I never know under which shell the pea it hidden, as if the
pea has a life of its own, doing its best to avoid me.
I used to watch hermit crabs crawl from one shell to other
in a seaside cage along the Point Pleasant boardwalk, less the sci-fi mothers
with its multiple legs than something wounded or scared, seeking newer, safter
loggings that are neither new or safe, always a place previously occupied by
some other entity that fled for some other reason of its own, perhaps, the pea feels
the same fear and fleas one shell for another hoping to find where it can
remain undiscovered, knowing it can’t possibly stay hidden, as wounded and
scared at the hermit crab that over time runs out of shells in which to hide
This is supposed to be the month of showers, and so I dream
of rain and more rain, and pecking in my head that turns out to be the cell
phone I clutch under my pillow.
It’s like falling asleep with a calculator and wondering why
things do not add up in the morning. Or believing in a tooth fairy. Or
wondering what it means to be so old and not feel it.
Bees buzz in my head that aren’t out yet.
I wake up not in a sweat by aching deep in the bones as I
look to the window and wish for dots of rain to appear there, and wonder what
will happen in the morning, and slowly, before I get my coffee, I check the
phone.
Then on the front picture window I see dots and feel relief,
the way I used to wake up relieved in Junior High School, checking the sheets
to see if it was real.
Then all day long I ache for more rain, and more, and
wonder, what it is that I am waiting for.
Dots of wet on my window, as I drift back later to sleep.
Who are you anyway, this being that pops in and out of sea shells, a tease, a torture, an alien being, and ET waiting for your mother ship to take you home, only off world, perhaps so far away and so unfamiliar, no mere human like me could possibly grasp what world you actually come from or hope to understand what you actually believe.
who are you and what do you stand fore, and will anyone get to see behind the curtain to where you operate the machines that keep you safe, unscathed, more wizard than witch, though you seem to like people to confuse which is which, needing to be loved, yet never at the risk of revealing just who you really are, better safe than sorry, though sadly, sorry, no mater which way is which, wizard or witch.
I want to drink her up until I am drunk shedding one intoxication for one I better understand, I need to know why I stagger around in this fog, bumping my head on things I cannot see -- if I cut my finger I would better explain the pain I feel, see blood I bleed now inside -- it would be a wound I might stitch up with hope to heal, rather than this vague ache I can find no cure for I I could only drink her in where I could understand her better, letting her inspect me from the inside out, I might know what is wrong or right, might find a way to come to terms with this confusion ongoing in my head -- I could pin the cause on what I know I actually did to myself though I know what I feel now, this hazy ache, this trembling shake, this vast mistake I caused, I just don't know how I did it and so do not know how to undo it, or even if I want to undo it at all.
She is the cub who took over a beat other quit because it
was too much for them, she speaking two languages filling in the gaps, though
she had learned her craft writing food reviews for free for some on-line place
in New York, dragging behind her a string of degrees that made the rest of us
look foolish and music awards from a five-year career she feels ashamed of, yet
still hopes to broker into something she can be, enduring a jealous husband and
his cheating long enough to settle upstate where she could start over.
“I never cheated,” she says with a straight face, a notorious
flirt to whom men and women flock, not all of them fucking her, but those out
the outs wishing they were, her way of surviving in a world full of users and
abusers, claiming she no longer uses cocaine, but I don’t believe her.
She claims everybody at the office ignores here except for
me, which is just fine with her since it lets her do what she wants to do, with
me coming onto her radar because of my sudden anti-management tirades and the
fact I lent her some books to help ease her into the job – she suddenly being
my cub and I her mentor – something we both knew couldn’t last.
Doom’s day or not, I wake before the alarm clock rings and
wonder what will become of me, and if the news I get will be as tragic as I
suspect, having already outlived all those who had raised me.
I expect to live forever, and live my life as if this is
true, expecting small things to malfunction, my lungs, my eyes, my prostate,
and like those would be mechanic back at the cold water flat in Passaic, I
expect to tinker and make repairs, to keep this old car on the road, and resent
any implication differently, and so I wake this morning wondering if my plans
will go awry, and if the nearer I get the more likely I’ll need a tow truck for
that long, terrible ride to the junk yard.
