...as it stands

{Awkward Pause}

{…}
I know how the movie of my life would start.
It would be an extreme close-up, and then slowly pull back, until the audience realized that they were looking at a face, and then, KA-POW! Fight scene. Not like, giant letters and Batman, but realism. If I were playing me in the film, I’d take the punch in the snoot, too, it’d be the least I could do. They audience would be introduced to me getting decked into an office wall.

I’ve started watching movies from the middle. It’s not that I don’t have time for explication, or setup, or whatever words people are using to describe the first hour of a movie, but I continually find myself watching for a good hour in fast forward, and then seemingly at random, stabbing the play triangle, stuttering with the picture to a halt, and then proceeding smoothly, as if that first half, three quarters, whatever, hadn’t happened. I pretend that I matter enough that film buffs look at me with disdain.

And that’s how it happens here. Except there’s no buttons for rewind, no shuttle, no god-help-us-please-make-it-stop. It seems instead, like it’s all pauses. Just a string of stutters…like that…and that…and these…

{…}
There are times when a song hits you and you can't get away. And it pummels you into submission, uses you, until it’s good and done. That’s perhaps not as romantic as this—somehow this other person, maybe millions of miles away, has put down on paper, or recorded, or whatever, exactly what it was that you're thinking, feeling, hoping. I'm sure it's different for different people, but for me, I really think that—

"You going to boil those noodles all night?" her voice came from behind me, and to my left. The noodles in the pot on the stove were threatening to mutiny, the force of the boil driving them to climb up, over the rim, reaching down the sides to sear their tips on the burner below. A suicide mission, clearly. I reduced the heat, stirred slowly, my emergency noodle boiling training holding me in good stead in these times of trouble.

I grinned. No one would think that was funny but me.

Her eyes were in my back. "So, I have to go." I nodded, focusing all my attention on the noodles. I heard her turn, and her sandals slipped from the wood floor of the kitchen to the rug in the other room. THAT, was the sound of leaving, if I ever heard it. Sort of a "shh" and then "pff", and then silence until I heard her hands push the door. I didn't hear it open.

I could almost hear her biting her lip. I'd seen it several times, and while I don't claim clairvoyance as part of my training, I'd place virtually any amount of money that she had her right hand on the door knob, and her left hand flat on the door, and her lower lip, just the right side, tucked up under her top teeth. It was an action that still defined her to me. I would miss that. Still no door.

I was totally wrong about the door, but not the lip. She surprised me, crossing back on to the fake wood floor of the kitchen. I dropped the spoon in the bowl of noodles. As it clanged around in the boiling water, I felt her behind me, just barely touching my back. "I don't know who fucked you up, but it's the best job I've ever seen." She leaned closer, brushing her lips against my right cheek.

My eyes welled up as I counted her steps across the kitchen. Numbers like that always make me cry. "I'll call you tomorrow," I blurted out, as she again crossed the threshold to the silence-imposing rug.

"You can call me any time." It seemed, at that moment, a rote response. It probably still is. I looked down at the noodles, more of a casserole of noodle-like mush at this point, hugging the upturned spoon handle like a monument to my sorrow. I’m being over-dramatic. They’re just noodles, and I cooked them too long. It was Jeff Lynne's voice that got me though, coming out of the tiny radio to my right, "Hello...?" I switched it off, impulsively pushing the pot off the burner and garnering a small burn on my fingertips for my efforts. The "F" of her expletive had been so...thick. When they teach little kids the sounds of our alphabet, they should play them recordings of that "F" sound. It was all that "F"-ness could ever aspire to be, an "F" to make Plato proud.

The aching in my fingertips subsided under the cold faucet. I watched the spray, as it slipped around my fingers, into my upturned palm, pooling and then spilling into the foreboding depths of the side of the double sink that was still usable. I considered a scene from the book I’d been commenting on at work, and they were Marvin's hands, instead of mine, scrubbing off the chemicals at the end of his work day. The squelch of unknown elements as they slowly slide off his hands, mixing with the water, down the drain with the rest of the detritus. My knee buckled. It does that when it's cold, and more often now when it's not, just to show me who's boss. Rain had started outside, though, and temperatures were falling, so I couldn't blame it...much. I wiggled the leg, willing it back to full strength, and straightened up, twisting the faucet handle into silence and relative dryness.

My favorite movie for awhile now has been High Fidelity. And while all I wanted to do was to throw open the window and yell into the oncoming rain, "you should have gotten to me sooner!" but it didn't quite fit. Save it for another time, I guess. Instead, I dialed her number, standing at the door, watching the rain come down harder. It rang. Once, twice, three times. Numbers again.

"Hello...?" Fuck you, Jeff Lynne.

"You should come back. Weather's awful."

"It's fine. you should come out."

