christopher bundy

Kent returned each evening to his capsule with bloodshot eyes and a headache from staring at a computer screen all day. Outside, he wore out his eyes scanning the faces of every woman he passed on the street, in a store, a park, or a train station. Occasionally, on a crowded train or in a queue for a movie—evenings in which he sat alone with his popcorn and soda, wondering if Kumi were in the audience with her own popcorn and soda, falling asleep like she did through every movie they ever watched together—he spotted a “Kumi.” Kent looked at the world around him so carefully he wouldn’t have been surprised to see her anywhere nor would he have cared how she appeared to him, via the swirl in his coffee or a puffy white cloud, as an angel or in the guise of a child. Perhaps she’d speak to him from the big screen, step right out of the celluloid and into the theater, a holographic Kumi, her voice full of reverb, an image of dancing light. Some of the “Kumis” Kent spotted had straight, dark hair, subtle figures and benign smiles; others in zero-sized blouses above capri pants and enormous platform shoes that left them bowlegged and clumsy, eye shadow and expensive perfumes; a few wigged devotees of cosplay.