A little red book
I just got out my little red book
The minute that you said goodbye
I thumbed right through my little red book
I wasn't gonna sit and cry.
"Chloe, you wanna hear something crazy about this song?" Jake took a bitter swig from the fresh can of India Pale Ale in his hand, then cheersed Chloe's can as he sat down next to her on the worn beige couch. "It's about my great aunt Mae." Chloe tilted her head with a small jerk, her eyebrows twitching inward. Jake saw it as a sign to continue.
"Yeah, she knew the singer of Love, Arthur Lee, from middle school back in Memphis, and they were, like, sweethearts, as she would say. She died a few years ago, but man she was fun to talk to. So many cool stories. I swear she looked like she never left the 60s, always wearing bell-bottoms and glasses with colored lenses and shit like that. And she always smelled like incense and cigarettes."
"She sounds cool." Chloe picked at the lower corner of the label sticker on her can. "But I thought that was a Burt Bacharach song."
Jake's stomach tensed. "Do you have any cool great aunts?" he asked her. She stopped picking at the label and looked at him, then looked at the ceiling and relaxed into a smile. "Yeah, my Auntie Josephine is awesome. She's not doing too well lately, but she was always so nice to me."
Jake took a drink of his beer before setting it down on the glass-top coffee table and walking over to the wooden record crate. "Oh yeah? Like what kinds of nice things?" He flipped quickly to a spot somewhere in the middle of the crate and grabbed a random record. Guided By Voices. Sure.
"Oh, she brings us sweet little gifts, and she's just nice." Chloe looked at her left wrist as she ran her finger under a metal chain bracelet with little metal charms dangling from it, including a little bus and a little shoe.
"Did she give you that bracelet? It's really cool. I love the little Monopoly pieces."
Chloe recoiled, her right hand guarding her bracelet as she pulled it away from Jake. "They're not Monopoly pieces, they're charms. Each one represents a moment in her life."
Jake leaned forward, his eyes alive, a rush of warmth flowing from his chest out to his limbs. "Please, tell me these stories."
Chloe relaxed and returned to running her finger under the bracelet. "I don't know, she never told me." Jake slumped back into the beige couch cushion.
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The Institute of Empathy