“It’s safe to say that people are bored of being bored.”
Virgil finally breaks his tenuous gaze on the lake’s glassy surface, and slowly turns his head towards Henry. Quizzically, he starts, “Explain.”
“People dig shit they can relate to. Break up songs? Huge seller. People are always breaking up. They eat it up. Songs about being depressed? Can’t get enough of them.” Henry takes a drag off his cigarette, and exhales before continuing. “Boredom? No one wants to hear about it. No one wants to be bored. The navel-gazing grunge apathy has long since worn out its welcome. People want fantasy again.”
Virgil slowly turned his head back towards the water. The smoke from Henry’s cigarette coils and wafts through the aether of the grey Sunday afternoon, as the two sit on a bench somewhere outside of the city. The day is as motionless as the sunless sky above and the still lake beneath it. The wisps of smoke dance with the silence that hangs heavy in the air.
“Another Godless afternoon.” Virgil sighs, with a tone that could be interpreted as sad, at least, to someone who didn’t know him. Henry is slightly startled by the broken silence, but nonplussed. Virgil lets his ambiguous statement fall away. “Ironic it would be Sunday.” Henry squints slightly as he takes an extended drag off his cigarette, and holds the smoke in for a beat. He furrows his brow, expelling the smoke from his nose like a confused dragon in a children’s cartoon, and turns to Virgil.
“The hell?” Henry asks, bits of smoke still caught on his lips.
“When I was very young. When I went to church with my folks.” Virgil states in his trademark, halting tone, without ever looking up. “I would see days like this. No rain. No sun. No wind. No sound...” Virgil’s voice trails off. He bites his lip slightly “No life.” He closes his eyes. “It’s like God forgot about us; A Godless day.” He opens his eyes and looks up a touch, at the distant, black line of trees across the lake. “At least, That’s what I thought. When I believed.”
Henry coughs and says “Man, even GOD is bored! I’m telling ya!” in a tone louder than the day might deem polite. “You remember that Depeche Mode song ‘Something To Do’?” says Henry punctuating his dialogue with intermittent drags off his cigarette. “Now that was a great song about boredom. It was upbeat, urgent, heavy on the drama, and what’s it about? Dude and his girlfriend have jack-all to do one night. That’s ennui done right. None of this mopey, staring out a window on a rainy afternoon, cliché Zoloft commercial shit. They could make boredom exciting again!” Henry takes a final drag off his cigarette and flicks it in an arc towards the sky, falling into the lake with a distant sizzle, causing a slight ripple in the placid surface.
Virgil snaps out of whatever trance he had lulled himself into and turned towards Henry. “Don’t do that.” He snaps in tone that had only the mildest hint of irritation.
“Heh. Sorry.” Henry says as he grabs his pack out of his pocket and pulls a fresh cigarette out with his teeth. “Y’know Virg, we should go somewhere. Out of town I mean. New York, or LA, or Christ, let’s drive to Vegaville, I hear they have a mall with a pretty bitchin food court. Blaahh. Maybe next weekend or something, I think Merrifield is eating my soul!”
“You spoke of fantasy. Earlier.” Virgil watches as the ripples on the lake surface extend from Henry’s spent cigarette, and attenuate with size. “An ever present fantasy is that salvation lies in other cities. That one has known all there is to know in one’s own town, and that other cities are dissimilar. I think we’re spoiled. I think we’re bored. We refuse to take responsibility for it, so we wish for a new city to provide us fulfillment.”
Henry thinks on that a minute and lights his cigarette. “Yeah, it’s like they say, ‘Everywhere you go, there you are.’ I guess you could say every state’s got a Merrifield huh?”
“No.” says Virgil as he watches the last dying ripple fade slowly back into a calm, mirrored surface. “I would say that every state IS a Merrifield.”