To Eden

I.

Eden Gardner’s black hair flipped beside her as she entered the doors of Goody’s Tavern situated on Del Mar and El Camino Real. Her friends had convinced her to come out, it was her birthday Monday after all; she was turning 22. As she looked in the mirror assessing her outfit and make up, she thought of David and Foster and their times eating lunch together in high school, just the three of them. They were all well liked and popular, but they only chose each other. It was going to be nice to see them again. She wore a dark long skirt and dark eyeshadow, and her black Doc Martens reflected the can light on the top of her room.

Upon passing the security guards checking ID, Eden made her way towards the bartenders when Wayne Davis side-stepped in front of her view. He went to highschool with Eden, David, and Foster, and he was now a collegiate baseball player with the patented mullet and stringy, blonde mustache.  

“How you doing?” Wayne asked.

“Good.” Wayne reached in for a hug but Eden kept her arms crossed.

“No hug for an old friend?” Wayne had cheated on one of Eden's friends. To expect any sort of conversation from her was baffling. Wayne was the type to know how much hatred was in the eyes of the beholder, yet still step in front of the flames. He probably liked the burn. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Eden raised her brow and paused for a moment. “Mmm. How about you fuck off?” Wayne raised his chin and gave her a smirk. She thought a snake tongue rolled out of his mouth. He walked away. David came up behind her and gave her a hug.

“Old friend!”

David Hield was 23 years old. He never went to college and worked construction with his father among affluent homes in Orange County. He was in love with Eden Gardner. When Eden invited him out that night, his chest grew with excitement. Not because he wanted to get lucky, or because he hoped something would happen, but because she was perfect in his mind. She was nice, and caring, and she had humor. The way her green eyes slicked at you when the teacher said something inappropriate. The way her sudden appearance in the hall would increase your mood ten-fold: the lights would get brighter, the student chatter surrounding you would silence. 

When Chuck Taylors entered the door that night, and Eden spotted his shaggy auburn hair and David spotted her grunge outfit, the music convened in a single line linking the two. The strobe lights brightened like a solar flare. The sea of people parted in their wake. Foster followed behind David and observed the scene. He knew David loved her. He knew she wouldn’t give him the chance. 

Foster Williams had long black hair and a patchy beard. He was dragged to the bar that night for the sole purpose that David said he would buy him the first round. Foster didn’t enjoy going out, he felt it claustrophobic, clammy, and gross, but a free beer and drunk cigarette could get Foster most anywhere. As he approached Eden following David’s lead, his head made a swivel of the crowd. He saw sunglasses indoors, he saw a marine buying an older woman a drink– Foster and David probably knew her son– he saw awkward dancing from respectful men who were too polite to look down on loose breasts on the dance floor. He saw a very short man with a mustache and a cowboy hat dancing with a very big woman. He was already looking forward to that cigarette.

Wayne Davis saw the trio convene by the bar. He was always jealous of David and Foster for being in such kahoots with the likes of the pretty Eden Gardner. He was sure he would’ve “bagged” her already if it weren’t them in her ear telling her who and what is good for her. He detested the both of them. 

This was a rare occurrence for Wayne. A new fawn. He’d spent every weekend at Goody’s since graduating, making out with a MILF here, a blacked-out-yet-standing girl there. He’d seen almost every girl at this bar three times over. Eden’s appearance at this bar was like a bright jewel that he couldn’t take his eyes off. He had to have her. 

The throbbing bass of Katy Perry’s “Fireworks” clattered Foster’s skull, palpitated his heart at irregular rhythms, and it made him ruminate his Bud Light. His shirt began to stick to his skin, and the back of his jaws itched at the vision of a cigarette softly falling on his lower lip. He stepped to walk outside when Wayne Davis, shouldering his way through the crowd, bumped into Foster and made him spill the rest of his beer. Wayne looked down at the empty bottle on the floor, helplessly regurgitating the last of its hops, then looked back up Foster, and said, “Sorry-wha- if it isn’t Foster Williams! Here, let me buy you another beer.” Foster thought about it. Usually, he would decline, but the beer was six dollars. 

When Foster and Wayne approached the bar, they began talking. Wayne turned in the direction of Eden and David and said, “Eden’s here.” Foster noticed Wayne raise his brow in anticipation, as if he was waiting for an answer from Foster that he would not like. 

