A Return of Sorts

 It wasn't their city.

He remembered an argument over a phone when he was soaking in a tub in the Plaza...a long ago debate about actually getting together...her voice on the phone tin-like and thin...he stayed in the tub as the water grew cold.  He hated arguing with her.

She was unlocked in the low country...she was sea breezes and open windows in a Spring morning when the dew is drying and the sun is just barely a warmth.

He was a brick alley.  But he loved sunsets.

She was the first cool feeling of a wave over your feet in the ocean...the sand warm, the shells pin-pricking their way under the soft heel and the foamy wash a bit of a chilling surprise...that then withdrew only to do it again seconds later.  She would likely argue that one should be aware that the ocean was sometimes cold and waves literally happened in waves...a recurring tug between gravity, the moon and tides.

She was almost always right.

But God did he want New York to be theirs...cab rides colliding down darkened streets, stolen kisses in darkened doorways, a vibe, an energy...when the rest of the world (the southern world, her world) was putting on pajamas and socks New York was putting on lipstick and stepping out.  The music in certain bars, the dollars slipped into doorman's hands, the restaurants with 10pm reservations...he so wanted that.  He wanted to be in a suit, a tie...and by night's end he wanted his tie in her purse and her lipstick on him.

But it never happened.

She wanted porches and swings, cobbler and tea.  Thunderstorms you could see coming.  The crickets and the peeping frogs.  The quiet after a sunset. The smell of rain.  It's not like he relished the sirens and the horns, the pungent trash bins and neon...it was the pulse that he wanted.  Her pulse to match it.  And she didn't.

The quiet of a New York city morning...gray sunlight.  He wanted to wake with her in a bed of black and whites.  Coffee in proper porcelain.  She was content in a morning with a rooster and a cup from a camping collection.  

He pondered his dilemma...the eventuality as he felt it.  He didn't disagree as much as want to add her as an ingredient into his favorite.

He loved the sound of his footsteps in the dark in a night...she loved the way the grass felt on her bare feet.

He was going back to the city...and as he prepared he took only his best clothing...his favorite dress shirts, his cologne, his polished shoes and his collar stays.  He touched the material, felt the heft.

He thought of her love of flowers.  

He remembered a time when they were drinking bourbon in an evening...fireflies were out as it must have been early summer...her legs were folded under her.  The orange of the twilight had dissipated...they were in a bit of shadows...he heard the ice molting in her glass...the air was still and it was quiet...like in an empty church.  It kind of struck him...he remembered a slight kiss and a murmur. He remembered a moon.

He finished packing for his trip to New York. He thought about how it wasn't their city.  

He zipped the zippers close.  

Tobacco Barns

 

So they found themselves in a summer...an unusually warm one in the Surry County seat and the weathermen and women had been predicting storms throughout the week.  But as they walked along the roadside of 626, holding bottled waters condensating from the humidity there wasn't a cloud in sight.

Ahead, in an acreage there was a red shaped barn...an old tobacco one, flimsy, but still standing.  

Let's go explore he said...and they pivoted their path and slowly started the angle towards the barn.

They approached it, looming red and contrasting against the blue background...it was slightly raised, like it was being readied for transport vs dying on this grassy beaten-down turn.  It looked like it was going on a trip...against its own wishes.

They pushed open the creaking door and went in, the humidity cloying, like a fishbowl...slivers of daylight strewn down in sleeves...but it smelled of old wood...and perhaps old tobacco if you closed your eyes.

The colors in the barn were collecting...yellows from the tannins of the sun, dark shadows in the corners of 100 years of wood, the beaten down hay was gone from a color to a blend of whites and darks...the red paint from outside was just barely perceptible inside.  

She was wearing a black shirt and jeans and the dust was in orbit around her, pushed from their feet, in colloidal suspension hovering in the sleeves of light shining through the slats in the roof.

it was like stepping back into 1860...or sometime around then...with the hurrying of people and bright-leaf tobacco...stringing it up into the rafters, opening the windows to dry out the leaves...