I opened the outer door, stepping out from what I consistently try to refer to as the foyer on to what I consistently try to refer to as the front stoop. She stood just off the steps, on the sidewalk, only about a quarter-soaked so far. Smiling. "It's only rain. You should enjoy it...or something." The "something" was ambiguous to me, as I guess it was supposed to be. Grammar.

"I don't enjoy. You should know that by now." Witty, I thought. She shivered a bit, and stood there, letting the rain soak her hair and shoulders, pinning her bangs to her forehead and cheeks. She was beautiful, and that came as a surprise to me--it's always been hard for me to find the rain-soaked, plaster-haired girl attractive. Never been my thing, really. She was biting her lip, again, half-smiling.

I took the first of the steps, slowly, and she smiled more fully, coaxing me out of my hobbit hole like one of those little squirrels that live outside the building where I work. I resented it, but not enough to stop. Second step, and my knee twinged again. This would end badly. Also ambiguous. Third step, numbers, and my knee stopped working, I couldn't tell which part of me hit the pavement first, but there were at least two more steps, full of pain, vertigo, and darkness.

"Hello...?" Goddamn Jeff Lynne.

{…}
So it happened, after a rain, as things of that sort often do. I like to think that we both had a good time, but, as these things go, I’ll probably never know for sure. I gave it my best effort. I walked her home in the morning, as it was only a couple of blocks away, and got my first look at her living space. I suppose that is one of those things that a guy should consider before he goes and spends the night with a girl that he actually seems to like, but, as we walked up to her door, I shrugged mentally, and probably physically, and acted as if the thought had never crossed my mind. Because it hadn’t.

And then I realized what had been bothering me all along. It wasn’t that she wasn’t quirky, or intelligent, or pretty, it was that she was all of those, and it had been driving my crazy, although, in my estimation, a fairly happy kind of crazy. She was the kind of girl who didn’t mind that her underwear was all over when you saw her “place” as she called it, for the first time. She was also the sort that had her cds everywhere. And while I’m no vinyl bigot, I do abide by the “keep your cds in their cases” rule. I’m also not saying that I hated the underthingies all over, but it does make a guy wonder about certain issues.

You can tell a lot about a woman, or person, for that matter, by their underwear and music collection. From a quick scan around, there were several matching sets, (the underwear) which, according to the myths that I subscribe to, was a good sign. Also, she did have her burned copies, labeled “Dido” and “Son Volt” right next to each other. This brought High Fidelity to mind, and I wanted to ask her how she was categorizing and hope for some either asinine or ridiculously cute answer, but couldn’t bring myself to bite that proverbial bullet. Instead, I stood there, mute, while she skittered about the main room, clearly not sure what we were supposed to do here, but not telling me to leave…

“I need to get to work, soon, so, I should probably run.” I’d never been a fan of awkward pauses.

“Ah, ok,” she returned, smiling up from the rumpled bed where she had finally seated herself. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to take that as “ok come over here” or “ok get the fuck out”, so I did a quick dance, a two-step of sorts, 1, 2 and back. She was clearly nonplussed. I backed out the still open door, and into the hall of the strangely communal place she was living in. At my quizzical look, she replied, “it used to be a hotel”. I mentally translated “hotel” to “brothel”, and reminded myself that I had work to get to.

She bit her lip, which actually may have torn open my chest and held my throbbing heart in front of me, had I not already been committed to the walk towards the front door, and then smiled and said, “come by any time” to my retreating form.

“Sure.” I managed, as I turned the corner to the main stairs…


{…}
Marvin is not a misanthrope. That was what I realized, as I sat down to consider, for the umpteenth time, beginning to write the review for the packet on my desk. I hadn't finished the manuscript, which was normal for us. The idealogy of our office was very much that if you could make it halfway through whatever it was that came across your desk that day, it was not only a good day, but the story might even be half good. The problem was, of course, that I wanted to. Marvin is someone that I needed to understand. And like good fiction, or whatever this was, it had made me see things in my life that were connected to it, maybe even satirized by it. It's not that he hated people, it's that he wanted. And when he realizes, throughout his story, that it's not acceptable to want, to need, even, because it's never reciprocated in the way that he wants, he comes off as this arrogant prick. The most convincing scenes that I'd seen so far had been in his embalming room. I can see of course, how an undertaker, mortician, if you like, could be seen as a misanthrope. We've got the whole 6 Feet Under oeuvre to signpost that for us, but that isn't what he's selling. He just doesn't see people as individuals. Not very often at least.

Michael walks by my desk, asking if I'd like another coffee. That seems like code for, "how did it go?" so I slowly manage my way from my cubicle to the coffee staging area, sliding in next to him, and staring directly ahead into the shoddily printed notice above the sink, letting us know that our mother did not, indeed actually work there with us. There was a small note at the bottom, penciled in a vaguely familiar hand, "Your mom is hot". I can't think of anything to say about that.

