She wanted to meet again for a drink and texted me for about
it for a couple of days after our strange breakfast at her apartment, though
even up to the point when I was driving north to meet her, the where and
exactly when remained unresolved.
She had first suggested one place a half block from the
office, then another, a little further on, but committed to neither. When I
arrived, I went to the office instead, raising more than a few eyebrows.
“This is not Tuesday,” the always gracious receptionist
said. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
No one was more surprised than she was when I appeared in
the bullpen near her desk, looking more than a little nervous. She tended to be
cocky in private, but rarely in the office, sometimes concerned about misspeaking,
being judged or exposed. Texting was always after, nobody to overhear.
“I’m not done,” she told me.
So, I waited at the desk on the floor below reserved for me
on Tuesdays unaware of her leaving the building until she sent a text saying, “I’m
outside.”
Then, when I got outside, she texted to say she was at the
first bar she’d suggested a half a block away, and true to her word, she was seated
on a bar stool when I arrived, sipping on a glass of white wine, less like a
damsel in distress than a queen on her throne. But she didn’t look happy – not distant
the way she had been during our vegetable and egg breakfast, more annoyed, and
not, fortunately, at me.
She complained about the bartender, claiming he was rude. He
didn’t seem to notice us, but I recalled her reaction to the former cop/politician
at the German bar previously and wondered if she knew the bartender personally
and had a person gripe, I knew nothing about, and did not feel comfortable drinking
here in front of him.
After our first drink, she suggested we change bars to one
across the street, which we promptly did and settled at a table with our backs
to the street.
“You know none of this will work, we have no future,” and
she responded as she had before, “We can’t worry about the future. This has to
be moment to moment.”
It was more than our difference in ages. I felt confused,
floating in a perpetual fog, all too aware of just how playful she could be,
and how vague she became when I pressed her as to what she wanted from me.
My brain went into a freeze each time she sent me a photo of
herself or posted a new one on Facebook. I offended her once when I unfriended
her in a stupid effort to put a halt to the parade of images that greeted me
there each morning. I was hooked on something. I just couldn’t figure out what,
and it wasn’t just the German beer messing with my head.
Why couldn’t I even finish a meal when I was around her?
I was not in control of anything, and it scared me to
imagine what this forebode.
What was I doing breathing the same air as she breathed,
listening to the rise and fall of her voice, stumbling behind her, my heart
feeling as if it was missing beats? It was like nothing I had ever encountered before,
and I wasn’t sure I could survive it.
She talked and talked, and I listened, watching her lips
move more drunk on her than on the drink I was drinking. The same questions
spun around in my head. What does it all mean? Where would it all go?
I later tried to describe it in a poem, talking about how
her cigarette smoke swirled around us like bitter-sweet perfume, her hair framing
her face.
I didn’t want this to be a mid-life crisis, something
inspired by my approaching morality.
Something had brought us together, not fate or destiny,
something else, something darker, something she knew about, and I didn’t.
Again, I knew all this would end up in pain, for me, for
her, and maybe other spirits I knew nothing about.
After what must have been hours, I told her I had to go home.
She seemed disappointed but walked me back to my car parked near the office, where
I gave her a kiss and fled.
She was already texting me by the time I reached home, and
sending me pictures, some of them of her naked.
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