The Unbelievably Redemptive Power of the Shoelace

I have only given one eulogy in my life and I hope that I never have to endure such an ordeal ever again.

Selfish?

Yes, because it means somebody dear to me has already passed on while I attempt to immortalize them in simple words and phrases...attempting to encompass over 85 years in a few minutes.  It means that I have to stir up the clouded memories in my own mind with a simpleton's stick, retrieving the good ones and letting the poor ones remain dormant.  Throughout that weekend of my paternal grandfather's funeral I had a mental image of a brick wall, weathered and wind-beaten.  I put it up every time I started to try to articulate how I was feeling.   I held it together for the majority of the speech, but I have to admit that my voice began to crack as I finished. 

It was at my other grandfather's funeral, my maternal one, that I realized the heart-wrenching reality that life and its tiniest, most insignificant gifts can seem like such trivialities to one person and true and complete needs to somebody else.

I have two such memories of the emotional toll a mere piece of crafted shoe-string can be lifted gently like river-dead from my mind, carried on to the shore and displayed for the curious to see.

In the first one, it is a regret.  Frankly, both of these stories are framed in regret, framed by my inability to overcome what was clearly a trivial matter to me but in the end perhaps meant the whole world to the people dear to me.

My daughter owns the first one, where as a young and precocious four year old she attempted to dazzle and be as close to a forest princess as she could muster.  In the tall pines of North Carolina where the drones of C-130 transport planes carrying airborne soldiers off to far away places buzzed in the sky and she would glide underneath their shadows and twirl in our yard.  She rarely saw me, as I left early and often and spent the majority of my time in the field.  But she was happy, and vibrant, and constant.  She was sweaty, her hair curling tightly against her forehead and she had a deep and guttural laugh that exploded from such a small frame.  But this hurricane of energy was impulsive, and demanding.  And one time, at an amusement game/restaurant she had played the midway challenges and won enough tickets to buy whatever she wanted.  She got some larger prizes, a bundle of trinkets that would likely be thrown into her closet and never again played with, and in the end she had only two tickets left.

This is important, because she had already expended her efforts on the toys she really wanted.  A fact that apparently was lost upon her, because suddenly those two tickets were just enough to get a pair of sparkly shoelaces that she suddenly and desperately needed.  As an annoyed young parent, I had worn myself out with the day, and this was a line that I wasn't going to allow her to cross.  In hindsight it seems so fucking trivial as to border on the insane, but she had had her way all afternoon and I was ready to go and for some reason this became a firestorm.

I can remember her screaming as I carried her and her other toys out, screeching for the shoelaces like I had literally just pulled her teeth out. I was completely vindictive in not allowing her the final small pieces that would have completed her day, but I was the parent and I wasn't going to be bullied by this little girl, shoelaces or not. 

In those moments, they became something much more important to her, perhaps the literal icing on the cake for her day.  It wasn't that big of a deal to me, but how could it have been?  The only time I bothered with shoelaces was really when I was in college, and I wore forbidden Chuck Taylor's with my cadet uniform and needed to know how to make them remain untied but also unmoving.  Only time I really cared at all.

But I reflect on the fact that to her they were her redemption and that they were the only thing that mattered at that moment.  And I didn't let her have it.  And I feel, 19 years later, almost her lifetime, like I could have let her have her way.  And given her those fucking shoelaces so she could be that forest princess dancing underneath the planes that would take me away.  From her.  Again.

My second chance encounter into the power of such lowly items was actually at my maternal grandfather's funeral, the one where I didn't give the eulogy.  It was a very nice service, and a lot of people spoke about him, his quiet and calm demeanor, his gentleness, his love for his children and his grandchildren and his humble beginnings and endings.  I remembered we swam a lot in his pool, but we were never allowed into the hot tub, a memory that seemed harsh and somewhat ridiculous in even feeling harsh about it.  But it was a comment that my mom made, when she was describing some of her last conversations with her father, that made me remember about these stupid shoelaces.

She was recounting that when she saw him in the hospital people were asking what to get him to make him feel better...a card, a gift, flowers or something to eat. 

"Shoelaces" is what he said he wanted.  Shoelaces.