“She’s with me and David,” said Foster, and he raised his chin towards the smug Wayne. Wayne looked back down and smiled.

“What are you up to now, anyways?”

“I’m an English Major at Sacramento State”

“No shit. So you like to read?’

“I do”

“Have you ever read Can’t Touch Me?”

“By David Goggins?” Foster laughed. He could’ve guessed that this would be the literature Wayne read. Protein in the form of letters. Weightlifting for the ego. But he wondered how toxic masculinity would affect a guy like Wayne. He was already balding. He stood five foot seven. Foster often thought that the misogyny derivative of the Goggins and Tates of the world were because of their complete encapsulation of their own inadequacy. They knew they could never carry the boats, but they acted like they could. 

“No, I haven’t.”

“The Art of Seduction?”

Foster squinted an eye. Who would get seduced by you? “I can’t say that I have.”

“It’s all about the different types of seducers, and seductees. What works for who and against who. It talks about the greatest seducers of all time, like Casanova, courtesans, Napoleon’s wife! To think of how many women Casanova slept with!

“Does it work for you?” Asked Foster.

“Yea, I’m going home with someone every weekend.” Foster looked around. Who here would be dumb, or, he laughed, drunk enough to go home with you? Foster nodded his head, and Wayne looked to Eden. Foster knew that David wouldn’t let anyone go home with Eden, and for that matter Wayne. He needed not to worry, but something seemed off. Wayne bit with his fangs into the lime he was given for his tequila soda, “Well, see you, Foster. Sorry about the drink. Cheers!”

II. 

When David and Foster left the bar that night, the streets were deep and inviting. The fog hugged the lamplight and whirred around like it had a conscience of its own, and slowly fell on top of the dark asphalt, dampening the already faded divider-lines into a depressed, murky yellow. They often walked home on nights like these, looking into empty shops, catching glimpses of consumerist ghosts meandering the clearance racks in the clothing and niche item stores. The content of these stores, cold from being untouched by the buzz of human warmth, seemed lifeless, like a temporary graveyard, until the key locks turned and the lights shut on early the next morning. Foster contemplated this as David swayed and drunkenly sang the words to “Like A Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan into the chill of the night. The ice filled their lungs and their breaths exhaled the steam, and their eyes watered from the dryness of the cold. David continued to kick the stone down the sidewalk, evading every large hole or crack it could surely get caught on. It was mesmerizing, and it was as if every bounce and misdirection was leading them to the very alley the following takes place. 

They jerked their heads towards the sudden flap of a leather jacket. The flash of sound was too quick for this deep in the night. A woman had her back against the wall as a male figure stood over, grabbing at her shoulder leaving it exposed. The man was kissing her neck as she turned away. To David and Foster, this moment takes place in what felt like a million seconds, and every thought or idea about what was happening was ultimately correct, like the theory of everything had been calculated completely. Foster saw one strand of dark hair standing against the moon, and it reminded him of deep red auburn hills leading up to a lone farmhouse on the precipice, where inside an elderly man was reading the newspaper and an elderly woman was taking steaming cornbread out of the oven. He saw the fear in the perpetrator’s blue eyes down to his iris through his optic nerve and into his amygdala. He saw David’s shoulder blade muscle retract and extend, and he could see every speck of titanium and lead in the pipe that David held. Foster didn’t have time to witness David advance, because it all happened in one moment, like the entire event was condensed into a block that he could conveniently hold. Afterwards, they identified the man David killed as Wayne Davis. Dead at 22 years old.

III. 

“You’ve probably seen me in better situations.”

Foster looked at David for a long time and finally said, “Dave, why did you do it?”

“I think I know, and I’ll tell you, but only because I trust you more than anyone, Foster. It’s not a normal reason either. It’s beyond reason. Just listen, please, and you’ll understand. Foster, do you remember the first time you woke up?

“Like my first memory? Not really, but I can point to a few that were the earliest.”

“You don’t remember what it felt like to be conscious for the first time?

“Do you?”

“Yes. I remember I woke up in my Dad’s bed in the middle of the afternoon. It must’ve been summer, because I wasn’t in school and I remember looking out the window and seeing the clear blue sky and hearing the far off drone of a lawnmower. I remember waking up in my Dad’s coffee-brown colored sheets. He wasn’t there, but he must’ve been in the kitchen or somewhere else.”