In his mind he felt the weather...the outside.  The accumulating humidity and the pouncing of storms.  Here in the old barn the mood changed...the sleeves of light dissipated...shadows gathered from the corners and now joined hands to fill the room.

He had never smoked...but he loved the images, the demure way women did.  The way they held the cigarette, the way their mouth slightly opened to put it gently between their lips, the slight purse as they inhaled...maybe the way they pushed them to the side as they gently blew the smoke away...and the warmth of their mouth if he happened to kiss them during or after smoking...

What are you thinking about? She was staring at him, backlit against the barn...not an accusatory tone but more of a "hey, pay attention" one.

I was imagining you smoking.

Me?

Yeah.

Okay...she knelt down to tie her shoelace as it had unraveled...why would you do that?

Can't you smell it?  Can't you smell the old tobacco?

She stood up and turned around...maybe?  

He moved closer to her...took her arm and guided her closer to the wall.  Some of the tobacco poles where they hung the leaves were leaning against it...smell one of those poles.

She moved closer and put her nose against the wood.  Mmmmm...that's delicious.

He joined her, enjoying the musk of wood and old tobacco and summer.

I think I'd very much enjoy watching you smoke, he said.

She pulled back a little...really?  Why?

He grabbed her hand and pulled her with him, moving slightly towards the door...a breeze had picked up and inside the barn it was suddenly stale and hot...he could feel the light wind coming through the door.

It's hard to explain...you just make certain things...better.  Sexier.

She let out her low laugh.  You're weird.

He nodded...they let their hands touch briefly and then connect and held them as they walked back to his car...

Let's go buy some cigarettes...I know this gas station.

Worship

 I awaken to the sultry sound of far-off bells, beckoning the faithful to come and bend a knee, join in a silence and consider somebody worthy...

I lift my eyes up hoping to see you, wanting the stained-glass to be burnt a dark brown and when the light pours in I imagine a stare...I murmur your name like a prayer, the words alighting from my lips and ascending to your ear...a heaven's distance away.  I clench my hands together, almost painfully, as I want to rip them apart and clutch you...but you are far so I hold onto myself in the hopes of saving them for you some day.

A basket is passed, brimming with people's money...I am tempted to reach in and snatch as much as I can, and maybe buy a ticket for a plane or a ride on a bus and come to you...instead I merely pass it on to the people beside me.  We stand and we chant and we kneel some more and we sit...I think unholy thoughts and immediately ask for forgiveness only to start it over again...so I close my eyes and all I can see is your face.

I read from the books and I believe...I believe that in them I get the same feeling from you...the peace, the courage...the love.  

I sing, not well, but joyfully...I want you to hear the words we lift up...I change and insert your name in certain portions and I feel even better in my bad singing.

We conclude...we rise...we stream out, gently yielding to others as they depart...I take my time, enjoying the growing silence...it reminds me of you...this peaceful empty beautiful building...not physically...but of how you make me feel...how you descend upon me and let me falter and fail...a save...a temptation.

The wicked thoughts I conjure up...the confessions I make...the penance of our separation.

I finally depart...moving from a tiny place of worship out into a world where everything I see reminds me of you.

Tastes

Departing in the dead-ass earliest of mornings he could still taste her...weaving through the travelers and the luggage and the security gates and over-head announcements...even past the Starbucks line and its scent of coffee and pastries floating gently in the terminal...he could still taste exactly how she tasted...the slight granular and poke of salt on her lips, the cold of the iced-down tequila with the contrast of her slightly warmer tongue...he walked past a gate jammed with travelers and found his a few hundred feet later.

In the antiseptic confines of seats and airline brands he put in his headphones...he had finally joined Spotify and found it amusingly underwhelming...but he was tired.  They had barely slept.