And as mind-numbingly bland as it sounds, I think it meant that he needed to have his shoes tied and ready for when he walked out of that hospital.  That he was thinking of a detail that most wouldn't really consider and more importantly he was planning on leaving that place.

And he never did, and he never got the shoelaces, my mom dismissing such a notion like I did with my own daughter.  And he never did because he never left the hospital.

It's funny, not in a ha-ha kind of way, but in a peculiar way, how something so trivial and uneventful can be the thing that I remember.  And its memory is a regretful one, and in a way a redemptive one, to remind me of the ties that bind us to each other, and how easily they can be pulled undone and let go forever.

Se Rompio

Morning was the worst.  It was an awakening to a vague cloudy memory that pierced him with the sun and reminded him of the next 16 hours until he could collapse his mind, fold up his heart and crawl into bed.

It was an ugly sky, filled with colors of a burnt cigarette, stale and smoky, and it tasted reminiscently of bad dreams.  He could feel its taste upon his tongue, like a wool sock, and it cloyed his head like wet burlap.  He hated the undented space next to him like an ache he had never healed from.  It was a bone-bruise, and it was part of the process of waking, realizing and remembering.  He half the time wished he might wake up and realize it was a surgery, and he had lost all his limbs and could only lay there and feel the distant tinglings of parts of him that were no longer there.

     Fuck it he said, climbing out of bed and padding over to the window.  The gray morning was light in the east, and he remembered a time when that same goddamned sky was leaking rain and he was completely impervious to it.  Now, even a faint sun bothered him, annoying and unblinking.  Colorless.  His was a slate marked only with chalk, no colors, just a black and a white.  Binary.  One wins, one loses.  It was what made him somewhat okay with everything.  Forget gray and in-betweens. 

     I'm not sure what I lost.  Maybe I just lot a portion of me and maybe I didn't lose it as much as I gave it away.  He realized he was saying this out-loud, to the cold mirror and the colder pane of glass. He laughed a bit, knowing that his coping was just to emote and talk and he remembered vaguely that that was exactly what she never did. 

She studied.  She parried.  She stayed aloft, looking down like she had pushed you from a cliff and then craned her neck out to make sure you made it all the way down to the bottom.  She possessed fine eyes, but they were as black holes that pulled in gravity and took in more than they let out.  He got that, realized that, remembered that.  He was feeling a little bit better, the breaking sky not quite as murky as before, some potential blues leaking in and softening the empty horizon. 

He went back to the empty bed, still warm on his side, and laid back down.  He remembered the saying "we are all the same size laying down" and smiled again, knowing that he had never been able to prove the adage.  He felt like she would be able to mold upon him, fit the jigsaw pieces in perfect places, and just lay in the cooling morning, with only body heat to warm them.

He knew that that would be the case; he knew she knew it and yet as much as they both knew it they let the time spool away and he could not push her and she would not pull.  Chemistry is a reaction, but it is not an actual action; it takes muscles, and it takes one's mind.  It takes thoughts, and it takes a finger to be lifted, a lip to part.  It takes the breathing to inhale and tightly exhale, and it takes a short walk across the room to join. 

It takes navigating waters without a sextant, uncharted and unknown.  And he lay in the bed full of courage and all alone.

He wondered if she had even contacted him, not live, not in a full hearted way of talking to him, but in a benign and cautious way.  A text.  An email.  An easy way to slide a message across the floor to him.

He went over to his phone and picked it up. 

Nothing.

He threw the phone across the room where it met the wall, a simple collision when jigsaw pieces do not fit and they get thrust upon each other and the inevitable happens. 

He turned to the window and the sky had lost its blues, and returned to a blank and emptiness that likely mirrored the colors in his mind.

Dolven

He had departed that evening in a spiraling twilight, suddenly and painfully aware that he had merely been a roadway that had slid easily into her life and merely continued past it in the same tiresome and predictable manner.  He realized he might have scored a glancing blow, a mild bruise, but ultimately if she were to examine her limbs and her tussled up heart she would find everything neatly in place and relatively undisturbed.


