The Bottom of the Ocean

 The pretty door noise was now just a reminder...the comings and goings, the in's and the out's...the arc of a leaf falling, a randomness that allowed the intersections to occur...a fallen star skidding sparks across a sky...a random rain.

He heard each of these when the door to the store opened, and he jack-knifed up in his chair, scurried hurriedly to the front of the store in hopes to see her...but it never really happened.  Rather it was just another visitor, another neighbor...he greeted and he politely engaged.  But a part of him leapt at each noise in the hopes that perhaps she might return...a politeness.  He had over-steered and careened into a ditch...had overdone...had overcooked...burnt the very gift he had wanted to give.

It is hard to compliment.  At least early on.  But he had the benefits of age, of seeing many many things...so when she entered his lens he had the benefit of perspective.  A beauty of rarity...that she perhaps could not completely agree with...she was too judgmental of herself to hear another voice.  But the fact that she cut him off and his judgement was saddening...to him.  She didn't know what he had seen, his advantages of where he had witnessed things...some good, mostly bad...but for him she represented some rarity that she didn't agree with.  So she hopped off the ride.

Yes, he attempted words.  Descriptions.  Adjectives.  It's what writers do...they see and then they describe.  And if his words filled a thimble or filled a gallon it happened to be what he saw.  She perhaps was only ready for the politeness...the quiet few.  

He wanted her to have an audience.  A stadium filled with flags with her name. 

She wanted a quietness of comfort and affection...a trust built on rare but cautious moments.

He felt like he was on the ocean floor...a vast, crushing place...devoid of light and movement...a deathly place that was flat and black.  She, in his active mind, was sun...or rather sunlight...streaming through waves and water.  She was within reach, but wavering...evaporating when a hand grasped at the prism of light through the liquid.

What a rarity he mouthed silently, surrounded by his books of antiquity, maps and scholarly reads...written by many many others much smarter.  His vegetables by the curb immaculate.  The streets of this western burg safe and smug in the knowledge of knowing each other.  Neighbors.  Neighborly.

He rubbed his eyes, tired from the smoke of the cigar, the scent of tobacco and the driftwood smell from the fire.  It was almost winter, the darkest part of the calendar.  And he was adrift...unsure.  

He had built half a bridge...and she had burnt her half...

But he also knew...as he pondered and let the evening settle against him, the sounds of the shop quieting...no doors opening, no cars hovering, no talks in the corners of the store...that perhaps she too was unmoored...drifting...looking at stars to steer by.  Ancient markers to guide a path. 

Would she return?  It was a question he begged in the quiet.

He thought he heard a yes...but he poured himself another bit of bourbon just in case he misheard.

For a scenario where she wouldn't darken his hallway wasn't exactly something that he really wanted to hear...it would be like the bottom of the ocean...just a dark, crushing sensation that he had no chance of surviving.

The Words you Use Because the Others Aren't Enough

 

There were slow languid days when he would just hold his coffee cup and watch the cars and walkers go by the front of the store, no real rhythm but just a steady enough distraction for him to be stimulated by the visual.

At times he saw here drive by and at times he noticed she looked towards him...maybe him, maybe the store.  He tried to remember which type of car she drove but each time she appeared in something different so he stopped trying by color or type...instead, he would close his eyes, and imagined a radar or similar set up...but one that expanded to the entire universe, of course the universe was bordered by the north by I-66 and came down to the split between Highways 340 and 522...but for him it was a world.

And he would wait for her...like a disturbance...a tiny splash across the lake...a rogue wave in a calm sea...he wanted to feel a difference, atmospheric...and sometimes he could detect her, long before her car went by.  He could tell because his breathing picked up a notch, his heart rate bump.  And there she was, head tilted slightly, staring into his world.

He loved that game.

And he loved that he knew absolutely nothing about her, not even her name.  Just a connection, like a remote relay station in Alaska finding a faint radio signal from Russia...unfamiliar languages, unknown words but a connection on a single frequency being sent out to millions of others...but only one hearing it.

