Flash Fiction: Lonely Hearts, Him
An immersive audio story 🎧
🎧 Listen to the voiceover with headphones 🎧
His greeting to parents dropping off in the carpool line was that of a man preparing to deflect a blow, hand raised in front of his face, frowning smile, and squinted eyes. His position as principal at the elementary school was not to blame for his defensive posture, though it could’ve been, given the revolving door in his cramped office of complaints from belligerent mothers righteously angry about everything from the date selected for the bake sale to the unsubstantiated rumor that the Lindenfeld’s nanny had packed Nutter Butters in Timmy’s lunch when she should have known that a single particulate of peanut could send their little Rosy into anaphylactic shock. He’d spent his life bracing.
He didn’t need a weighted blanket to sleep. The leaden overcoat of loneliness he wore all day was heavy enough to exhaust him to the point that he could fall asleep sitting on the crowded bus during his reverse commute from the suburbs back to his studio apartment in the city. The singular, best part of his day was stopping at The Cosmic, down the alley between 7th and 8th to have a cup of tea and to read a few chapters of whatever novel he’d picked up the Saturday prior.
The jingle of the single brass bell above the door was like the tone of a meditation bowl every time he stepped into the dim-lit space. The quiet was absolute when the door closed behind him. The patchwork of Persian rugs and the floor-to-ceiling shelves of old books swallowed the frenetic noises of the city and silenced them in the weave of their ancient yarn and yellowed pages.
But it wasn’t just the quiet or the steam of Bergamont rising from a chipped pottery mug as he brought it to his lips that made this ritual the best part of his day. It was Muriel. She worked behind the counter most days. Though they’d exchanged fewer words in the six months of his visits to the tea room than were crammed into a five-minute hallway chat with one of the young, wearisome teachers on his staff, Muriel’s smile and the way she pressed both hands over her heart after carefully pouring his tea, made him feel seen like no one else ever had before.
It’s been a tough morning and just stopping to listen to this made me feel peaceful and centered today. Thank you Ben.
This sentence says so much: “He didn’t need a weighted blanket to sleep. The leaden overcoat of loneliness he wore all day was heavy enough to exhaust him to the point that he could fall asleep sitting on the crowded bus during his reverse commute from the suburbs back to his studio apartment in the city.”