She was aflame with femininity. She was awash with allure. Like gravity, when she walked the city streets of Manhattan, she pulled all onlookers into her orbit. It was innocent bystanders and her scores of idolaters alike. It was as if she were the sun in a far off horizon, beckoning a hope they could only imagine. Like a promise to keep; a dare to take. She was also the was the worst thing that ever happened to the man. A writer whose sole purpose of being was to uncover a love he’d never known. And he would have done it all over again at the drop of a hat if given the chance. Chasing her to his death if it meant he could have breathed her air for a final embrace …
“I slept like a lion last night,” he mused to himself upon arising. Eyes blurry on the morning after his first night in the desert. That he was there on a much needed reprieve. To gather himself from the ashes; to mend his wounds; to figure out the next steps of his life. After Gabriella.
“Oh yeah,” he chuckled in reply. Groggy and giddy with the whirl of a pair of dueling box fans on the floor drowning out every sound that could dare to harm, convinced he was far enough removed that he could actually lay his head to rest without the constant image of her undeniable silhouette intruding. He added, “Oh yeah, and how do lions sleep.”
“They sleep pretty well.” He answered with a laugh. With his idiosyncratic mind set to anywhere other than her, he made his way across the cold wood floors of the hollow room and into the kitchen for breakfast, coffee, and to jot his morning thoughts.
I wonder what today will hold, he began. The coffee brewing in the pot after nourishing himself with an avocado on a toasted bagel with yogurt and almond butter pasted to a spoon.
He held zero expectations for it, save for another nutritious repast following a hike through Joshua Tree National Park, and to then procure enough drinking water for that night and the following morning. And moreover a new rental to stay for the day after and the remaining to come. “Safe and alee,” he beamed aloud. With no set date in mind to return. “Not until I’m ready,” he reflected. As if he had anywhere else to return to. Certain of one thing, however, “There’ll be no letters today.” No additions to the Epistolary Collection or missives to his former lover making futile demands he knows now invariably fell upon deaf ears. As no, today he woke with clarity. For the first time in years, he wrote. Since the day I found out more than I wished I knew.
Feeling at last as if he were free of the weight that’s been haunting him like the ghost under the stairs, torturing his soul from the inside out.
What changed, he continued. Why now; why here. As opposed to there, with them. In that godforsaken city, at a life that was never ours. Playing pretend at reality with the daughter who wasn’t mine and her incandescent mother the same.
Could it be as facile as time away. And distance. In this majestic land where inspiration is not a mirage, but seems to coruscate in the sand outside of the door. Swathed under a brushed crimson sky before the stars come out in droves. Appearing as if a perforated blanket had been draped over the sun. It’s where wolves and men alike take to howl at the moon. I do feel welcome; I am at ease. Perhaps it’s as simple as she wouldn’t be able to exist in a place such as this. Isolated with only the one mirror, and that it’s not even above the sink in the bathroom, how would she know everything was in place. That she could exist without the constant validation …
He paused and ruminated, “Maybe I actually am a desert person.”
An amalgamation of mother’s son and father’s creation. That he is tantamount to each.
He returned to the passage, pressing the page, cleansing them all in the strokes of the keys.
I won’t make the mistake of a missed opportunity again. And for why: for her. No, it was an ineffable connection from the moment our paths crossed. Walking down a reluctantly crowed sidewalk, our eyes met as if we were the only two beings alive. It was instantaneous, like a slap to the face, and I thought to myself, “I wonder if she felt it too.”
It was that I couldn’t bring myself to act. We continued on in our separate ways. Two points on a line drifting further and further from view.
To our next encounter, like deja vu, when she was put on the spot by the band leader who asked her for a request. I was ten feet away, behind her with my back to the bar, facing her and the band, contemplating the menu for lunch or possibly a drink. She was sitting alone at a table in the center of the capacious room surrounded by a sea of infamy with a mug of amber beer in front her. The foam was still settling from the first sip she took. “I don’t know,” she yelled out.
Though not timidly, mind you, as it appeared she was anything but—that much was easy to decipher—rather, it was honesty. For she would have no need to cower. “I’m not good at these things … the names of songs.” Was what she said after another sip. Clearing the wash with her tongue from the bottom of her upper lip.
The din of the room fell silent at the words she spoke. You could cut it with a knife. It was the sound of anticipation. They were hung on her every word.
“Play Free Bird,” I suddenly called out over the hush. Breaking the lull, I thought of all the instances hitherto. In how many juke joints such as this; with how many other faces I for the life of me cannot forget.
She immediately turned to find the voice. Her platinum-blonde locks were haphazardly tucked under the same cap I saw her in earlier, protecting her flawless, dewy alabaster skin from the blazing desert sun beyond our confines, though it was her doe brown eyes that struck me again as they did on the street. “Yeah,” she said, wherein our eyes locked, and there was not an ounce of apprehension in her gaze, “That’s a good one, for sure.” And in the moment, for the first time in I could remember, my mind was completely freed of its shackles. “It sure is.” Was all I could muster to say.