There are no easy victories in this war of words waged on
pages that are no longer pages made of paper, although the devastation remains
clear, the wide range of abused branches set to flame in the exchange, the
painful turmoil only exaggerated rhetoric can bring, wounds forged so deeply
and with such rage that no stitch in time can made them heal or at least heal
correctly, leaving twinges on gray days we must endure until the skies turn
blue again. No one win when both sides stumble away with wounds this deep, inflicted
with the most terrible weapons, no knife or bullet, but with sharp edges of
what we call love, and it is far too late to surrender, the damage already
done, a treaty managing merely to halt the hostilities, not mend what has
already been done, war of words more debilitating than an atomic blast,
radiating into every park of the anatomy, especially that places we previously
derived pleasure from, the worst woulds rising from where the hear once found surety
in.
I park and watch the rain drops gather on my windshield,
making my already blurry vision that much worse, this distortion of reality that
brings me strange comfort. I do not wish
to see the world too clearly reveling my illusion of safety that I feel as I
watch the world get wet while I set dry inside, unmoved by the elements, I grip
the wheel and wait for the rain to cease, if it ever will, these blue days,
this mood I crave, to fee alive even in the midst of adversity, the knock on
the hood, the tear of a planet, a day in the rain, safe and sound if only for
the moment, all too blurry to fully make out.
She must be scared to death or maybe bored to death, having
to do this all over again after so long believing she would never have to – the
hamster wheel in her head spinning faster and faster or maybe – as Todd Rungrin
once put it – the merry-go-round she just can’t get off of or at least not on
the ground, spinning round and round, up and down, dizzying to watch even from
a distance, painful to endure since she assumed the ride had ended long, long
ago.
This is not what she wanted when she bought the ticket; it
is what she got stuck with, and must wait out the ride, for when the spinning
stops, wherever that goes, and wherever she ends up
I feel it more than I see it, her shape filling the spaces
new leaves will soon occupy, thit time of year, each year, will continue to
haunt me, teasing with the memories of how she felt an d how she still feels,
which I knew but never will know again, the wrong kind of green in my eyes,
pondering about the lucky man or men (maybe women, too) who get to feel what I’m
denied, a specter in my dreams that ruins me the luxury of even imagining that
man, those men or women, are me, and ow different it might feel being with her
as one of a multiple of men or women, the mind’s eye always exaggerating the
most banal act, when I might settle for a handshake or a kiss when even an orgy
would not be enough, contemplate every way imaginable in the absence of the
possible
The liquid sloshes as I carry the bottle into the office.
Red wine though I know she mostly drinks white.
It sloshes like it did that day in her apartment when she
didn’t have any and I didn’t bring any and we both strolled down the street to
the liquor store, where she bought it and brought it back, red wine instead of
white, sweet as blood.
Maybe it’s why I bring red wine this time, as a memory of a
happier moment when that wine led to something else just as sweet.
I hold the bottle by the neck and keep it by my side, trying
not to let it seem obvious to the receptionist what I have.
She guesses anyway, wanting to know why I’m here when its
not Tuesday, though knows that, too.
They are too close for my comfort, telling each other
everything, and I’m scared if they share this bit it’ll spoil the whole point.
How do I explain how innocent this really is, my bringing in
a bottle I promised after she – my coworker – asked for me to take her out for
a drink.
After my leaving her at the bar that night, It felt awkward
going out with her again. So, I told her I would drop off a bottle instead.
How could I be so stupid, coming in on a day that no one
expects me and so makes it all too obvious I’m up to something, and the
receptionist has a nose for such things.
But I picked a day and time when I know she wouldn’t be at
her desk upstairs, not trusting myself to see her after her screeching at me on
the phone, knew if I met her face to face at this moment I might melt, still
aching, still wishing we might go back to that first bottle she shared in her
flat, and what transpired after wards.
Too much wine has flowed under the bridge since then, red
wine, white wine, and those terrible in-betweens.
Even on Tuesdays, when I’m supposed to be here, I almost
melt, seeing her across the meeting table, struggling not to look too deeply
into her eyes.
I get drunk just looking at her, as if I am a bottle full of
wine whose cork might pop if shaken too briskly.
Or even that first time, after the texts started and how
disappointed I felt when she suggested we go out for a drink, a Thursday,
maybe, when I said I couldn’t, having still work to do, meetings to cover, and
yet utterly elated by her merely asking – drunk even before we had the chance
to have our first drink.
At least, I got a rain check.
This came around the same time she started to text him at
night, innocent ramblings at first, the drip, drip, drip of something ready to
pour down into my life, the first sips of a fine wine I opened my mouth wide,
edger to receive, joyful exchanges even when I crossed that line of sobriety I
knew I could not step back from without pain.
I wanted to drink up whatever she offered, greedily
imagining what might come next.
Back then, after such late nights, I voraciously anticipated
sitting across the table from her at the office on Tuesdays, reshaping into a
mental reality what were mere dreams the night before.
