March 6, 2010
We make plans. They unravel. We try again. She backs off. She says even talking to me feels like cheating. Then she says that she's coming down for a friend's birthday but that we can't see each other. That its too much and too overwhelming. I tell her I understand but my words bite harder than hers. I do understand - but I wish to Hell I didn't.
A week later, some dreary Friday evening, I'm curled on the futon watching Minority Report and drinking crappy Merlot. Thats what its come down to: acting like a goddamned frenchman. She texts me to say shes sorry, to see if I want to have brunch tomorrow morning. With no one else. That we don't even have to eat, we can just wander around New Haven again. Time and location is forthcoming, but it would only be for two hours or so and I'd have to get her to the train on time.
Morning comes around. Quick breakfast, shower, shave and I'm out the door early. A couple text messages between us and she's running late going with her friend to drop someone else off. I get there an hour early (bad habit of mine: fear of driving somewhere unfamiliar. Makes me get places way ahead of time) and kill time at a parking lot. Notice a chip in my windshield from the drive down on 95; not especially bad but a good enough nick with a half circle nickle around it.
I get a call, saying she's just pulled in and that she'll be out in a minute. By the time I'm at her door, she's half way across the front yard and into the passenger seat.
"Hi."
Her voice is high and gentle, like someone sighing upwards an octave. Theres a certain tense expectation to how she talks, how shes turned her whole body to face me. Before I pull out from the sidewalk and into traffic, she says "Wait, are you dressed up? Why are you dressed up?"
"Because," I tell her with a stupid grin, "You can't be the only one who looks good." Though I didn't really dress up. Charcoal slacks and a new collared shirt. Well, okay, maybe I did dress up a little. And I meant to, because just seeing her was important enough to do something like that.
We drive around and get lost on the turns on and off the highway to get to the center of New Haven. She laughs as I feign frustration at our mutual inability to find any familiar roads. We end up right back to the same strip mall next to Yale where the movie theater use to be and Barnes And Noble takes up two thirds of that side of the street. We duck into the used CD store first, lamenting how they're slowly becoming a thing of the past. She walks up to the soundtrack section and stops, looking at me worriedly.
"What?"
"No, nothing. I just knew you were going to walk here."
We thumb through the stacks of CDs and duck briefly into the vinyl. We pull out some fun stuff but leave only so empty handed that she curiously puts her hand into mine and grips gently, as if testing. I look at her and she leans closer, shuffling her feet.
We walk into Barnes And Noble and we go right back to looking at the books we did last time. She pulled out some books on punk music, I flipped through a copy of Mencken's America. We traded quips and details and books. We have another 45 minutes before the train shows up. She grabs my arm and we race down to the bottom floor and go through the humor section. We giggle like school kids over Our Dumb World. She gets closer as we get midway through the book, her hair smells a little like shampoo and a lot like ... well, if you've ever walked through a wheat field, you know that smell of earth-fresh grain. (Otherwise, just imagine something really pleasant and earthy.)
The book goes back on the shelf. I gently take her arm and she puts her head against my chest. She's the perfect height for a dancing partner; the top of her head fits just under the bottom of my chin. She gets flustered but doesn't move.
"No, wait, stop... people will see us!"
"Like you're ever going to see these people again. Like they matter. Like they matter more than this."
I finally put my hands in her hair and she softly goes limp, saying nothing. I can hear the fabric in her shirt stretch, slide, wrinkle as she tries to curl closer. Imagine trying to hold in your hand the thing in the world that most wants to hold you. Its not something I'm use to at all, but its something I wish I had more of and more often.
"We should go."
"Yeah, we should."
Neither of us moves.
I pull out away but keep my hands on her arms, guiding her to walk next to me out the door. Back at the car, she takes out two dollars and forces it into my hand. To pay for the parking. I try more than once to stick it back into her hand and she refuses, I relent. My hand again ends up in hers and she traces the veins on the top of my hand. She says something under her breath and then dismisses it when I ask her what it was. I call her gorgeous, she wraps her arm around mine and clings as she puts her head to my shoulder. It was like Linus with a blanket: she felt completely safe with me and I felt completely happy that she understood that kind of physical affection. We probably looked like "that couple" to the woman at the parking booth.
The train station is ten minutes away with traffic. She points out the chip in the windshield and I tell her I got it today, on the way to pick her up. Her eyes widen and she apologizes profusely, saying she wished I never picked her up if it was going to crack my windshield. I tell her that I don't mind, that it'll just remind me of spending an afternoon with her. The corner of her mouth curls up but her eyes get more worried, more consoling.
Her train is late. We sit down on the furnished wood benches at the terminal and watch the arrival and departure sign. I say it reminds me of the end of Say Anything and she giggles to herself, apologizing for reasons she doesn't share. Her hand is glued to mine so hard someone's palm starts to sweat and I'm not sure if its mine.
She doesn't look at me, but instead shuffles as close as she can get without putting her legs across mine, and then she says "I love you so bad." And now I feel like that elderly couple you see sitting around at McDonalds during early mall hours or the kind who feed pigeons in the park and still look at each other with that odd glow of all-knowing youth still in their eyes.
On the station platform, she puts her bag down and my hands instinctively go through her hair again and she coos without making a sound. Like morning fog gently passing over water, she says "I love you so much - but I feel like such a bastard for saying it." and I squeeze her, hugging her harder than before. Her arms lock into my ribs, then my back. She digs in like she's holding on from drowning - or at least like she's in missionary position.
Details falter here. I ask to kiss her and she quietly looks away and says something I can't hear. I nudge her chin up and go for it all the same, with or without permission. Her hands leave me and I wait for her to push me away but instead she tries to frantically find a place to grab hold of me and she balls parts of my shirt up in her fist. I think about leaning back - the movie music should kick in soon or I should at least be Frederic Henry, ready to jump on that train - but realize she's so nervous and weak-kneed she'd probably stumble. She breaks it off and then puts her face into my shirt, muttering embarrassments about kissing in front of other people.
We kiss again. And a third and fourth time. Each one a little shorter and she becomes a little more desperate after each. She buries into me like a tick, she grips, grabs, pulls at me. I've never felt such an overwhelming physical want projected from another human being. Not even in the sexual way but in the sense that physical force alone could get me to never move. "Dear God stay," she said with her fingertips, dug into my back, "Don't go away again."
Details come back right around here. The train pulls up and she stutters "I...I... I have to go."
"I know." (Yes, I used a Han Solo line. No, I didn't mean to but its amusing in hindsight.)
She gets on the train slowly, looking back time after time. Waving the last time before she disappears into the passenger car. I watch the train pull out because it reminded me of when she said not to watch her go into her parent's house and I did anyway.
I get a text message two minutes later - "You've ruined me."
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