The bar is dark and crowded, but around her is a ring of emptiness. She watches her martini. All around her, people crush into each other, trying to pass at a safe distance. She stares down the martini, a microcosmic effigy of some long-ago cowboy, trigger finger twitching as he/she considers their opponent. A wailing note slices through the tension, and a tumbleweed bounces past. Her heavily manicured fingers tighten on the delicate glass stem. The audience is held breathless, suspended in the ‘maybe’ of his/her pause.
The cowboy draws.
Her rings flash in the low light.
The black hat falls in a dusty heap.
The empty martini glass is slammed onto the table.
Itchy trigger finger.
~*~
He hadn’t expected her to be so heavy. She’d been bragging to her girlfriends just the other day about losing three pounds. Stupid fat cow.
The bag ripped on a rock as he dragged it to the edge of the outlook and her hand fell out; a bleached spider on the black earth. He scrambled to the low stone railing, chest heaving as he gathered her weight in his arms and lifted her. She teetered on the rail for a long moment before plummeting off the cliff. He stood listening for a long time.
Listening to the echos of her landing.
