I create an ambience of calm with the very pressure on the brake. The car slows in a gradual way. It’s clean inside and out. No cold shrilling squeals, no grinding edge, no musky smells, just the perfection of a stop that can only indicate to nearby drivers that I do not need to be anywhere particularly. I take this really nice breath. In through the nose, then out through the mouth.
It is spoiled soon enough as cars driving by shake the stillness. But it’s ok. The pine smell from the car refresher I bought this afternoon makes things better, feel better. The car wobbles uncomfortably fast then slows while I listen to the Doppler effect. I stare at the red and then at the sudden green. Motion and then deep breathes.
What will we talk about?
My nerves will follow me to the door, I suspect. They are worries of appearance, anxieties of acceptance; and despite the familiar curves in the streets and the calm dark trees with their recognizable roots in the sidewalk, this tension will continue without release. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Pine. I see that I know the way just as one knows one’s way to all of their houses, jobs, and schools, years after. It’s the kind of knowing that lends itself to one’s dreams: you always know the way back school in your dreams.
Left lane, left blinker; red light, slowly stop.
I make a point of looking at a nearby church. I haven’t seen it since I left for school but I remember it well enough. They put these vaguely religious phrases on a large black and white sign and light it with a light bulb. It reads: What have you done for Him lately? I wonder if they are suppose to be jokes after all.
Beside the church and its sign is the shabby park. Next to which is this flower shop that I still wish I could get hired at. Submit application, nothing. Submit application, still nothing.
I pass by the public and private high schools that are opposite one another. They look more like a maze of parking lots and detention halls with high fences and stuffy professionalism. You look down the familiar empty halls for a moment. The suburbs are all such mazes of asphalt, private and public divisions, churches, and doctor offices. Warm alienation - everywhere‘s local specialty.
The lights on the streets come on. Remembrances as well as pieces of sentences, her timbre, and vague feelings that were had in and around this neighborhood. The evolution of shyness, to tasteful bravado, to meaningful intimacy, to controlled aversion, and then to indifference. But it all doesn’t seem to matter so much now. I have some other hopes and optimism. I have humor.
Somewhere inside me says: go and park and look down the row of similar houses, no hurry in face or motions.
Pale tones, sharp tile roofs. Unimpressive small patches of grass that hired gardeners keep up. Excitement and also defensive straight faced-ness. You’ll walk up the concrete path between the grass and then up the steps onto a porch. You’ll ring the bell and wait and try to relax. When she answers, smile when she smiles.
But you can’t prepare for spontaneity. Static and ringing.
We’ll see.
I look both ways, exit the car, up the path, and ding-dong. Dog’s bark, quiet footsteps. The door flies open. She smiles, says hello, and gives a tentative hug. She stands on her toes and her sweater touches my bare neck
Warmth.
Cinnamon.
Itchiness.
We look past her porch at the windy trees and the clean 2-door coupe I borrowed from Paul and then she walks back inside for a heavier coat.
Huh.
I look into her parents’ house through the blurred glass by the door and can’t remember if it looks the same - just tables, a sofa, knick-knacks, and glass and wood cabinets. Plain and warm. Dog still barks, keeps me wary. When she returns, a smart black belted raincoat over her sweater, she locks the door and then jogs to the street with a smirk.
Look at that! Energetic steps. Follow behind her. But please don’t comment. I spot the duality in my motives at once.
She chatters to me and we catch each other up without much trouble. She mentions the grinning fellow I saw her draped upon at the park as well as her father’s newborn daughter - Devin and Alexandria, respectively. I listen as we drive our way into town, remarking very little. I notice a urge to impress her on the one hand, and a movement of boredom on the other. She talks about Devin: she sits next to him in a film class – homework friends and then kissing friends. She talks about her part-time job and the regular customers. She says, Do you know that I work at a coffee shop? I nod and politely say, Yeah, I remember. Politeness is easy with people you don’t really know anymore.
She tells me about a group of homeless people who come during the afternoons. They order tea and sit by the window and just stare, take up space. She says that she talks to them a lot, now. She says that she is thinking of writing a book about each of them. It would be a factual narrative about who they are and how they got to be the way they are.
There’s a tension and hurt. Please repress it, somewhere says.
I get caught up in my thoughts as she talks about the project: Don’t laugh or pout. One can’t remember everything, obviously. But breathe for gods sake. What have you done for Him lately? Smaller than a shadow in the corner of the car. In the cracks with the dark. Don’t you remember! At the Italian deli a few months ago after you spotted me reading in the park, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I was smoking a few minutes earlier, wondering if you realized, we drove separately to the arts and crafts store to get a notebook and some supplies, and you wanted me to go with you to a homeless shelter in Los Angeles in a week or two and interview whoever would want to be apart of the project. And you talked about who you had already interviewed, like that woman who, when you asked what her favorite color was, she said rainbow and who used to live with a guy who abused and raped her and that she only stayed there because she had nowhere else to go, and then she finally left, and you said it was kind of a good thing that she was homeless.
What do they think about this? I ask, suppressing the noise.
I don’t think they mind, she says. They all seem to tell me the basic information.
When we stop at a Mexican restaurant by the freeway she orders for me while I get a table. I’m vaguely proud of myself. Cold breeze, stiff chair.
She asks me in a less polite way how I’ve been as I stare at some loud children free of their parents by our table.
I’ve been fine, I say. You know, calmer, fitter, healthier, and more productive. Like a pig in a cage on antibiotics.
Certain sad old men with grimaces and certain worried women with few words, she says, trying to be me.
Poetic, I say. I don’t really know how to answer the question and I say so.
I know that, she says.
And then she smiles like a child. Too large – or maybe cute-naive. She's alright, you think to yourself. Nice even.
It starts to rain as we eat and the ambiance makes me feel warm and vital. We discuss parents some more and our old friends. I refill our sodas and chips. She asks me when I will be leaving.
In a few days.
