Jack Meet Sophie

         She can hear a boy saying: Baby, please stop crying, stop crying. She can hear sirens and people shouting and someone is asking her are you okay? She is fine. Are they? She can still hear: Please, please, please. She pinches the bridge of her nose, burned to the back of her lids are red lights, screeching brakes, breaking glass, that car, those kids. Dropping her hand and she forces herself to see, just for a moment, what she has done.

         With the sun setting and setting everything ablaze the crying girl, her hair a halo, could very well be beautiful; and him, with his broken begging, her Prince Charming.



         The cop is a rookie: shoes shined, brass star gleaming. He needs her name, Emma and her license which she gives him. She says: “My husband is a cop. Or, well, he was. So.” And then, she doesn’t know why it matters. She asks again, “Those kids, are they okay?” And this cop, he hopes they are. She explains: "They must have been arguing, those kids. I had to brake." She sweeps her arm to show him, "Everyone was braking. But they didn't see and he swerved."



         The rookie points to his car, “Will you sit for me?” She sits. In front of her: twisted metal, the guard rail pregnant where it caught the car, and -- Her head hurts, is spinning. All these man made things so broken how could anyone survive? And what about the woman, girl really, with her tan skin, dark hair and throaty sobs? Only her scarf has escaped and it waits, in the gravel of the soft shoulder, a fainted waif; blue silk. It is a scarf belonging to a woman named . . . a woman with a name like Sophia. "Oh," Emma catches a sob between her teeth and kills it.



         These two, they must have been on their way to some very fabulous party and in so very love (just listen to his voice, begging).

         Just help us.



         Earlier, when these two were still safe at home, he would have watched this Sophia dress in the mirror. Emma can picture him sitting on the bed. He would be thinking: she is a little too thin, and it bothers him - her hips cold, cut marble. She is telling him about her day; she is an actress and it’s only a small part she has landed but, “Darling, I am going places.” And his heart aches for her, aches because of her.



         Leaning against the ticking, cooling cruiser, Emma itches for a cigarette though she hasn’t smoked since the girls were born. Her girls. This would never happen to her girls: both slightly overweight, bored and boring. When she met Howard she used to dream of the children they would have: lithe and lively. Smart. Quick. She used to imagine watching them grow up, pictured graduations and grandchildren and a life built from a life she made. But no, not reality.



        And Sophia? Not destined for a trivial life. Her Prince Charming maybe not such a prince but oh, he must have seemed like it, in the beginning. His name must be something mild (his voice, cracking now, has no hero quality, no heir of grandeur). A simple Jack then. She pictures him foreign but not exotic: Canadian. A little, small town kid with this drop-dead woman in his car.



         Emma pictures Jack. There he is bumming a cigarette and then pacing away in his dark, torn jeans; his leather jacket with collar popped; gray eyes; unshaven; leaning against a broken brick wall out back of a bar and then Sophia exiting with her friends or no, better: alone. Her dress too short or her legs too long saying “Let me have a drag, will you?” In the shadows she must have seemed too good to be true. “Only if you tell me your name.” “Sophia,” and waving her fingers impatiently for the nicotine she says, “Sophie is okay.” “Jack,” he hands it over knowing that from now he would be forever handing it over. It doesn’t take long. They finish the cigarette, passing it quickly and efficiently; not talking, him too scared of ruining, her too confident to bother. Oh yes, and then courage (liquid) seizes him. He backs her against the far wall, his eyes hooded and his voice pitched low: let me. And she arches her back, exposes her neck, a smile breaking free: beautiful. Her skirt rips: those hips.

        Sophie, still in the shadows but moving towards the dim, doorway light, is twisting her hair back, her waves uncontrollable after the friction of his damp fingers tangling; straightening her shirt; smoothing her fingers over the popped threads of her skirt, she is demanding with a look that Jack take care of things. His cellphone slippery, him needing another cigarette but he’d bummed the first one and finally dialing. “Taxi? Yes,” and he is giving the cross streets. “Fifteen? Sure, of course. Yes.” Hanging up, looking up: he matches her smile and together they light up the alley with their strange exhilaration. Emma knows: in that moment they were already in love.



        They arrive: Jack’s apartment - no, of course - his hotel room. Messy. How could he have been expecting that this dark nymph would follow him from the bar? As soon as they are in the door she sits, very edge of the bed, slipping her heels off while he fixes them a drink from the mini-bar: little airplane glasses of Please-Can-We-Again whiskey cut with soda water. “I’m trying to be an actress,” she starts.

        “Oh? I’m a. . . A writer.”

        “What kind?”

        “Television, maybe movies.” He hands Sophie her drink.

        “You don’t sound like you actually write, yet.”

        “Well,” He sits next to her but not too close; still, so scared of it all disappearing. “I just had a show picked up . . . that means it was bought.”

        “Isn’t that nice.”

        “I’m not just saying all this, I mean, we already. . . “

        “Of course,” She is willing to believe. “You’re on your way to Hollywood, then?”

        “Big city, bright lights.”

         And what is Sophie seeing? Jack is thin but strong through the shoulders, he smiles from the right of his face and always his gaze is just to the side. Look at me, she says and she’ll be saying it again and again and again for as long as she knows him. Look at me. But I can’t, he’ll say. Don’t you know? It hurts.



        Do they know that this is the moment: their meet-cute. It all spins out from here.



        They’ve pulled Jack from the car and he’s surrounded. From here Emma can see his legs only: shined shoes, pressed jeans - kicking.



        This morning when they woke up were they already angry? Emma can see Sophie, tense from sleeping pulled in and away and Jack already apologizing for whatever hasn’t happened yet. Before them they think: a party, a round of small talk, drinks, a moment of happiness. Before them really: a painful twist.



         They’re getting close now, the paramedics. Emma can hear the high-pitched protest of metal tearing.



        Jack is quiet.



        In a moment Emma will know. The cop will come back, he will ask her questions, he will blame or absolve. The paramedics will scatter, she will see the boy’s face. The girl will be freed. Was she right about them, Jack and Sophie?



         A fireman grunts and then laughs - a nervous release of tension. A paramedic says: it’s okay sweetheart, we’ve got you, it’s okay.



         Emma closes her eyes, takes a beat, opens them. A paramedic stands and there he is. Jack, at first looking for Sophie and then, his neck twisting, his eyes scanning and oh: he is meeting her eyes for the first time. The line between them unbroken, a tether of tension. I see you, his eyes say. I’m sorry, Emma thinks, I’m so sorry. But it’s not enough. This is their only moment, Emma knows, and it’s not enough. She stands. She wants to go to him. The rookie is coming towards her, he’s saying her name. Emma. He’s blocking her view.



         The moment is over.