His occupation at the moment is the act of thinking, and then allowing himself to be consumed by it, as noises and sounds flutter around him from inside and out. He hears his girlfriend, who’s saying, arguing, speaking, as he also has been saying and arguing, in between moments of intense thought. He hears her say, and then she stops, and he says, Let’s agree to disagree. Saying this is a result of a couple of things. First, he tried to agree only, nodding and saying yes, that makes sense, but he’d drift off into his thinking and get distracted, miss important points and this missing would be reflected in comments he made later on, then pointed out by her to a detrimental effect. Second, he will not be in disagreement with her, that is known. So he says again, Let’s just agree to disagree, and she says, That’s not a legitimate response, you can’t say that to end the conversation, and besides I don’t want to agree to disagree, that’s not the point, we’re not speaking and talking so we can come to a conclusion each time, and he says and she says, and so on.
Another matter entirely, however, first. He’s consumed by proposing to her, which has consumed him since he’s had the ring, and before that since he first started shopping for a ring, and before then since maybe a year and a half into them dating, and before that he’d always thought the idea of being married and proposing was appealing, likely to happen, and something he was looking forward to doing.
The instances when he’s zoned out completely, lost the thread of what she’s saying, now lend themselves easily, invitingly, to be finished by an easy and simple, quickly delivered let’s agree to disagree and a hope for the best. He tries this now and then and often, and hopes he won’t have to deploy it much longer. They’re not even really arguing, and he knows that, he knows they’re talking and for whatever reason, be it that one or both of them has found themselves to be more invested in the topic than anticipated, or voice volume has risen to levels unnecessary, or even that the other is surprised, and therefore slightly taken aback, by the other’s ability, choice, decision to disagree at all, or not at least come forward, up for air and say, yes of course I agree, but no, he only says let’s agree to disagree and be done? and that doesn’t work for her, and really it doesn’t work for him either.
He’s trying to distract himself by thinking and saying and arguing but the consuming nature of the coming proposal wins each and every time. How’s there going to be any of him left when the actual time comes? He looks at her. Her face. Her lips moving, out and around and in and for words. He can’t hear a thing. He’s thinking, finding himself in self-consumption, thinking of other weddings, acknowledging they happened following a successful proposal, after planning and stress and family input and back and forth, that it’s possible that this can be done. He finds he has some kind of twisted, perverted pleasure in seeing that the proposal is as stressful as some have said, as tense and overwrought as his friends and family have let him know it would be. He hopes the wedding planning is the same; he wants others to have been correct.
What comes easiest is imagining, thinking through again the weddings he’s been to which have started and finished and happened and he’s been there and seen the success. The one in Italy he and she went to last year, on a lake, where he was wearing a blue tie with yellow and red and purple flowers on it, taking pictures next to her while she wore a green dress, and the other attendees had said to him, The tie goes so well with her dress, they practically match, great choice, both of you, I’m sure she had input. He says, I appreciate that, it’s a nice tie but how? and looks are given, and he continues, How do these match? and she says Stop, and pulls him away with a laugh, dissipating a chance at tension, and says to just him, Take the compliment, it’s nice of them to say, agree to disagree, and he says, They should at least be able to explain it, I’m not even pushing that much on them for a response, I want them to talk me through it is all, point out the similarities that I’m not seeing, and she says again, Agree to disagree, and he says, I’ll try.
He’d stood and taken in the scene; the dinner table laid out in a block-shaped U, his seat at one of the ends next to her and their friends, the high tables under an awning with waiters waiting with champagne and other bubbly drinks and tall glasses. He saw the villa rising above them, the old terra cotta and exterior still holding strong, capturing, letting them know it still looked the same as it did when the people of the area were living and breathing here.