She had not been lonely.  At least not in the same canyon that he was.  She had not probably ever been alone, and probably, by all accounts, would never be.  He just had caught her at a bad time...maybe a vulnerable time although that word and her never mixed...for to do so would imply a weakness and she would spackle that up and paint right over any fissure he might find.

He was exhausted.  She was as big as this place, he thought, hurtling past unlit fields and flats that were blacker than they ever seemed.  He could not simply pull on a thread of her and find an unraveling; rather he would find himself doing what she herself claimed he could never do:  catch rain.  It was a favorite saying of hers, implying the impossibility of catching the thunderstorm in one's palm, while the body was pelted with a thousand drops that escaped.  She had marked him, like a passing squall, and he was drenched in something that he had not ever felt.  And he could not scrub it away, could not towel it off. 

     I am not in the same place as you she had said.  He had pulled away, and while he could still taste the brine of her tears on his lips he had already known what she was going to say.

     I'm not in any place he offered.  I'm here right now, but only because you asked me to be here.  I came here because you asked me and so far that's all I've done.

     I know.  I asked you and you came here.  You always come back.  You've always come back to me and I guess I know that you'll always will.  And I'm not sure if I want that.

     He was further back from her now, and she was looking down.  For some strange reason she was almost indefinably beautiful when she was looking down, sculpted almost, her sharp features softening and it reminded him of a single word:  Grace.  She possessed it and most embodied it when she stood like this.

     I probably would.  But I would come back to try to discover, or to try to build upon something.  I wouldn't come back like a retrieval.  I wouldn't just come back because you said so.

     I'm not so sure she said.  Watch he said.  And he strode out of the room.  He walked down the steps and he stood for a second outside his car, where he could see the reflection of the front porch.  It stayed empty.  He had a feeling it would remain that way for awhile.

He felt dug out, mined.  He felt dolven, his inside scooped out and heaped out onto some table.  He didn't mind the feeling, it was just tiring.  He felt like perhaps she might watch the taillights and hope that they might brighten with a stop...but he kept his foot from the brakes and he hurtled into the evening.

       

Scratched Vinyl

Her text had come in a doldrums of an afternoon, when a storm had passed and the hours were as still as a church on Monday and the humidity cloaked the town like gray moth wings.

       What are you doing?  Are you busy?

He was surprised at first, this outreach.  Her clues and reveals had been painfully slow, bandage-like, as if she was really showing him a wound versus just sharing with him.  She did that, as part of her being...like waves breaking in slow remnants on a shore.  She would reveal, then pull back...draining the sand with her, and tugging at him in an undertow.  He never knew what she was thinking.

     I'm driving he wrote.

There was a pause, like in all their interactions...that time-slide.  It was a chess move.

     Can you come see me?  Like in a bit?

He hadn't been asked before, so the request was a little intriguing.  He really wasn't going anywhere.  At least no place where she didn't melt upon his mind like the final waxes of a candle.  So he might as well go see the flesh and blood of her.

     Where are you?
       At my parents...I will send you the address.

He got the address and turned his car around.





They say that memory is not a video, but rather a set of photographs...Polaroids, snapshots of time and space.  As he drove amongst the trees and the bits of gray light filtering in, he remembered the bits and pieces of the kaleidoscope of her.

Her eyes, that looked the color of licorice in one moment and lightened into taupe in another depending on her mood...the purse of her lips, the lyric of her voice...it was a snippet, a sonnet, and it scattered in pieces against his memory like those people in phone booths trying to catch dollar bills.  He drove on, remembering everything and knowing nothing.

Her address was a bit confusing, trees blocking the house so he probably went back and forth a few times before deciding which house was hers.  A short walk up and he knocked on the door, and she opened it.

     Hey, so you found it.

     Yeah, it took me a bit, but I got here.  He walked into the house, quiet and quaint, and stood in the middle of the room.  He then noticed that she had a record in her hand, not a small 45, but rather the old vinyl records from his youth.

     Wow...that's a blast from the past.  What is it?

     It's one of my favorite records she admitted, kind of embarrassed...she held it in front of her like a relic.
     What is it?

