04/07/80
I didn’t know at first who she was, only that she passed and waved
every day when I jogged up River Drive.
Had I recognized the face behind the wheel I might not have waved back
for shame. But in the fog of waking and running and feeling the end of winter
wind blowing into my face, she remained a morning mystery I ached to see, like
seeing the first crocus of spring, a yellow kiss in passing that stirred up my
blood in a way the jogging could not.
The first time, I heard the beep and saw no face at all, just a blur of
blonde hair, and her lifted hand, red fingernail polish flashing with the
reflected sunlight.
Even later, when I saw her passing me going one way while I went the
other, I did not know I knew her from elsewhere, and simply waved and watched
her wave back, always a flash of fingernails or shimmering lips.
She did not stop or pull over; she went her way and I went mine,
leaving me not in a trail of dust, but of lust I could not satisfy.
Then one night, at the bar when I was working for the band, the blonde-haired
Michelle pulled me aside and asked how my jogging was going, jogging a memory and
a connection that stunned me into silence, and finally my managing to utter: “You’re
the girl from yellow Volkswagen, and she nodded.
She was more than that – striking something up inside of me from two
directions at once, like a match finally finding a striker to rub against, she
the face behind the wheel, but also the girl from the kitchen months before
that, who I’d stared for most of a party while she played a game not too
different from chess with a dozen other men in the room, all of them completing
for her attention, all trying – as I tried – not to stare too boldly as the swell
of her breasts from the too-low-cut dress she wore, or the nipples against the
fabric that stood too well out for anyone to miss.
If she looked at me that night, it was no more attention that she would
have paid to a pawn, a figure she could move across the board in order to better
position herself to capture one of the pieces she desired, pieces also poised
to fall when she as queen swept them up.
And even then, each time she looked at me I choked, and forced myself
to look in some other direction although from her stare I knew she knew where
exactly I’d been looking, and her smile hinted at a playful thought of letting
me have it, if only to further tease the heavyweights in the room all of whom
believed they deserved her and intended to have her, and would be utterly dumbfounded
if I wound up with her instead.
A passing thought, yes, and perhaps one that might have become a night
to remember, as it later became anyway, because a pawn doesn’t like being used
as a pawn, even if he becomes lucky in the process. And the more she looked at
me, the more terrified and resentful I became and the more she seemed to see me
as someone worth pursuing, her polished red fingernails playing along the edge
of the blouse, easing under the silk just where her breasts swelled, coming
dangerously close to exposing the nipple, her gaze locked onto me, pupils
filled with promises of delights I could easily imagine for anyone else but me.
I wanted to be cool, and pretended to be immune, trying hard to play
the game the really cool cats in the room played, trying to pretend I did not
need what she offered, and resisted, and then, she frowned, and her gaze moved
on, focusing on some other pawn more willing if no more desperate than I was to
be used.
Pauly later tried to console me, telling me I didn’t want to be one of
the crowd, an implied insult against her I could not accept, wanting more than
anything to be one of them, to be used and abused by her, and to remember it
later, only I had lost my chance.
And here she was again, later, at a different bar, touching my
shoulder, letting me buy her a drink, telling me how sorry she was we hadn’t
managed to hook up back then – and I believed her, although still too late
since she no longer played that chess game, but had already check-mated her
king, the diamond engagement ring glittering as brightly on her finger as her
eyes had that night, as if she had transferred some of her passion into the
finely cut stone.
“It’s really too bad,” she said, leaving me only to nod, and in the days
that followed, wave to her as she passed me on River Drive, her yellow VW Bug vanishing
behind me as if part of a dream.
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