Michael looked over at me, and I toss off, "it was weird. That's all."

His eyes strained to come out of their sockets, like they always do when he really wants more, but can't bring himself to ask for it.

I give in. Too easily perhaps, but he knows me. We've been stuck in our respective cubicles doing this job for close to 3 years now. "Remember the dispute of '05?" We would really like to be secret agents, or ninjas even, but neither of us could afford the training, or to stay in the sort of shape it takes to do such jobs. He nods in assent. "Well it was nothing like that. In fact it was more along the lines of the last time we went out after work, and you got picked up, taken home, and..." I trail off. His jaw drops.

"..." His silence is just what I wanted. And expected. "Going to see her again?" I turn to leave. He's broken all protocols with that one. Never. Ever, do we use the pronouns in these stringent coffee pot times. I look down and realize no one had even made coffee. This is the worst moment of our spy careers. "You have plans after work?" I nod in the negative.

"See you then."

Marvin is not a misanthrope. What he is...well I'm not sure. There's a traditional triangle in the story. Marvin, Sue, Jennings. Growing up, somewhere in middle America, just like the song, and Sue falls for Jennings. Marvin has so much soul in him, and wants so much to be with Sue...and yet, there's nothing there. She cares about him, sure. It's her that says, "Marvin, they're all different ones," trying to lead him out of what I think readers will construe as his hatred of mankind, but when he sees them, on his table in the back room, needing to be dressed and made up in ways that they probably never would have in life, they are the same...and his response, "they're all fading into one", well that just shows what he sees. I'm reminded of a course I took at the university. Michael was there, and I wonder if he remembers the talk of screens, and acts and scenes. No one will give a crap if I write those things, so I don't.

I look up from the blank computer screen, trying to swivel my chair just to the point where I know it will creak and draw attention to my stymied attempts at work, but not past. Success. I look past the cubicle and see her enter. This "her" is the reason for our never uttering the pronoun aloud. She should be the only one who gets that pronoun, thus, we do our best to avoid it at all costs. I stare, except in that way that I think she doesn't know I'm staring. This is the way Marvin looks at Sue, I know it. There's never a time when he just stops her and says something like, "Sue, goddammit, you are the best thing that's ever happened to me. There's no need for me to eat or sleep when you're around...etc etc." He NEVER does that. Why? He's no coward. The man shoves his hands into dead people for Christ's sake. He takes the bus. Cowards don't take the bus, not in Marvin's neighborhood.

I however, am a coward. And so when she walks by, I keep focusing on the way the tree that's growing next to hour office door arches up, and sort of cradles the second story window, cupping it over the top sill with one branch, and supporting it beneath with two more. It's just slipping into Autumn today, and the leaves have turned...I smile. What a great quote from the book--"the leaves are turning and so have you. And the cold wind still touches your skin, and that makes me the bitter one." Words from Marvin's head. This is the weakest point of the book by far, and as of now I'm still choosing to ignore it. That, is what cowards do. I hear from just behind me, "that tree is almost cradling us, stuck here in our little world of papers and desks. Have you noticed that?" That voice. Her voice. Michael leans back, just down the way from me, his eyes doing that thing again. I lean back into the computer, as if I haven't heard. Like a coward.

{…}
It occurs to me today, as it does each morning when I get up, that I might die before I finish this book. And I want to know what happens, but just can't get the pages turning fast enough. The same thing happens at work. I want to say things, do things, get finished with things...all because of this inane fear that I'll one day walk past that cradling tree, step off the curb, where there's never a bus, and there will be one.

And I wonder who will come to pay respects, and who won't. And I wonder who will do Marvin's job, and who will read my will, and who will care...

Maybe this is what reading a book about a life of loss and embalming gets you...

Instead of The One She Knew as Cowboy, I'm going to recommend a different title. I think...it should be Awkward Pause. Because that's what we do...it's what Marvin does. It's what we ALL do...pause after pause after...you get the picture.

And we HOPE, goddamn we hope that somewhere between those pauses, there's some sort of connection, some sort of moment, that doesn't stop as quickly as it started, that plays like a song on repeat, with just that bare minimum pause as it restarts...that pause that lets you breathe, but then plunges you right back in to the moment.

Marvin spends the whole book...well I'm guessing, since I haven't finished it, searching for that moment. Which in turn makes me think about me, and how I stopped looking, instead relishing in the pauses...but that doesn't work, does it?

It's then that I realize that I've been staring out into the five o'clock darkness for close to thirty minutes. Michael's beeping me on my cell, reminding me that we're going out...five minutes ago, actually. And then I'm grabbing my jacket and hitting the door, walking under the cradling tree, stepping off the curb...

