love in the time of zika virus you are closer to him right now than most people will ever have the good fortune to be. that mantra droned on. she flipped through a literary magazine, feigning disinterest. at the same time she chastised herself mentally, for being so obvious in her posture, her body language crying with a hope she wanted nothing to do with. she wanted to be removed—to remove herself, to leave, grab the keys and say “i’ve got somewhere to be.” she didn’t, though. she had left earlier with a spring in her step, grateful to have a reason to leave the house, where the tarot cards told her things she didn’t want to admit to herself and the dishes still weren’t done. he stood far away, which didn’t surprise anyone who knew what kind of person he was. he felt warm and okay. he wondered he would have for dinner. her grip grew stronger around the fancy IPA glass she didn’t know the name of, and she thought about what would happen if I got murdered one day. it would be a statement, in a way, wouldn’t it? just like not texting back being the ultimate response. the reader was a disheveled white man who kept talking about his love for a black girl. he had a dusty blazer and an urgent, bellowing tone, like he watched a lot of videos of dylan thomas readings and said “i’m gonna do that.” she purveyed the audience, the rejects in the back. the crowd was embarrassingly hip, all with their bent elbows and obscure stick-and-pokes. she wondered if any of them would become a murderer someday. in the heat of passion or premeditated, it didn’t matter. “’in the heat of passion’ is a reasonable justification in court for murder,” she drawled to someone she thought was still standing next to her. her friend had left—and in his place, an eager bespectacled man. “why did you just say that?” “oh, i don’t know.” “oh.” “did you know that, though?” he pushed his glasses up tentatively. “i mean, yeah. everyone knows that.” “but like… did you ever really think about it?” she peered into her own reflection through his crooked glasses, grimaced. he seemed bored. good. that thought wasn’t for him anyway. she wasn’t in the mood to explain her convictions to strangers that would later try to add her on facebook. a fugue state washed over. suddenly she felt a combination of extremely numb and willing to do something crazy. she took that as a sign that it was time to go home. still, though, she felt an affinity toward that cheap glass of cab sav in front of her, and the half-thrill of public sexual tension. she got that disgusting thought that always made her want to take a shower afterwards, that idea that no matter where she went, no matter how close she got to people, she would never meet someone who really understood. and just knowing that was an idea that existed in her mind made her sick of herself. was anyone in this room understood? she didn’t understand the man who fell in love with a west african on southside, nor the peckish fellow who didn’t give a damn about legislative processes, nor the man across the room, so far away that he might as well be an idea, an abstract cloud of a thing that looked like an elephant—then a scythe—then a balloon. was it realistic to expect anyone to really understand anyone else, ever? or was it just a
narcissistic concept, a distraction from real shit that was happening in the world, like Ted Cruz or the Zika virus? the sound of applause broke the air, interrupted it like large cement blocks colliding into each other. elephant-scythe-balloon sauntered over, frowning. he still didn’t know what to do for dinner or if the heat of passion was a reasonable justification for murder or if Ted Cruz was a real person.