Accosting the New Year
by Tonia Brown
She sits in a darkened dining room, sipping hot coffee and
eyeing the New Year across the table. This wasn’t what he expected, and she
knows it. He thought this would be easy, that she would beg him for new possibilities,
new fortunes, a new life. But no. She has other plans. He shifts in his seat. She
enjoys his discomfort, and sips again.
“So,” she says, “you’re the New Year. What was your name
again?”
“2013,” the New Year says. “You may have heard of me.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of you. I heard you weren’t coming, but
you saw fit to make an appearance.” She smirks. “How kind of
you.”
“Well, these things are never certain until the time they
happen.”
She shrugs and sips.
He clears his throat. “I’m sure you know what I am here
about.”
Setting her cup down, she folds her arms and leans back in
her chair. “What are you about?”
His brow furrows as his lips part in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“What are you about? What will 2013 bring the world? Because
the last few years have been sort of okay. Nothing spectacular. A little
success, a lot of disappointment, and every day we got older and older and
older.” She laces her fingers and, leaning over her half full cup toward him,
she whispers, “What are you going to do differently?”
“I … I … well, I don’t know what to say.”
“I know you don't.” She stands and leaves him sitting there to think
about it. She goes to the kitchen counter and with her back to him she asks, “Coffee?”
“Yes, please. Black.”
She shakes her head as she pours and preps his cup. Joining him
at the table again, sets his mug down and returns to her seat.
He picks up the cup and sips, then swallows with a grimace.
“Problem?” she asks.
“You must’ve misheard me,” he says and pushes
the cup away.
“No. I heard you. Black.” She sips her coffee again.
“But … this has cream and sugar.”
She pauses to watch him over the lip of her cup, the steam framing her mischievous grin. “I know. Drink up.”
He narrows his eyes at her. “What is your game?”
“Game?”
“I see.” He stands and checks his watch. “This has been just lovely, but I have
other places to be. Can I get your resolutions and be on my way?”
Instead of placating him with promises and hopes, she
laughs, long and loud.
He turns in place, looking about, unsure what the source of
her humor is until he realizes it is him. “What’s so funny?”
“You are,” she says. “I don’t have any resolutions.”
“You don’t?”
“No. Not this year.”
He stares at her in silence for a moment. After her words
sink into his thick skull, he nods. “Okay then, no resolutions from you. Are
you certain? This is your only chance.”
“Yes. I am.” She stands and approaches him, tracing her
fingers along the tabletop as she takes careful, cautious steps toward the New
Year. “After romancing almost forty of you fuckers, I think I’m fairly certain
how this is going to play out. I make promises I know I won’t keep. You roll on
and on, ignoring my struggle. And in the end I spend my last day with you
weeping about how I am so glad our relationship is done, only to have another
bastard come along and take your place.” Almost atop him, she leans down into
his face. “Am I right?”
He swallows hard enough for her to hear. “Yeah, well, that’s how it goes.”
“Not with you.”
“N-n-not with me?”
“Nope.” She backs off a bit, allowing him some room to breathe.
“Not this year. This year I don’t have resolutions.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I have demands.”
He chuckles. “You must be kidding. I don’t do demands.”
“You’ll do mine.” She pulls a slip of paper from her
cleavage, and sets it on the table. She leaves it there and returns to her
seat.
The New Year picks it up and unfolds it. He reads, and as he
reads his eyes widen. “You can’t be serious.”
She nods. “Perfectly serious. I want every single one of
those fulfilled by the end of your run.”
He points to the paper. “But this one isn’t even physically
possible!”
“Then get it as close as you can.”
As his eyes scan the page, he blinks over and over, as if
trying to wash the requests from his mind. He gasps and blushes when he reaches
number eleven. “Really? That is just … you should be ashamed.”
“What? I’m a woman of many tastes.”
“Yes but I’d be surprised you’d have any taste buds left
after something like that. Oh, now this one I can do. And this one. I can do
this one twice.” He smiles. “Some of these are rather simple, aren’t they?”
“They are, yet somehow you guys manage to miss the simple
things.”
He looks to her over the paper, his ancient gaze heavy with
a millennium of experience. “So do you.”
“I realize that, which is why I plan on making those things
happen with you. You won’t be in it alone.”
“I thought as much.” He folds the page with a chuckle and
pokes it into his jacket pocket. “You all make resolutions in the end.”
“Don’t mistake my commitment for submission. These aren’t promises
from me to you. This is a to do list. Things we will get done, together.”
He taps the side of his mug and considers her words. “Together?”
“Together.”
“That will be a new one.”
“A new one for a new year.”
The New Year lifts the sweetened coffee and drinks it down
in a few gulps. He smacks his lips with a satisfied smile. “I always enjoyed a
little sugar in my cup.”
“So do I, hon. So do I.”