Distraction isn’t working though. The proposal. The wedding. The prices and the costs, the exorbitant asks and moments in between the rehearsal and the ceremony and the reception when people need to be kept busy, fed. What’s he supposed to, he wonders, when he wants only one outcome which is to make her happy, which is to make sure that events take place with as little obstacles, hitches, as possible, and that she believes that what she wants is what he wants, because that is the truth? He wonders. He needs to work very hard at this. She has to know she’s not alone in any of this. He’s waiting on himself, for his thinking to become motion and action.
They talk, explain, go over plans for days in the future and then he kisses her, says bye and that he’ll be home soon, he’s meeting so and so. He leaves and walks to train, eventually arrives at a small restaurant which makes burgers and fries and American fare, and serves beers and drinks and American liquid. He finds his friend at a table off to the side near a window. He says, I was thinking about this tie I wore at a wedding last year… But he trails off, and doesn’t finish his thought. Waits for the beers to arrive, clinks with his friend and they sip. He says, It’s this whole situation of needing to propose so that all the other moments and events and decisions can be unlocked and allowed to start, everyone’s waiting on me. Friend says, The tie? What’s with that, and he says, Nobody would give me any kind of response worth hearing, about how a blue tie with flowers and a green dress matched, no one could defend it. Most only said something like, they simply work together, they go together, but nothing else, nothing deeper. Can you imagine how those would match? I had on a light blue button-down shirt, tucked into gray pants with black shoes. She had on a green dress and heels, her hair was down and her arms were bare. Now go. Friend says, I can’t see how you matched, and he says, Right, exactly. I guess that’s not the point, and he waits, pauses, looks at his friend, who nods for him to continue. I need to propose, he says, everything needs to fall into place. I’m waiting on that: the falling.
Friend says, But you’re not married yet, not even engaged, why bother with the worrying about the planning and all that now, when what’s about to happen is supposed to be the fun part, the happy part, the part that’s captured in photos and videos and disseminated among your friends and family. They’ll call you right after they hear, or wait in a digital queue until you’re done catching up with one another’s moms and dads and siblings first, then it’ll be time for friends to call and offer congrats and screams and oh my gods, then oohs and aahs when she shows them the ring, that’s what’s waiting for you, you know that, and he says, Yeah I know, the waiting, that’s all. Friend says, Something else then? and orders them both another round of beers and they take a moment and drink, and drink again, and then glass hits wood and the friend says, Anything else? Go, and he says, Fine, this then.
This then, is, he says, This is all only an attempt at diverting attention, there doesn’t need to be a linear line, something to follow okay, you’re agreeing to this as a means of supporting me and keeping me free of stress and worry, of over-planning and similar bad habits, and his friend says, Right, and he says, Ok, and his friend nods, waves his hand, gestures, allows and he says, I might as well, I guess, then, right. We, uhh, ok. Last trip we took was to Louisville, where her family is, to spend a weekend and see everyone. Plane, flight, what am I talking about? I’m not getting at anything, this isn’t working, but fine. Reading…I can’t even come up with words. I know what I’m doing, I know I’m trying to ignore thoughts with much more size and weight in my mind. Fine. Reading a collection of four novellas on the plane, and in Louisville. I’d finished the first two before the trip and finished the last two while in Louisville. The writer writes like an American, that’s what the jacket copy says. That he writes about Turin during and after World War II, about people hiding in the hills and descending down the hills to the city and then climbing back up after, the hills scattered with grapevines and workers, small and large estates, shrubs, brambles, trees, walking paths and not. But he writes like an American, whoever wrote the copy says, because he lacks overly lyrical prose, lacks the delicate, detailed nature, I guess, that Americans have come to expect. He’s an American writer in the sense that he does not meet Americans’ expectations of imported Italian literature. It’s on the jacket though, so I’m telling you that because it’s what I’ve been told. Friend says, And? so he keeps going, he says, Her aunt lives in Louisville too, and she’s spent months and years of her life in Italy, leading tour groups around regions but never in Turin. I’d asked her at a dinner on that trip if