She looked down.  The black vinyl shined and reflected the light from the room.  While it was a perfectly innocent question, he knew she was unwillingly revealing.  He felt a bit of warmth from her reaction, watching her squirm a bit.

     It's Kim Weston.  

     Take me in your arms? He asked.

 She looked up at him quickly.  Yes...as a matter of fact.

     You should listen to her song A Little More Love...like a freaking primer on how to treat a girl.

She smiled at that, letting the distance in between them linger.  She then crossed the room and soon she was very close to him, close enough for him to see her eyes that were not as dark as they seemed.  Her eyebrows, her mouth, and that simple clean scent of hers.  The record was the only thin slice between them.

     Why don't you go put it on he said.  He could stand above her and watch her and she slowly turned and moved towards the player.

     I'm not sure if this will work...it's been a long time since I tried this player.  She opened up the wood cover and turned on the power with an audible click.  She put the record on and lowered the arm onto the vinyl.  You could hear the scratching of the needle filling the stereo.

     That is something you don't hear anymore.

Soon the music commenced and the voice of Kim echoed in the small room.  But as the music played, there was a definite skip in the tune.

     Damn scratches she said, getting up to blow on the record and seeing if it was dust or something else.

  And he didn't know what it was in that moment, but he saw her startle for a moment.  He got up, and moved across the room and stood behind her.  She was still leaning over the record player, Kim Weston still scratching and singing her tune.  The needle bumped and skipped now and again, and dulled the tune.

And then he realized she was crying.  A subtle movement, a very tiny shake.  But that she was holding it in and it was escaping without her control.

     I'm sorry. She had a hand pressed against her face like a mask.  He grasped her shoulders so he could turn her, and while she kept looking down he pulled her against him.

     What is it? he asked.  She still felt rigid, like the way a drowning victim pulls down their potential rescuer, he was vulnerable and in very foreign waters.

She didn't answer, and she kept that hand clumsily across her face.  He pulled her in closer and kissed the hand, wet with tears, wet with the salt of her and he realized this was the first time he had tasted her.  Tasted the part of her that she had never shared and as he gently put his lips across the fingers dripping the waters from her eyes he realized that she was as lonely as perhaps he had been.

And he pulled her into him tightly, her breath in short waves, and he wondered if he had stumbled like the needle as it crossed the well worn grooves of the record, stumbling on scratches that she had put on him a long time ago.

Unfinished...

He chose a pencil to write the note because those words could always be erased.  But he also chose a pencil because it showed that he had to push the graphite to the paper, exert effort, carve the letters and then let her consume them as she pleased.

He was traveling again, yet again, and before he had departed he thought he would give her the tiniest glimpse into what he was struggling to say.

He had exhausted the usual ideas, and then he felt that the most simplistic bare-boned effort would probably be the best he could do.  He would write her a letter.  Not type her a letter.  Not text her a letter, but rather go to the store, buy himself a pencil and then sit down and craft a note.

It was way harder than he imagined.  Nobody sold pencils anymore.  And the ones he found were unsharpened.  He would have to buy an electric sharpener or literally do the small square with the razor that peeled back the skin of the pencil until it was semi-blunt but never sharp.  He felt like a caveman.

Couple in the fact that his handwriting was careless at best, he felt like he would most likely reveal that not only couldn't he write, but he couldn't script either.  It felt clumsy.  Thumb-like.  And she deserved a stiletto move, a razor-sharp retort.  He needed to give her heart a paper-cut.  Not a major injury, but rather an annoyance that she felt touched, yielding to something he had provided.  It might not even bleed...it might be a pinprick, no bigger than a dot left by a wayward pencil.

So he had written her a few lines, a poor man's lyric, for her to stumble upon before his departure.  He had even worried about the folds and the lines as he tucked the paper into quadrants.  He decided to leave it underneath her windshield wiper, the left one, so that she would see it first thing in the morning.

And he remembered how he wanted to keep the cadence with her at a very slow beat.  A metronome in a 4/4 movement that might have been a funeral dirge.  She revealed very slowly, and mostly through a visceral move...a touch, a glance.  She hardly cracked open the book of her mind or the book of her tongue and let him know exactly, at that moment, where she was.  It was interpretation, it was an obscure Chinese language. 

