(Robert, you can’t make rent payments on time, you’re not worth any job above minimum wage, and you can’t even learn to fuck the right way no matter how many times I tell you to use your hips and stop wiggling back and forth like a worm. We’re done.)
Robert blinked the thoughts away and grounded himself in the present. The park was pleasantly chilly and soothed away the harshness of life. He drifted through the calm coolness of the day with his hands resting in his pockets. The grass was a mellow and muted green, the sky a cloudy, whitish blue.
People — strangers — smiled at him as he walked. He nodded back at an elderly couple on a bench and wondered at their lives and their trials and their tribulations.
A soccer ball came skittering over and Robert turned, trapping it under his foot. He flicked the ball up to juggle it, failed with a laugh, and kicked it back to a group of teenagers.
He walked on, a slow, soft smile spreading across his face.
Rounding a bend in the path, his body airy with the freshness of the park, he paused and watched a boy set a newspaper ship afloat in a startlingly blue pond. The S.S New York Times bobbled for a moment, then steadied and sailed along strong and stable. The boy clapped his hands, and Robert found himself clapping along.
A fiery flash in his peripheral made him turn. A pretty young lady had shifted an orange scarf around her neck. She was seated comfortably on a bench, watching the boat sail too, but her big doe eyes were distant and dreaming and she wasn’t clapping.
There was a spot next to her on the bench — the only bench near the pond — and Robert took a seat a respectful distance from her. She seemed to take no notice. A soft smile splayed across her face and her eyes followed the boat.
“My brother and I used to sail newspaper boats,” Robert said, breaking the silence. “We used to call them whatever text ended up on the side, so we’d get names like The S.S NASDAQ Down 4% and The H.M.S Five Guys Burger Voted Best.”
The girl didn’t acknowledge him. Not even a nod or a smirk. She was still watching the boat with lost and dreamy eyes.
“It was funny at the time,” Robert muttered, leaning back with some bitterness. The bench creaked and that was what seemed to startle the girl out of her stupor.
“Oh,” she said, looking at him and blinking once, twice, like she was clearing sleep from her eyes. Her mouth hung open just a bit, like she was going to say something else, then it settled into that soft smile again and she looked back to the boat. The S.S New York Times had reached the far shore and the boy ran around to set it back on a return journey.
Robert frowned and turned from the girl. He watched the boat. It wasn’t that fascinating. He found his eyes drifting back to the girl. She was more interesting. Rosy-cheeked from the cold, eyes bright and pensive. She had a small nose that Robert wanted to pinch softly between his fingers.
“Come here often?” he asked, trying to draw her back from whatever distant land her mind had floated off to.
She looked over again, surprised, like she hadn’t noticed his whole opening spiel about newspaper boats.
“Come where?” she asked.
Robert gestured around. “Here. The park.”
“Sometimes.”
A silence ensued. Now she was watching him with that smile still splayed on her lips. It was playful and teasing, like she knew something he didn’t.
“Is there something on my face?” Robert asked, suddenly self-conscious.
She shrugged. “No. You just talk a lot.”
“What else is there to do?”
“Think.”
Robert frowned. “About what?”
“Anything. Try it.”
He leaned back. She leaned back. They both watched the boy and his boat, and Robert let his thoughts wander.
(All aboard folks! The S.S New York Times is setting sail once more for the west side of the pond.)
(You got two days, Robert, you little shit. Scrounge up the money or you’re out. E-V-I-C-T-E-D. I got a whole lot of other tenants who want that room—and they all seem like folks who won’t try and take advantage of an old landlord. Your mother would be ashamed of you, how many times you say you’ll—
(We’ve reached the west shore, folks, last stop before the S.S New York Times sails east!)
(Four years at college and you’re no better off at flipping patties than you were before all that ejuh-muh-cation. What a waste. Could’ve learned to build planes or use computers, and you wasted your father’s money on four years of reading about all these make-believe worlds and people.)
A creak brought him back to reality. He was gripping the edge of the bench and his knuckles were white. The girl was looking at him with concern flooding those big eyes of hers.
“Sorry,” Robert mumbled, letting go of the bench and flexing his fingers. “I was just thinking. That’s usually not what I do when I come here. I don’t want to think about…you know…my life.”
She giggled. It was musical, cutting through the air crystal clear. The boy with the boat looked up and started laughing too. Robert stayed silent.