He needed to work on knowing her.  He drained his coffee and turned the light switch that lit up the OPEN sign.

Funny enough, it wasn't too long when she came into the store, a handful of whatever season it was worth of vegetables...he nodded and they made small talk as there were other patrons...patrons, he mused...lookey-loos who perused the books.  But those were his type of people...book lovers...regardless. So he was polite. And boring.

She was talking about another farmer's market in the area near the center of town, wondering if he might go.

Nah he said.

But why?

I've seen enough farm vegetables to last a thousand lifetimes...I certainly don't need to go see my neighbors.

She had sort of straightened up, like she was a little put off.

Well, do you ever venture out of...here? she asked, an arm motioning across the store.

Every night.

He could tell where she was going with this but wanted her to work a little harder.

Other than that, she said, dripping with sarcasm.  Where do you go?

'scuse me he said, retreating back to his first office.  He didn't hear her follow him.  He went over and snipped the tip of a Corona cigar and held it over the flame of a candle...tobacco scented he noted and puffed until the end was lit.  By then she was now standing in the doorway.

I get out when I can, he said.  It's hard with this place, the farm, the typing, the

the typing?

Yeah, the typing.

What is that all about?

Well, he inhaled a long pull and then let it out...it's about these things called words, he smirked.

Small heat flashed in her eyes.  I know what typing is...

So you see, I can be kind of busy.

She watched him, wondering how busy one person in a store could possibly be.  So she tried:

Well don't you ever get...

lonely?

I was going to say bored...but since you brought it up.

I am bored all the time he said.

Like right now?

Definitely not right now.  But earlier...and probably later...but now?  No.

A really long pause with them staring at each other, the cigar smoke forming a peaceful bit of barrier between them...

So no to the Farmer's Market, she said quietly.

No, he said, but why don't I take you to a real farm, where I give things away on the free market.  It's not neutral ground for you, but if you'd like I'll just give you the address and you can come on over.  Whenever, no set day.

He went over to the desk and pulled out a card...and handed it to her.  She looked at it...said his name out loud, factual.  A pumpkin farm? she asked.

That was long ago...I just never changed the card.

She held the card up to her chest.  Maybe I will.

And with that she turned and walked away and out the door, the pretty little door noise announcing her departure.

Which was why he found himself 8 feet up in the air, on a ladder, in an apple orchard.  She had suggested it (It's not vegetables!) and he didn't want so lose a chance per se...so she picked him up in one of her many cars...a truck this time and they drove a few miles to Anderson's Orchards where they would provide you a bushel or two and a ladder and after signing a waiver you could explore the fields.  She had brought a basket of cold fried chicken and a salad of grapes and strawberries.  He had picked the first bushel in record time and thought he ought to slow down or it was going to be over soon.  He did like plucking the apples off the stems, the little pop they gave...and he loved the look of her looking up at him, a rare view.  Sometimes she held a hand over her eyes to keep the sun out, other times no...but her angular face was made more poignant from above.

They lunched a little later, a cotton blanket on the grass...he loved her cooking and wished he had the forethought to bring a bottle of wine or something...but they stayed low in the grass, heard the chirping of insects, sipping on bottled water and taking bites of grapes.  They talked about growing up, about the long broad circles that happened before they intersected, they talked of small towns and small minds.  The afternoon sky was adrift with a very light blue and white cotton clouds that mirrored the color of the blanket...it was therapy for him.  He felt lighter afterwards.

He told her so in the confines of the car in front of the store...he leaned into the back seat and pulled an apple from the bushel.  A bite? he offered and he held it while she opened her mouth and took a piece with her mouth, a bit of the juice running down her chin.  He moved his hand to gently wipe it from her chin.

He brought the apple up to his mouth, right next to her bite mark, and took a bite.  He then took her hand, gave it a kiss and opened the door, taking the apple with him.

She came into the store some time after.  She actually bought a book, an Italian cookbook originally written in the native language with translations on the side.  It was a language he secretly loved...he was just too lazy to download babble or some other app...but the passion of the Italians was something he felt he could immerse himself in...like the Pretty Woman Opera scene...it was either an appreciation or it was part of your soul.  To him, it sat out of reach on the soulful level...a key to unlock his narrow-minded cage.  So of course he sold it to her, without all the revealings.

