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.