By Joshua Vigil
After she sat me down at the all-night diner, she said she was no longer attracted to me. All humans, Traci clarified. The truth is, I find that scooter out there incredibly sexy.
The electric one?
Yes, the electric one. Though they don’t always have to be electric. She slipped her hand into mine and led me to the parking lot. When her fingers touched the scooter’s frame, she let out an animal sound, so unlike anything she’d ever made for me. And with an unfocused but crazed expression, she said, Do you understand?
The scooter can’t love you back! I said.
I think you’re wrong about that. You’re so wrong.
She dropped to her knees and left her cheek plastered against the aluminum.
Is this about Richard? I asked. Or your Dad?
Traci’s fingers jumped to the cluster of gold acorns that hung from her neck. She worried them in her grip, each of them filled with the ashes of the men of her life. A dead father’s. A late husband’s.
I think I’ve finally gotten over their deaths, she said. This is what that looks like.
***
We remained friends. Every so often she sent me photos of scooters she had crushes on. Some were tiny and mechanical, with rust and dents, while others were shiny and expensive, the latest models. I began paying more attention to the scooters that populated our mid-sized city. Down sidewalks I found many cast aside. Years ago, a start-up had come and dropped hundreds all across downtown. Now, fleeced with cobwebs, they stood forgotten. I righted one up, pressing its frame against my leg, and I closed my eyes, waiting to feel something.
***
My date and I were a little drunk, our voices thick and our treads unsteady. She asked me to stop talking about Traci as I flicked the light to the living room on. Had I been talking about her so much? Beside the front door the woman teetered. A moment passed before a look took over her face. Why do you have so many scooters? she asked. Her head swung left and right as she inspected my living room, taking in the sheer volume of scooters I’d amassed since the break-up.
It’s complicated, I said.
She ran through the maze of scooters, asking if I’d bought them all or if they were stolen.
Is it stealing if they’ve been left for dead?
Are you one of those eco-anarchists?
How do we know they don’t have souls?
The woman cocked her head. You’re joking.
I told her the truth then. That it was Traci’s fault I’d been collecting them. She’s into scooters, sexually, I said, and I’m just trying to understand her.
You want to get back together with her, she said, I understand.
But doesn’t it make you sad? Seeing all those scooters out there? Worse than any graveyard I’ve ever seen. At least in death humans get to rest in privacy.
I don’t think this is just about scooters, she said.
We’re never just any one thing, I said. You’re right.
The woman plopped onto the couch. Her face was pink and oily, and she looked deflated suddenly. In the spirit of sharing secrets, she said, I have a fake ear. She fiddled with her ear until the whole thing came off. A shark accident, she said.
I was still holding the prosthetic when we tried kissing. Our lips pumped and squirmed when the woman said she couldn’t, not with all the scooters staring.
I told her I couldn’t either. Traci, I said, she’s the love of my life.
***
Are you familiar with yappers’ regret? Traci asked when we met again at the all-night diner. The gold acorns still hung from her neck.
Neither of us are yappers, I said. We’re the quiet types.
People assume we live interesting interior lives, but I’m not so sure that’s true.
You fall in love with scooters left and right.
That’s what I need to talk to you about, she said, and she told me she was done with scooters, that she’d been taking an interest in roller skates recently.
Is there a difference between roller skates and roller blades? I asked, thinking of the latest trend on TikTok involving one or the other. People flew down the paved hills of my neighborhood dangerously; so many had already died. Like most trends, this one would be over within a week—and what would become of all those recently-purchased skates? Traci, I thought, was here to save them.
She looked longingly at a pair of skates packed in the front basket of a bike parked outside. I said, Maybe you just have a thing for feet.
Maybe, she said.
I thought of what awaited me at home, the scooters I’d now have to get rid of. And I thought of what the weeks after would look like. All the skates I’d pilfer off the street. Anything for Traci. When I focused my attention back on her, she was drooling. Her eyes were still set on the pair of skates. You want to save the skates because you couldn’t save Richard, I said, or your Dad.
Look at the way they catch the light.
I stared at the skates, aqua colored, with bright pink laces. The brake jutted from the toe, domineering. And then my eyes returned to Traci, with her dreamy gaze aimed out the window. Faint freckles splashed her face and chest while curls bounced from her head. Her irises twinkled.
I took her hand and pulled her up—she’d never get over their deaths, but I could try my best to help—and I rushed us outside, where I scooped up the skates, Traci screaming beside me, lit up with joy.
As the skates bounced against my chest, I admired how they caught the light.
Joshua Vigil is a writer and educator living in the Pioneer Valley. His writing has appeared in Hobart, Joyland, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His chapbook Shapeshifter is out now from Bottlecap Press.