One time she asked about the nearby Skyline Caverns...
I hate them he said...

Why?

I fear just when I get there, into the deepest part of the park, there will be a tremendous earthquake, unprecedented...and it will all cave in and I'll be stuck, buried alive with all those former stalactites.  

Oh.  Okay.

One time she came into his second office, it must have been maybe fall as it was cooling and he had a small fire burning...a cigar smoldering but this time there was a glass of bourbon near the chair.  By this time he could recognize her pattern of her walk...the way her shoes echoed on the wood floor...many years later he would come to recognize her scent, the lavenders...but here and now, all he could smell was the smoke from his fires...

I didn't know you drank liquor...is that bourbon or scotch?

Really?  hmm, I guess we didn't have the chance to find out...and this is bourbon.

A pause, as she looked at the glass, slightly shivering.

Would you care for some?  

She looked at him and nodded.

He took a draw from his cigar to keep it going and put it back into the ash tray.  He stood and moved towards a wall that had a slight wooden grip on it.  He pulled the grip and about six feet of wall opened up, revealing a glass case backlit with copper colored lights.  There must have been 50 bottles of bourbons and while she knew a little she didn't recognize the majority.

What kind do you like?

What kind?

yeah, do you like it with a little bit or more vanilla, caramel like?

I like a little bite.

He nodded and examined the rows...pulled a dark bottle out...uhm, Ice or neat?

Ice please.  

He made a face and went over to another part of the wall, adjacent to the case.  A smaller grip of wood.  He pulled it out and two shelves of crystal glassware emerged with a black machine with a green light.  Inside the black machine was a clear box of similarly crystal ice.  He picked a glass, held it up to the light to make sure it was clean and added some ice.  He shut the door and went back to the bottle.  He poured her a couple of fingers, just enough to cover the ice.  

He held it out to her, grabbed his own drink and angled his glass to her:  to new friends he said.

New friends she said, clinking his glass.  

She drank, holding it with both hands and moved closed to the fire.

They talked of being cold and being in places that were really warm...they talked about the scent of fires and how it reminded her of her mom's home...he talked about the spiritualness of splitting wood from cut-down trees and the circle of oak to flame, from tobacco leaves to smoke...she sipped her drink and he poured himself another.

Finally, in a quiet moment, with the fire sputtering and the cigar dying in the ashtray, he offered this:

You make me very relaxed...exceptionally comfortable.

She was still standing but no longer shivering.  He only had one chair in his second office and he thought right then and there about adding another...just in case.

Well thank you...she had a habit, when pushed to reveal, of an almost-whisper, like if she said it softly enough it may not be admitted.

He turned towards his desk, a small and tiny part of the place and opened a drawer.  He pulled one open and pulled out a thick sheath of papers.  They were all typed, some with corrections and others with erasures.  It was about half an inch thick.  He put them in his lap.

I've always admired nurses who can find a good vein, he started.

Uhm, okay...

You know, to draw blood...it is like they just know, they find your arm, tie the tourniquet, thump once or twice and plunge ahead...they know exactly where to look.  Writing is sort of like that, with way many more misses...sometimes you find the vein, sometimes a dry hole.  You keep plunging the needle in hopes of discovering something magical, life-giving, life-sharing...but it is an endless chase.

But since I met you, I feel like I've tapped into a great source of creativity, the great vein...a great vein at least...blood rushing through my brain, feverishly typing and shaping thoughts and words...I feel like it is a hot pulsing vessel that I have stabbed into...

He looked up at her...she had a bit of worry on her face.

I'm sorry...that's too graphic.  

She didn't say anything.

Simply put, you've created a fresh new perspective and joy for me...and I've tried to capture it.  I've written so many things...letters to you, songs, poems.

She still stood there...and maybe, just slightly...took a step back.

But you don't know me, she offered.

