Little Synchronicity
Ray Timmins


Been three months now on unemployment. Don’t get a lot, but every two weeks I’m there at the mailbox to collect my meager earnings from the state. With a few cutbacks I can just get by.

Should be a check in the mail today, which means I have to make a trip to the check cashing store. But first, breakfast.

I head to 7-11 after picking up my check at the mailbox and pour a large coffee. I also get a granola bar and head for the register to pay for them. Some basic nutrition and a little caffeine boost is what I need today.

The cute girl at the counter rings me up and I’m off to the bus stop to wait for the 33.

I sit at the bus stop, happy to be alive for a change. Much of the time I’ve had lately has been spent in sadness and boredom, but today feels like a good day. The sun is shining but it’s not too hot. There’s a nice breeze, as a matter of fact. I feel it sweep through my hair and a subtle shiver consumes my body as if the wind has passed right through me.

Today I woke up somewhere around eleven, watched Headline News for a little while and took a shower. Being unemployed, I can work the day at a leisurely pace. This is what it must feel like to be retired.

Sure, I should be looking for a job, but there’s plenty of time for that.

I’ve lost thirty pounds in the last three months due to my low calorie diet.
The coffee keeps me going. I’ll hold on to the cup and when I get back home from the check cashing store I’ll refill it for a dollar.

I can see the bus coming. I finish my granola bar, take a sip of coffee and stand up. I pay my fare and take a seat in the middle of the bus. From here I can sit sideways and take in a view of the whole bus and all its varied passengers.

In the back corner is a kid rocking and bobbing to his iPod. A couple also sits close to the back, holding hands, staring straight in front of them. The girl sees me looking at them. I look away.

There’s an old lady with groceries sitting in the front rifling through her purse for something. And sitting directly across from her is an old man talking to a young woman, in her twenties, dressed in black with heavy black eye makeup.

It’s not too far to the check cashing store. I ring the bell and get off the bus. I cash my check and make my way to the bus stop on the opposite side of the road. I have about a fifteen minute wait. I light up a Camel and wait.

A guy walks up to the bench and sits down next to me.

“Hey, could I get one of those,” he says.

I hand him a cigarette and lighter. He lights it up and hands back the lighter.

“Thanks,” he says, smiling.

Now I’m nervous that he might want to talk. I’m not in them mood to talk. I just want to smoke and drink my coffee—I’m still a little sleepy and don’t think I can keep up with a conversation with a stranger right now.

“Man, it’s a nice day,” he says.

“Yeah, it sure is,” I say.

There’s a moment of silence and I decide that that wasn’t too bad. It is, after all, a nice day.

“Man, when I get home I’m gonna smoke me a nice, fat blunt,” he says, out of nowhere.

“Sounds good,” I say, sipping my coffee.

“You smoke?”

“Not in a while. Been unemployed. Not much money.”

He opens his backpack, which I hadn’t seen till just now.

“Man, you’re gonna make me cry. Here, take this.”

I couldn’t believe my fortune. He gave me a nice little bud from what looked like an ounce in his backpack. I put it in my cigarette pack. I hand him another cigarette. He puts it behind his ear.

“Take this too,” he says, scribbling on a scrap piece of paper. It was his phone number. “Call me if you ever want to hook up. I get this stuff all the time. It’s good shit.”

“Thanks, man.”

“James,” he says.

“Dell,” I say.

“I like my weed,” he says, “I like my booze. I was in the Mideast during the Gulf War and we used to get some good shit. Man, tell you what. Fucked up over there, though. Lost a lot of friends. Fucked up,” he says staring off into the distance.

“That must’ve really fucked with your head, seeing all those people you know die.”

“No shit, man. After all that I decided that you gotta have a good time as often as possible. Now, I party whenever possible. I spread cheer and mirth, man.”

“Cool.”

“So, how long you been unemployed?”

“Three months.”

“Getting unemployment?”

“Yeah, but not much. Ya know, just enough to get by.”

“Yeah, I know. Just found a job recently myself. I’m a cook at Boscoe’s.”

“Oh, I like that restaurant. Good steaks, man.”

“Yeah. When you get a job you should come by. Call me before you come, I’ll fix you up something sweet.”

“Cool.”

“Ooh, the bus.”

The bus overshoots the stop by half a block. James and I run to catch it and board. We pay our fares and sit down in the front of the bus.