Now, here, in the office, standing before the receptionist’s
desk with my hand gripping the neck of the bottle I brought, I feign innocence,
desperate to recreate a baffled look, and then to explain how the bottle was a
gift, to apologize for a disagreement she and I had had over some work related
issue – hoping that she had not shared the truth about how I had abandoned her
at the bar, or the intense pain in her voice screeching at me as I stumbled
home drunk on too many glasses of wine, that taste still sour on the back of my
tongue.
The receptionist looks at me as if she thinks I’m drunk,
too. This is not good news. She is too close to the girl upstairs, perhaps
close enough to have shared talk about me, even though the girl upstairs keeps
secrets.
And what if the receptionist tells the boss, a man I already
suspect of being involved with the girl, as drunk on her as I am, and possibly
as jealous, maybe jealous enough to find a reason to fire me for messing with
her.
It’s only wine, I think, and I’m only doing what I said I
would do, to make up for leaving her at the bar, to make up; for not going out
for the drink she suggested we do.
I am utterly confused – as if I have already consumed the
contents of the bottle I’m carrying.
I’m scared the boss might come out of his office and catch
me here on a day other than Tuesday. So, I hurry up the stairs, determined to
get the whole things over and get out before the whole situation gets out of
hand.
Half way up the stairs, I catch her scent, not overpowering,
just there, an occupying force I’d not reckoned with, haunting, pervasive, as
if she’d left a trail from the front door to her desk, a subtle perfume that
grew more powerful with each step closer to that space she occupied upstairs.
It is the same scent from the German bar, where she posed
like a goddess, her long fingers gripping the stem of her wine glass, her pink lips
staining its rim, and me with the almost irresistible urge to stick my finger
into her white wine to paint her lips with it, to have her tongue lick the liquid
from the tip, to draw my finger into her both as if sucking the wine from it.
Her absence sobers me as I inch towards the desk, which is so
stark, it’s almost as if she might never return.
I put the bottle on and flee, staggering back down the
stairs, the images of our last encounter in the bar haunting me.
I say nothing to the receptionist, and do my best to avoid
passing in front of the boss’ open door, and once outside, I feel revived,
thinking how maybe things might return to how they were before I abandoned her
at the bar, maybe even back to that first time in the German bar when I stole a
kiss, a foolish notion, of course, but a pleasant one.
I’m all the way home when I get her text.
She is not happy.
Someone, the receptionist most likely, called her about it,
and maybe also told the boss about my unscheduled visit.
It’s like I’m back in the bar again, not the German bar, not
even the later bar, but that last bar, my mouth filled with the bitter taste of
wine I haven’t yet had a chance to sip, but know that it is sour and sad, and I
realize, regardless of the promise I made to bring her the bottle, I somehow
again made the situation worse.
I try to tell myself I did my best, made my peace offering,
and if she doesn’t appreciate the effort, I kept my promise.
This is not my fault.
But I’m wiser for the experience, knowing I wont trust the
receptionist in the future, if there is anything in the future to possibly
trust her with, and I won’t make any more unscheduled visits to the office.
Then, the receptionist calls, telling me the boss wants to
know why I have a bottle of wine sitting on my desk in the alcove.
“That was for her,” I say.
“Well, she doesn’t want it,” the receptionist says, “and the
boss wants you to remove it as soon as possible.”
“I’ll be there on Tuesday.”
“That’s not good enough. He wants you to get rid of it now.”
“But I’m all the way home.”
“That’s not my problem,” she says and hangs up.
My head is spinning. I can’t believe how bad it is, first the
thing at the bar, now this.
I take the long walk back down the viaduct, glaring at the
receptionist as I pass, not bothering to climb all of the stairs to the desk
where I put the wine, but stopping at my harry Potter place.
It’s obvious she doesn’t want peace.
I uncork the bottle and start drinking it on my walk back,
feeling a bit better by the time I get home, not quite drunk, yet pacified, not
quite back to where we were in the German bar, but far better than that bar
where I left her, feeling the buss, living with the memory of those better moments,
when we sipped wine together, seeing her still in my head, the glistening of white
wine on her lips which made me wish to kiss her, knowing I still do.
I saw Craig’s and Nancy’s cars in the parking lot when I got to the office, but office door was locked.
The dark interior showed only my reflected face in the glass and the fact that I had rushed out so fast out of the house after seeing the kids off, I had forgotten to put on any make up.
Perhaps the two of them had gone down to the nearby motel for a change.