“Why’s this important?”

“Because the dream I had before I woke up was the first memory I ever had, and I believe it was more than a dream.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw the earth from an expanded view. You’ve been on Google Earth, right? And minimized as far as you can go? It was that, and the earth was spinning but it was slowed. Millennia were passing on the globe, and the distortion of time gave the earth a rotting look. It looked like a timelapse of an apple from its ripening to its spoiling in reverse. Magma flared, then water rose, then ice enveloped, then melted as the seas began to roar. Clouds ran across and created harmonious pictures; Pangea broke, plates shifted, fires scorched, and eventually, the city lights began arriving as if to mirror the stars in the sky. This all happened in a milli-second, like when your life flashes before your eyes. This was grander, though; I had experienced the whole existence of the earth, and into the future, too.”

“The future?”

“Yes. I witnessed my birth, then the moment I woke up in my dad’s bedroom from a midday nap to the seagulls flapping their wings before the clouds in the blue sky, as if they’d been born from the clouds themselves– it was this midday nap where I had the dream. The reel of my life continued rolling. I saw my boyhood friend Ryan, who used to trounce along the bushes with me and we’d return home at dusk, covered in sap and fleas. I saw my Mom’s ex-boyfriends, and I hated all of them, except one, Johnny, because he was a cartoonist for Hanna Barbera and would draw me notepad flip books of Tom and Jerry, Wacky Races, and Johnny Bravo– my favorite– and play with me out in the yard building stick structures made out of loose twigs. I saw my baseball team in Cooperstown for the 12U travel team tournament, when we made the finals and lost on the final crack of the bat as the baseball ejected into the night, past the stadium moth-infested lights, and vanished into the crowd as ours dreams of dogpiling on the mound did too. I watched as, in my high-school football team’s first ever CIF game, I dove into the turf after the wobbly football that hung in the air for a second too long, placing my hands underneath the ball and above the turf, tire rubber flying, and secured the game winning interception that sent us to the second round. There were many more moments that convoluted my field of vision, yet it stopped November 13, 2021. I never knew why Eden was the last image I saw in this dream, until that night.”

“That’s crazy, David.”

“It affected me later in life too. I lived my life aware of this dream in the back of my mind, behind the fresh memories that made my existence make sense. Every once in a while, though, this dream would creep from the depths of my hippocampus like a sea worm trying to bud the surface of the ocean floor. Then it would recede as a new flush of memories filled my sense of his existence from whatever action I was doing; watching Atlanta, sharing a beer with friends, trying a new strain of weed. The importance of this dream, Foster, lies not in its existence, but in my different modes of trying to understand it. First, I went to my Nana and asked her: 

‘Do you remember the first time you woke up, Nana?’ 

‘I barely remember waking up today, Davie. Besides, do you?’ 

‘Yes, I had a weird dream.’ 

"I don’t remember her answer, which implies that she had no understanding of what I was trying to inquire about. I do remember asking her, and that told me that the existence of this dream is real– not something I conjured– because I was trying to understand it. I asked my boyhood friend Ryan the same question, too, with no recollection of an answer but confirming again the existence of the dream by the mode of attempting to understand it. If no one understood my question, nor my dream, then why did I?”

“I still don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Bear with me. I knew the déjà vu I felt at the most identity-impacting moments of my life was no coincidence, but I didn’t know why no one else felt the same when they achieved their goals, or felt hard strife; perhaps when they made varsity swim, or when their grandma died, or when their first poem got published. It only meant that I was the only one who’d ever received this clairvoyant dream, or atleast the only one to remember it. It made me feel special, and fragile. It made me feel that with the powers for foreseeing my path, or rather, my given awareness of it, that I would be destined to do good in this world. It made me conscious of the people I talked to, of the friends I kept close and the enemies I kept afar, and of the way I allowed others to perceive me. The philosophical musings I subjected to myself were often of no benefit, yet I felt it necessary so that I could perform my duty of being the sole good in this world. The chosen one.”

Foster stared quietly out onto the road and David continued.