So his only alternative was to commit it to a sentence, commit it to a word. 

So he spent the day away from her and heard nothing back.  No text, no "thanks for your note."  His immediate responses ranged from that she was the rudest of the planet or that she was worrying to figure out how to respond.  Neither favored him.

Finally, he decided to call.

How was the flight she had asked.  The flight had been fine, the landing had been fine.  Did she notice anything today?  Any note?  Any communication?

I left you a note on your car this morning.  Yes, I know it's a somewhat archaic move.  But I thought I'd give you something to ponder.

Her quiet air didn't let him know if she had read it or if she hadn't.

Really?  god it poured this morning.

It did?

Yeah, like white sheets.  I had to sprint to the car and got drenched.  


Do you want me to go look? She said.

He laughed a brief unbelieving laugh. Short and cutting.  No.  It just figures.

I can go look.  It might still be out there. And they both knew it was a lie.

Well tell me what you said?  What did you say?

He had purged his mind into the note, had felt the pencil almost snap with his words, letting them flow out and spread across the page.  He knew he would never remember, and he knew he would never be able to pluck the muse again.

Please tell me a little bit of what you said.  She was being polite. He hated this miss, this complete miss of a chance and now he had to go back and re-sculpt.  Vacuuming after the party.  The fun was gone, the noise abated.  Now it was an ugly echo.

I'll write you another one someday.  I'll try to remember what I said.  I think I can remember the good parts.

Okay.  I hope you will.

I will.

Goodnight.

Goodnight.

She hit the button on her phone, killing the call and looked at the shredded molt of paper on the desk.  She had found the note, crushed into a collapse of wet folded paper as she pulled into her office at work.  She had initially thought it was a campaign flyer, some annoying nuisance.  She had pulled it from the brim of her car hood and was unfolding it with very little care.

I just wanted to tell you that there is a part of me that has separated and it has left me

If I could describe, in petty spend-thrift words the perfection that I

Anyways, you have tattooed me and

a permanent scar

You

These were the only words that she could see, as the paper shredded in pieces in her hands.  The pencil writings were faint, and barely perceptible.

She wondered what it all meant.

Comfort

He had arrived at a point when the sky was mottled in orange and it was as still as a funeral parlor.  She was on the porch, a bit of strawberry margarita in her hand.  It was a favorite drink, the perfect color for when she had her back up, her cheeks lit, her mind made.

He took the steps deliberately, one at a time.  She fixed him with her gaze, watching like a hawk spotting prey.  He sidled up to her, sat down at her knee, allowing her to be above him, in the dominant position.  He felt the heat from the floor boards, even seemingly feeling the heat of the nails in the floor boards, and felt the dust brim all around them.  It was a Texas evening, portending a night of dark skies and perfectly circled dots called stars. 

He reached around her legs, jean clad, wonderful calves, tied up in a pair of boots.  She watched him, her cold drink in her hand, glass sweating as all get-out.  She crunched ice, her eyes beaming and amused.  He was probably powerless, but he didn't feel like he should admit it.  But she already knew.

His envelopment of her calves resulted in him kissing the brim of her knee.  An arched eyebrow from her was her response. 

You are aiming way too low.   She said it with a smile, a whiplash statement, drawling out in the syrup of her voice.

He kissed the jean clad knee again.

I have got to earn this he said.

And with that, he laid his head against her legs, watching the sun burn a hole in the West.  He heard her swirling the last icicles of drink in her glass, and he felt her more than heard her put the glass down.  She touched his shoulder, there, against him.  It was a weight, a spot, a finger, a hand that belonged to her and now was against him. 

They watched the sun broil in the sky, immolating itself against an afternoon.  Heat, colors, and the rhythm of an evening collapsing in a chaos of a night.  It was a violent ending, the sun crashing in a horizon and exploding in pinks and blues, colors and hues, all seemingly resistant to the ink-blue rising rapidly to rush at their feet.

I am he started to say.

Comfortable.  She finished the sentence for him.