No...but there is an idea of you...maybe even a dream of you...but there is definitely a you.

Anyways, he continued, I was going to share some of them with you...but I am now thinking it isn't the right time.

She put her glass down next to his...thank you for the drink.

She walked away...he recognized the sound of her footsteps...and heard the pretty door noise as she went back out into the cold.

Words

 She had passed it maybe a couple of times...new to this town she was just now figuring out her rights and lefts, her norths and south.  Something about the place that she checked some place in her mind to return...and then kept driving.

The name of the place was Word...and she wasn't sure what it was so she left it alone...figured she'd never need it.

In the high summer she was ambling around town and she saw the place again, but in addition to the green outline of the building there was a couple of huge tubs, like bathing ones...and inside of each of them, filled to the gills so to speak were a variety of summer vegetables:  tomatoes of the ripest red she had ever seen, yellow onions, butter beans prepackaged in plastic, cucumbers, green and red peppers and of course snap beans.  She was at a redlight and she casually noticed people stopping by, fondling a few of the bigger offerings and putting them in handbags or plastic.  She furrowed her brow at this obvious shoplifting and turned the corner to park.  Parking was free on the weekends...and she rarely got into town given her commute to the tech centers in Virginia.  

She got out of the car, leaving the confines of air conditioning and immediately wondered if she should continue this brief stop.  The humidity was nearly 100% with no chance of rain...just a pure white sky.  But she continued and found herself amongst a couple of folks picking through the bins.  One old lady slightly nodded as she held up a very long cucumber and she suppressed a giggle...the lady tucked it under her arm and strode away.

what the fuck she thought.  People are just coming right up and taking this.  She glanced at the door of the Word store, still not knowing what it was and saw a tiny cardboard sign by the front.  It had pretty poor handwriting but she could read:  ....And Vegetables.  That's all it said.  No price tags, no suggested tips.  Just that.  By now she was sweating and her hair started to curl at the ends.  She decided to go in.

Immediately cooling relief...like walking into a freezer.  And a slight scent...tobacco?  Was somebody smoking here, she thought?  It was a nice smell...like a place men like her father or her grandfather would gather, beside a fireplace or a lantern, and throw shadows against the wall and talk...she could her her father's drawl in a place like this.  It smelled like that, plus some old pages, not dusky, just airy.  

As she entered there wasn't any chime or bell...she looked at rows and rows of books.  Some were very new best sellers but others were of maps, or coffee table size.  There wasn't a ton of organization but it was inviting...that and the familiar warm scent...of men, she thought.  And not in some exclusionary way, but rather a place where a woman could know she wasn't intruding but rather welcome. 

She noticed a door towards the back and walked towards it...the scent of a cigar grew slightly...and against the yellow light she saw tendrils of smoke.  She worried for a second and then she saw him.

He was reading...a cigar in one hand and a book in the other.  It was of black and white photographs.  He was older than her but still had a look about him...she felt that and it was like he was waiting for her.

Hello he said, without even looking up...can I help you?

She moved closer to the door, the room warm with scent but still pleasing in comparison to the outside...she thought she heard a slight sound of music from a white sonos speaker in the corner...Uh, she started, I wanted to ask about the vegetables...Christ, she thought.  What an opener.

He looked up and regarded her...it was an immune gaze but she suddenly felt exposed...not sure, maybe the sweaty hair, maybe the sweat on her back...but she felt like she needed to put on some lip gloss or toss her hair about.  He was slightly smiling.  The vegetables?  What about them?

Well...she said, her hand climbing up the door frame, elongating her in front of him.  How much are they?

How much?

yeah?

Well they're free.

Free.  You mean like one or two?

No, like take as many as you want...or they'll just go to waste.  He looked back down at his book and took a draw from his cigar...she couldn't tell how tall he was but he looked lanky, but in good shape.  Sharp eyes and when they fell on her she couldn't help but feel noticed.  

He looked up again...but if you want a book you're gonna have to buy it.