“However I pricked with the needles of life’s positive philosophy; Stoicism and Buddhism, or the negative; Nihilism and Existentialism, at and around my mind, I felt I would be taken care of by God who made me this way. That night, when I saw Wayne accosting Eden, I realized it was the end of my dream; that I saw no more into the future after that night. I understood that God was allowing me to make the decision myself of what was moral. I also knew that there was a wrong decision. The choices were: scare Wayne away and allow him to continue visiting Goody’s every Saturday night, getting disgustingly drunk to the point where rape is not out of the moral compass of his behavior, or, the route I chose, to kill Wayne then and there, ridding the world of his molesting existence. Foster; up until that night, I had begun to feel that my dream was a farce. I believed it had no importance because I felt as if I added nothing to the world. I was not going to college; I was working for my dad’s construction company. I was not a leader of any sorts to the youth of the world, nor paving a path for the greater good of humanity through teaching. I was not a protector– I could love, but there was never any woman to keep me excited enough to stick around, and therefore, protect them from the demons that lurked in the dark of man’s patriarchal imagination, preparing to attack the innocence of women. If I was created to do good, then why had I felt an underlying sadness in every decision I made because of its lack of importance? I began to feel hopeless and empty of the golden feeling that filled my chest stemming from my awareness of my prophetic dream.”

IV.

To Eden,

Hello, Old Friend. What a life we have lived. Not that we’ve spoken, but I in my wisdom will assume that you have lived a life full of warm, morning glows off the chlorophyll green in your yard, airy and light ponderings into the infinite, afternoon sky, and bright stars expressing their cosmic love to you through the night as you look up through the sunroof on your way home from the office. This is what life is all about, at least it’s my best guess, to embrace in the beauty before us as if we belong, and have always belonged, as a spinning, whirling, collection of molecules capable of thought in the grand collective of nature. How sweet! Yet, it’s been years since we’ve talked. And I know why, for the spinning molecules can’t possibly lay out their plans with everyone in mind. It is no fault of either you nor me. Though I glamorize, there are pessimistic ruminations within me that are revolving around you and David. I often think about what life would’ve been like for the three of us. I often wonder how the venom of that man, Wayne, has spread by the evils of our world and what I could do to stop it. I often wonder if your life would be filled with love and laughter instead of a dark rain cloud of shame, guilt, and depression. I often wonder what had convinced David to kill him that night, and why the broken pipe ceased to retract a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth time. I wonder, would the two of you have fallen in love? David is to be released tomorrow. I was the one he called to pick him up, since all of his kin is dead. I extend the invitation to you, because I think it would take us back to the old days when we rode around with the windows down passing the bong around to our 2010s Hip-Hop fad– oh, how music has changed since then. Yet, I understand if I don’t see you there. After all, we’ll never be those kids again. 

V. 

Foster and David drove down the highway in Foster’s red pickup truck with a white racer line across the hood. The gears rattled and the breaks squeaked, and the both of them remained silent until Foster could take no more of the awkwardness.

“How was jail?” Foster asked. 

“Skip the niceties. We haven’t talked in years. What’s on your mind, Foster?”

“You thought murder was the right way to protect her?”

David nodded his head. “Whatever the means were, I protected her. Did you want me to let him do that to her?”

“You know that’s not the case. Why couldn’t you have beat him up and left him at that?”

“He was no good in this world, Foster.”

“It’s not your choice to decide who’s in this world or not. That’s MURDER.”

“It is only murder because it has consequences, I rid the world of evil. You can’t convince me that what I did wasn’t Good.”

“Anything involved with killing is bad, David.”

“I disagree. If we were to kill all the bad in the world then there would only be good. Isn’t that what we all strive for? To be embraced into the all-encompassing feeling of Joy? Good? Love?”

“Those are idealisms. They are nothing more than fleeting feelings that we glamorize for the sake of coming to terms with our own depressing existence. Seeking love and happiness and feeling grief when we don’t achieve it is a product of our overevolution.”

“You're being nihilistic.”

“I’m being realistic. You murdered Wayne because your moral compass was out of wack and you disillusioned yourself to believe that you achieved the only good thing in the world.”

“Why do you care that I killed Wayne? Don’t say because he had a family, I could care less about them and they probably deserve the same fate.”