The Geography of Geometry

Brown is really a tertiary color, mixed with both primary and secondary ones…it is considered a low-chroma color that comes with mixing blue with yellow to make green…and then adding red to the combination until you get the desired results. 

Coming out of the northeast, crossing the Appalachians, the generally low relief of the plains is broken in several places, most notably in the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains, which form the U.S. Interior Highlands, the only major mountainous region between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains.  He remembered the contours of her as he sailed high above the terrain, her gentle slopes, the arches and insteps, the curvatures and geometry.  He had seen her enough times to memorize her angles, her lines, the way she walked, the silhouettes of her against an afternoon.  He knew what dresses looked best, which clothes he could remember and the colors that created her art. 

The greens of the Tennessee valley start to run golden the further west you travel, and although the land is slowly rising towards the plains it is a gentle and gradual one.  The land flattens out as the trees give way to the farms and the furrows, the ground running in tannins, leathers and wood colors.  He remembered the flatness of her belly, the smoothness of her midsection that he had seen once, casually, not intimately.  There were still areas undiscovered, places unknown, places unrevealed.

He remembered a time when he was waiting for her to get out of a car, and as she slid out and entered the bright afternoon he saw her hair and its complex array of colors and cuts.  Like painted sands, they mingled and merged and shifted in an array of golds and brass, blondes and browns. It was an innocent look and it was a deliberate one, hair cut unevenly to fall perfectly, whether windblown or rain-battered.  It created a perfect veil, almost sculpted…it was a perfect petal, tightly wrought. 

 The Great Plains come to an abrupt end at the Rocky Mountains. The Rocky Mountains form a large portion of the Western U.S., entering from Canada and stretching nearly to Mexico. The Rocky Mountain region is the highest region of the United States by average elevation. The Rocky Mountains generally contain fairly mild slopes and wider peaks compared to some of the other great mountain ranges, with a few exceptions (such as the Teton Mountains in Wyoming and the Sawatch Range in Colorado). The highest peaks of the Rockies are found in Colorado, the tallest peak being Mount Elbert at 14,440 ft (4,400 m). The Rocky Mountains contain some of the most spectacular, and well known scenery in the world. In addition, instead of being one generally continuous and solid mountain range, it is broken up into a number of smaller, intermittent mountain ranges, forming a large series of basins and valleys.

At times he felt like he as an asymptote, his line following her curve arbitrarily closely, but never touching.  For infinity.  Forever.  He could see out the window to the low curve of the horizon.  It looked like forever, the light blues turning darker as the sand colors of the earth intersected in a flat line.  It seemed very far off in the distance, and it seemed that she was twice as far as that.  The geometry of the earth keeping her far from him, the simple math that he was here and she was there.  The colors in-between them were earthen in tone, flat in terrain, sun-bleached and sometimes barren.  Left without water they would crack and crevice, and break in your hands.  This far from her he felt brittle. 

He had had exactly one dream about her, a haunting one that had left him stirred, a vision of stark perfection that was unsettling…in it they had been walking together, a dark place like a woods or a forest…he could only see her outline of her face but he knew it was her.  He had tumbled, into a hole he had thought but as he looked up at her he knew it was planned.  She hadn’t pushed him, she had merely led him to this place.  And with both hands, she began to cascade dirt upon him, slowly at first but picking up speed.  Soon, it was at his knees, and he couldn’t move.  Soon it was pinning his arms against him and soon it was near his mouth and he could smell the dark earth, feel the moisture of it against him and soon he could only look up as she pushed more and more upon him…the dirt perfectly matching the color of her eyes.

The black tires skidded and smeared rubber on the white tarmac, announcing the landing in a town far from where he had taken off.  The land here was perfectly flat, and he walked out into a collision of colors and angles, noises and temperatures and yet he found himself looking for something else, looking for something he knew would not be there.  But he wanted it to be, wanted the shape to take place in front of him, wanted the shape to stand stark against his afternoon and be waiting there for him. 

There were a thousand shapes in front of him, and none of them were her.

Awkward Goodbyes

There is a moment in a phone call, prior to it being answered, when there is a part of you that hopes it isn’t answered because you are not prepared for what to say.  Or even worse, you are not prepared to hear something that is said.