She nodded, understood and went out front again.  Humidity smacked her back into a bit of a reality and she plucked two of the best looking tomatoes she had ever seen and a bag of butter beans.  She got back to her car and threw the items in her front seat.  She couldn't wait to get home.

He watched her disappear like the blown smoke from his shrinking cigar...I really should put a bell on that goddamn door.  She was new...hell, he knew mostly everybody.  She was more city.  But her voice...it ladled out of her like southern gravy.  It was warm, fluid, and reminded him of something...he couldn't put his finger on it.  He inhaled another turn of the cigar...felt the warming smoke inside before exhaling, the scents lingering inside his mouth and his nose...he looked at the embers at the end of the cigar.  He blew on them, the orange gray suddenly becoming reddish orange, a fiery flame...that suddenly succumbed to the oxygen and air and returned to a quiet state...

Back at her new house she had washed the tomatoes and pulled one out, a delicious red with a little bit of give to the skin to know it was very ripe...she took a knife from its magnetic strip near the fridge and cut it in half...some juice and seeds fell out on the cutting board...she cut the half once more in half and took her salt shaker and sprinkled it liberally across the red slice.  She took a bite, and returned to a time when she was much younger and interrupted her mom cooking dinner, snatching a piece for herself before being shooed out the door.  It burst in her mouth.  

Whenever she drove down Main Street in Front Royal she usually scanned the road for bikers, or kids, or walkers...but she now had a bit of an orientation...she needed to at least cross into the line of sight of the bookstore.  She had gone in now and again, perusing but mostly seeing if he was around...in his office or arranging books.  Usually they were alone, the scents of the store and the heat outside...she hoped she wasn't intruding as she rarely bought a book...in fact had never...but she felt like if she was going to grab a bag of summer vegetables that she should find him.  Talk to him.  Whatever.  He always obliged.

Fall in the Shenandoah Valley is actually the very best time of year...when the colors come, starting high in the mountains and slowly filtering down into the floor...being far enough from DC, Front Royal is able to be rid of tourists and crowds once the end of September hits...October is delightful and November sucks...but when the colors bloom it is truly a spectacle to witness.  And the summer vegetables move into the fall...the tubs now dark with radishes and beets, root vegetables...but some fava beans and kale are still worth checking out...not quite as many people were in front of the store, the winds picking up and allowing just a smattering of people picking over the tubs.  She liked radishes...so she would wait until late in the afternoon when the sun was behind the mountain but still glowing...and she would collect them in a plastic bag until it was brimming.  The bookstore had faint light so it always seemed dark...she wondered if he was there.

She opened the door and a tiny pretty noise was made.  Hmm, she thought, he's getting smarter.  

Can I help you?  She heard his voice from the back.  She moved towards it.  

He wasn't smoking a cigar this day but he was in a new spot...a new room that she had never known...it was like a parlor, with a fireplace.  Christ she thought, how many rooms does this place have?

It was a tiny fireplace, like for one or two pieces of wood and it spilled out into the room noticeably...but it gave off a nice warmth...and somewhere she heard the sonos playing its music.

I'm finally expanding, he said.

Expanding?

Yeah, making rooms people want to be in...to read, or just be...here.  He moved his arm around the room...there were candles on the shelves, all lit.  It smelled of linen...it was like a spa...inside a bookstore.

Uh, she started...this is lovely...it kind of feels like a spa.

A spa?  Really?  Not what I was going for.

But you have candles...that smell like linen.  

He snapped his head towards the burning wicks.  Goddamn.  I should have kept the theme.

The theme?

Yeah, tobacco.  He stomped off and went further back into the store.  She took her brimming back of radishes and left.

Winter in Virginia is unwieldy...it starts maybe in October and ends in March, or maybe February.  It snows or sleets.  It is cold and windy and then randomly a day in November it is warm.  It sucks because it should be snow and predictable...it is always the opposite.

Despite the cold temperatures the tubs in front of the store were full...the town was like a gray shawl, wrapped around itself and turned inward for warmth.  She knew that they would be filled with carrots and brussel sprouts and maybe some parsnips...winter vegetables generally sucked and she harkened back to that day with the tomato and its summer salty taste. 

