Ghost Town, 22
In my bones I already knew how it would be, how it would end up for her and me. She and I came of age, but how? The repeated questions, over and over, would receive no answer. The why did not matter. Some god or dictator, a deity or local newscaster, wrote my name in a piece of darkglass. Candied resin, leftover from ancient venerable times, jewels embedded in a falcon sculpted like fruit in a poundcake. Nuggets of wisdom, spears, coldsteel lancet callingcards for preventing teenybaby bigbopper Hodges — they had my number. They knew my deepseated fears. They were bound to torment me and I would give up my secrets.
“Here we go,” the businessman said, and he gave the bottle another spin.
“I can’t watch this,” I muttered — but I did watch. Look for meanings, search them out. What did that mean: to be chosen, to have a calling, to be the people who had to meet each other? I knew it would be me, but surely no one else did. Did she know as well? Chosen also, casting dice, picking lots, tossing off fortune just the two of us. Nope. For it was impossible to reconcile. To have a fate means it is only you that was singled out for this. But kiss and embrace means there will be two of you. Even at midnight, in the garden, between palmtrees with the mob under torches, merely meaning to betray: there are two of you. Not three, not one. A kiss is for two of us alone, here and now.
Moment of hesitation, recognition.
The bottle was a blurred wheel and I watched blurryeyed, all atremble, stirring fear mixed with young love, hoping against hope it would not be me. But it was. Even now I’m singled out. It stopped staring me deadcenter, its gaping glass mouth hungry, and it was almost like disappointment. Like a bloodfilled decanter. How could you know a thing like that without God granting you some portion of wisdom and foresight? I almost looked around to find the brokenarmed man, to see if Seers had registered this curiosity. Our final miracle is the stupidity of the human race. It felt like waking from a finedazzling decorated dream, shaken awake rudely, to renew the same familiar floor littered with shopping bags and a mildewed sink. Review plaster of Paris, Roman porcelain, china cups.
“Stand up,” several women said. “Stand up, stand up…”
The hippy girl was on her feet already, headcocked, shifting weight over one leg bent. I stood up. In an age of proud disobedience, relegating duty to the alley trashcan and elevating riskybusiness to a lofty aspiration, I was listening to a vapid young woman. I still needed to be told what to do. I never wanted to marry, never wanted the ball and chain, I never wanted to join the army — but the desire must feel something like that. I walked in front of her like a dutiful man but at first I kept my eyes down. When my gaze finally turned to her face it hardly got past her chin. Sometimes a sight at closequarters takes you by surprise. Your breath is gone. Justly described by too many poets, knowing they cannot do it justice, there was something about her chin that could not be put into words. But her eyes would not betray a hint of knowing this or that, not one squeak of acclaim. Fair warning we are visual creatures. Men were born that way and she was born with this face. Just like that. Up in close proximity her face was wider than I imagined, roundcheeks like a child, her hair cut short threequarters length, and curled up by stops at the corners. It was curled where she pushed it continually behind her ears. For God’s sake believe me. Did she notice this? Was she careful to tread lightly, to treat herself gently? Of course not. The corner of her mouth was chapped, where she often chewed nervously on her lower lip.
Drowning in my own pool of chemicals, my throat stung raw, my scalded nosebleeding confused, bobbing for air and wavelets while my sickheart pounded from pills, I knew enough to call it quits. I saw her upright face floating over the petroleum spill, her oily image reflected on the water like a silverplatter holding a head. Womanizer. Dear dread Herod was an abominable clown. I knew better than to grab the rope and upset the applecart. My reigning free queen needs a place to stay for the night. I’m in love with you. I adore your throat and I want to caress your collar. But still her hair didn’t move, her eyebrows hovered in a halfsmile while her mouth set waiting for resolution. Watery with anticipation. The expectation sat on me like a nightwatch, reckless to insult, an unscrupulous wight. Up all night under the moon. Crossed branches clashing, treetops waving. Maybe each of us stood at one end of the rainbow, cast in shades of gray, abandoned to a roiling sky, no sense for right or wrong. Golly, the righthand horse gave his life geehaw out of practice. Lots of patience needed.