“Enjoy that,” he says.

“Believe me, I will.”

The bus arrives on my block, I shake James’ hand, thank him and get off the bus. I jog to the 7-11 to get my coffee refill.

Feeling plucky, I get the dark roast with a little Irish Cream-flavored cream and go up to the register. I then remember the weed in my cigarette pack and decide to get lunch now so I don’t have to come back all stoned to get it. I have some food at home, but I probably won’t feel much like cooking when I’m high. I grab a microwave burrito—a green burrito—and a Chipwich.

I dart across the street after a couple cars pass and walk up to my door, key ready. I put the burrito and ice cream in the freezer, skip to my bed and plop down. I take out my cigarette pack and pull out the nice bud. I grab a random book from my bookshelf, it’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and start to break up the bud. I have papers, but decide to use my bowl instead, to conserve what little I have. I figure I can get high twice, maybe three times, since my tolerance lately is so low.

I pack the bowl and take the first hit—a long, slow hit. This is good shit, I decide, already feeling it. I take one more hit and decide that it’s enough for now. I turn on the TV and flip through the channels, trying to find something good. I can’t find anything. After going through all the channels twice, I turn off the TV. I go to my computer and queue up a beefy playlist. I randomize it a few times, till I’m satisfied, and click Play.

Morphine plays—I get lost in the somber tones, sinking into my pillow, staring at the ceiling fan whirring above me.

I hear a knock at the door and I already know who it is by the uneasy sound of the knock. It’s Hanna. Hanna’s crazy. Hot as hell, but crazy. I met her on the bus last week when I was going to cash my check. She immediately took to me and started telling me all about her life. How she had taken a bus down here from New York to get away from her psycho ex-boyfriend. She was going to the grocery store nearby and asked me if I’d meet her there after I cashed my check, that she was afraid to be alone. I promised I would, so after cashing my check I walked the block to the grocery store and found her in produce, where she said she would be. I did some shopping too and we walked to the bus stop and caught the bus. Turned out she lived about a block from me and I was surprised that I had never noticed her before. She’d said she’d been in town for a few months, though she had spent most of her time inside till the last couple weeks.

I answer the door and, indeed, it is her. She pushes past me and plops down on my bed, seemingly exhausted.

“I ran all the way here!” she says, panting.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s a cannibal living next door to me!”

“What?”

“It’s true! I saw him eating a giant piece of raw meat in his doorway when I came home from the beach this afternoon. I went inside my place and prayed. Dell, he was smiling as he chewed the meat, eyeballing me. What if he wants to kill me, hack me up and eat me?”

“Calm down, Hanna. Are you sure he was eating raw meat?”

“There was . . . sinew and gore and blood dripping from it. It was so gross, oh my God!”

“There’s no way you know that it was human flesh though.”

“I know what I saw, Dell! I saw an elbow!” she screamed hysterically.

“Alright, Hanna. I’m sorry. What are you going to do?”

“You have to let me stay here for now. But I need some stuff from my place. I need you to take me there, so I’ll be safe. But not now. He goes out at night, probably cruising the beach bars for women to take home and hack up. We’ll go after dark.”

She starts to calm down and I take a seat next to her on my bed, feeling sorry for her. Murder by Numbers starts.

“Holy shit! I’ve had this song in my head all day. Ever since I saw that guy eating the raw meat in his doorway. That’s just weird.”

“There’s a lot of Police songs on this playlist.”

“But why this one, huh? This is the first song that’s started since I’ve been here. I came in the middle of the last one and then a new song starts and it’s this one and I swear, Dell, it’s been in my head for hours.”

“Well, nothing terrifying about a little synchronicity,” I say, laughing a little, “which is also somewhere on this playlist.”

“One or two?”

“Both.”

“Cool!”

She seems at ease now, which puts me at ease.

“Is that pot I smell?”

“Yeah. Want some?”

“Hell yeah! I haven’t smoked in months. Not since I split up with my psycho ex. He was a huge pothead.”

“Couldn’t have been that bad then.”

“You don’t understand. He was psycho!”

I hand her the bowl and she hits it, offering it back to me. I decline, tell her I’m already stoned and she hits it again.

