PERENNIAL s
by Susan LaMarca
Not quite the fourth of July, but almost. David was listening to Rock and Roll part one, mesmerized. Before he realized the song could go on forever, his feet perpetually shuffling in tune, David put a cigarette in his pocket and hoped it was still lit so his pants could catch on fire. “He was there, 1999. The summer of rain. The start of the coldest summer that was.” Questions developed. What would it be like, excuse me, what will it be like, when… and so on.
On this particular evening, the girls were wearing shorts and sweatshirts, standing in the wind and dark, on the grass. David couldn’t see where he was stepping and snapped the branch with six tiny buds from Jessica’s rosebush. He perceived the destruction of his aimless gait when he heard a desperate sigh behind him.
Jessica dropped to her knees. Sharon, who was on the phone with a robot, paused to suggest grafting. She repeated “12:15”, attempting to communicate effectively with a computer that heard “12:01” six times before it switched to keypad entry where she had wanted to be all along.
David looked at Jessica, shoulders moving with his lungs. She sprang from the grass, and David pivoted carefully, stepping to make his feet smaller and his body lighter. Adam emerged from the brush David had followed him into, holding a small tree in one hand, its roots hanging at his knees.
Before the fate of Jessica’s rosebush came into question, they decided to relocate a tree from the backyard to a 3x3 patch of grass existing, mysteriously, in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the house.
Adam stood in the middle of the yard gesturing with the tree, yelling up at the third floor to an unresponsive Jessica. Vaguely frightened of her ever since a vivid dream he had had the night before, Adam left her alone. He dreamed he was at work when suddenly a pizza oven swung open and Jessica climbed out saying, “It’s not that hot in there.”
Adam planted the tree. David watched, shoes off, standing on the concrete. It came from the ground crooked. Probably able to spark desire in even the most aloof. Passersby suddenly gripped with an urge to tear the tree from the ground and fling it into the street where it could, in one motion, be crushed by a moving vehicle.
