Divorce In A Minor Key

There is a jolt. Then the smell of rubber burning. Or hair, maybe it’s hair burning. A siren screaming in my left ear, the one not buried in the foam pillow. Damn it! I was hoping to sleep away my sadness on this train traveling at lightning speed to nowhere.

“Nowhere? Where is nowhere?” The gum-chewing ticket counter clerk had looked at me like I was crazy.

“Far away from here.” I say, looking down at my sneakers. Maybe I am crazy. Who jumps on a train with no luggage, no destination, no hope?

The siren forces me upright, stretching, reaching for the door, thinking about caffeine.

When I see her standing there in that space alien costume, a black vinyl dress, red rectangular stripes painted across both eyes, I just blink. Blink again. I try to blink the image away, but now she’s shouting at me, “C’mon, Paul! You’re late!”

And now we’re stumbling through the corridor, a blast of cold air hitting me in the face each time we pass through another vestibule connecting us to the next car. In between rubbing my eyes and grabbing onto walls to steady myself, I pat the pockets of the jeans I slept in, searching for that ticket stub. What kind of train did that gum-chewing punk put me on?

“Paul! My man! You ready to rock this?” A guy wearing pink sunglasses is handing me a red ruffly shirt, more ridiculous than his sunglasses. A fog machine is pumping away furiously, and it dawns on me that this is what set off the smoke alarm. The entire floor is covered in tinfoil, and as I take it all in, the walls and windows covered by floor-to-ceiling mirrors, I get this strange sense of Déjà vu.

A familiar guitar riff in A-Minor wails behind me, a drum beats to my left, and as the vinyl-dress woman pushes me toward a synthesizer, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror.

One look at my freaky blonde hair, spiked on the sides and swooping down my forehead, and I feel a surge of excitement running through my body. The other band members step in front of cameras and microphones, and I am fully awake now. I know where I am. This is the set of the 1982 music video I watched a thousand times. Electrified with synth-pop memories of every high school breakup, I think of every sappy mixtape I made for the girls who broke my heart, girls that wouldn’t stay.

A guy in black steps up with a clapperboard that reads “Flock of Seagulls, MTV, Take One.”

I’m touching my hair, riding the new wave, and it all makes sense now. The divorce papers in my mailbox. The endless shots of tequila at the bar downtown. The bar next to the station. The ticket to nowhere.

“Hell yeah, I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

I lean into the microphone, my breath still reeking of tequila. The lyrics are there before I open my mouth. “And I ran, I ran so far away. I couldn’t get away.” As I sing, I forget all about the divorce papers, the for-sale sign in front of my house.

I’m a star. A freakin rock star.

BIO: Tracie Adams, a retired educator and playwright, writes flash fiction and memoir from her farm in rural Virginia. She is the author of the essay collection, Our Lives in Pieces. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, longlisted at Wigleaf Top 50, and published widely in literary magazines including Cleaver, Dishsoap Quarterly, Trash Cat, Epistemic Lit, SoFloPoJo, Fictive Dream, and more. Visit tracieadamswrites.com and follow her on X @1funnyfarmAdams.