METANOIA

HEAT

Barry drifted down the sidewalk, slipping in and out of awareness of his surroundings. His day had become a series of Polaroids; a collection of snapshots that somehow included his feet, and a head pulled down by the ghostly hands of heartache.

The patterns of the cobblestone flickered if he moved too fast. An ocular sodomy he dictated with the pace of his legs. It forced him to walk even slower.

Barry wasn't exactly sure what he was looking for. He slouched as his oversized gut bounced to the rhythm of his feet. His cargo shorts were heavy with sweat, and his flip flops were starting to chafe his feet. His T-shirt was inside out, but he was oblivious to it.

His ears still rang as his mind was frying under the vulcanized sun.

He avoided stepping on any cracks between cobblestones. He realized, with disdain, he had been staring at his feet the entire past half hour.

A man like Barry loved fervently. Love for him was not a premeditated romance story, but a genuine form of devotion. His love was the purest form of adoration, and once given, it was unshakable. It was the sort of love void of expectation or deliberation: rushed, vibrant, unconditional, and uncontrolled. The love of such a man becomes his sole purpose - a causa-sui taking precedence over self-worth. Barry was beyond devoted, and the inability to exercise that passion can break such a man.

The streets of the college town were mostly empty as they usually were during the summer. The few faculty and students who remained were holed up in local establishments. With the burden of academia off their backs, they became a horde of zombies wandering aimlessly; heads bowed into their cell phones.

For almost his entire life, Barry had been a jewel of a human being. An exemplary citizen, he was as kind as he was giving. Organizing charity events were pit stops as he struggled to make a living. What he lacked in wits, he made up for in hard work. A genuine, lovable man, he lived mostly with heartfelt, staunch faithfulness. He wasn't too good with women, so the few he connected with he held onto tightly. His past was defined by a handful of steady, romantic relationships. He led a clean lifestyle, hardly drank and never smoked.

Now, as he staggered through the empty streets hunched over, Barry was a wreck. At the bitter end of his late thirties, he felt too old to be here. His ginger hair was thinning, and the few strands that remained were like sparks from a dying flame. His face, although unremarkable, was not an ocular offense. His Irish blood covered him in freckles from head to toe. His most redeeming features, his yellow eyes, were scattered with specks of red. Now the weight of his droopy eyelids concealed their spark. He felt the back of his pale neck burn as he wandered the steaming streets of Columbus, Ohio. He was heading towards the college bars vaguely, though with no real intent. He was on the hunt for something, anything, to give meaning to his wretchedness.

He had no goal now, no purpose, and to be frank, no idea where the pavement was taking him.

Maybe he was looking to score? He wouldn't know how to begin.

Pick a fight perhaps? Although he had never been in one, the idea appealed to him for a change.

When the skeletons in his closet finally burst through that door, all he would need was his fist and someone's jaw. He had never punched anyone, but now, at least, Barry felt he could. Lost inside his mind, he wandered until he made his way through a crowd of vaping kids and into a nameless bar, the only one open that early in the day.

In contrast to the pulverizing sun outside, the interior of the bar was extremely dark and cool. The air from an invisible AC unit welcomed him as he entered, but it was no match for the blistering sun as it was still warm inside. Most of the bar was underground, and the few windows near the entrance were boarded up. Old school rock music echoed down the empty hall. To say the place was sketchy would be an understatement. He found himself ogling a dimly lit bar stool, and sat on it like a sack, placing his elbows on the bar.

A bartender with Polynesian tattoos covering his entire body materialized before him. His face, barely visible in the darkness, looked like a samurai mask. Barry sluggishly pulled out his wallet and placed it on the counter. He barely acknowledged the bartender's presence.

From out of nowhere, a shot of whiskey appeared, and another, then another. They disappeared as quickly as they came. The bartender knew not to ask questions to a man drinking this early; they had either just buried someone or were planning to. The back of Barry's throat burned with the first two shots, but never after that. He never asked for the whiskey; the tattoos just knew what he wanted. Responsibility is a foreign concept for a man in his state. Barry simply obliged, according to his personality.

Barry had given up everything for a woman that was now a stranger wearing the skin of his lover. He felt wronged and sordid. Truthfully, Melinda never intended to harm Barry. She really believed if she said she loved him, if she moved in with him, if she became engaged to him, if they were married, "it" would all come true. In her recklessness, she dragged them both into this vicious cycle. She wanted it all to be true, but Barry didn't see it that way now.

Over the last month, Barry had promoted her to a partner of his small workshop. He had moved into her place and sold his Ford Pickup to buy a more family-friendly Toyota. Together, they had raised money to fund their wedding. He had taken out serious loans to buy the summer house they wanted, the honeymoon they dreamed about. He distanced from his friends to become closer to hers. He cut off loved ones who were vehemently against their arrangement; those who warned him he was a rebound for Melinda. Sacrifice after sacrifice, to right something he felt showed promise. Everything in his universe seemed to point him toward her: their story was one woven by symbols. Everywhere they went, some small coincidence occurred they interpreted as divine approval.

"It was meant to be," they had often said while high-fiving. The slap of their palms echoed in his ears. He wished the ringing would stop.

With that memory lingering in his head, he gulped a shot so hard it made a splashing sound in the back of his throat.

Melinda had been his anchor; the one thing keeping his life afloat. The chains that bound them just snapped. Such was now their story: he was on a collision course with catastrophe.

Drunk and hurt, his mind too wandered. His life had become a pitiful downward spiral. He believed nothing could be worse than how he felt at this precise moment, yet how wrong he was. Shot after shot, he didn't know he was feeding charcoal to fuel the locomotive of his inevitable destruction.

He sighed.

It was the first sound he had made since he left the house. He noticed, with surprise, he had been holding his breath. He was lost in his breakdown, searching for metanoia, ready to become a vessel of volatility.

A dark woman's hand appeared from his peripheral vision. It was holding an amber whiskey bottle. She twirled it around on the countertop, beckoning him.

He let her pour him one more.

"My name is Taylor," she said.

It doesn't take much more than that to start a relationship.