“He would just snap for no reason sometimes. Like we’d be maybe kissing and it’s getting hot and heavy and he would just shove me away and tell me that he knows what I’m up to, that he could smell other men on me and that he knew I was fucking around on him. Then he would break down at times and confess that he’d never dated someone as beautiful as me and what was I doing with him. Sometimes he’d accuse me of using him for his money and that I was used to living off Daddy’s money so that’s why I was with him.”

She takes one more hit and puts the pipe down.

“But I really did love him. I worked part time at a shoe boutique and I’d see him driving by every now and then just to check that I was working. Sometimes he would come inside and talk for a while, which was alright, but many times I’d just see him driving by.”

“That kind of possessiveness can get old after a while.”

“Tell me about it! One day we hired a guy, a fag actually—his name was George. He was really cool and we hit it off right away. So, Desmond, that was my ex’s name, came in and we were all talking. Now George was very obviously gay. He didn’t spell it out for Desmond but he really didn’t need to, ya know? And when I got home that night, my ex was waiting for me in the dark with just a single candle flickering on the coffee table—it was so creepy! He accused me of fucking around with George and I laughed because the whole idea was absolutely absurd. He slapped me and began screaming at me, calling me a whore. That was the last time I saw him. I packed some things and left. I went to my dad’s and stayed there for a few days till I bought a bus ticket down here. I wanted to take the bus to see the country, ya know? Although, in retrospect, a train might have been more comfortable.”

“So, you haven’t heard from Desmond?”

“No. Sometimes I miss him, but it’s for the best. I’m better off without him. Though he made me feel safe. Part of me hated that he would stalk me when I was at work, but another part of me liked that he was looking out for me. I dunno, sounds kinda crazy, I suppose.”

“I see where you’re coming from. But you are better off without him.”

“Besides, I have you now.”

Jesus Christ, what did that mean? Although she’s calm now and opening up, I still can’t get past the cannibal who lives next door to her. And how she’s moving in. Am I some sort of boyfriend now? No, I don’t want to be, but I don’t have the heart to turn her away. I mean, she’s a damsel in distress and is legitimately afraid to go home.


After dark, we leave for her apartment. Along the way, she sees “the cannibal” walking down the opposite road. She hides behind a bush and pulls me back there with her. When he’s out of sight, we emerge from the bushes and continue on to her place.

“Didn’t he just look evil?” she says.

When we arrive, she slowly unlocks the door and heads inside. I follow her. She grabs some clothes, a few CDs and some things from the kitchen, packs them in a large shopping bag and darts toward the door.

“Let’s go,” she says, “I’ve got everything I need.”

We walk back toward my place. She needs to stop at the gas station for a pack of cigarettes. I wait outside with her giant bag of shit. I see steaks in the bag and think that this might not be so bad. Hell, I haven’t had a steak in I don’t know how long. I remember the bag of potatoes at my place. Some guy on a fancy, bright yellow motorcycle pulls up to the gas pump near me. He begins fueling up. Hanna comes out, talking to the guy who works inside who’d followed her out. The stuff is heavy, I set it down while she blabs with the dude. The guy on the motorcycle calls to me.

“Hey, that your wife?” he says.

“No, just a friend.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“Yeah.”

He hops on his bike and flies away. Hanna starts walking toward me, holding up her pack of Marlboros.

“That guy is so nice,” she says, referring to the kid who works the gas station.

We cross the street to my building and walk up to my door. The next door neighbor is sitting on his stoop. He looks at me and winks, smiling. I open the door and we go inside.

“What was that all about?” she says, worried.

“Guess he was sort of tipping his hat to me for bringing home such a beautiful woman.”

“Really? You think I’m beautiful?”

“Very.”

She beams. She puts the steaks in the fridge—saying that she will make them later—and the rest of her food away. I start packing the bowl with what’s left of the pot. She sees me and her eyes widen as she makes her way toward me and sits down next to me.

“This is the rest of it,” I say.

“Can you get anymore?”

“No money. Some guy gave this to me.”

“That was nice of him.”

“Yeah, sure was.”

“Hey, I’ve got some money. Dad’s credit card, actually—I can get a cash advance. I’m sure he won’t notice, he doesn’t really check. I’ve had his card since I was sixteen.”

“So how many years has that been?” I ask, trying to find out her age.

“Oh, a few.”

“Well, it’s up to you,” I say, handing her the bowl.

She hits it.