Hours earlier...she had asked..."do you want a lick?"

She had raised an eyebrow, a skill he had never possessed...she was holding the salt rimmed cup in one hand and a lemon in the other...she was still dressed which was disappointing but that was only a matter of time.

Sure, he responded...but where?

She set the cup and the lemon on the counter and started unbuttoning her shirt...she unbuttoned a few buttons but then reached behind her to loosen her bra.  Both items of clothing were loosely clinging to her, like defying gravity and beneath them...well.

She reached over to the lemon and started just below her neck, squeezing it slightly to leave a residue and she pulled it downward to where her unbuttoned shirt hung barely.  She smiled at him, a dare.  Then she reached over to the pile of salt and pinched a portion...she applied it on top of the lemon's glaze...some stuck and others tumbled down her, some going into the void, others falling off of her to the floor.

She patted her hands together to free the last bits of salt and then she took the top of her shirt and pulled it so it fell over her shoulders...just barely...

I'll let you decide, she said.

He kissed her first.  On her lips, and her response was to move closer.  He kissed the corner of them and let gravity slide him down her, along her chin and onto her upper neck...he avoided the obvious and went to her just below the ear...and eventually found the top of the salt and started there...he could feel the movement of her breathing flare.

In the airport somebody was talking about who got to board first, who needed extra time...who needed to check luggage if at a certain point the cabins were full.

He inhaled, hoping to detect a whiff of lemon, a tartness of salt infused with it.  He thought he could.

He got up and boarded with the others, with their morning coffee and orange juice tastes in their mouth while his remained filled with her.

 

Bourbon is a Color

 He had seen her in sunshine...had seen her in the rain.

He hadn't quite seen her in a darkened space, a quiet intimate place quite yet...he drank and imagined those times but for now they stayed in the part of the mind where fantasies blended into the allure of possibilities...and fueled the rush of blood and heart strings.

He had, however had a drink in a darkened space, a quiet cove in an empty bar.  The road was back in place, travel was now an occurrence.

So he sipped...the caramel against his tongue and the slow warmth in the throat.  

He imagined a kiss...the barest of glances and the compression of pliable lips.  And the slow deliberate pull away and the opening of the eyes only to see that color.   Again.

The shade of fallen leaves, long bereft from a limb...anchored in a freezing ground that eerily echoed its own shades of brown.  The fertile earth.

She stared back at him unblinking in his mind...not to disrupt a gaze.  A fixed image, like guiding a sailor across a blackened sea she remained a constant.

Desire rose in him like sap, a built-up chemical reaction to being near her...nearness being relative...on the same planet, in the same world...god forbid that darkened space he imagined.

Bourbon felt like the closest companion he could share with...these indelicate thoughts.  The proportions didn't work though...as the bourbon grew smaller in his glass his regard for her only grew.  

Outside the bar, on the random streets and intersections, people looked ahead, stared in front of them.  He wanted an object, a face...a facade...eyes.  He wanted interruption and delay.  An obstacle.  She could be there, pausing his world, carving out time...space.  With just a glance.  And he would gladly stay.  Pull up a chair as it was.

He imagined those eyes in a shower, unveiled.  Tentative, maybe looking down.  Or maybe not...staring up.  The cascade of waters warming, the pale skin, the slide of hands on skin...but the eyes so locked and compelling...height differences, hair wet and dripping...just a stare that made you want to kiss with your eyes open.

He sipped more and found the glass empty...like a thought of her entering his brain and exiting.

He raised his empty glass to the bartender in the international sign of one more.

One more...he relished the thought of multiple times of her stare...conjuring up her face uplifted towards his.  Felt like the distance of inches was the most beautiful distance in the world.  The perfect gap...a mathematical equation that resulted in exactness.

So he drank more...the bourbon colors blending in his brain, causing the closest thing to what he could imagine.

Sipped...savoring.

Imagining how he would devour her if she let him.

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.