Day 34 - Internship Story

Internship Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer

Stacey was dead.  It was unexpected and uncalled for, but then again most deaths are.  Owen hadn’t spoken to Stacey in three months.  They had chatted on the phone right after Thanksgiving and messaged each other a little during a lonely New Years Eve, but they hadn’t spoken since then.  They had made plans to communicate via email and text, but life is busy and time slips away and that’s the way things go.

Stacey had died.  She missed work. People began to worry.  A friend with the spare key had found her on the couch in their living room.  Owen had been three thousand miles away, not talking to her.

Owen was at work.  He received a text message from his former employer saying it was urgent.  Owen ignored it.  He had left this former job and had been happy to do it.  Now he wondered if the urgency had been to give condolences, or if his former supervisor just wanted to be the first with the hot dish of gossip.  It kind of sickened Owen a little bit to think about that.  He couldn’t be sure about people and that made him sad.

Owen had been angry so he had been ignoring her.  She was the one who suggested a separation.  She was the one who didn’t want to move when he had a better job offer.  She was the first one to start having an affair.  Sure they were separated and estranged and miles and miles apart, but Owen took his wedding vows very seriously.  It was still technically an affair because they were technically still married.  Of course it didn’t take him long after discovering she had moved on for him to do the same.

He had been stupid.  So many times.  So many ways.  But everyone can be stupid in a relationship.  And during a separation.

Former friends and co-workers suspected it had been an overdose.  Everyone wanted to ask Owen without asking him directly.  He wasn’t about to open up about any tox screens that had been run.  Stacey had moved on in a lot of ways in the last year.  Owen didn’t know if he ever knew her at all.  He wanted to believe that he did, but you never know.  He wanted to tell himself it all started after they were separated.  She made choices.  He didn’t want to be responsible for that.  She made all those choices after he left.

He knew he should have called her more.  Separated or not.  Different time zones and different directions shouldn’t have mattered.  Now was too late.  He should have thought about that sooner.  But what do you do?  Call someone everyday just to hear the sound of their voice?  If you did that for everyone you loved, you’d never get anything else done.  Still, he felt bad.

Owen resented her in so many ways.  Not just for putting herself first always.  That had been a big enough problem in the past.  But he resented what she was doing to him in the present.  They were over.  Just because they never signed any papers didn’t mean they weren’t over.  But no, now here he was, digging through her personal belongings, cleaning up and throwing out and putting everything in order.  It shouldn’t have been his job.  He didn’t want that responsibility.  But no one else was there to do it and everyone expected him to just because at one point they had made some empty promises to one another. 

He missed her.  A lot.  Not just because she was dead and he would never see her again.  He had been missing her for months, but didn’t know what it meant.  He would look at pictures and read old letters.  He told himself he didn’t have time to call her or fly back east to see her, but he somehow had time to wallow in their past.  He would remember that.  Remember his choice.  He hated that.  He hated her.  What was she doing, getting into party drugs at thirty-two?  Who needs to party at thirty-two?  Who needs to overdose at thirty-two? 

She made so many bad choices in the last four years.  Oh, but he loved her.  Still.  Even gone, he was still in love with her.  From beyond the grave she could screw with his life and screw with his head.  He resented her for that too.

Owen sat on her couch, formerly their couch, and more formerly his couch, and drank a stiff drink of whiskey.  He flipped through their old photo albums casually at first, not really looking at the pictures.  Then he reached a set from when he was twenty-five.  They had been interns together at a boutique publishing house in New Jersey.  They thought they were artists and were going to spearhead a very important movement discussing and analyzing very important ideas.  They got very drunk at a company holiday party and danced the night away.  Owen was not a good dancer, but that night he pretended to be.  Someone had been taking pictures all night and made copies for everyone.  They looked so young in those pictures.  Everything seemed so much easier then.  What was he going to do with all this stuff? 

Owen poured himself another drink.  At least he’d have no trouble disposing of the alcohol.

Owen had gone to the holiday party that night hoping to hook up with a co-worker.  He had never told Stacey that she hadn’t been his first choice.  Judging by how their relationship ended up six years later it was safe to assume she probably realized that at some point.  Owen hoped that hadn’t contributed to her problems.  First instincts are often wrong and the girl you want to hook up with is hardly ever the girl you want to fall in love with.  He had loved her and had loved the fact that she was so much more than he ever expected or had thought she could be.  He probably should have told her that.  He didn’t know if it would have made any difference.  Now he could never know.

Owen looked at a group picture.  There were five interns along with their supervisor and a half dozen other random employees.  Owen could still name five of them.  He was five for twelve, not including himself.  Could they do better?  He wouldn’t know how to find them to ask.

He wished he could remember their names.  He didn’t know what good it would do, but right now, looking back, he knew those were some of the best years of his youth, and of his life.  He didn’t know if Stacey had stayed in contact with more people than he had.  He never thought to ask.  He should have stayed in better contact with people.

Stacey was dead.  Owen didn’t know what to do with that yet.  He poured himself another drink and stared into his past.