“Because he had a family is still an argument because where there is a bond there is love. When you sever that bond you are doing worse than murder, removing love from the world. In the same vein, when you say that ridding the world of evil is what everyone must do to achieve Good, you are forgetting that the hands that rid evil are covered in the same blood that evil is responsible for. You can’t have Good in the name of blood, evil, killing, pain, and grief. As soon as you murdered Wayne you tainted the earth even worse than what Wayne was doing to Eden.”

“Let me out of this car.”

“I can’t, because we’re picking up someone.”

"Who?”

Foster pulled to the side of the bus stop where Eden Gardner walked out among the enclave. 

“What are you doing?”

"She wanted to talk to you. I’ll park over there and wait for you guys.”

David got out of the car and walked towards Eden. Eden still had dark hair with streaks of gray and her smile lines had long come in. David thought she was as beautiful as ever, and the string between them converged even tighter. 

“Hello, Old Friend”

“You are an old friend.” Eden said. 

“Do you seriously not forgive me for protecting you that night?”

“That’s not it. I am appreciative that you protected me. But I won’t forgive you for leaving us for the fifty years you were gone.” 

“You were okay without me. You have kids and a husband.”

“But you were never there to meet them.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“David, I lived with the guilt that I felt it was me who locked you away. If I weren’t there that night, if I weren’t stupid enough to walk home alone, then you wouldn’t have had to protect me. You wouldn’t have had to act on Wayne. Then, you went overboard. Why did you do that?”

“I thought I was protecting you.”

“It was more than that.” 

“I thought what he was doing to you was poisoning you. I thought he was tainting your name, and your body. I loved you, Eden, you knew that. I wanted to be the one to hold you at night and kiss you in the morning.”

“He wasn’t doing that.”

“But he was kissing you. It’s like he left an infection on you that I could only get rid of if I killed him.”

“But then that got rid of you.”

“It did.”

“David, when I was young, there was no other person in the world I wanted to be with more than you. You took me to places that I’ll never forget. The experiences we had with each other are a large part of who I am today. You can’t begin to imagine the hole you left in my world. You left me depressed. I felt I was responsible for what happened to you because I thought you did it out of love for me and I never reciprocated. I never wanted a relationship with you at the time because I loved our friendship and the golden days we spent with each other I never wanted to end. David, I always loved you. You were my first crush. My first love, and my last. You took all that away, can’t you see? It took me a long time to forgive myself but now I find a hard time forgiving you. Why, David? Why did you do what you did? You saved me from Wayne but you ruined my life for many years.”

“I thought I did what I did because I loved you.”

“If you loved me you would’ve never left.”

“I suppose it’s too late.” 

“It is.” She waved a hand towards Foster’s pickup. “Goodbye, David Hield. I hope we fall in love in another lifetime.” Eden walked down the street into the cafe around the corner. Foster pulled up beside David.

 “Ready to go?”

“Yea.” David sat in the passenger seat. He began to think about how he thought his sentence was worth it because he did it in the name of protecting Eden. He thought he was the most noble of inmates because he did it for the sake of love. What he didn’t realize then was that his choice was mostly selfish. He felt he had no place in this world so he created one by taking the life of another. He made himself so present in the lives of Eden, Foster, and Wayne’s family but all along he thought it knightly of him to rot between the cinder block walls. 

“Stop the car.”

“What?”

“Stop the fuckin car.” David got out and ran towards the cafe. He stepped through the doors and spotted Eden on the cafe bar. 

“Eden, we are still in a lifetime together. Let me come back to you and I will show you the life you lost, tenfold. I love you and always have loved you. I did my sentence with you at the top of my mind, whenever I looked out at the sky or out at the stars through my bar window you appeared to me. You were my cloud figure. My constellation. Eden, I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have killed Wayne. I should’ve done what I could to preserve my life with you. My life would’ve been perfect– we would’ve fought and maybe broken up and gotten back together, or not, but I know when I died the greatest thing I would’ve ever done is love you and create memories with you. It’s not too late, but if you say it is, I will walk out these doors and out of your life and I will die knowing I made a mistake of my life. That will be fine, because I deserve it.”

Eden turned and her green eyes pierced deep into his clammy skin. Her jaw looked like it came out of the freezer until her cheeks rose and her eyelids drooped.

“You don’t deserve it, David.”