l i f e
falling into place
contributions
christopher@30seconds.org
"Yeah, I won't be making it in today. Uh huh, thanks. You too."
I hang up and lay back sweating. My head aches from last night. Bad. I think about vomiting. Then I do.
Never think about it. Never. It's hard to beleive June came so quickly, and with it the unbearable heat that is a southern summer. Slowly I get up off the bathroom floor and turn on the shower. Cold water. I lean out the window and breathe deep. I play with the flaking paint on the sill and rub at mildew grown around my banzai trees. I think about the long hot day ahead. Should I bother cleaning my apartment or leave it as is? Should I write things down or will I remember them? I'll probably act as if I've seen the impossible. I know I'll think it...
Skip ahead.
The sun is going down slowly and I'm waiting by gate 45 watching a squat 727 fall from the sky in a controlled glide on the east/west approach to Greensboro International. This is it. Surrounded by plastic seats and vynil, this is going to be it.
No.
No meeting. We're just there, the two of us. Sitting in a sun-baked MGA going about 65 mph away from everything and toward each other. Conversation is difficult over the dual webber carbs and throaty exhaust so we just sit side by side, enjoying the moment. The only moment. I wind the car through its gears and pull into a small country store just outside Bynum. The car settles reluctantly in a cloud of fine granite dust and idles while I run inside and grab the coldest beers I can find. Fish-tailing out of the lot we cruise quickly into the Bynum complex and meld into the shade of a river birch by the rear warehouse. Barefooted and happy, we can relax at last.
Not that. It's night at Pomona. The rail lights flash a few hundred yards off and we sit amoungst the steel with a fine bottle of gin and dry gingerale, fresh lime sticky on our fingers.
No. It's simpler than that. I've almost given up waiting on the street. I'm tired of playing the guitar, and the chords are coming clumbsy today. I'm concentrating hard when a shadow falls over me. I see a pair of boots, black, stop in front of me and slowly turn. I keep playing. Not the first time a pair of boots has parked itself in front of me. A hand reaches out and leaves a piece of paper at my knee. Folded twice. The boots walk on. The paper blows on the sidewalk. I scramble to grab it. It smells familiar. Like burnt wax and oil. My stationary. And on the back a move f8 e7. I look up but the boots are gone...
But really. There is a knock at the door. Unexpected. Arbitrary. I open it without getting up and from the same chair from which I write right now, our eyes meet for the first time and everything else falls into place.
goodnight 4.1.98