“We’ll see tomorrow. I don’t want to go to the ATM after dark, even though I have you. That guy is out there.”

“Oh, yeah, the cannibal.”

She slugs me on the shoulder: “It’s serious!”

“Sorry.”

“Besides, we have some for now.”

“True.”

We smoke till we’re high and save the rest for later.

“What’s this?” she asks, referring to the music.

“Frank Zappa.”

“Oh, so now I finally hear him. Have heard about him for years but never actually heard him.”

“Hearing one song is barely a glimpse into what he’s done, though.”

“Oh, yeah?”

I nod.

“I need to take a shower,” she says, rifling through her bag. She pulls out a towel and a T-shirt. “Is it alright?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I just love taking a shower stoned.”

“Go for it.”

She goes into the bathroom, I hear the shower turn on. I’m not really paying attention to what’s playing, just entertaining the thought of her naked in my shower. If only she weren’t crazy. Ah, but we’re all crazy in our own way, I suppose.

She comes out in a towel, curly brown hair hanging wet upon her neck and shoulders.

“Steamy in there,” she says, smiling, sitting down on the chair next to the TV.

“So, how was it?”

“Sublime!”

“Good.”

Suddenly, she stands up, drops her towel and says “What do you think of my ass,” showing it to me.

“Gorgeous.”

“Desmond used to say it was sublime—that’s what made me think of it, when I said that.”

“Yes, sublime would also be a good description.”

She puts her towel back on and walks into the bathroom. She comes out in a large T-shirt. It’s white and I can see that she wearing nothing underneath.

“All clean?”

“Oh, yeah,” she says, lying back on my bed, exposing her thighs.

I play with her hair, running my fingers through it and she begins to giggle softly. She reaches up and grabs the back of my neck, pulling me in closer to kiss me, which she does, upside-down. It’s a short, simple, but passionate kiss.

Her shirt pulls up, exposing herself but she doesn’t cover up. She just lies there smiling. I kiss her on the forehead and she closes her eyes. I run a hand down her shirt over her breast and she giggles.

“Stop that!” she says.

She pulls up her shirt.

“I have such small tits.”

“They’re very nice though. Well shaped, that counts for a lot.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

She grabs the back of my neck and kisses me upside-down again. This time I put each of my hands on her breasts and stroke them. She squirms and giggles as I lightly pull on her nipples. She sits up, taking off her shirt and lunges at me. Pretty soon, I’m undressed and we’re having sex on my bed, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds playing on my computer.


I wake up and she’s gone. It’s morning, just after 8. I get up and go to the bathroom. As I’m pissing, I hear the door open. I finish and go back out into the living area. It’s Hanna.

“Went and watched the sunrise. Haven’t seen it since I’ve been here. It was beautiful. And I picked up some breakfast, too.”

We eat breakfast: pancakes, eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast. It is delicious. As I eat, I think about the sex we had last night. It was wonderful and I’m hoping for a repeat performance today. But the more I think about it, the more it seems like a fluke, that it’s never happening again. She sits across from me on the bed eating her pancakes with the innocence of a young girl. She thinks there’s a cannibal living next door to her. I start to feel sorry for her, so far from home and so lost. She has stepped through the looking glass. I reach my hand out and caress her cheek. She smiles at me with a mouthful of pancakes.

I call up James later and he makes a delivery. We all hang out for a while, smoking, till James has to leave. Hanna makes those steaks with some potatoes, which is wonderful. We make love again that night and it's even better than the first time. She stays the next few days, each night we make love is better than the previous night. I can’t believe my fortune. The way this crazy girl just appears out of nowhere, buys me pot, makes me steaks and gives me the best sex I’ve ever had in my life. This seems to good to be true, I keep telling myself. Hanna’s strange. I’ve spent every moment of the last few days with her and I know nothing about her childhood. She tells lots of stories though, I know just about everything that has happened to her in the last few years. She seems to like aggressive dickheads, which makes me wonder what she sees in me.

She lies on the bed now as I sit at my computer. I watch her sleep. So beautiful and serene. She begins to wake up, her eyes slowly open, she sits up in bed and runs her hand through her curls. The blanket around her falls away and she is naked. She gets up and gets dressed—the whole process is breathtaking. I like watching her get dressed almost as much as I like watching her get undressed.

Almost.

After spending a good half hour zoned out to the TV, she says, “I wanna get drunk today.”

