THE GREY PLANE

by Tali Beesley

Gerard had known when he first met Melody that she would say yes to a date with him and not to the douche she’d been talking to. Not because Gerard is extraordinarily attractive—you know he’s not—but because he could tell that she is that kind of girl. I’d asked Gerard what he meant by that kind of girl. He’d said “You know the kind—the kind that dates men who are as smart as her but not as attractive.” “You mean that Melody actively looks for less attractive men?” He’d said he didn’t that think she did it consciously. “But she doesn’t want to deal with the uncertainty. With me, she’d know that I couldn’t do better. That she would be the best I’d ever get.” “And that didn’t bother you?” “No, because she was right.” And he was happy and grateful to be with her. I’d told Billy about that conversation just that morning.

Then I’d told Billy about the personality tests Melody had leant me. Billy asked if Melody uses the tests in her practice, and I’d told Billy no, Melody takes them herself. “She says she would never classify her clients in such stringent terms, but that she doesn’t feel like she can pinpoint herself.” Billy asked what the tests said about me and I told him “That I’m an ESTP.” He asked what that meant, and I said “That I’m a prick.”

He said that the dating website he was using had personality quizzes with it. He had answered all of the questions.  But then, feeling unsatisfied, he created another profile and put his second-choice answers on that one.  I asked him which profile was more popular with the ladies. He said he’d only uploaded pictures of himself on one of the profiles, and so it had a lot more traffic. I asked, “Why don’t you have pictures on your other site?” “Because then people would know I have two profiles.”

After coffee with Billy I walk to the park and even though it is the middle of the day, there is a mist in this grove that I find. It hangs heavy and is tinged almost blue and I think that I would like to come back here in an altered state of mind. I wonder if Melody would give me a prescription for an altered state of mind and then I know that she wouldn’t and I would never ask her. And then I wonder if she never would because I wouldn’t ask her or I never would ask her and so she won’t.

My time in the park is short because Billy calls me to say he’s going to the races, and would I like to come? I have never been to the races and so of course I go. At the races we run into Gerard who at one time was up twenty dollars and is now down forty. “But the important thing is that I am drunk at 4pm on a Tuesday,” Gerard says.

I call you on my way home and you tell me hushed that Gerard and Melody broke up. “But he didn’t breathe a word,” I say. “She slept with someone else,” you say. Apparently Gerard had already forgiven her, but she broke up with him anyway because she didn’t think she’d be able to stand the guilt. “How did you hear?” “Melody told me.” “Why would Gerard forgive her so quick? They haven’t been together that long.” “Gerard told her she was still the best he could ever get.”

After you get home, we are so loud that the next morning the little girl from the apartment next door tells me she can’t wait to grow up so that she can jump on the bed without getting in trouble too.