PIVOT

flash fiction

So I walk up to her and hold out the flower. She grabs it out of my hand and wads it up and pitches it side-arm to the left, the thing now in a ball and rolling to a stop.

I look at her.

She looks at me.

We look at each other for a very long time.

Neither of us says anything. It has become a staring contest.

'Okay,' I tell her, glancing at the wadded-up flower for half a second, thus losing the contest, 'I know you hate me for what I did the other night, but doesn't my bringing you a pretty flower mean anything? Anything at all?'

She bites her bottom lip and says, 'About as much as the theory of relativity, so fuck off.' She pivots on a heel and walks away. I watch as she eventually becomes smaller and smaller then vanishes around a building corner.

I sigh deeply and go home, to my empty apartment. I turn on the TV and fall asleep, dreaming of the wadded-up flower. I see my hand picking it up and straightening it out. I get it as straight as I can, although the petals are crinkled and the leaves are twisted out of shape. I place the flower in a watery vase and it dies within two days.

'The dream,' says the interpreter later that week, 'means nothing. She still hates your guts and that will never change.'

I pay the fifty bucks and head back out, the world itself already dead.