She wondered, astonishingly if that is how he tasted in a kiss.  She shook her head, trying to drive it out, but it lingered.

She grabbed a handful of carrots and started snacking on them even as she pushed the door to the store open.  She heard the pretty noise.

Carrots, huh? he walked towards her, the afternoon light being sucked out to the west like a pull from a straw...those could use some ranch.

Ranch? she said

Yeah, carrots suck by themselves...I've been toying with the idea of those ranch packets being left outside but can't figure out if they'll enjoy them alone or only with chicken wings.

They don't suck by themselves she said, loudly crunching one for emphasis.

He smiled.  Okay, point taken.  He clapped his hands together...so what can I do for you?

For me, she got out, words stuck by carrot bits and pieces.

Yeah...you never buy any books...you take all my vegetables...

whaaa?

Kidding...he smiled.  He strode up next to her.  In the dying light he could see her eyes were really dark...like rich soil...like where only the best things would grow...ideas, thoughts...she was a fertile gaze and he regarded her.

I'm very glad you come by here...

She stopped crunching her carrot.  I am too.

He extended a hand, worn with gardening, typing words on a typewriter, holding burning cigars...it was tough and ordinary but when she let it envelope her pale cold hand it was warming...it felt almost like it came from an oven.  It warmed her, stirred her.  

Outside the last remnants of an afternoon played high above the sky before darkening...in her hand she held bright orange carrots and in her other hand she held something she wasn't quite sure of...but wasn't quite ready to relax her grip.

  

Winter Part Two

 He sat down to write a love letter.

First, memorializing the date...in case this piece of paper was ever found, tucked in a drawer, concealed in a secret space...many, many days in the future...so somebody reading it, discovering it would be able to detect the time.  

He scrolled her name...a name that he had said many times...breathed it out, whispered it in an evening, it fell from his mouth like a poem.  It wasn't her birth name, but rather a shorter version.  It was phonetic and delicate...and youthful.  

He struggled with a bit of the opening lines, wanting to catch her early...pull her in.  A gob smack.  He was writing in ink so there was no chance to re-do...edit.  It was spilling words literally on the page.

She had mentioned that his handwriting was hard to read at times and so he strove to craft carefully...trying to articulate a feeling that was likely unfathomable.  Colors to the blind, music to the deaf.  

Rarity.  That was his most poignant prose.  Her rareness.  Despite her efforts to remind him she was "every-day" he proposed that she was like a new one...somewhere between Saturday and Sunday...she was the peace of a weekend, the calm of a break...but even rarer.  Like a Leap Year...but even rarer still.

A comet, every 80 plus years or so.  Yet he got to enjoy her every day...whether in his mind, or in person.  And when in his mind she was pane-glass window colors...a little fuzzy on the edges but those colors...lit behind by a sun...beamed down upon him.  

He tried to describe her voice, which is a bit of an odd compliment...her drawl, her brogue.  It was uniquely hers...and he had heard it in his ears, pressed tightly, squeezed out in breaths, and sometimes just opening a conversation on the phone.  It changed only when there was a hint of trouble...and he liked that...he could tell she was taking issue...like a barometer before a storm.  A detection.  He could attempt to defuse, and restore the sonorous delicate southern lilt of hers.

His words carried across the page.

He remembered how she smelled in a morning, freshly showered with lotions applied.  He attempted, poorly, to capture that.

The way her make up came off in a shower, the color of her hair slicked back, her plain nakedness that revealed such extraordinary beauty.  No need for anything else...

He tried mightily not to compliment.  Nor flatter.  Rather, he tried exceedingly hard to describe the way he saw her...the way she revealed herself to him.  And if in that reveal it was striking, or was complimentary then so be it.  It was at that point a truth, so she couldn't dismiss it.  It was a fact.

He wrapped the letter with some wishes...he looked outside at the evening and the slate of snow that covered the world outside the window.  It was a cold but beautiful evening.  It made him want to clutch, clench...have proximity to her, hands in her hair...a sort of wildness that generated heat.  The steam rising from a bathtub of soapy waters.  The slipperiness of entanglement in said waters.  The cold outside stewed a sense of her inside of him.  

