|
Just now I saw your face in the mirror by the door. You leaned in to check you hair before you went out. I saw your lips pose and your eyes look at themselves. Your deep blue fingernail poked a wisp of hair into place. You tilted your head to the left, flexed one eyebrow, just slightly, as you grabbed the collars of your coat and pulled them around your throat. Prepared, you closed the apartment's thickly-painted door between us and walked on down the stairs and out to the street. I thought of you standing there in front of the flats, wind whipping up the street and setting all your fashion in motion, your brown hair streaking across your face, your coat dancing up and tapping your elbow. And your eyes, fixed ahead, already plotting your next steps, away from me.
Can you ever slow down enough to just look at me? At who I really am, and how I need you?
A young man, but well-used, a darkness beneath his eyes, a looseness of his bottom lip, sighed, sat up on the mousy couch, sniffed.
She's gone. It seems silent, but I can hear the tiny rustlings of others left behind in the building. I feel the background roar of the city, against which all our dreamings take place, staring into a well-used ashtray. A cigarette -- I could use a cigarette. I think I left some in the kitchen.
You've stopped telling me where you go.
Maybe theres one under all the old mail from that basket we bought in Arizona.
He reached across a cracked set of yellow tiles and searched through a flat basket.
An old pen, "watch that hand", crusty rubber band, and neon flecks of something degenerate lodged between the twines of the basket.
Sometimes you come back late and the conversations and the flitrations are still in your eyes. You turn away to undress. "It was ok, lots of people, all talking about themselves," you tell me. But you can't keep control of the corners of your mouth, they turn up in a tiny flash of a smile as you remember. What? Someone you met? A kiss? Someone else you tell things to, someone who is not me?
He turned slowly in the kitchen and surveyed crumbs on a red formica table, the cracked plastic on the chair revealing something fuzzy. He plopped down on it.
I don't hear much about what happens on your job any more. Not much talk at all these days. The banannas are pretty dark. And smell sweet and sticky, almost alcoholic. I really need a cigarette.
When I told you how he swore when I told him, you just peered at me over your glasses with a grin. You would never imagine anything you could feel would really have a consequence.
But it did. You showed up here on a hot night when, even with all the windows open, the dark smells would not leave the flat. You were in a sweet little dress, your stringy hair silhouetted in the lit hallway. "Hi, can I come in?" you said. Lucky boy, I thought. Lucky. You sat down and looked at the little table in front of the couch, stretching out your legs in front of you and I looked at the bare length of them. "Yeah, sure, how about a beer?" I said casually. You wanted a beer. I went and got a couple from the fridge, and when I came back into the room it seemed different somehow, not my own, not with you here. You had brought your smell with you and it blotted out all the boredom, all the cold metal staminaless rhythm of my life and here you pulsed in the center of my living room. Handing you the sweating brown bottle, I smiled and finally you looked up at me. "Thanks. Thanks for being here. I needed to get away," you spoke kind of soft, looking down at the bottle. "From what? What's happened? Is it Mike?" I gave my sympathetic voice. "Oh, Mike! Do we have to talk about it?" you sighed a great feminine tragedy.
There must be a cigarette here somewhere. Top drawer, silverware, next drawer, cloth stuff, third drawer, chaos, recepies cut from magazines, notes, pens, rubber bands, and way in the back, wrapped in crumbs, a cylander of white. A Camel. Yes.
He turned on the stove knob, and drew an even breath.
Yes.
After a long drag he shuffled back into the living room, flopped onto the couch.
You kicked off your little shoes and put your feet up on the table.
Your long brown legs wrapped around my neck on a hot summer's night.
The ash became heavier and slowly dropped to the floor. The smoker, with eyes wide open, did not notice.
And even if I told you how he makes that face every time I mention it, you would just peer at me over your glasses and grin. You would never imagine that any thing you could feel would really have a circumstance.
|
|
