The Bottle Opener
“Michelle! You got a bottle opener somewhere?”
The disembodied voice from the living room answered. “On the fridge. Looks like the Millennium Falcon.”
“The what?”
Silence fell upon the kitchen, followed by an astonished exclamation, again from the other room. “Oh my god, Steven, you did not just say that.”
Footsteps sounded from the other room. Steven felt a chill creep up his spine, and it wasn’t caused by the cold bottle of beer he held in his free hand. He quickly tried to suss out what magnetized construct on the side of the refrigerator could in some way represent some kind of millennial bird of prey, but his vision was quickly lost in the wild assortment of knick knacks that covered most of the appliance’s visible surfaces.
“How do you not know what the millennium falcon is?”
Steven shrugged, his eyes falling on a weird little poem formed out of seemingly randomly selected words. “First follow stay in separate grey boxes of ketchup,” he whispered. “I don’t know what this means,” he said.
“Which part?”
He pointed at the tiny white rectangles that formed the bizarre sentence. “Poetry?”
Michelle laughed. She was enjoying this more than he was comfortable with. “Shopping list. It’s right there, by the way. Two up and on the right.”
“This is a falcon?” he asked, plucking the oddly-shaped magnet from the fridge. He couldn’t figure out its orientation. Was it pointing up? Sideways? Was it upside down? What the hell was this thing?
“Millennium Falcon,” she corrected. “From Star Wars?”
His blank expression elicited a gasp from the young woman.
“You are SHITTING me. You haven’t seen Star Wars?”
“Nah. My parents used to watch Star Trek all the time when I was growing up. Is it anything like that?”
“I’m breaking up with you.”
“Wait, what?”
Michelle laughed. “No, but we are definitely going to sit down and watch them, or you’re never going to see me naked ever again.”
“What?”
She nodded, walking past him to pull another beer out of the fridge. “Also, yes, I would love a bottle, too.” Plucking the bottle opener from his hand, she placed it over the cap of her own bottle and deftly flicked the cap free. Handing the bottle opener back to him, she tossed the cap to her right, where it landed neatly into the trash.
“Forget Netflix,” she said over her shoulder as she returned to the living room. “I’m going to teach you a thing or two, my young padawan.”
“Pada-what?” He fumbled with the can opener, finally managing to pop the cap off before dropping the cap into the garbage. He turned the strangely shaped item over in his hand slowly, admiring the sleek lines and mysterious form. “Is this a spaceship?”
“Get in here,” she called back out to him.
From the other room, he could hear the old Twentieth-Century Fox opening tag. Drums. Horns. Orchestra. He hurried back in to sit down on the couch beside her, noting that she was already a good way through her beer.
“You’re really not any kind of girl I expected,” he said, taking a drink from his own bottle as Michelle leaned in close beside him.
“You have no idea,” she replied. “Now pay attention.”
“As you wish,” he whispered.
“Wrong movie,” she began, but corrected herself. “No, wait, that’s Empire.”
“Empire?”
She lifted a finger, touching it gently against his lips. “Spoilers.”
The screen changed to a field of black, revealing a simple blue sentence:
A long long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…