she’d been to Turin, if she’d seen the hills in the sky but she said it was one of the only regions she’d never visited or toured through. I’d tried to not be disappointed by that, by this blind spot in her up until now untouchable resume when it came to Italy. She was the source for news, tips, trips and routes in Italy, and yet Turin was unknown to her. I’d at least read those novellas. Friend says, And the hills? He says, I don’t know why that matters, and his friend says, Just go on about them, there’s momentum here, we’re getting farther away from who knows what now, and he says, Here I go. The hills, the hills. I say that a couple of times, and then I say a full sentence, right? The hills are hills, in that they’re hills and we’ve all seen something like it. Maybe it’s an in-between state that makes the hills there so noteworthy. They’re not big enough to be mountains but too big to be merely rises in the terrain. I’d like them to be so big as to defy imagination. A seemingly flat expanse and then from nowhere a soaring into the sky, a wall stretching up and up, scalable only by ropes and pulleys and improvised elevators elevating human bodies to the top. I’d like to be able to see waves, crests, the rising and falling of the clouds once I reach the top of the hills. Imagine me in Turin, high above, wondering where all the noise has gone off to, what would that be like? I’d be somehow different, changed, for having gone without the noise and dull hum of life. Friend says, Almost there, and he takes a breath, deeply in, readies and says, We’d had a lot of time to ourselves on that trip, where we were sitting around, typing on our laptops but not working very hard, or waiting for her mom to get home with the car and it was kind of a return to adolescence, in the waiting and the lounging. I’d go outside on to a small side patio the house had, with a tiled rectangle and trees to either side demarcating it from the grass around, and smoke a cigarette and listen to wind chimes and bird songs and I’d wonder again, as I had when I saw myself on the hills, where the noise had gone to and how the noise I was hearing had arrived to this place. I wondered if it was there, below the noises of cars and buildings and yells and engines, if the smattering of chirps and calls, of rising and falling notes from the windchimes wavering in the breeze were present like a layer, a stratum in the air, expanding and contracting as it can. Then up on the hills, right, would become a place to see the strata and the dividing lines all the way down, and so the noises don’t ever abate but sit in their channels, and this would all be clear, in view, if only the clouds weren’t there obscuring the view from the top of the hill, don’t you think? It’d all be right there for us.
He waits for his friend to respond, to explain to him what he’s talking about, find some meaning in it, but the sounds outside don’t end, a pause or moment of understanding never arrives, and his friend speaks about something else, and goes on for a little while, meandering from point to point, and he waits and listens and is lying in patience for something else, somewhere else, anywhere else, and finally acknowledges he’s lost the thread and asks his friend, What were we talking about, before all of this? His friend smiles, nods, orders another round of drinks and says, This and that, things we’re thinking about, but nothing at all really, let’s keep going. We know how it ends.
Knows how it’ll end now and with that he goes home, opens the door, says hello, speaks, chats, catches up and sits next to her on the couch and asks if she’s hungry for dinner, if they both want the same thing. She says, he says, he kisses her, waits for something, though he doesn’t know what, something he was waiting for earlier, or had already arrived, a feeling, a descent, but he stays on top of it all, looking down or not aware at all, waiting, not waiting. She looks at him, stares at him, reaches a hand to his face and holds it there. She says, Is something on your mind? He doesn’t respond, though he wants to, he wants to say everything is on his mind, and nothing at all, and what will happen will happen in time, whenever that may arrive, and they will be happy, happy, happy, and so, he thinks about the sounds and the noises they’ll hear each day, as they change, as where they are changes, and he waits for the listening, for the noises to go all the way down and rise back up again, for something important to happen. He waits for the crescendo.
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Teddy Burnette is a NYC-based writer. His novel, Heartfelt Anything, was published with Expat Press in 2022. His fiction has appeared in X-RAY Lit Mag, Hobart, Apocalypse Confidential, Expat Lit Journal, and Maudlin House, among other publications.
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image: Ashley Beresch. Check out more of her work on Instagram @ashleyberesch
Rejection Letters 