086 - Eighty-Six

[TRANSCRIPT]

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Breaker, Breaker, this is Whiskey heading west from Albuquerque.

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“It still matters”. That’s what you said: it still matters I’m not sure what you were referring to with that…I don’t even know what I was talking about. 

My…friends? Or—my crew, that is. I was telling you about Harry and I being nice to each other…is that what still matters?

I’m not sure what matters anymore when it comes to Harry. I’m not sure what ever mattered with her. With…us. 

All those years together and what kind of impact did it have, really? None. Our existence left the barest footprint these past six years. We might as well have not existed. Why does any of it matter?

I guess you could say we mattered to each other? In the sense that the only thing we touched since the world emptied out was each other. 

Each other’s lives, that is. We didn’t—not that—

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I do…there are things that feel like weird echoes of the lives we lived in proximity to each other. I’ve finally cut my own hair, but it’s…

I’m not sure I would’ve taken that painting if it weren’t for Harry. I’m not sure I would’ve bothered to go to that museum at all. I don’t like paintings that much.  
But it felt like I had to. Like I’m—like I’m doing it for her because she can’t. Which might make sense in a sad sort of way if she were dead but she could’ve—

(sigh) I’m so fucking mad at her. 

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I…I haven’t told you this, Birdie. I don’t know why, I’ve told you everything else. But I’ve picked up something to the tune of seven postcards since I last told you about keeping an eye out for them. And I’ve written to Harry on each and every one of them.  
I don’t know why. I don’t know why I keep putting cinnamon in my coffee even though that’s how she likes and I never did it before I met her. I don’t know why the few times I’ve passed a sign for a town or road or anything with the name Franklin, I’ve circled it on my atlas, thinking about how Harry grew up in a town called Franklin and always complained about being from a place that shares a name with a dozen other places in the country. 

I’ve even—my perfectly organized trunk? All the tools just where I want them, the food in one place, the cookware in another—that perfect system that I’ve had in every car I’ve ever owned and the few places I lived long enough to implement any kind of system—the system that Harry destroyed within two weeks of us settling into a permanent spot? That system is useless to me now. I put the coffee can in the food section because I’m not an insane person, but I keep looking for it next to my toiletry bag because Harry liked to keep the coffee and tea next her toothbrush on the kitchen sink so that she could brush her teeth while she brewed her morning cup. That’s nuts! Just walk the extra two steps to the cabinet! 

(sigh)

Everything that used to work just…doesn’t anymore. I guess, in that sense, it does still matter, the way we treated each other. Maybe if we’d been kinder to each other the whole while, more accommodating, I wouldn’t be looking for tea bags in my toothpaste. 

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[beeps]

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Th 9AM