Jazz

 Here...

He walked into the room where she was reading, comfortably on the couch...somewhere Sonos was playing some light instrumentals...she looked up and saw he had a bag from a fairly exceptional boutique.

What's that? she said.

He set the bag down next to her and she pivoted and put down her magazine.  She pulled out the crepe paper and pulled out an ivory dress that came out of the bag like a long rope.

For tonight, he said...and don't wear a bra.

It had rained that evening and the streets were reflective and starting to shudder with the first sparse evenings near fall...it was a combination of humidity and chill, and it made her hair curly up a bit.  Stepping out of the Uber he took her hand and she unfolded out of the seat...she was stunning and somewhat hunched as she got out and then, standing straight up she turned to him slightly.

She looked down at herself.

Well....I guess this will make quite an entrance.

He half smiled...nodding. Thank you for allowing me to dare was all he said.

He brought her into him in a clutch, smelling her soap and shampoo...and kissed her where her hairline met the back of her neck.  She turned towards him and her mouth was the warmest part of her body and the street was wet with recent rain and the evening smelled scrubbed and it was if they both were completely undressed but they were amongst strangers to they behaved.

There was a short walk to the entrance with the yellow lights carving into the sidewalk...the entrance where sounds spilled out and you could hear the high tapping of a cymbal and the low drone of a saxophone...and entering it, whispering his name to the maitre de, who accepted his folded bills and nodded and drew them down towards a table near the stage.

He remembered something he had read...and wished he had written it himself...as he sat down next to her, the darkened room filled with strangers and a common desire...the scent of cigarette smoke and he wished he had remembered to buy her a pack and watch her...it was one of his favorite views...anyways...he recalled the passage...

Jazz, at its very core, is sex. The one begs the other. Harmonic tension, rhythmic tension, and even melodic tension, followed by release matches the feel of the moment, passion and unrest bent up inside a person before the ultimate and sudden exhale.

so he watched her settle in...

Thought about her begs...which she never did and never would...if anything it would be him to her.  But the tension...he loved it.

He watched her reach into her purse and watched her pull out a pack of Marlboro lights...she glanced at him like seeking approval as this was a rarity...but her wearing a clingy gauze outfit that showcased her nipples was already pushing the norm so there was no need to do anything other than nod...so she unfurled the plastic and pulled delicately on one single thin cigarette to extract from the box.

(Now in his past his father has smoked and he had a zippo lighter that opened with a click and you thumbed the little circle and a flame was created...in this moment he knew he had missed an awful opportunity to pull something out of his suit pocket and unleash a flame, perhaps her hand touching his slightly as she pulled it close to alight her, her first inhales as the embers glowed a fast deep orange and a few puffs of smoke that she tried to blow away from him)

Instead she pulled out a box of matches so he reached across and took them from her, snapped one of them against the side and produced a flame...but she did take his hand and pull it towards her...an extremely intimate moment as she brought the fire near her face, regarding him the whole time...the few inhalations, exhalations and she sat back and he withdrew, waving the match extinct into a smoking little black stick.

The evening played on, the sounds conjuring up just a world that was contained inside the room...the sweat of the musicians, the smell of cigarette smoke, the occasional sounds of ice in a glass...she was smoking again but she had slid closer to him and was resting against him...they kept ordering drinks and a few bits of food and when she had leaned over to kiss him she tasted of jazz...a combination of something assembled, her senses and her wants, her evening and her letting go, her trust and her tiny, tiny hints of something that was present just underneath her skin but goddamn there were other people in the room.

The uber ride home was quiet and she slept.  He actually helped her out of the car and with one arm around her he led her upstairs and made the decision to let her sleep in the cling of the dress.  He got her a water and took off her shoes.  She murmured some things and she told him how relaxed she felt.  

He put her into bed and he aligned upon her as she lay on her side.  He whispered some words into her ear and he could feel her smile.

Plucked

 

Goddamn have I missed you.

Not in a distance or sequence kind of way...but in a lost-limb type of absence...a bottom of a glass reaction to a memory that had once filled it completely.  

I breathe you in, the scent of a city in its sweat-stained summer'd past, with the first tendrils of Fall starting to spill into the mornings, a coolness along the avenues that rides on breezes that brush past you like strangers on a sidewalk.

I taste you, the air of you...the inhalation of streets and windows where pasta boils on a stove and street-vendors mix concoctions and the mix of scents is distinctly yours...

I remember a tub, filled to the brim with warming waters...a delicate step into it and a leg sliding past the surface...a spill of water onto the tile as I joined...the skin upon skin and the steam blurring your face slightly and your hair turning darker in the water...the tendrils turning like leaves in the Fall.

I remember the faces of strangers, figures and stares, laughter and aloofness...worries and doubt at times, complete joy at times...a mix, a cacophony of noises and reactions to a city with labored breathing.

I try but completely fail at conjuring up you in my mind...I cannot quite get the fullness of you in person, the sound of your quiet voice, the darkness of your eyes, the warmth from just being in the same place as you, the pull of gravity keeping me from looming over you, the ache of a distance and the memory failing to remember, to replace...so I get pieces, shards and fragments that pierce my memory and I gather them like a puzzle pushed onto the floor, disconnected and misshaped.   

Until I see you again.

And then, as if I am plucked from the very part of where I was I return.  We return.

And the parts of me that fit the parts of you find themselves familiar again.

And surrounded by millions of people we don't even notice them.  Because you are enough for me to capture and keep in a singular lens, plucked from the others to rest my gaze and fold into me.