Stop and write about “what if that night never happened” if you wish. Or you could [[a mind to meander|go back to where the river begins]]. ---- They all wanted to go with me to the airport. I guess they assumed any friend of mine was cause for celebration--and trust--and sure to bring variety and fun. And you are. And you did, I think, although they seemed a little subdued for much of the weekend, a little less boisterous making pies and painting nails than I might have imagined. We looked at twenty-eight-dollar cheese hats and stuff while we waited, and I was slightly nervous. M—— asked if someone could fly the plane hanging from the ceiling. We pointed out our favorite miniature planes in a display case. They didn’t really want to go into the bookstore. You looked old, as soon as you got up close where I could see your actual face. That’s her, I said as you were coming out of the concourse. Really? G—— said, looking at a turned-inward, sideways-and-down-looking, young but rumpled woman walking a little ways in front of you. No, her, I said hurriedly so as to dispel the notion that my famous friend from Alaska whom I’ve known since I was a teenager could possibly be that nondescript. The tall one with the dark shoulder-length hair and purple sweatshirt, pulling that red suitcase. Her. You looked so old. You gave the little wave, exactly as I could have visualised, and you had the protected smile, exactly as I remembered. Your face was so lined, the skin around your eyes so weathered and thin. The part of your chest that was showing looked like my mom’s used to. When we were talking in the backyard, I said I had a carapace around me, and that’s why I hadn’t been dating or anything like that. You told me about your nice guy who treats you really nicely, and how you’re trying to kick your addiction to guys who are a puzzle but are damaged or else aren’t really there once you really start to dig in. When you started to get just a little bit obviously not completely comfortable on the couch, I said you can share the bed if you want, and you said do you want? and I said--what did I say? Did I say “that would be nice,” or “that would be fine?” Big difference. When I told you I don’t relax because I’m afraid I’ll miss something, you said you can miss some things, and it’s okay. And you’re right. When you were sitting on my bed with your laptop and I asked what you were doing, you laughed and said watching a movie because you never stop running around. Puttering. So I climbed over your blanketed legs, kind of making contact but mostly not, and got in there and watched a movie with you. The movie was pretty good because it had life and death and sacrifice and nightmares and helpless people taking care of each other and becoming a tiny bit less helpless, and greed and gore and tenderness. And it pulled me away from where I was, the way movies have been doing for years and years. Because pretty much every movie that pulls at me at all is some kind of love story, and I have yet to see a love story that really sits right on top of my chest and holds me down and spits in my mouth and says, I’m yours and you’re mine, right here right now. At least not one that makes me feel really good and pure when it does that. And when we went apple picking I watched you tell the girls and me what to do a few times, and I watched myself watching that and how that felt, and I disappeared a little bit so that I was there, jouncing along with everyone else on the hayride, but also I wasn’t quite there. The last time the girls and I went to that place was almost exactly two years ago, and the woman that was telling us what to do then had hijacked my fantasies, had become swollen beyond the boundaries of her own fantasies and assaulted our child, and was picking apples and telling us what to do as I sat there not quite there, marking time until I would have a chance to leave the house without arousing suspicion and go break down in front of the sliding window in the front room of the police station. And the only time I remember feeling perfectly natural acting silly in front of you was when I was playing with L——. She had come out to the sun to see what we were talking about and to get some of our pistachios, and I rolled around on the ground with her and did that thing where I pretend to fall asleep on her and then wake up with an exaggerated snort when she makes the slightest sound or movement, and she giggles and we do it all over again until we do something else like swing her around in a flying circle. You guys are silly, you said as you walked back toward the house, and it sounded like it meant “I can tell I’m not included in this.” And it reminded me of years ago when K—— said in Seattle that she had wanted to cry because she had looked over at me and Dexter crouching side by side with our paws up on the windowsill looking out, and she had realized that she would never be as close to me as that dog was right then. I noticed in the kitchen that I didn’t look at your eyes much, and I wondered if you were noticing that too. And after we watched that movie and I was all full of fizzy energy, I struggled like a muppet to get the covers straight, and I said a few strange outbursts that made you laugh. It felt good to make you laugh, not so much because I wanted to make love with you, which is how I used to think of making someone laugh, but because it made me feel a little relieved of the burden of you not laughing and having a good time after you’d spent I don’t even know how much on a ticket to get all the way down here. And I couldn’t get to sleep because of the movie energy pulling me somewhere, somewhere away off left, over the dark wet grass of the commons, out past and above the airport, into the glowing dark, past all the exciting places you told the girls you’d flown or floated to in all your exciting jobs, and I wondered--and I had to actually do that sideways ladder climb half touching and mostly not touching your legs thing to get to the dresser to get my phone to make a note about it--I wondered whether or not that real big life-and-death grandiose charging-ahead movie love can ever be possible again. And I’m still wondering that. And not knowing? That actually feels okay, right now.