I got dressed, carefully, before leaving for the picnic, the day's "main" event, or so it presented itself in my head. It was frigid out, which dulled my mood, and I looked around for the people I would want to sit with. My friends and family had been there for hours already, but I had been busy at home, adding vitally necessary touches to my painting so that it looked right when I left the house, cleaning the kitchen, finding shoes, the right shoes, putting on a jacket - a jacket that looked good, and checking myself in the mirror five times and again in the car, thinking my blue eyes looked particularly blue and nice. And I had driven with the window down despite the cold because it made the ride more interesting - not being alone in a car with myself, only myself to fill the space.
At the picnic I got out of the car and the first thing I saw was Ben walking, in his usual lackluster gait, toward a group of our close friends. His girlfriend was sitting just adjacent to them, but it appeared that he didn't notice her before he went over. She sat on a towel with her closest friend, Twinka, and they both smoked in silence. Our friends produced a robust chatter that was decidedly unaligned with the mood he was in. I could see the mood he was in from the nature of his movement, the way he held himself, his expression. He stood a little ways off from them and lit a cigarette, watching both them and his girlfriend, Rachel, who was not aware of his presence. She sat at a slight inward angle toward Twinka, and the women’s bodies made more points of contact than would’ve happened unintentionally. Their forearms, rooted into the ground, supporting them, touched along an inch or two of skin. Their legs overlapped slightly. Their long hair – and they had the same hair but in different colors, Twinka’s a kinky blond and Rachel’s a kinky black – looked mussed, as if it had been brushed only early that morning and the full day outside had taken its toll.