The Writer by Kim Dallmeier

Chapter 1
    It is hard to explain how
it all began. She came into my life like a Storm.
    Her name was Joy, and she
was 19. Her dreams were chaotic and inspiring. She drew me into her
life, to her, like the moon to the sea: there could be no other
way.
    The first time Joy and I
met was memorable. She burst into the bar, covered in snow,
refusing to wear a hat in a blizzard: she complained they flattened
her hair, disregarding the effect of snow on it instead.
    We were university
students, doing what the young do: reinventing and deconstructing
the world. We were Revolutionaries, Existentialists, and
Idealists.
    She sat at our table, and
ordered a drink.
    “I’m right!” she exclaimed
to a young man that had followed her in.
    “If everyone hung out
their clothes, instead of using their dryers, do you know how much
electricity we would save?” She went on.
    “How much?” he
asked.
    “A lot!” she
exclaimed.
    “Maybe you could dip your
socks in water to save on ice too…,” he added, teasing
her.
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” she
said, sitting back.
    He grinned. He looked
vaguely familiar to me. Since he knew most of the people sharing my
classes, I assumed he was in one of them too.
    As the evening progressed,
people came and went, and Joy took no notice of me.
    I was enumerating the
reasons in my head of why a woman like her would never be
interested in someone like me, when she smiled.
    “ You’re right,”
I blurted out.
    “Sure am,” she said,
leaning towards me. “What are we agreeing about exactly?” she
asked, taking a long swallow of her red wine.
    “The dryer thing” I said,
trying to get my voice across the table. “Every bit counts,
right?”
    The more we spoke, the
more I felt we were alone in the world.
    “You shouldn’t smoke” she
said, “It’s bad for you.”
    I laughed.
    “I’m Joy, by the way,” she
said.
    “Ben. It’s nice to meet
you.”
    “Are you an accountant?”
she asked.
    “Why? Are you calling me
boring?”
    She laughed and looked
away, finishing her glass.
    “Another?” I
asked.
    Her hair was dark and
lush. For a second, I imagined my hand going softly through it as
her head rested gently on my shoulder. I wanted to hold her in my
arms, have her fall asleep next to me. I closed my eyes and took
another long drag of my cigarette, as though nothing else mattered.
I exhaled, and realized that she was now standing.
    She threw a piece of paper
at me.
    “If you’re ever bored,”
she smiled. Then, Joy was gone.
    I picked up the paper
airplane, as though it were made of gold; little did I know that I
was holding my entire future in the palm of my hand.

Chapter 2
    I ordered a coffee:
black.
    A month had passed, and I
still had not called Joy. Whether you called it stage fright or
pure idiocy, it did not matter to me. I wanted to hold on for as
long as possible to the dream of being with her.
    I knew that the moment she
would see me again in daylight, minus the alcohol, she would turn
around and never come back.
    Yes. I was going to stay
in this illusory state for as long as I could. The brain was a
funny thing this way. You could pretty much convince it of anything
you wanted, if you tried hard enough.
    In a psychology class, I
had learned that if you smiled into a mirror while upset, you would
feel better shortly. Apparently, the brain could not tell the
difference between a genuine smile and a fake one. Since I felt I
was in a relationship, my brain was not about to convince me of
otherwise.
    I held the cash receipt,
behind which Joy had written her phone number, gently between my
fingers. I studied the piece of paper as though a test on its
content awaited me: red wine, avocados, Kalamata olives, baguette,
brie, vine tomatoes, salmon, and the list went on.
    I imagined myself dining
with her on a beautiful terrace late at night, a candle flickering
between us. I was not a wine drinker myself, but in these
fantasies, I did not need to be.
    I smiled, and folded the
paper