“Why would you think about your life?” she asked, in the same laughingly confused tone as someone asking why you would put a leash on a rock. “You can think of anything.”
Robert shrugged and let a silence simmer. The boy went back to sailing his boat.
“What do you think about?” Robert asked.
The girl smirked. “None of your business, mister. If you tell people what you’re thinking about, then it ruins the thoughts. They’re not yours anymore.”
“So you just think and do nothing with the thoughts?”
“Yup.”
“You should write a book, then. Do something with them.”
The girl shook her head. “Same thing. If you take the thoughts from your head and put them on paper, then they don’t belong to you, and they don’t…flow. You’ll get embarrassed. But you can’t be embarrassed if it’s all in your head and it never comes out.”
Robert felt a lopsided smile grow on him at the peculiar girl. “You’re bizarre.”
“I don’t care what you say here.”
“What?”
The girl shrugged and turned back to the boy and The S.S New York Times, now a veteran of numerous trips across the pond. Robert settled deeper into the bench and watched the ripples in the water.
(S.S stands for steamship, Robbie. You know, the ones with the cool factory smoke coming out the top.)
A dark billow of smoke puffed out from the top of The S.S New York Times.
(Hurry, Robbie! Make it go faster! The pirates are gonna catch up!)
Two ships sailing and waving the black flag, one The S.S Landlord and one The S.S Career-Path, were in menacing pursuit of The S.S New York Times.
“Captain,” a deckhand told Robbie, “They’re gaining on us.”
Robbie was by the wheel of the ship, looking out through the bridge’s window and smiling at the sea. He adjusted his sailor’s cap and tamped his pipe. It was wonderfully sunny out, wherever they were in The Atlantic. The air was warm and soft, and the sky was such a clear and cloudless blue that it almost seemed fake.
“We can’t outpace them?” Robbie asked the deckhand. He lay a hand on the wheel of The S.S New York Times, veteran of a thousand sails.
The deckhand shook his head solemnly.
Robbie sighed and looked ahead. On the horizon, an armada of dark clouds loomed—vulgar and black against the rest of the bright weather.
“They don’t have the balls to chase us through that,” Robbie said, grinning the grin of a cocksure captain. “But ask the lady if she’d rather face the storm or the pirates—she’s our esteemed guest, she should have a say in how she gets home.”
The deckhand nodded and scampered away, leaving Robbie alone for a moment with his thoughts.
(Twelve hundred dollars by Tuesday.)
(Stop fucking up the patties, Robert. Three years in and you still overcook them to tire-rubber status.)
(Where are you gonna live when—
“Captain?”
Robbie turned and smiled at her. She was in a cream dress and flashed a smile back at him full of playful confidence, despite the pirates behind and the storm ahead.
“We’ve got a choice, Miss —”
(Should I ask her name? No. How about Morgan? Sounds nautical enough.)
“— Morgan. We can try our luck with the pirates, or we could full-steam it through the storm.”
“Cut through,” Morgan said, eyes alight with glee. “Cut through that storm, Captain Robbie, and bring me home. Oh, what fun.”
“It’ll be rough,” Robbie said.
Morgan took his hand in hers. Her palms were soft. “That’s just how I like it, captain.”
He smiled and pinched her nose between his fingers.
(Oh, that’s cringe-worthy.)
(You can’t be embarrassed if it’s all in your head and it never comes out.)
Robbie sent a telegraph order down to the engine room and, after a moment, he could feel the pistons of The S.S New York Times pumping furiously as the ship shot across the sea and into the heart of the storm…
The boy was done playing with his newspaper boat and he plucked The S.S New York Times from the pond. Robert let out a gasp. Besides him, the girl laughed.
“Sorry,” Robert said, blinking. The sun was painfully bright. His vision was splotchy with floaters.
The girl on the bench stood and stretched her arms up to the sun, yawning. “I’ll be going now,” she said. “I have… real things to do. Sadly.”
Robert cleared his throat. “Can I ask your name? I’m—”
(Captain Robbie.)
“— Robert, by the way.”
Amusement flashed across her face. “I was thinking of you as more of a Roger. It’s more rough. And rugged. Better fit for the high seas.”
She —
(Morgan?)
— gave one last smile before leaving. He watched her go, then stayed on the bench by the pond for a long time, thinking.
Lance Colet is an undergraduate student at Penn State pursuing a major in economics and minors in psychology and creative writing.