We each then returned our attentions back to the band as they strummed out the opening of the eternal song’s prefatory chord.
I was torn. I could have easily walked over and asked to join her. With no intention or expectation other than two strangers in a bar. To harmlessly sit and have a conversation in foreign land.
Alas, for whatever reason, I let it slip through my fingers. I reverted. I shook my head, set the menu back in its slot, and walked out the door and into the glare. I chose to find another locale for lunch. I opted for a better food option than that of the fare at a dingy roadside saloon.
And who knows, she could’ve politely declined. “Sorry,” she could have said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I have a significant other … and besides, I don’t talk to strangers in bars.”
Or, the flip side of the coin, and we could have fallen madly in love. Swept up and off in the teeming desert winds. She could have been my salvation. She could have been been the antitheses of her.
Nevertheless, I’ll never know. I didn’t give it a chance. Still stuck in an era when the only thoughts in my head were living to appease the woman of my dreams and nightmare of my life. I fled.
To then, an hour later after having finished my better option for lunch, I was crossing the intersection on the way back to my rented house, and low and behold, it was her. Idling in the pole position at the stoplight in a late model Volkswagen Passat; her hat still in place with her satiny blonde hair glimmering in spite of it.
I paused, directly in front of her hood, and smiled in recognition. She smiled back. Her teethed matched her skin.
We then went on with the rest of our lives …
The next morning he awoke with a start. It was the inverse of the one before it, but identical to every other morning he’d roused for as far back as he could recall. Sprung straight up from bed like a rod with a sour taste in his mouth. He was thrusted back to the reality of hating and persecuting himself for having not done enough to keep his Gabriella in tow. To remain in her orbit. Along with her daughter, Bella, the three of them as a galaxy unto themselves. Right up until the moment it was not. When the mother’s affections veered towards an alternative course.
Is a writer confined to living only in the imagination. In this fraught, fragile existence, fearful of consequence, must we take to the page to fulfill our every desire. Concocting to ourselves what could have been had we had the courage to act. Were the initial words he wrote in defiance upon gathering himself over a cup of acerbic coffee with the previous four years of bitter indignation roiling in his gut.
“Never again,” he then chided himself, banging his fists on the counter. “I won’t make the mistake again.”
It was on to the next. He was turning the page. For the remainder of his thoughts on the subject were as meaningless (and repetitive) as they were profane …
Later in the day, back out in the world and at the same roadside saloon as the previous afternoon, this time seated at the bar with an ice cold beer sweating the glass in front him, he was presented the unique opportunity of putting into action his words. For three stools down, and he didn’t even notice her until it was she who announced, suddenly, as if calling out in a crowd, “What song is it you want to hear this time around.”
He looked, and explicitly, it was her.
This time however sans the hat, though if he wasn’t mistaken, she was wearing the same set of clothes. In a pair of form fitting beige hiking pants and matching lace-up boots, with a Kelly green, Champion crewneck sweatshirt on top. Over which her platinum locks fell to past her shoulders. Her eyes again captivated; her smile ignited the dimly lit interior.
He smiled in return with a playful tilt of his head. Whereupon she did the most curious of things, sharp to the brow, a glint in her eye, she saluted. Then broke it off with a guffaw that all but made him lose the reason he was sitting where he was. Alone, thousands of miles from where he should have never been.
It was when lighting strikes more than twice. That even he couldn’t ignore it.
“Well there you are.” Was what he mouthed, lifting his glass. As casually as if he’d been expecting her to arrive.
She raised hers in turn, and asked, “Care if I join you.”
“You took the words out of my mouth,’’ he answered.
To where she sidled up next to him in the empty seat on the other side of the rest of his life.
“I’m Julia,” she said, proffering her hand.
He took it. Their touch was not the explosion of Gabriella, then again, he thought, “What is.”
“Jack,” he said. His icy blue stare aglow under the ambient light of the bar and sun peaking in through the blinds.
“Come here often,” she then posed with a knowing smirk.
He laughed. They drank. And before he knew it, they were on their third round. With loose hands and rubbing arms, he could tell beneath her wears she was firm of build, strong like a nurse, the opposite of Gabriella and her lithe model’s physique. “No,” he deemed to himself, “This is the type of woman who moves herself when it’s time to leave, who takes trips alone to Joshua Tree to hike and clear her mind, who makes a joke with a stranger at bar, who initiates, who carves her own way in life.”
“You know,” he then said after a team scored a touchdown en route to a dramatic win on the multiple screens playing overhead, “Saluting originally began as a gesture to show a stranger you weren’t holding a weapon … that they meant them no harm.”
“I didn’t know that,” she replied. Then, with a wink, “I guess I probably shouldn’t have saluted, huh.”
With this, he knew precisely to where the encounter would lead.