Big Heavy Love

Where Patrick Bowles lived alone was a tall, black, glass tower called Trident. He had a sleek and spare studio there with polished-concrete floors and white, empty, modern walls. He had an enormous bed for himself. It filled all of the space at one corner of the room in front of a long closet nook. A single flat, foam pillow at the head made the bed as spartan as the room. But the sheets were soft and expensive. The blanket was goose down. There was a dresser across. A television was bracketed on the wall like a painting. A chair with no armrests that could disappear almost completely under the slim, low desk beside it was illuminated by a brass floor lamp standing like a cornstalk. There was also a single plush, yellow loveseat to lounge on. That was all. It was correct. It looked just like the room in the design store where he’d bought it all.

The floorplan was generous for a studio. One wall of the space was the window, top to bottom. Below was the street. It was too far north to be considered downtown. The neighborhood was called Lipton. Still it was mostly high-rises. A prestigious place to live. Patrick thought after a time it was also frigid and soulless. He paid thirty-six hundred dollars a month to rent it.

He stood at the window. The glass of it was thick and cold. What he could see wouldn’t be called a skyline. There were the windows of the tower across the street. His gaze went down. Hardly any traffic at night. Glass muffled the sound. The all-night buses, the OWLs, went almost silently by.

Patrick was going to have one of his long awful nights. He had known it near the end of the work day and he had walked home, almost an hour, to try and banish it. But the sun went down and he went right down with it. Arriving home he’d felt heavy and dull. That was hours ago. Now he was restless. There would be very little sleeping. If the mood didn’t break before 3:30 am or so, he’d be in the awful suicide hours of the night and there would be no sleeping at all. His thoughts would throw themselves backwards and forwards. His past would be a minefield of regrets and the future would be like a fever dream. He would plummet through his irrational fixations at a familiar pace. Thinking of his work led to feelings of futility. That emptiness led into aging, into loss and failure and on, inevitably, needle after needle until he came to the sharpest, which was the woman Meg Schwartz.

Patrick was haunted. He had a big heavy love. It was dragging behind him but he would have been terrified to lose it. He wanted to exchange it. Dukeport was such a big place. A person could ride the same bus or streetcar every day and see all new faces. Every day. What’s one woman in a lifetime? That singular love was an old-fashioned fixation. Now people know more clearly how inevitably they grow to hate each other. So what you learn is to open yourself instead. You don’t be precious. Here is this great buffet of ambitious and striving people, of compelling personalities ready to share the experiences of their lives with other good souls. So you seize each other, because humans can’t help that. As you are learning yourself you are learning many others too. So that finally what you make is a choice. And the love you need comes to you. Or it is astutely made. He wasn’t sentimental.

The street below seemed unreal, like a movie set. Grim cars lined up neatly along the curb, parked bumper to bumper and stone dead just like the empty sidewalk. Even the homeless were motionless under their blankets, covered tightly from head to foot like cadavers. Homeless collected at the feet of the luxurious towers every night. Now the tents they had pitched were dark. The stillness was mesmerizing so that a sudden movement far up the street stunned Patrick almost like the sound of a gun. He looked. It was a pack of scouts coming.

They were three men riding on low cruiser bicycles with wide handles. They wore dark oversized clothes which gave them boxy, working-class silhouettes. One of them had long white sneakers pumping the pedals and wore thick gloves like a gardener. They steered lazily, crossing the center line carelessly and tracing big casual circles in the wide street. They shouted short commands to each other. Patrick couldn’t hear clearly. One of them rode close along the line of cars, almost clipping the mirrors. Then he jerked the handlebars and joined the other two. On some sign they all stood off their seats and pumped hard together. One pulled up the front of his bike and balanced skillfully on his back wheel, scraping the fender, a sound as loud and rude as a motorcycle in the empty night. He was squawking with laughter until they reached the empty intersection where they turned the corner and were gone.

There was no great buffet. That myth had served Patrick poorly. He was lonelier then he’d ever been in his life. He had cared tremendously about a person and let it pass, thinking it was common enough, thinking that adults everywhere knew to love each other gratefully and that now he had learned it too. That was false, the wrong road. But now he was so far down it. Panic! Panic was like an awful itch.

The scouts were back. They came from the other side this time and went straight up the street together in a tight line, confidently and directly. It was one car they all wanted, one sedan. They saw that the street was still empty and went right to it.

In the later hours any panic would be unmanageable. While his thoughts were still clear Patrick had to inoculate himself. Going into the storm confidently it would be less. So he bargained with himself. He promised himself, get to morning and he’d make things different. He’d do something drastic. He would reach Meg. And not in any sour phone call. The only thing was to go to her and lay this load down at her feet.

The idea was a balm, but suddenly Patrick knew he would actually do it. Who ever carried these things alone? Why did he try to? He would see her again. See her. Not in a tortured memory, but face to face. His panic was altered into a cozy glee. And maybe the planning of it would occupy his thoughts all night instead of the fear that everything worth having was already lost.

Down in the street the man smashed the glass. He used a center punch tool, like a short screwdriver in his hand. He put it quickly to the corner of a back window and leaned on it with his hip so that the glass went white and shattered. Patrick heard it pop. Then the man with the gloves punched the window in and the top of his form disappeared into the car. The other two stood at their bikes, looking in all directions. It was only ten or twenty seconds before the man was out again. He had nothing. They had misjudged. Never mind. It was nothing to miss. The neighborhood was full of loot in cars. But they wouldn’t be back on this block again, not tonight. They stood on their bikes and pumped away, fleeing to the next block in their dark jackets, gliding quick and smooth as cruel crows.