Dirt - Those Paper Boats

by Ziad Shihab/ June 24th, 2024

June 24th, 2024

https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/ss/c/u001.edrBSs6H04GIDvX9C9_yFlTYlc8xizInaCi-BhduWCA/47h/I1xyHBwZSGO1KhrN4MYKiA/h0/h001.LVRkdqOh5V8w4P6fH0VR6qtfF4zKQe8uI8uFMeLO81M

Those Paper Boats

Fiction Week returns...

Artwork by Walden Green

It’s Dirt’s third-ever Fiction Week (and first of 2024)! Between now and Friday, we’ll be publishing three short stories from established and emerging authors.

"Most of them were simple creations, hat-like, but a more complex variety had begun to turn up, with two chimneys in the middle – a steamboat."

"Those Paper Boats" is a short story by Suchandrika Chakrabarti.

Those paper boats started appearing around the flat in spring. You and your best friend had just moved into a great place. His girlfriend, who had stuck about for an unprecedented four months, introduced you to the neighbourhood.

Slowly, slowly, she filled the place with girls. They were there on Thursday nights for TV and curry – no football allowed. They were there on Saturday mornings after the big night out, dragging you to the farmer’s market in last night’s clothes and today’s carefully rearranged face. They were there on Sundays to cook a roast for you boys.

Weren’t you the lucky one, with all those girls around? Your flatmate advised you to get in there while you could, before the window of opportunity shut. The danger of being placed in the friendship category was imminent. You thought of it in a more romantic way: you had to reach the moat, and then make it over the drawbridge before it was too late, flower between your teeth.

Most of them were simple creations, hat-like, but a more complex variety had begun to turn up, with two chimneys in the middle – a steamboat. Whichever girl was making them was upping her game. You vowed to follow the trail to your heart’s desire.

The danger of being placed in the friendship category was imminent.

You looked for her. Which one was it? None of them stole scraps of paper while you all passed round a box of wine in front of the TV. None of them furtively folded away at drinks on Friday. Then, on Sunday, during lunch at the pub, you found her. She couldn’t keep her fingers off the menus. She made six in an hour, and often checked to see if you were watching.

It wasn’t difficult. You just asked her how to make one of those paper boats. She showed you a simple one first, and you made it with ease, then crowned her with it. The steamboat was harder, and she had to place her hands on yours to help. Later that night, she made you a swan out of a flyer slightly damp with beer, and slipped it into your pocket. You knew then.

The rest of the girls weren’t jealous, but, instead, trilled with delight at this new development. So it continued all that summer: nights out and back to yours, hangovers in the sunny park, living the times of your lives that you would always look back on fondly, memories rose-hued and framed with rigid nostalgia.

As August neared its end, the flat quietened down; but she stayed, leaving a trail of those paper boats to your bed. Before she came over, you would gather them into a pile, and throw it out. This saddened you, but your flatmate had grown tired of them. She never seemed to notice this, never commented on their absence, and yet she kept on making them, out of takeaway menus and receipts and bills.

September came. After an evening of listening to your flatmate and his girlfriend fight in the other room, you turned over and saw that she had made yet another steamboat, which sat, marooned, on the bedside table as she slept. She had started wearing your boxers to bed.

You went on your first couple’s holiday the next day, and noticed the telltale creases on her boarding pass. The people you met by the pool, at the bar, in restaurants, they all commented on those paper boats piling up around her. You kissed someone else without her knowing, and held this secret close, guarded it; not just out of chivalry, but also because it was a grenade for later use.

You suspected that she kept making them to float across the water that was gathering between you... but they never quite made it.

Autumn yielded to winter. The girls were long gone. Your flatmate’s girlfriend was long gone. It was just you and her, in silence, surrounded by those paper boats. You suspected that she kept making them to float across the water that was gathering between you... but they never quite made it.

If they had? There was that other life you could have lived together, in a paper house with paper children and paper boats collecting around your ankles, then your knees, then piling higher and higher, collecting around your ribcage and your beating heart and your Adam's apple, suffocating you…

You were a bit abrupt when you ended it, but only felt surprise at her surprise. Hadn’t she seen the warning signs? Her trembling fingers crafted a swan as you spoke, only the second one she had made for you.

After she left for the last time, you floated the swan in the sink. It sailed forth proudly, for longer than you thought it would, even through the rain; but then, of course, it sank. You wiped your face and plucked it out of the water. With a sigh, you let it fall into the bin.