Ryan Werner<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t marry a girl named Florence and then she won the lottery. That\u2019s not the way I tell it, but it sure is the way she tells it, like they\u2019re related, like there couldn\u2019t be one without the other.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m building a pool the size of your apartment building,\u201d she tells me. \u201cCome on back and I\u2019ll fill it with whatever you want.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFill it with New Coke,\u201d I say. \u201cThey haven\u2019t made it since we were learning long division. Get the last drop to the brim and I\u2019ll pack up everything I own.\u201d<\/p>\n
She tells me not to bother, that she\u2019ll buy me a new whatever. \u201cEverything in your apartment looks like it was made in the dark,\u201d she says, and the next day a bottle of New Coke shows up in my mailbox, a reason to wonder if the world can only be a better place if we are in it alone but, also, why I might go back: something important is going, gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re supposed to be sweeter than the Coke they make now,\u201d Florence tells me when I set a bag with nine bottles and four cans of New Cokes on the floor in front of her, half a week\u2019s worth of deliveries. \u201cThere\u2019s really no telling how many are even left in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
A couple minutes later some construction workers show up to start digging the pool. At one point they partition off the circumference and Florence yells for them to extend it by a few inches.<\/p>\n
She turns to me and asks, \u201cHow many more bottles do you think that is?\u201d though what she really means is Why don\u2019t you want the sort of love I have to give?<\/i><\/p>\n
I keep waiting for the money or the New Cokes to exhaust themselves but neither of them will. I get a bottle from New Jersey one day and two cans from Nova Scotia the next. She\u2019s paying the equivalent of good repairs on a shitty car to overnight them to me and I can\u2019t make her stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d say we\u2019re at least an inch deep right now, drop for drop,\u201d Florence tells me over the phone. \u201cAnd the pool is coming along nicely. Twelve feet in the deep end.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow much in the shallow?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n
She coughs into the receiver and pauses. \u201cWho cares?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
So many New Cokes build up over the next week that I need a laundry basket and both crispers in my fridge to take them all to Florence. I tell her the extra weight is going to kill my shocks.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat,\u201d she says, stuffing some bills in my hand. \u201cThis should cover the shocks, the gas, and the fact that your car looks like a sixteenth birthday present for a set of twins whose parents barely love them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll get a bus pass,\u201d I say, setting the money on the table. As I\u2019m walking away I look back and see her in the window, bottle of New Coke in one hand and a glass half full of New Coke in the other, her way not of giving up, but of showing the magnitude of what she has to spare.<\/p>\n
In the drawing before she hit it big, Florence bought me a lottery ticket, too, either as an excuse to see me or as an attempt to develop an addiction she could blame on me.<\/p>\n
When I told her that I ended up winning $20 she showed me the classified ad for her wedding dress and said, possibly changing the subject, \u201cDoesn\u2019t it feel good, gambling with something besides your life?\u201d<\/p>\n
I short Florence by a six pack the next time I deliver to her. She barely says anything to me when I\u2019m over there, just takes me to the backyard to show me the wet cement around the pool, a full bottle of New Coke stuck in at each corner like bedposts.<\/p>\n
The men working inside the pool make a racket and what I think Florence asks me is if she needs a life coach. \u201cSome things are just too big for one person to handle,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t until later that I realize she said lifeguard<\/i>, worried, always, about the compartments of her helplessness.<\/p>\n
When I met Florence, she told tell me everything about her name except where it came from. \u201cThere\u2019s a city called Florence in almost half of the states in America,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd Florence Nightingale pretty much founded the idea of modern nursing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it was the real first name of the mom on The Brady Bunch<\/i>,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cExactly,\u201d she said, holding one hand in the other. \u201cIt\u2019s like having built-in matriarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the years, she told me it\u2019s been a hurricane, a poem, and a saint, but I never asked which one she is.<\/p>\n
After a while of four or five New Cokes a night, I get two of the three worst stomachaches I\u2019ve ever had, just sugar on top of sugar until I can\u2019t stand or sleep.<\/p>\n
The third stomachache I get the hard way, I\u2019m sure, but it\u2019s been there so long I don\u2019t know how.<\/p>\n
The New Cokes start to slow down on my end, and whatever I\u2019m taking off the top slows it even more on Florence\u2019s side. She demands I drive the missing ones over to her house. It\u2019s between early and late with no sun, but I\u2019m awake and shaking anyways, just finishing up the last pile of New Cokes I\u2019ve got around.<\/p>\n
When I get to her house she\u2019s not in it. The light in the backyard is on with the flood bulbs pointed at the empty pool. Florence is sitting in a $6000 chair at the bottom of the deep end, empty bottles around her.<\/p>\n
I climb down and sit on the arm of the chair. \u201cI\u2019ve been reading up on this stuff,\u201d I tell her, picking up one of the bottles. \u201cThere\u2019s a conspiracy theory floating around that Coca-Cola changed the recipe on purpose knowing that people wouldn\u2019t like it, which would spark interest in returning to the original formula and make the company more popular than it was before they switched.\u201d<\/p>\n
She sets the bottle down and walks over to the ladder in the deep end, leaping up, barely getting her fingers around the bottom rung, and climbing out. Instead of following her, I sit down where she was in the chair.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later I hear a hose near the shallow end. I turn around to look and see the water start to flow in with Florence next to it, sitting down with her legs pointed in and then sliding onto her feet. She\u2019s holding a silk pillowcase full of New Cokes over her shoulder and walking so slowly toward me that when she finally reaches me the water has already began to touch us.<\/p>\n
RYAN WERNER<\/b> has got a body built for sin and an appetite for passion. He practices shameless self-promotion at his blog, ryanwernerwritesstuff.com<\/a>. He is the author of Shake Away These Constant Days<\/i>, a collection of short stories published by Jersey Devil Press, and the chapbook, Murmuration<\/i>, from Passenger Side Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ryan Werner I didn\u2019t marry a girl named Florence and then she won the lottery. That\u2019s not the way I tell it, but it sure is the way she tells it, like they\u2019re related, like there couldn\u2019t be one without … Continue reading