It was winter.  He wrote her a letter and signed his name at the bottom.  It felt inadequate but it was the very best he could conjure.  And that is exactly what he tried to tell her.

 

Good Bones

 He was never entirely comfortable sitting in her old room, her childhood bed, the scattered remnants of her younger years strewn about the place...an old jewelry box filled with scribbled notes from high school, passed surreptitiously across rows of neatly lined chairs.  He had read just one, from some guy named Gary and it was quite entertaining.  She had gotten mad when she saw him reading it, snatched it away and stuck it back in the box.

You just going to keep that?  Forever? he said.

Maybe...I just don't throw things away. 

He looked around.  Clearly.

So he never felt welcomed...like an intruder, disturbing her past...a past he wasn't ever a part of...a part of her that she liked to keep.  So he tended to sit in the middle of the small bed and not touch anything.

But he did love her outline as she stood near the window, a shape he was exceedingly familiar with...her back to him, her hair in a pony-tail...the slope of her shoulders that came from years of athletics...even her height was measured in memory, he knew where she met him if she stood in front of him, where the slope of her met him...found him.  He was very comfortable with all of that.

Come on...it's almost supper.  She had turned, extended her hand out and pulled him off his seat.  

Her mother's house had good bones...it had wintered and summered and stayed...of course the stairs strained a little bit, just to let somebody know that you were descending...an arrival of wooden notes.

The whole family, or at least a majority of it was downstairs...brothers, others, wives and children were in a quiet buzz of conversations...it sounded like a radio was in the kitchen playing some beach music...the scent of food floating amongst the bodies...a salty poultry smell...cut by a sweetness like a pie warming on the stove.  

She was the youngest and so naturally she had the most responsibility...ensuring drinks were topped off, helping her mom in the kitchen.  She had a bit of a natural grace moving along the floor, swaying to avoid a collision with a child, balancing multiple plates, contributing a few words to a conversation that left everybody laughing.  Like most kids in their old homes you almost revert to being that age again, or at least respecting the authorities that raised you...one can't help it.  You're home...a place that stamped its imprint on you like a penny-press...way more permanent than a tattoo...it was a feeling...a sensation.  A place.  A place where you assumed a certain role, acquiesced to a certain behavior.  

As a stranger he just watched...sipping his vodka cranberry...he was the only one drinking liquor...it was a beer and wine crowd.  Perfect, he murmured, feeling judged but in a friendly way.

For dinner he sat on the couch and she sat on the armrest...he was sort of sunken in the back, lowered...he could listen well but he couldn't be seen readily...she was perched, higher, taller and commanded the view.  Her thigh was near his face...he put a hand on it...she put her hand on his for a very brief moment.  It meant the world.

Supper was amazing...amazingly loud...voices, forks on plates, asks for more...he had one serving of just about everything and let his empty plate just loiter...he was listening...trying to see where the conversation was flowing.

You're not saying much...she was looking down at him, smiling...

I'm doing a lot of listening...

Well, if you feel compelled...

I'm good.

Okay.

The clean up was more chaos, with people trying to jockey to help rinse, or help dry...pretty soon she had of course taken charge and it was just her and a sibling.  He watched her like he was a friendly invite...an allowance to come into this home, surrounded by her...her friends, her family, her things.  Her formidable alchemy of an environment that made her...it's like watching the ingredients of something you crave...something that you cannot ever have enough of...and you'll never be able to take notes...it's not something you can snap a picture of and replicate.  The good bones of this place had created...over years...like that whole business of pressure and diamonds...of sand and pearls.  She emerged.  

Later that night, cramped in her tiny childhood bed, they had kissed.  His kissed had asked for more. Her tiny shake of the head let him know that just like the stairs it was highly likely they would be heard...whether a bed spring, a floor squeal or even one from her.  

He smiled...knowing he was merely a guest in the good bones of a place that brought her to him.