FREEDOM IS JUST ANOTHER WORD

I felt two hands sneak around my stomach. I froze when I heard the woman’s voice in my ear.

“Baby, what are you doing?” the voice asked.

I turned fast. Her black hair flowed down around her cherub face. Her brown eyes widened when she realized - I wasn’t the man she expected.

“You’re not him,” she said, frowning.

She took her hands away, stood, and curled her hair back behind her ears.

She smirked. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not a problem,” I said.

I could smell the faint smell of wine on her breath and her lips were stained on the sides.

The man she was supposed to be touching came up behind her and pulled her towards him. His shaved head gleamed under the red lights of the bar as he kissed her, leading her out.

And with that, I was left alone in the bar.

---

I was back at the same bar a couple of days later. My dreams were very strange. I was in prison. Another inmate was trying to attack me with a crow bar. I snapped from the dream, just as the man slammed the crow bar across my face.

I smelled the same scent from the night before. My whole body felt it - like when you are ride in a car and the driver presses hard on the accelerator. Your head goes back and your stomach rises in your throat. That’s what I felt just before I smelled the wine scent and saw that same woman form the night before mounting the stool next to me.

“You again,” she said plainly.

“Me again,” I said back.

---

I felt her body on mine. Her heaviness was firm and at no time did I believe I would not find her when my hands reached out or when her legs wrapped around my waist.

She touched my face to wake me up in the morning.

I opened my eyes.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” I said.

She grinned.

“You were funny last night.”

“Why? What did I do?”

“You’re just a good guy, that’s all.”

I raised myself on my elbows.

“What makes you say that?”

She looked down my body and started kissing my neck. She kissed down my chest to my stomach. I closed my eyes and felt her around me. I stopped her head from moving further.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“It’s okay?” She brought her head up.

“You don’t have to…”

“Of course I don’t ‘have to’,” she said, pushing me a little, getting up from the bed. She walked naked away from the bed and went into the kitchen. I heard the faucet turn on.

She stood in my doorway, unaware of her nudity, and took a sip from some ice water.

“You’re weird,” she said.

“Why?”

“You just are, I don’t know.”

“I’m new in town,” I said. "Maybe that's it."

“Of course you are.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

She went over to my messy desk full of papers and other notes. She picked one of the pages up.

“What is all of this?”

“It’s my work.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a journalist. I work for the paper.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?” I said, “Is it that bad?”

“No, it’s just - normal,” she said.

“What’s so normal about it?”

She went over to my bookcases. The two took up most of one wall - full of hardbacks, journals, and some paperbacks. She slipped one of the books off.

“Well, what do you do?” I asked her.

She flipped through the pages of the hardback.

“As little as possible,” she said.

“That’s productive,” I said.

She looked around fast, placed the book back on top of the bookcase, and found a folded towel by the bureau. She wrapped the towel around her and turned to me.

“Can I take a shower?”

“Sure.”

I had a lot of work to do anyhow. I didn’t feel strange when she left. She kissed me quick after her shower and I let her out, watching her disappear down the sidewalk.

---

Two weeks later I got a call from Karla.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I took my glasses off and put them down on the papers strewn across my desk, “just working on some bullshit.”

“Can I come over?”

“Sure,” I said.

An hour later we were smoking cigarettes on the steps in front of my apartment building. The air was hot and our skin gleamed with wetness in the sun.

“I missed you,” I told her.

“Oh yeah? What did you miss about me?”

“Your charm,” I told her.

She laughed and blew out some smoke.

“My charm? What’s so charming about me?”

“Well, you don’t like books. You hate writing. You think what I do is boring. You dislike everything I like.”

She grinned. “And this is a good thing?”

“Sure. I don’t like people who like what I like,” I said.

She blew out smoke and laughed again.

“What’s your problem?” She asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Nevermind,” she said.

“Tell me,” I pulled her close and kissed her hard on her lips. They softened and she brought herself up upon my lap.

“Well, I think it’s strange. Most people want to be around people that are like them. They feel better in company of their own.”

“I think that’s boring,” I said.

She smiled.

“Is it?”

“Well, I know nothing about you. I’ve never been to your home.”

“I don’t have one.”

I laughed.

“You’re a homeless person?”

She kissed my neck. Against my skin she said:

“No, I just don’t have a home.”

“Tell me something about you,” I said.

“I like people.”

“That’s broad. What do you like about people?”

“I like people who live freely.”

“Freely?”

“Yeah, you know. People who aren’t uptight. Like you.”

“Like me—I’m not uptight.”

