#153 Tonight is a Favor to Holly- Amy Hempel
This story is about complacency, indifference, and apathy. As
the narrator prepares for a blind date she does not want to go on, she wonders
about her directionless life:
“It takes me fifty-five minutes to drive one way, and I wish
the commute was longer. I like radio personalities and I like to change lanes.
And losing yourself on the freeway is like living at the beach—you’re not aware
of lapsed time, and suddenly you’re there, where it was you were going.”
“My job fits right in, I do nothing, it pays nothing,
but—you guessed it—it’s better than nothing. A sense of humor helps.”
She ponders the slow, lack of ambition life of living on a
west coat beach. The fickle, flaky, shallow musings of someone trapped by the
luring effects of the beauty and vastness of the ocean view.
“The people who live here, what you here them say is I’m supposed to, I’ll try, I would have.
There is no friction here.
It’s kind of a buoyant place.
What you forget, living here, is that just because you have
stopped sinking doesn’t mean you’re not still underwater.”
But she has tried moving away, tried other lives, tried
switching lanes. Only to move back west. Like the many who die each falling off
the cliffs of Highway One, she continues to move West until it’s too late.
“The truth is, the beach is like excess weight. If we lost
it, what would the excuse be then?"
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