Any Coincidence Is | Page 8

mess of her own life. Not that everything had
gone perfectly. She had a job, she was going to school - although Uncle
Justin kept reminding her it was "only" for accounting. No science, no
liberal arts. But she read a lot on her own. Mysteries, new fiction, the
classics that were recommended by that stud of a librarian. Not that she
understood all of it, but there was usually something to enjoy, to learn
from. Especially questions about the Big Picture - that always sparked
her interest.
But Uncle Justin would just shake his head. It was a tech school, not a
college or a university. Lord knows there are plenty of cheap schools in
Wisconsin that offer some liberal arts courses, he would say. To say
nothing of real science. He accused her of falling for the same trap his
sister, Julia's mother, had fallen for: living in a Wisconso-centric
universe. Once he brought this up, the conversation usually degenerated
into combative silence. They never settled that argument - it just kept
going on its own, to the detriment of everyone's sanity.
Whether she was getting a real education or not, Julia found herself
constantly searching for meaning. About what governed reality
(whatever that was), about what was human will (assuming it existed),
about the elusive qualities of soul, and about the urge to bury one's face
in Godiva chocolate every twenty-eight days. The last question was
more easily answered than the others. She took a long drag, determined
to make this one last. One a day was bad enough for her. And she'd
probably need another one after work, if Denny was in one of his
moods.
She leaned back on the toilet and stared at the pale, sodium light spread
out across the ceiling. Deja vu. Something from a dream about lying
back and watching the sky. Of course, how the sky and the ceiling in an
Osco restroom were connected was beyond her, but what the hell -
there would be an entire evening for worrying about mundane problems.

But like most of her dreams, she remembered it as another memory,
one as real as a memory of a waking moment. And as usual, the
memory of the dream seemed more vivid than her memory of what she
had done this morning. That was it - the light in the sky had been
yellow, almost gold, with a brown tint. That was what made it look so
unusual, this dream-light. It wasn't the sunlight of the world when
everyone is awake and concentrating on whatever was going on
beneath them. A light reserved for people who didn't deserve it, or
know what it was, or what it meant. At least, that's what it seemed like
in the dream. Or maybe she had made all that up after she woke up. But
she did remember it had altered into a haze, growing more uniform,
covering the world in a grey aura. The white of the clouds gave way,
under pressure of a great and unstoppable force, to something else,
which she couldn't describe. This, whatever it was, blanketed the sky,
offering neither snow nor rain, instead smothering the world below
from whatever was above. Except now, the clouds began to descend.
In parallel streams, this gray sky, this aura seemed to move toward her.
Julia felt herself begin to giggle, that nervous giggle when she knew
something was terribly wrong but didn't know what. And then she
realized that she wasn't just remembering the dream - the haze had
seemed to pierce the ceiling and was beginning to cause the restroom
lights to bend and shimmer. Julia stopped giggling and stood up, her
eyes fixed on whatever it was that she had to be imagining. But the
gray haze remained until it finally began to back away into the
unknown sky beyond.
Julia felt her body constrict itself to form another giggle, but none came.
She dropped to the seat and quickly lit a second cigarette. Nicotine
euphoria swept through her body, but it would not take her to wherever
it was she desperately needed to go. She dropped the cigarette to the
floor and crushed it under her foot.
"How disappointing," she muttered. She felt her throat knot up with
sadness until she heard someone move outside the door. She looked at
her watch - she had wasted fifteen minutes, and now the restroom
smelled terribly guilty.
The bathroom door creaked open. The fan located above Julia's well
chosen stall expelled the smoke and Julia began flapping her hand as
quietly as she could to speed the smoke on its way.

"Julia?" asked a voice.
"Rhonda?" Julia whispered conspicuously. The restroom door quickly
closed and Rhonda scuttled into the stall next to Julia.
"Quick! Give me a