“No, no. You’re uptight.”

“How so?”

She breathed out and huffed. “Let’s get a drink.”

---

I laid with Karla in the park two weeks later hung over when the sun burned bright in the sky. I kissed her hand and laid my head down in her lap.

“This sun is killing me,” I said.

“You need sunglasses,” she said.

She rubbed the back of my head.

Work was and I wasn’t used to doing nothing. People in Seattle were different from people in New York. They were quiet, less anxious, uncaring of the latest fashions and trends. They looked softer, less rigid, and their speed as alarmingly slow compared to Manhattan.

Karla, on the other hand, was a quintessential New York girl. I told her it would fit her like a glove.

“And why’s that?” she asked.

“They are all murderous there.”

“Great, that’s what you think of me.”

It was true. There was a certain kind of steeliness necessary to survive in the City. People would say that was all a myth. But those were the same people that never lived there.

While her fingers stroked my hair, I realized I knew nothing about Karla. She was elusive and ironic, answering most questions with sarcasm. It wasn’t that we didn’t speak about things.. But there was a border - one she did not want anyone to cross.

“So do your parents live here?” I asked, pushing a little more.

She pausing, picking at the green grass. Her fingers stopped rubbing the back of my head.

“Well, my Dad, the fucking dick, used to, but I don’t know where he is now.”

“Why is he a dick?”

All warmth left her body. I felt her muscles tense in her legs. I raised my hand over my eyes to block out the sun and leaned up to sit next to her.

“Why is anyone a dick? He hit my Mom a lot. He hit me. He’d fuck other women. You know, all that macho bullshit.”

“I don’t do any of those things.”

She put her hand on my cheek.

“No, you don’t, do you?”

I kissed her and we fell back onto the grass with me on top of her. I held her close.

“What about your Mom?” I whispered.

“She’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t kill her,” she said.

“How did she…”

“Sadness.”

“Really?”

“Maybe. Close enough anyway.”

She did mention once she had her mother’s eyes. She stared at me with silence, then spoke:

“Take me home and fuck me right now.”

---

I got a call from Karla a week later. I hadn’t heard from her since the night after the park. I could barely make out anything on the line. Horns and sirens blared out from her end.

“Karla? What’s all that noise?”

Pause.

“Sorry? What?” she said.

“I can barely hear you. Where are you?”

“Market Street. San Francisco.”

“San Francisco?

Pause. San Francisco was hundreds of miles away.

My stomach jumped into my throat.

“I’m staying with a friend.”

I knew it was another man. That was Karla. This was her philosophy.

Freedom.

There were other words I had for these activities.

“Well, when are you coming back?”

“You miss me?”

I waited a second, trying to push down a jealousy rising up. I imagined her with another man, his hands finding her in the darkness.

“Yes, I do.”

“Aww, you’re sweet.”

The horns blared again and the line cracked with static.

“Look, I gotta go…”

“Okay.”

“I’ll call you soon.”

And the line went dead.

My hands shook.

---

Work had started. The flow came nicely. I dug in and met my new colleagues and went out to some fine dinners. I tried to imagine this place as a real home, a place I could see myself settling down in, but the image didn’t come. I still felt like I was pretending to be this other man and my real self was somewhere else.

With no word from Karla, I tried to think about something else. She called once, but I ignored the call. It was a stupid reaction - I was angry and I knew that a conversation with her would bring everything back up I was trying to avoid.

I decided because it was such a nice day I would walk home from my work. The air was hot and wet, the smell of the newly paved asphalt beneath my feet poured into my nose. The sidewalk was empty save for the long row of orange construction cones that lined out all the way down the street and over the hill. They seemed to line out forever.

I looked at my phone and it beeped - signaling a voicemail. I must have missed the phone call. It said:

Karla.

I hit the button and waited to hear the message. Her voice wavered.

“Hey. It’s me. Karla. Of course. You probably know that already. I just wanted to tell you. I’m not coming back to Seattle. I’m just not going to do that. It’s not you. It’s that city, I just can’t do it.”

I stopped walking when those words crept into my ear. The air was thick. There was no wind.

“I know you would just tell me I’m running away. Maybe it’s just who I am.” - and that was it.

I called her back, but it went right to voicemail. I called again, standing there, staring at the long line of construction cones down the hazy road.

Then it hit me. It was like she had never existed at all.

Later that night I tried to call again. It didn’t even go to voicemail. Just to a recorded voice: “the subscriber you are trying to reach is unavailable.”

I stared at my cell, listening to the machine repeat the words, as the rain started to pelt against the window pane.