Page 10 of Under the Weatherman
“Hast thou not dropped from heaven?”
The Tempest
I leaned against the post while Elizabeth slipped the key into the lock. Sporadic street lamps glowed hazily in the midnight gloom, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to turn right around and make the reverse trip in the dark alone. I’d been digging a hole for myself since we left the bar. One fun side effect of social anxiety was spouting opinions I hadn’t thought through, just to fill the silence.
There’s a weather phenomenon known as sprites—essentially lightning in the upper atmosphere high above the storm clouds. The cold plasma discharge is nature’s way of balancing out the ground strike. It isn’t rare, but hard to capture due to atmospheric light, but when someone does, it looks like a big red jelly fish hanging out in space. I sometimes felt like sprites: fractured, propelling myself away from the tension of social interaction. My knee-jerk responses left a mess for myself.
I hoped Elizabeth would understand, especially after what she’d said about nervous lying. I didn’t usually handle it well when people deceived me, but I couldn’t fault her for saying something weird out of awkwardness.
She kicked the door open and said, “Come on in,” with a bright smile, and I sighed with relief. My social gaffe hadn’t cost me a chance to spend another hour catching up with her.
The living room with its overstuffed sofa bedecked with pillows and throws felt very cozy. I tried to picture her house growing up, but I drew a blank. It had been nearly fifteen years since I’d known her, and I couldn’t even recall if I’d ever gone inside.
I scanned the titles on the bookshelf closest to me. If there was a system to her library, it was lost on me. A piece of paper hung from a tack on the side, and I lifted it. The first half was typed, followed by some additional hand-written lines toward the bottom.
Shakespeareisms:
This above all: to thine own self be true. —Hamlet
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting. —Henry V
Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.—Measure for Measure
“What’s this?”
“It’s nothing.” She plopped down, so I joined her on the sofa. “Just searching for permission.”
“Permission?”
“Yeah, it’s dumb.” She shrugged. “I have a pathological fear of speaking up for myself. I started jotting down quotes that remind me it’s okay to dare.”
“That’s…wow. Some people would grab a self-help book.”
She shook her head. “I know it’s silly to take life advice from some old white Brit who lived hundreds of years ago. Assuming Shakespeare wrote those words.”
“Do you think he stole them?”
“I dunno. It doesn’t matter.” She held up a finger. “A rose by any other name, right?”
I snorted a laugh. I wasn’t anywhere close to a Shakespearean scholar, but even I knew that line. “Still smells as sweet?”
“That’s the one. Shakespeare was my gateway lit.” A gray-and-white blur darted out of the bedroom into the kitchen.
“What the heck?”
“The other reason Chelsea wanted her own space. My cat, Jacques.”
“Jacques? Like the French? Or Jock like a sportsman?”
“The French. His full name is Jacques Lacan, though I sometimes call him Jacques le Cat.” I arched an eyebrow, expectant, and she went on. “Blame it on a semester of grad school.”
“You’re going to have to explain more than that.”
She pulled one knee onto the sofa. “I read a lot of literary theory. Jacques Lacan was a psychoanalyst turned lit critic. And you can’t name a cat Jacques Derrida. That would just be mean. There’s no there there.” She tilted her head, like she was reconsidering, and finished with. “Then again, cats are natural-born deconstructionists.”
She’d gone over my head again. “I’m afraid I missed the classes on literary criticism in school.” Relaxing into the conversation, I considered my college curriculum. “You don’t get too theoretical in Principals of Physics.”
“Hmm,” she said, leaning a little closer. “Isn’t everything theoretical until you put it into practice?”
