Creative Writing from
Fairleigh Dickinson University

Lying

Andrew Condouris

It was summer. I met her at a bar on the edge of town. She was a nice English woman; her eyes were two chestnuts. I made her laugh. We left together in her little Nissan and headed down to her little rental on the beach.
        On the way, we got pulled over by a cop. She pulled out her international license: a huge piece of paper folded like a map. The cop didn't know what to make of it. He let it go and told her to get her rear tail light fixed.
         We got to her place and she told me that she wanted to fuck. In her bedroom, there were mirrors everywhere, wood paneling. We shut out the lights and played freeze tag in the dark. I was “it” for quite a while.
        I stripped her down and she was wearing a black bra and matching panties. I liked it. I liked her wearing black in all the darkness and her heavy breathing from running around the room. I stripped down and lit a cigarette. Then, I lay there on the bed next to her and smoked. Her breathing grew softer.
         “You want to get under the covers?” she asked.
         “Nah. It's too damn hot. Turn on the air conditioner.”
         She got up and went over to the thermostat. The moonlight through the blinds caught her breasts.
         “What are you thinking about?” she asked.
         “I don't know. Nothing, I guess.”
        She slithered back into bed.
         “Are you sure?”
         “Never been more sure in my life.”
         “Somehow I doubt that.”
         “What made you fall in love with me?”
         “Who the hell said anything about love?”
         “I'm just testing you, lady.”
         “Right.”
         And with that, we proceeded to fuck.
         It was uninspired, but we laughed at it being uninspired.
        
         Afterward, I watched her take a shower through the open bathroom door. Her body was cherubic, soft. There was a birthmark above the small of her back. Reddish, faded. I had felt it in the dark, wondering what it was. As the water worked its way down her body in tiny indecisive rivers, I looked at my reflection in the mirror above the bed. I looked at my belly and thought about becoming a fat man.
         The lady got back in bed and I put my arms around her wet body. She was breathing deeply, calmly. I smelled the back of her neck, her wet hair tickling my nose.
         “Let's just sleep for awhile and forget about everything.”
         “Okay,” I said. “But that might be hard with all these reminders around us.”
         “What are you talking about?”
         “The mirrors, lady.”
         “What do they remind you of?”
         “Me.”
         “Why?”
         “'Cause that's me in the reflection.”
         “Oh. No, it's not.”
         “Well, who's that dashing fellow in the mirror?”
         She turned around, all alive, and put her watery hand over my mouth. She was giggling quietly. I started to laugh, not knowing why.
         “Didn't you have that dream when you were a kid?” she asked.
         “What dream?”
         “Well, not exactly a dream. But you look in the mirror and you say your name and you have no idea who that person is looking back at you.”
         “Whad they put in your drinks tonight?”
         “I'm serious. You never had that feeling?”
         “What is it again?”
         “Never mind.”
        
        In the morning, we went for breakfast. We ate, then smoked cigarettes and talked about nothing. I started to look around at all the funny souls eating their breakfast and drinking their coffee. We were in an IHOP, so I looked up at the flags. She asked me if I knew what they all were and I said no. She began to put a country to each flag.
         “That one's Greece. That one's Sweden. That one's Japan.”
         “Japan I know,” I said. “It's gotta be the ugliest flag of them all.”
         “No, the American flag is the ugliest flag.”
         “Bite your tongue, lady.”
         She stuck out her tongue and bit down lightly.
         “Okay. Now what?”
         I laughed.
         “Let's go down to the beach.” she said.
         “Okay,” I said.
        
         We walked on the boardwalk for a while. Then, we walked onto the beach. We found a spot and fumbled around on the sand for a bit.
         “Do you like the ocean?” I asked.
         “What kind of question is that?”
         “Some people don't like it.”
         “They're lying.”
         “Why would you lie about that?”
         “I don't know. But they do. They lie about all kinds of things. People lie about their age and their names, where they're from. It makes things more interesting. You've never lied about something?”
        “Plenty of times. But I don't think it made things more interesting.”
         “Well, what did you lie about?”
         “I told this girl I was in the CIA.”
         “You?” she said.
         “What's so funny about that?”
         “You're not CIA material. Not with that stomach.”
         “You little witch,” I said. “What about you? Have you ever lied big?”
         “Sure. In kindergarten, I told the class that I had a pet monkey.”
         “That's insane.”
         “And I also once told a guy he was really good in bed.”
         “What was his name?”
         “Ask the mirror.”
         “Now, I know you're just playing games.”
         “How do you know?”
        I kissed her. We kept our eyes open.
        She stripped down to her bathing suit and ran down to the sea. Watching her, I thought about how there was nothing I could do with her that hadn't already been done.
         She waded further and further, breaking through the waves. I imagined her swimming all the way to England. She would win all these awards. News reporters would pummel her with questions, the most important being why she did it. She would say she did it for love. And I would laugh on this side of the Atlantic, thinking she was lying. But I wouldn't know for sure.
        She dove into a crest. Then, I thought about how there was nothing she could do with me that hadn't already been done. But then what did I really know about that? All I knew was the small of her back: a seashell after the storm.
        “Keep going,” I muttered.
        Keep going.