Balloons
by Kara Vernor
At twenty-eight, Edna already envisioned her thirties as a long dirt road. Edna—the verbal equivalent of a stubbed toe. Her parents had worn slacks and kept two topiary greyhounds at the head of their gated drive. She missed them, but not that much. In her hotel room at 5:47 am, she eyed the slice of light searing the corner of the blackout curtains.
After too many minutes awake, she dressed and went out. Beyond the lawns a path cut through a forest of eucalyptus and French broom. The world muted a few feet in. Just the rustle of the canopy in the breeze, clusters of chirps. Bark hung from tree trunks in strips.
The path cut along the hillside with a downslope on her right, glimpses of the Pacific past the branches. Then an incline leading to a plateau and thicker growth. The leaves stilled. Through the sieve of the bushes up ahead, a shock of color. Was it a man?
Enda crouched and peered at the patches of red, royal blue, orange, and white: a bouquet of balloons gently swaying. She scanned the foliage, the high up branches for a camera, or someone. Was it a trap?
She waited, but heard no new or suspect sounds. Probably the balloons fell out of the sky. Probably that happened all the time. She straightened and approached. The bundle hovered a few inches above the ground. As she reached a hand to touch the nearest white ballon, they shifted back. When she withdrew, they rocked toward her. If she were, say, Edith, she might snake right past them. Push further into the forest to discover a private view of the ocean that would change or affirm her. Enda had once seen a man in the alley by her apartment leaning into the shadow of a dumpster, masturbating. A good-looking, well-dressed man—who didn’t need to touch himself in an alley. Her friend said she should have called the police, but that’s not what Edna regretted.
She glanced around again. The balloons dangled there like the loose soul of a clown. An evil one? She hadn’t brought her phone so couldn’t call for help if needed, or take video. She didn’t know what time it was exactly or how soon the day’s first session was starting.
Enda doubled back on the path, leaving the balloons undisturbed, and shortly emerged from the forest the same way she’d entered it. In her hotel room she showered quickly, hoping to catch her colleagues eating the last of their buffet breakfasts in the room off the lobby. She wanted to talk about familiar things. Before leaving, she looped her lanyard around her neck, adjusted it along the trim of her cardigan. Edna Stevens, North County Community Solutions, Accounting Manager, ISTP. For now, it’s who she was.
Kara Vernor’s fiction and essays have appeared in Ninth Letter, Gulf Coast, The Normal School, The Los Angeles Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere. She has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, and her writing has been selected for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf’s Top 50. Her fiction chapbook, Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song, is available from Split Lip Press.
