fiction idea 2

Someone smart once told me, if you're trying to avoid being productive then do something else that's productive. This realization hit me while I was on facebook. Whatever. :|
But I'll just start writing this idea I have inside my head, and see how it goes.

There's this beautiful woman who wears this sad smile on her face every single day. It's plastered on like a rushed paint job on a house. It could mean anything: a placeholder for whatever expression is supposed to be on there, a sad attempt to hide what's inside the interior, a plea for help, whatever it is you want. It's like when light is filtered through clouds, and all you're left with is grey sunshine. It shines the brightest it can but you can't help but feel sorry for it.

She lives in a happy home, but she can't help it. She works in a nice law firm, she's married to a hard-working man, and still she can't help but post this fake smile. It's because her husband has to work these excruciating hours, waking up when the sun hasn't risen and coming home when the hours of the night are slowly winding down, where there's no traffic in the streets and the only sound is your own engine. Sometimes she feels that their home is merely a place of transition for him, a place where he can go to in order to change his suit and go back to work. The nights are long for her too, as she sees the space next to her in bed, a space which isn't used to the shape of her husband's body, a space which yearns for someone to sleep in.

They are debt-ridden. And even though they can carve a comfortable middle-class existence for themselves, it is because they are slowly destroying themselves to live in comfort. He is a presence in the household that isolates himself from it in order for it to exist. And she is someone whose vision is slowly deteriorating as she processes legal requests for hours on end. She walks home every single night alone, with her suitcase to her side, passing glittering stores and people on the street. She goes home and pops open a beer, cooking a modest meal and eating half, while sticking the other half in a tupperware for her husband to eat as she sleeps, missing him.

and so she goes on, the same sad smile, the same sad song, the same sad routine every single day.

There's this pianist who works in a cafe that sees her pass his window everyday, and every single time she passes he always wants to slam his hands on the window, saying to her, "you'll be okay, you'll be okay!" He doesn't love her, no no. The girl is more of a daughter to him. He has a love of his own, who sits in bed everyday because of a disease which is eating the marrow inside of her bones. But through their own love and tenderness for each other she conquered the disease and now sits at home, slowly recovering. The pianist is taking up the piano as a second job. He works as a bartender in the late nights, and plays the piano during the day/evening. So whenever he sees this sad-smiled girl, who is 35 years his junior, he is reminded of his wife who smiled the same way because she wanted him to be strong. She wanted him to be happy. He thinks to himself that young people shouldn't have to feel this way, ever. He drinks a cocktail and is reminded of his lovely wife who waits for him at home with hands like the frail branches of trees, and grows happier at the thought of holding them.

So one day he's sitting at his piano and sees this lady with her head hung down, like her burdens have finally caught up with her, weighing her down. He stops mid-song, a cover of a Frank Sinatra song, and stares at her face, and he sees it, he sees the same smile, despite the fact that her bangs are covering everything, she still sees those same lips curled in the same painful happiness. He stands up and watches her disappear in the window, only to reappear in the bar. Tiny droplets of water fall from her face but it's a beautiful spring day, not a single cloud in the sky. And so with tiny steps she approaches the piano and the pianist and in a tremulous voice she starts to tell her story to him.

She tells of everything, of how her and her husband had to elope because of the objections of their respective families. She wasn't the right race, and his family vehemently rejected her at various dinner tables in their own cruel mother tongue. He wasn't of the right pedigree, and her family made that apparent by serving him various delicacies and chardonnays he'd never be able to afford. And despite all of that they knew that as long as they'd be together, they'd be okay. Without a second thought, a day after their graduation they drove to a different state, leaving behind their problems as tiny dots in the horizon disappearing as they blinked, and they tried to set themselves anew in their life together. Except they didn't. Student loans and expensive real estate ate away at their newfound happiness, and they found a new set of challenges. The most painful thing, she said, was that even though they were together they weren't actually. In their attempt to close off the distance between each other they only managed to separate themselves even farther away.

And so with the story reaching its conclusion she has one request of the pianist, and that is to play a song about her life. She wants him to play a piece the most appropriate to her situation.

Silently he places his finger over a single note, and taps it. Then taps it again. Taps it again and again and again, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and... She asks what he's doing.

"Well, it'd be unfair for me to write a song when the composition isn't even done. I have no idea how the ending will go. If someone can make you feel so sad when they aren't even in your life, think about how happy you'll be once he can re-enter. It's only a matter of time, after all. No matter what eats away at you, if you keep going eventually you'll leave it behind. So that's why it's just this one note. I'm waiting for the next one to happen. You'll be fine."

She just stares at him, waiting.