, David Koresh has finally quit smoking.” After some scattered groans and one or two drunken guffaws, he says, “It’s a cult thing,” and then the band rips into a heavy metal rendition of She Sells Sanctuary.

I light two cigarettes at once à la Paul Heinreid, hand her one, and say, “Here’s to David.”

A few weeks later, we’re lying on the futon in her flat in Dream City, where she has gone away to college to study typing and shorthand. We’re in the middle of a lost weekend together, as I have just helped her move back to the city for the fall semester, and presumably this will be the last time we see each other for some time after her summer in Hermitage Hill with relatives. In actual fact, it will turn out to be the last time we ever see each other. We’ve been up all night, drinking cheap wine and smoking half a tobacco plantation. Now we lay there in the nascent morning light seeping into her bedroom window from the alleyway outside. We’re not asleep, but we’re not quite awake, either. We start to kiss but our mouths are impossibly dry — even a glass of water fails to provide the desired irrigation.

Days later, we are living hours apart, and she isn’t taking my phone calls. I will remain confused and heartbroken for years after, and through all that time, will struggle to remember her face.

“I’m over you. What is the purpose of me reliving our past? Why now?”

She looked up at the sky, as if trying to find some stars cutting through the firefly glow radiating upward. “Maybe don’t think about what purpose this is meant to serve, but rather about what unexpected purpose it can serve.”

I thought about it for a moment, and then I looked her in what I only vaguely saw as her eyes, and said, “I’m over you, but I’m also no longer angry at you for having been out of my life so quickly.”

“And…?”

“And therefore, I think there’s a chance I no longer regret having met you.”