Shadows Submission

Hannah swung her right leg over her left as she sat down, almost kicking the man sitting parallel to her on the train. Loudly lowering his newspaper, the man looked at Hannah, eyeing her long, fur collared black coat that had opened to reveal dark denim jeans snuggly fit inside dark, ruffled, suede, knee-high boots. Had Hannah turned to her left and met the man’s eyes, he might mistake her momentary glance for an apology and swallow the resentment he held for spoiled women, which had bubbled to the surface as soon as Hannah stepped inside the train, and had rooted itself in his temperament long ago when his finance left him and his studio apartment in Harlem for a climatologist professor at New York University. But as Hannah did not look at him at that moment or for the duration of the trip, he was not going to have to deal with swallowing his resentment and this personal transformation would not take place.

Instead Hannah scrolled through her telephone rereading the text message she had just received from the Brit she had meant at the American Bar Association’s Annual Energy Conference nearly a week ago.

HI HANNAH, IF YOU WANT ME TO PASS ON YOUR CV TO MY FRIEND IN LONDON THEN SEND IT TO MY EMAIL…AND IF YOU WANT SOME COCKTAILS THURSDAY NIGHT LET ME KNOW

She turned and conjured his face in the scratched window. With Burmese python eyes, a clean mess of a hair-do resembling a corporate Mohawk, and an athletic 5”8 build, he was attractive despite the fact that he was affected by a dental condition quite natural to his British homeland. That he was in the process of obtaining his PhD in economics, excelled in quantitative math, and was willing to pass her resume around made him a good contact professionally. She decided the dental dilemma didn’t outweigh these worthwhile reasons for engaging in the courtship.

Hannah looked at the person directly opposite from her and began to obsess. She worried about ageing whenever she saw the frazzled, ugly people on the train. Being ugly was not a problem that had ever belonged to Hannah, always having been athletic, a blonde with possibly the plumpest natural lips possible, although she hardly met her own ideals. By the measure of her obsession with how complete strangers looked, she had plenty of other issues to be concerned about. The train stopped at West 4th and having checked her pockets and seat three times prior to leaving the train for fear that her Rolex might have slid off, she stood up abruptly again disturbing the man who cursed her deeply as she left.

HI THANK YOU I WILL EMAIL YOU. I’M FREE AFTER 9.

She was on her way to her friend Daniel’s house. Daniel Rosenberger was obtaining his JD/MBA from New York University. Although short, his stockiness was alleviated by his sense of style and nice hair.

“You don’t have any sense of aesthetic, Hannah, not like me.” Daniel would often say.

“Yes, I do! I have plenty of it. I have music style.”

“Musical taste is not an aesthetic, retard!” He often argued.

It pained Hannah’s mother that the two friends never got together and got married. She was certain this would enable her to feel the feeling that eluded her, content. Her mother did not know that Hannah just broke up with her third serious non-Jewish boyfriend on account of the fact that he really didn’t keep up on conversations about politics. This was essential to Hannah, not so much having the same politics, but having them at all. Hannah’s mother would have been thrilled at the knowledge of the dissolution of the union, but Hannah wasn’t interested in thrilling her mother after the hell she had disseminated over the eight months of the relationship.

“Did you know that every time you are with him, your father feels as though you are being violated?”

“Don’t you dare bring up my dad!” Hannah’s mother knew all of Hannah’s weaknesses.

This type of hysterical interaction occurred frequently since Hannah had returned home unemployed, but this one had bothered her in particular. Purposefully pulling Hannah’s father into a gratuitously vulgar conversation warranted a miniature rebellion. Hannah did not speak to her mother for a week afterward, and the standoff ended only once Hannah filled herself with the great pleasure of recounting the story back to her father, in front of her mother, who was speechless in the face of such shameless retribution. Her words, Hannah thought. Her father had taken a stand on the whole situation in any event a few months earlier.

“She is old enough to make her own decisions is all I am saying.”

It was hard to tell if this was crippling their marriage. Hannah’s mother had become more religious, dragging her father along who usually went silently, not willingly. This silence included any public denouncement of policies Hannah’s mother had issued in the name of religion, but in this case he had stood his ground. He didn’t believe Hannah would end up getting a happy ending slash Jewish boyfriend at this rate anyway, so they all might as well let her be.

Hannah had arrived at Daniel’s place. His street was a typical for the NYU area stocked with jewelry bars, cozy pizzerias, and boutiques. Prior to graduate school, Daniel had tried to start his own clothing line, also a typical venture of this area. It had started to take off, in fact, several boutiques were carrying some of his product, but it was all quickly grounded by the economic downturn, much like she was grounded again at her parents’ house, the first time since she had moved out ten years ago at the age of 16.

She surveyed the call box to his apartment. She was going to actively avoid thinking about her problems. She stared at the limitless call box options, and pulled out her cell phone to dial Daniel.

“Hey tell me what apartment you are in again.”

“Ham, this is ridiculous, I have told you at least ten times.”

“TELL me again! Or I will hit all the buttons!”

“202, my little angry Ham.” He buzzed her in.

She was looking forward to getting completely drunk though she didn’t quite anticipate it only taking two drinks to accomplish that, a portion of which she was also going to spill on her tight, white, long sleeved shirt, which Hannah periodically pulled and scrunched together throughout the night so as to hide her belly that she felt was clearly growing from the consumption.

“Oh, Ham, you are looking good, looking good. Keep looking like that and you’ll be getting all the boys attentions' tonight.” Daniel said when Hannah walked in and plopped down on his couch.

She couldn’t deny she was looking slightly better. She had been dieting for a few days. Single girls are anxious reptilians, shedding their old nettled skin upon breaking up with prior, draping themselves in new perfumes, delighting in life's little delicacies. More accurately, these are the characteristics of girls who are single because they want to be. Hannah scanned the studio apartment. No one was at Daniel’s house yet. She wanted to be single.