He was in New York City, high up in a hotel in a gray scattered morning that littered rain and smeared the streets.  He let the phone ring its obligatory times and then disconnected when he heard her voicemail.  A minute later she called him back.

               Good morning, he started. 

               It’s 6am she said, voice still full of sleep.  He glanced at his watch, and realized he had forgotten the time zone.  Ah shit, I’m sorry.  Go back to sleep.

               He heard her breathing, imagined her in the dark. No, it’s fine.  What did you want?

What did he want?  He wanted a lot of things.  But mostly he had wanted to merely hear her.  Mostly he wanted to know that if he was far from her, miles from her, that he could at least hear her.  

               Well, he said.  I wanted to thank you for taking me to the airport. Goddamn am I lame.  He was walking around the hotel room, a corner suite upgrade that looked out towards Chelsea.  He could see the Hudson River, the low scud of clouds making the city look like it was in the 1950s, black and white.

               You already thanked me when I dropped you off.  You called me to do it again?

               Yeah.  Yeah, I know.  I guess I needed to tell you again. 

 He heard rustling, imagining her turning in bed, the sheets caught around her.  He imagined the pillow and the scent of her against it.  He was still sweating from the run he had finished.

               I went running this morning.  It was dark and the streets were empty.  It was actually a little eerie…kind of like “I am Legend”…you know that movie with Will Smith.

               That’s the movie where he killed his dog, right?

               Yeah.

               I hated that movie.

He watched the rivulets sliding down the glass of the balcony windows…he was reminded that he had just met her recently, in a rain.  And now he was unable to find the right words.  He realized how much easier it was when she was near him.

               So…yeah, I went running.  It’s raining here.  What’s it doing in Texas?

               There was a pause, and he imagined her maybe getting up to look.

               It’s pitch black.  I can’t see shit.  It’s 6 in the morning and I’m still wondering why you called.

When he was running he kept rewinding the tape in his mind.  He kept going back to the part of the departure and he remembered he couldn’t remember all the details.

               Why did you kiss me goodbye he finally summoned.

               He heard her breathing sort of exhale.  It was like an annoyance.  He was starting to get cold as the damp shirt clung to him.  He felt a little bit like he had opened a hallway and there were a thousand shut doors.  And he had randomly chosen this one to suddenly kick in.

               What? She finally countered.

               Why did you kiss me goodbye?  I mean, why did you kiss me…on the cheek?

He didn’t hear anything.  So he asked, you still there?

               Because it’s the fucking social convention.  Because the way you were sitting it was hard for me to kiss you anywhere else.  How about because I don’t really know you and because I felt like it was the right thing to do…otherwise I could’ve shaken your hand.

               He had his forehead pressed against the great plane of glass, he could almost feel the heartbeats of rain against it.  He had merely wanted to talk to her, he had really just wanted to hear her speak.  He would have been fine if she had put the phone down and just let him listen to her, breathing, sleeping…anything.

               When I was running, it was like I couldn’t get tired.  It was like I felt like I could run all the way to where you were.  It was kind of scary, actually.  The faster I ran the faster I wanted to run…and I felt like I couldn’t get to you fast enough. I felt like I was 15…a kid, sprinting down the streets. It’s like that line in that Al Green song…you know, where he says cause you make me feel so brand new.  I just felt like…

He stopped, realizing he was adrift.  He actually tapped the phone against his head.  He wanted to hang up and start over.  The silence grew.  It was like they were speaking via telegrams…spurts of words then time and space between them.

               I kissed you on the cheek because that is how you say goodbye to somebody. 

               How do you kiss somebody hello then?

Again, the pause.  Again, the empty room.

               You kiss them the same way.  He heard the phone click and she was gone.

He showered and the rain didn’t stop coming.  If anything it got worse.  And there is no worse city than New York in the rain…there are no cabs, umbrellas crowd and spill on you and streets fill up and cascade over shoes and generally turn everything into a damp mass of wool and sweat.

His flight didn’t leave for another 4 hours but he already wanted to start getting away.  He already wanted to be moving slightly towards her direction.  He motioned to the valet to signal him a cab and when one finally arrived he got in and told him to head to LaGuardia.

