It was a hot evening. The smell of chlorine from a pool somewhere drifted by on the faint breeze. Erin’s phone, thrown with abandon onto the bed, buzzed and hummed in its soft nest. She ignored it and walked to the window - watching the sunset reflected in the glass panes of a neighbor’s window with a view. The father of the family next door was teaching his son how to play basketball in the dwindling light, giving muted pep-talks and, somewhere, a ukulele was being gently strummed. All around, the world brimmed with sickening contentment. She resolved to go to Mass the next morning. Mass might shake this feeling. Turning on an episode of a cooking show, she watched figures in crisp white aprons create tantalizing dishes as she opened a can of sardines, squeezed lemon over it, and ate straight from the can.
----------
The next afternoon, she parked her car in a lot and went into the small church nearby. She listened to the priest, plump and mottle-faced, as he gave a homily. Golden light spilled in through the stained-glass windows, creating soft blurred pastel colors on the carpeted floor. The dark wood pulpit stood directly beneath a scowling statue of Jesus that seemed incensed at every living thing within its line of vision. The priest was saying something about God being love.
Erin prayed: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed."
"Say the word," she begged the plaster face.
"Please, say it."
----------
After Mass, Erin strode through the streets - a silent fury amid the lights and stop signs. As she was passing a playground, she saw a nondescript grey car parked on the street, smothered with bumper stickers. "Practice random acts of kindness" one advised her, *smugly*, she thought. She drew her keys from her purse and glared at the vehicle before crouching down and methodically scoring the sticker several times.
Pristine and secure, such platitudes fell from mouths like vomit from the balcony of a third-story apartment. Someone below was always left with the real mess.
Erin continued walking to her destination, abruptly tripping on the lip of a sidewalk edged up by the roots of a nearby tree. She fell.
A homeless man with grey matted hair and a ripe scent, sitting cross-legged by a store-front, asked:
"You ok, miss?"
"I will be."
She got up, dug into her pockets, and dropped the few coins she had into his battered cup.
----------
Later, Erin sat on a plastic throne. The attending nurse asked the routine questions: “Do you want a blanket? Or some juice?”
“No thanks, I’m fine.”
“Ok - name and date of birth?”
They always asked this many times, at various stages. Erin had once made up a date of birth, to break the tedium, and received a frown from a harried nurse with one too many patients.
“Erin McGhee, 3/11/1989.”
Laboriously prying open the pre-med pill packets with stubby nails, the nurse dumped them into a small paper cup, and handed them over along with a glass of water. Erin downed them all in one go, then pressed a button to recline and stare up at the drab ceiling. Everything here was anemic: the walls were white, the chairs were off-white, the privacy curtain was beige. There were no cheerful bright colors to assuage the the sensory palate. This place was wholly unsuited for corporeality.
The nurse’s capable body moved as it prepared the IV equipment: stolid, secure, healthy.
It was unfair. Erin had lived a clean life, was nice to small animals, went to church - she’d never killed anyone, wrecked a life, or done anything too terribly wicked. Just a little wicked. If God was love, it was a strange love.
The woman sharing the room with Erin was crying softly. “Sorry,” she whispered to Erin, “My daughter didn’t want to come with me,” and turned away to hide her face.
The nurse had not set the IV line properly and saline solution dripped into Erin’s arm, inflating it slowly like a tired bubble.
----------
The sun had set by the time Erin got out, but there were remnants of its passing. Purple clouds lowered to meet the dark mountains underneath, leaving an ominous gash of red light between them that reflected across the waters of the bay.
She made her way back to her car and drove home in the dark. There was no wind.