Additions & Subtractions

The sun slid through the vertical blinds in flat yellows, illuminating the suspension of dust motes and particles coming into the door of the bar.

It was early morning, too early for any broad assortment of drinks but perfect timing for a Bloody Mary.  Or two.  He was the only one at the bar, the only one aside from the older bartender, about 70 and stooped busily wiping off the far end of the counter.

A light sound of music on some Pandora station played above...no vocals, just instrumentals.  It was soothing, he guessed.  Well, either that or the vodka he remembered.  Maybe both he happily concluded.

His legs dangled beneath the chair, he was in jeans and a sweater and he twirled his phone along the smooth glass of the counter.  His phone full of data, full of computing power...full of news and sports, controversies and celebrities...full of his network, professional and personal.

His departure wasn't for awhile, and he was happy to sit as the first patron in the bar...the small town airport didn't have a lot of early travelers and he loved watching the sun make prisms of the liquors against the glass, browns, yellows, even some greens that were mini-kaleidoscopes that changed by the minute as the sun angles changed.

He tried to anticipate the shadows, tried to determine where the light would go next, where the shade might fall after.   He wasn't very good at it...he didn't like mysteries, in books or in theater.  He wasn't a sleuth...didn't pretend to go all Columbo when he encountered something he didn't understand.

Mostly he just let it be...

But he had to admit the deleted tweet bothered him.  Just a little.

Certainly not because he had found it surprising...in fact he was more surprised at the single sentence than in the fact that it had disappeared.

It in fact had disappeared a long time ago if facts mattered.

In the yellowing air he decided facts really didn't matter...the dust motes rising and falling, tiny specks in flight...like he was soon going to be as he hurtled through the air in a tiny plane...a tiny speck in flight.

Tiny specks.

Deleted bits, like little parts of eraser pieces left on a page. 

But like they say, the Internet is written in ink.  A tattoo.  And even if deleted there is a remainder somewhere.

And there were no other mentions, no other allusions...no other indications, no other mysteries.  And he remembered shrugging and wondering why but not worrying on it.

He never really worried on it, but rather wondered briefly at it.

And pulled it up out of his memory at certain times, like when the sun was perfectly even and shone in waves of yellow across his clear glass of red liquor.

She had mentioned something about missing putting her legs against him...which was weird, since she really had never done that.  Well technically.

They had once shared a couch, briefly, but she had laid upon it, her feet and legs tucked under her and they were very close to his.  But fabric lay between them, clothes protected their skin and shoes and socks were all intact and so...they shared a couch.

But her legs were at an angle and they might have briefly touched his.  He couldn't remember.

So when he saw the brief sentence on the internet, he simply wondered.

He didn't assume, he didn't respond. He didn't investigate.

He took a drink of his vodka and turned around to watch the traffic out the windows.  The sentence may never have even been written for him.

And now it was gone.

But then again, so was she...so really, nothing else mattered.