I look over with an inquiring look.

“I want to drink today—vodka.”

“Vodka?”

“Vodka.”

“If I give you money will you go get it for me?”

“Sure, I guess.”

She gives me two twenties and tells me to get as much Absolut as I can. I walk across the street to the liquor store and buy a liter. When I get back, I hand her the change and the bottle.

“Any shot glasses?”

“I have two.”

“Get them.”

I do, setting them down in front of the bottle. She fills them both.

“Let’s go—grab your shot glass.”

I do, we toast to never ending happiness, and we drink. She pours two more and we drink them. She pours two more, immediately, but I hold out.

“In a little while. I don’t want to get wasted this early in the day.”

“I do,” she says, taking down three more shots. “Pack the bowl,” she says, and I do.

We smoke. I ask her what she wants to do with her life, if she wants to go to school or what have you.

“I want to live with gorillas.”

“Like Jane Goodall?”

“Exactly. She’s my hero!”

“So you plan on going to school?”

“Yeah, I suppose. I mean, yes, definitely. Just not the right time, ya know?”

“Why not, I mean, won’t your Dad pay for it?”

“Yeah, but I feel . . . restless. It’ll wear off, I guess. I dunno. I don’t know what I’m thinking one day to the next. I probably need medication. I just get so excited and have all this energy sometimes. I don’t even know if that cannibal thing was even real, at this point. I’m not sure. But I don’t want to go back, just the same. I like it here with you. For now.”

“For now?”

“Yeah, I mean, like I said, I don’t know what I’m thinking from one day to the next.”

I’m a little hurt, suppose I was starting to get a little attached. But we’re living in a fantasy—no jobs, no prospects, just wrapped up in each other like we have been. Deep down, I knew it wouldn’t last long.

She gets drunker and drunker, taking shot after shot, till she’s barely able to walk. And yet, she won’t sit down. She stumbles around, picking up random objects, a sock or a pen, and waves them around at me.

“You know what I think?” she says. “This is the first time you’ve been laid in a long time. I can tell.”

“Oh?”

“All the detail you put into lovemaking, oh, it’s been building up for a long time.”

“Yeah, perhaps.”

“You know what your problem is?”

“What?”

“You gotta take what you want. Even when we met, I started talking to you. And earlier when I told you that I wouldn’t be around forever you should’ve said something, but you didn’t. You just accepted it. Don’t you want me?”

“Yeah, but not if you don’t want me.”

“God!” she says, grabbing her purse. “I need cigarettes!”

She walks out the door, leaving me alone in my now quiet room. The playlist I’d had queued up ended a few minutes ago, I decide to queue up some more. I listen to a couple songs before I begin to wonder what’s taking Hanna so long. I walk outside, to the front of my building, and look across the street to the gas station where she buys her cigarettes. She’s just outside, talking to that guy I saw there a few days ago with the yellow motorcycle. I think about walking over there, but decide I have no real reason to. I find that I’m more annoyed than jealous and go back inside to listen to music.

I’m listening and singing along to Fairies Wear Boots when she walks in. She starts packing her stuff in her shopping bag, saying nothing at first.

“What’s up, Hanna?”

“I’m sorry, Dell, I gotta go. We could never be, you know that.”

I have just this moment now—she wants me to try and stop her, but I don’t think it would help anyway. Plus, I kind of want her to go. She’s just too much, all at once. I miss my privacy. I miss my sadness. The last few days have been exalting but nerve-racking at the same time. She sucks the life out of me. When it comes down to it, I just can’t keep up with her.

She’s done packing quickly and heads for the door.

“I’ll always remember you,” she says and it’s so cheesy and Hollywood but it gets to me.

The door closes and I sit there for a moment. I have privacy now, and sadness. I curse them and make for the door. I run outside, to the front of the building, to see the fancy yellow motorcycle speeding away, Hanna on the back. Maybe I could have made her stay, but I still wasn’t sure whether or not I even wanted to be with her. Never wanted to be with her to begin with, but things just sort of happened. I may have even fallen in love with her. I watch the motorcycle disappear in the distance, turn around and walk back to my empty room. The Doors are playing: “. . . don’t you love her as she’s walking out the door?” I remind myself what I had told her about being terrified by a little synchronicity. As usual, my own reasonable advice seems useless when applied to myself.