That thought evaporated once I opened the coat closet and found the two of them in it: Craig with his pants down around his ankles; Nancy on her knees with her mouth so wrapped up in his crotch, I could not tell where Craig ended and Nancy began.
As the mother of three, I knew how to do what they were doing.
But marriage had a way of making such things seem less fun and more like an obligation.
My husband never did those kinds of things to me any more, and perhaps he never did.
While I pretended to be shocked, I was secretly jealous: even though Craig was the last person on the planet I wanted to touch or have him touching me.
Nancy, being instinctive about these things, knew how jealous I felt about their affair and often rubbed my nose in it each time she got a chance.
This time she gave out an extra moan as Craig made his deposit then wilted in her mouth.
At least, he looked embarrassed.
Nancy just licked her lips and said she needed to go put on some lipstick, leaving poor Craig to dress as I hung up my coat.
Although I knew Nancy knew how much I ached to do the same to some man, I refused to give her the satisfaction of saying as much or showing openly how I felt.
So when she came back out into the large front room that served all three of us as a mutual office, I pretended like nothing had happened.
I told myself I was being a good wife and mother, and that it was normal to feel these urges at age 40 that these two felt at 25.
Boy, was I ever grateful for how public a space our office was, how the front windows looked out onto a parking lot frequently used to truck drivers and sales reps for the hundred of different companies in this warehouse complex.
Craig and Nancy could not fondle each other here as they did in back when the warehouse boys were gone.
Forced to suppress their desire all morning, those two really went at it during the first coffee break, using the lunchroom table for Nancy to lie down on, while Craig pushed his face up between her legs.
She was undressed now instead of him, a slender woman that was all legs and breasts.
When I stumbled on them this time, I nearly fainted from lust.
Not for Craig, for Nancy.
I wanted to unbutton my skirt so that Nancy could do for me what Craig was then doing for her.
When Nancy looked at me in the middle of her passion with him, she smiled, licked her lips, as if indicating she liked the idea, too.
Had the boys from the warehouse not wandered in just then, I might have given in, too.
Nancy was always less bold in front of the boys than she was in front of me.
They tended to make fun of her to her face, often mocking her for her poor choice of Craig as a lover.
They knew sex was how she kept her job since she had no other skills to offer.
Going back to work, allowed me to regain my composure and to convince myself that my attraction to Nancy was merely a fluke.
I repositioned the photos of my children on my desk so as to remind myself why I worked here at all, telling myself that each hour was another step towards providing them with college someday.
Late mornings being slow, the boys from the back hung out in the office, keeping Nancy and Craig from making goo goo noises at each other.
I promised to buy the boys a pizza as a reward, though I did not tell them what I was rewarding them for.
Just before lunch, the district manager called, demanding Craig meet with him and a client at the local restaurant, leaving me and Nancy alone.
Nancy decided she needed to talk to me in private.
She asked me to step outside and sit with her in the car, and while there, she started to unbutton my blouse, her hand slipping through the open space to caress my breasts.
I was shocked, and stunned, but I didn’t stop her and soon she had her lips around my nipple and her tongue playing with the tip.
I tried to push her away, but with a gesture so weak, she knew and I knew I didn’t mean it, my hormones going crazy in me, and my body shivering in a way with Nancy I never did with my husband.
Suddenly, I didn’t care where we were or who saw us as long as Nancy didn’t stop, even letting her hand slip between my legs and into my very moist panties.
She caressed me and I purred.
Craig yanked open the car door and stood there looking at us, his face bearing a very amused expression.
Nancy being Nancy asked if he wanted to join in, offering him my mouth while hers eased down to where here fingers had been.
Craig’s pants came undone as he slid into the seat near me so I could get at him, and considering how much sex he had already enjoyed that day, I was amazed at his firmness.
He eased into my mouth and made yet another amazing deposit as I moaned over what Nancy was doing to me below.
We were so crowed together we could not move without making someone moan.
I hated myself for loving it all.
Craig finished first and left to go check the office, allowing me and Nancy to finish in our own time.
I never appreciated Nancy so much as I did then, and after she finished, we still didn’t go in, caressing each other.
She had flipped a switch inside of me I knew I could not and would not flip back, even for my husband.
So – more was the wonder to the boy from the warehouse when they came up front later to find me, Nancy, Craig all making goo goo noises at each other.
But the boys bothered me less than what I what I might say when I got home to my husband that night. How was I to explain how happy I had become?
Yet I knew all I would say when he asked perfunctorily over his newspaper how my day went: “Just another day at the office, dear.”
