2:32 ante meridian, even odd even, he saw her through the cafe window and he thought that’s her and she’s mine and pretty cute if I do hand it to myself. And she felt him before he came in, the same way she had felt him so many times before, even if she hadn’t, even though it was only once, in that just before moment, and still when he entered it was more than she expected, or better, or more severe than she had thought before it happened.
The cafe was loaded of course with the eyes through the glasses staring not at her eyes god forbid they see a soul instead of a body and saying, what’s your name but really asking the question can I know you. Can I possess you. Not will you let me but how should I do this. And he sat down and disappeared before she could wave or say hi, but she had smiled already at him because that was how it flowed from her, she couldn’t stop it. Tried being a stoic once in college, so she wouldn’t have to take so much, but the only thing that came from it was the question what’s wrong with your face, and anyway she couldn’t hold it back, these things rushed out of her like a broken dam. Damn. He knows I’m gone for him and now he’ll use that as power which, of course, she thought, he has. She would almost give him anything, she was just about at that point, of getting so worked up, to not ask anything but take everything you want from me, I don’t want it anyway now that I’m so in love with you. It’s maybe a pity or a blessing when you can’t remember what you were before something happened, something so gorgeous and tragic as this.
He was of course insulated and untouchable. There was the singer in a burgundy suit thin black tie on black shirt messed up hair and tempting gap between his two front teeth, who got down on his knees moaning on stage, not just singing but pleading and when he looked out at his begging audience of girls with the hair and the bracelets and the shoes and the boyfriends, just one glance sent them into silent desperation, the girls and the boys, because they felt it too, the loss the desire the sex. Even better and extra-sexy because there he was right in front of you on stage and wet with sweat, glistening and slippery and hard, just the way we like it, just the way it should be. There was the fun everywhere in an alley in the restaurant onstage 5am at the motel guitarist, far too cute to be in a band, model cute, movie star cute and the funniest of the group, charming women with his searing perceptiveness and killer humor, winking and cavorting onstage, making the girls laugh and sigh. The bass player, we’re not even sure he can speak, touched by the e-mails & messages left at clubs sent to him on the road from his girl. Quiet, touched, smiling sometimes after the show, and yet when he had to sing backup on the chorus it made you think something has made this boy terribly angry, and don’t we love it. The rhythm guitar player, covered in tattoos, seems like the bad boy, or maybe he wants us to think that? but secretly the kind of guy to drive you home after a fight with your boyfriend and not try anything. Emotional, dependable, sweet, but ladies don’t let him know we know that, shhhh don’t let him know the tatoos and black hair don’t fool us for a second. There was the guy who booked the show and his girlfriend, the show couple, the showy couple, invariably fighting or making out like in high school, she with the blunt black hair, red lips, bad attitude, smoking Camels wearing big heels and carrying, of course, a little black bag. The kind of girl you want behind you if you ever wanted to sock it to somebody, so their teeth went caving in from your fist. There were the friends, some guys from the other band, and him. Wingtips and spiky hair, a nose sent from thousands of miles and years ago, so expressive it held multitudes and cultures and stories and histories from a land where everything began thousands and thousands of years ago, eyes that held the seeds of civilization and the knowledge of history, and she’s just a boring Irish-Scot looking at his gorgeous long muscled arms through his sweater, what’s a girl to do.
She maneuvered a casual hi guys. She didn’t know if she should take out her pen or come back later, hand them the menus or just leave them because she was pretty sure she was shaking, send out the other waitress, crawl under the table or maybe even hide in the kitchen with the Mexicans who she made giggle with her baby level Spanish and the wiggly dances she did for them. There was a general noise for a response and an ensuing story about the jackass bouncer who threw out the roadie while they were playing because they mouthed off to him. She glanced at him and there he was, quiet and staring at her and god knows what going through his head.
They made it through, the boys happy and exhausted, content to be sitting and entertained by something else, plenty of coffee, and it made her feel like at least she could take care of them, she could mother them for a while before they left her stratosphere and she would be alone again in the cafe, listening to men’s boring stories and trying to pretend she was interested, or not pretending anything because it usually doesn’t make a difference. And soon enough she was. She got a hug, the kind like hey we knew each other once, wasn’t that nice. Everyone hugged her, waved, we like you, you’re cool, too bad you don’t live in our city. If only they’d asked. It would have taken her 14 minutes, exactly approximately or precisely, whichever, to grab the only other things that may have meant anything to her beyond him. She would have flown she would have driven she would have walked to New York, Ohio, wherever doesn’t matter, just keep on going I want nothing to do with this kind of loving aching needing not speaking. Just ask. Don’t speak to me again I can’t handle it. Fine. She wouldn’t see him again anyway. I love you come marry me. Fine. I’m already gone, everything is gone, lost it in the war. Like a war, this kind of love. No prisoners, no rules, maybe somebody fighting with you, covering your back, maybe not. Hope we can be friends. I hope so too because I can’t remember my life without you she would say. But he didn’t, she didn’t. Speak you may lose him and that you learn fast. Wrong guy if you lose him, and this she was not willing to find out. And leave he did, before she realized that he had been sitting there with his smell and those eyes and his shirt and those legs. Listening to men’s boring stories and trying to pretend she was interested, or not pretending anything because it usually doesn’t make a difference and she would look out the window every ten minutes, which was pacing herself.
At 2:32 in the morning, each time she looked out the window she saw only this, in this order: glass reflection, glass, twelve hundred local band stickers on the glass, none of them his yet, because the bastard had to be born halfway across the country, didn’t he, darkness, the reflection of the hazelnut light on the rainy streets. Some houses beyond that. Each time the bells on the door chingled she thought this, in this order: it isn’t him, it can’t be him, it could be him, it won’t be him, it might be him, I need him, he isn’t even done playing yet, I need him, I hate him, why are these other people interrupting my perfectly good fantasy of actually seeing him don’t they know I’m in love. What if the actual sound of the bells on the door were of the same reality as his body in the room, near and present and needing, full of heat and sweat and dates in history memorized in his head. Not to mention the damn drums. Those damn drums. She would smile. You could taste the distance. She was as good as another country, she was as great as another dimension, she was completely unreachable and funnier than ever because she kept forgetting she wasn’t actually alone, just felt like it. The stark contrast of real people in the cafe and the empty space she felt was so painful it wrenched her stomach, and solitude would have killed her. So she poured the coffee. She heard them whisper Jesus she’s tall when she turned her back. She held back the reflex to lunge across the table and say let me help you with that with her hands around their throat. She smiled. She would close her eyes for a second and the darkness would swallow her. She opened her eyes and saw the same thing in the same order. She tried to reverse the order, to bring him in. Telepathy was not totally out of the question for options to weigh, why fight it if you don’t have any options anyway. She got asked what her name was where she lived how tall she was if she had a boyfriend and how long have you worked here. She had some questions of her own she wanted to ask. She kept her mouth shut. When her smile showed her teeth it was the way a wolf does, in her mind, bare her teeth, better get back. I could kill you and you haven’t even thought of that yet. I could kill you but I won’t. I could run but I don’t. I could call but I won’t. Won’t even ask. Be such a good girl. Sit, stay, be silent. And wait and see. With every second like a new strain of virus, a new way of hurting, thinking, laughing, feeling, pondering, nodding.
When there’s nothing at the end of the story, do you still wait to hear the ending?
written Winter 1998