He made his way through security, drudging along with his wet shoes and damp hair. 

He found his way to the departure gate, dutifully waiting for his turn in the line spilling out the doorway towards the plane.  

He had a middle seat.

He was getting ready to turn off his phone as the steward hovered nearby, admonishing the passengers to turn off electronic devices.

He saw the text just as the man came over to gently remind him again to turn it off.

 

That was not our first kiss.  You will know when that happens.

He turned off his phone.

Firsts

                                                               “Strike-anywhere Matches”

In the end, it wasn’t the last things she did that stayed with him; rather, it was the series of firsts that she did that stayed with him, but each a cut deeper than he had initially realized. 

The car actually needed to be towed, from that remote space on the highway, and while she initially told him that she’d be fine she waivered when she saw the tow truck driver get out of the cab. 

               You’re not leaving me with him.  It was a directive, not a suggestion.  The driver, about 60, weighed well over 300 lbs, tugging on a rag kept in his back pocket, belly straining against a stained brown shirt with his name on it.  Ned.

               He didn’t remember a whole lot about Ned’s fussing with the car and hoisting it up off the two front wheels.  He remembered her standing pretty close to him though, not seeking protection, but just close enough to be noticed.  He didn’t want to keep looking at her, so he watched a few hawks circling above the trees.  Sporadic traffic kept them on the dirt by the road, still somewhat muddy from the rain.  But the air smelled clean, and in the slight breeze he could smell the shampoos from her still-wet hair, a  soapy and distinctive hint.  At one point she reached over to his shoulder, putting her hand on him while she raised a leg to let a pebble out of her sandals.  The sudden first touch was a surprise but it was like she had put her hand on a tree.  She didn’t ask, she just did.  And when she finished she merely released and resumed watching her car get cranked up into the air.

When Ned finished he indicated she should ride with him in the cab.  He remembered looking at her as she blanched and when she looked at him he had a wry smile.  You’re coming too she said.

               What about my car?  You want me to just leave it here?  

She answered by narrowing her eyes. 

As Ned climbed in the entire cab teetered that way and they looked up and into the seats.  The cab had a 4-on-the-floor shift and Ned was spilling over half of the bench seat. 

               You first she declared.  He climbed up, feeling Ned’s heavy presence and then she came in.  She squeezed the door shut and they rambled out of the road’s shoulder and into the north towards Elgin. 

The trip was noisy, high up above the blacktop, the tow truck ambling around 50 miles per hour.   He breathed in the sweaty proximity of the driver and the delicate presence of her.  She had her elbow on the window sill, staring out the glass with her chin in her palm.  She watched the sweep of trees and the crisscross of farm to market roads that shot out in directions away from them.  Now and again her left knee would glance off of his, uncontrolled and likely giving into gravity with the decided tilt of the cabin courtesy of Ned.

But at one point her leg, her knee…her calf, her thigh…they sidled up against his and stayed.  He looked at her but she kept her gaze on the right side of the road, unblinking, no change in expression.

It was like a strike-anywhere match had been lit and thrown against his skin.  Her leg was warm, denim-clad and it felt like it had cleaved into him.  He didn’t want to move.  He actually had probably stopped breathing and when he remembered to exhale he felt like his right side was glowing.  So he stayed rigidly still, not wanting to move the slightest that might move her away from him.  He almost felt like moving away slightly to see if she would follow but he realized that he was where he wanted to be.

He felt like he could feel the pulse in her, the heartbeat as the femoral artery churned the life blood through her.  He felt like he could feel how alive she was, even with her just staring out the window.  He felt the heat of her, the friction of her, and the visceral part of her that pulsated beneath her skin.  It was a simple touch of her leg against his but in his mind she had scorched his landscape, left it dry and hot-blown. 

Half of all forest fires are started in high summer by lightning strikes.  Catching the dry and kindled wheat and straw like gasoline that explodes and breathes hot breath across hundreds of acres of trees.

Here, in the cab, high above the Texas blacktop, he watched the road stream by, his mind careening in colors of orange and white, and the thoughts of a thousand one-hundred foot oaks ablaze.