596. Three Years

My house was not much, but like all homes, it was mine. I did some cleaning, careful not to erase me, not to do what I knew she would know, which was to be other than as I was; so I cleaned up to a point. My hands shook the way hands shake when something matters, when the opportunity is now and not tomorrow or any other tomorrow but now and only now. She was coming and she would sit and observe, we would talk and toast and eat and I would struggle with two dialogues, the one we spoke and the one running in my head. This is how it is when one is too stupid to let go of a dream that never was and probably never would be, for the thought of the dream, as the aroma of the meal, was, perhaps, more than I deserved, but more than I was willing to go without. Thoughts about thoughts. (Note to revisit this topic when my mind is clear and I can devote the time.)

I looked in the mirror, or I should say mirrors, to straighten my hair and check my teeth and pretend I was more handsome than I was; so I turned my head this way and that way, trying to find the one angle to support my case, to convince myself I had a chance to cross the thin ice and make it to the other side. I massaged the achy rubberbandish tension in my cheeks, raising and lowering them in a ghoulish sort of way, horrified at the thought that someone above was watching my nonsense, but then I thought of all the more horrid things I did, which, if anyone were watching, they'd of seen them too. I thought to pray and thought was as far as it got for if there was a Janus or a God or even a Papa looking down, I didn't want to insult them now with my pettiness and self-centeredness. The very thought made me smile. Just be yourself. Why that was so hard was beyond my comprehension, as if one had to try, while fully aware that the trying itself was mockery.

I arranged the glasses and the tea. We would have tea, brewed for four minutes and served without cream or sugar in glasses I had polished more, perhaps, than I'm willing to admit. Hot or cold is the choice I would give her as if there were no other choices and we would toast and drink our crystal clear black tea in crystal clear glassware and I would imagine all the times she drank with the crew and held amber glasses of snoot high; and, as now, I would feel my heart long for a time since past, wishing I had been born of a different age, in a different place, as if the fairy tales in my head bore any resemblance to actual events. And as we drank, I would turn the question over in my mind and her eyes would sparkle knowing that I and only I could ask the only question I really wanted to ask--Could I go with them?

She was on time as she had always been before. I wish I could describe her carriage, her walk, the sound of her heels on my hardwood floor, the lithe tightness of her curves or how the southern light warmed her cheeks, sparkled in her sapphire eyes, eyes clear, slightly glossy, brimming with a compassion wrought from loss and the pain that lingers when there is nowhere (or to no one) else to turn. She moved as if every movement mattered in the effortless way of those that are what they are as the bark is to tree or the feather to bird. When she spoke, there were her words, the ticking of a (pendulum) clock and the beating of my heart; and nothing else. Her words came neither fast nor slow, thoughts measured against a life lived in triumph and failure, of hands that had touched the divine and the labored, of eyes that had seen birth and death with the appreciation of blood giveth and blood taketh.

She asked about this and about that and I felt my chest swell, pushing forth a sigh and I was reminded of the absence of sincerity and genuineness in my own relationships and, I suppose, in my own life. She was the sun that showed me my shadows and I wondered with sadness if, as the sun, she would always be as close and as untouchable and I would forever be a shadow in her presence. Still, there was this moment, when the chocolate is on the tongue, and thoughts go neither forward nor back, but just on the melting, the deliciousness of a moment soon to pass. I watched as she asked about the sorts of things no one else asked about and I watched for even the slightest sign of distance, for a sign she was just being nice. If there were such a sign, I missed it. What I didn't miss was the dreamy sensation of relationship with one that can so effortlessly be interested and I felt as if the two of us were in a bubble, a bubble of time, a bubble I knew, like all bubbles, would eventually pop.

She talked and I found myself listening to two conversations. My own mind begun to spin, both past and future. In that moment, I saw all the stories of Bravo, all the interactions, the relationships, differently. In a way, I suppose, it was like the difference between reading a book about events you knew nothing about and reading that same book after you had had first hand experience of the place and people, of the moods and texture, the hues and sounds. The rest of the crew became different in my mind, neither better nor worse, just deeper as layers of relationship I didn't know existed were revealed in my own experience of Kyra. She looked human but that was about as close to human as she was going to get. She was something other and that otherness was nothing less than seductive and I felt myself falling and I wondered if she knew, and if she did, would her heart catch what her arms might miss.

Are you okay she asked, her hand on my shoulder as my mind raced to calculate just how much time had passed lost in thought, just how silly I must have looked to her, how alien in not being present and I wondered if she had the capacity to understand and the compassion to forgive my rudeness. Nothing, I responded. Just thinking of the time, how quickly it passes. She smiled. I told her I was thinking of the night exactly three years ago, the night I discovered the crew, for three years ago to this day, my life changed. To that, we lifted our pristine glasses and toasted with our pristine tea to a moment that seemed like yesterday and yet seemed as if another lifetime.