{…}
I didn't go out with Michael at all. I stepped off that curb, realized what night it was, and walked the six blocks to my apartment. Letting myself into what can only loosely be called the foyer, I grabbed what was clearly a bunch of mistreated letters from my box, and proceeded up the flight of stairs to my landing.

Yeah, it seems really movie-ish, doesn't it? There's always a “landing”, and there's always a flight of stairs, and a semi-communal living arrangement. It's always private, but not too private, so that if something bad were ever to happen, well there would be witnesses, but they'd be hard to find, thus making it relatively suspenseful. Luckily, this is not my life. My apartment, because I can't bring myself to call it a "flat"--I'd never be hip enough for one of those--greeted me in the way that homes do. If there was a place that I actually liked being, it was here. Slipping out of my shoes, shuffling across the carpet, padding across the worn wood floors in sock feet, I said my hellos to the kitchen and living room area. They answered with their usual calming silence. This was to be expected, right? Right. Expectation. Fulfillment.

I flicked the tv on from the kitchen, and there it was. So this is my problem with fiction, particularly televised fiction. It's beautiful and good. And it makes me want what they have. The tv shows me this handsome man and this beautiful woman, and of course they like each other, although for plot purposes they can't say it out loud. And yet they find themselves in romantic contexts, which allows me to think, "oh sweet jesus, here it comes", only to be let down, and get the same old, "not yet". Maybe the finale. At any rate, I called Michael, not wanting to be a total ass.

*ring*

"what?"

"I'm not coming"

"No shit."

"Oh come on," he does know me after all.

"You watching tv?"

"..."

He sighs. "Dude. Get OUT."

"I did that. Remember? Still thinking that was not my best move."

It's his turn for the pause "...".

"Look, I'll see you at work tomorrow."

"Yeah, fine. Did you see Sam on your way out? She passed me, headed back to the office."

"No....why does that matter?"

"I would have thought you would have crossed paths, that's all. She looked pissed."

"While that does interest me, she always looks like that. It's because of her head, and her face. You know this." I can hear him smiling. This is one of our favorite jokes. And it's true. She does always look pissed. It's that whole, my face is too big for my head, and my head is the wrong shape for my shoulders, and the rest...I can't even begin. In Michael's most eloquent, and Guinness-deluged moment, “it's a trainwreck.” Still, odd that she'd be headed back. We're usually the last two out. He hangs up.

I stop caring as the commercial break ends. I should work out, my abs don't look nearly as good as that guy's. THEN I bet that girl just shows up at the door, on the landing, up from the single flight of stairs, where she's just found my apartment number on my empty mailbox. I stop, holding my breath, looking expectantly at the door. I swear, that never works, but I keep hoping it will.

{…}
You know when you stare at something, and I mean the sort of stare where you feel like you're going blind, the sort of "here we are again in grade school and we're having the 'don't blink' contest with Sally out on the playground, because if you win, by GOD, she really will quit stealing your lunch money" stare down? When you stare at something until your vision goes fuzzy, because you can't focus on so many individual points, so like a camera, your eyes pin down whatever it is, to the exclusion of everything else? And then, because you just can't keep that up, your eyes toggle back and forth, and things go in and out of focus, and everything is at once backlit and highlighted, and you feel like vomiting, and at the same time, you think that maybe you just saw god, or whatever higher power you subscribe to, but you know, you just fucking know, that it's not "right". Like we're not "supposed" to see that. Because you can't STAY there, in that realm, your eyes, your brain, maybe even your soul won't let you. Maybe that IS your soul, connecting to other things out there. There's no way I buy that metaphysical crap, but that's what I'm selling today, it seems.

I'm sitting there again, at work on a Saturday, poring over the last chapter of Marvin's story. Pointing out the nitpicky shit that continues to assuage the people who fund our business. And I've got some old station tuned in on the tiny handheld radio that everyone hates. They both hate the station, and that the radio exists, just to cover any ambiguity. And Charlie Rich comes on, and it's like, jeeeeeeesus. That is one hurting white guy. Maybe the most soulful fella on Sun records ever, so I've been told. And the song just ends. That's the problem. Songs have these fade outs now, rather than just Charlie saying "and that's it". You hear him get up from the piano, and walk out in the street. I can see him, seriously, as he heads down the street, and I bet there's snow, because I guy like Charlie Rich is wrapped preternaturally in snowy weather. Black wool long coat, maybe even a hat, but probably not. He's going to meet a lady, at a table, somewhere. There, with the dark grain of the wood under his hands, he's going to sit, staring at the girl, until he can't see straight, and then tomorrow, he'll come back to that piano, and he will bare his soul for another three minutes, and then walk away.

Charlie reminds me of Marvin, right at the end. He's losing it. He's never told Sue that he loves her, except in that way that he looks at her. And when he does, look at her, I mean, the author, who's so good at this--I have to page back and read it verbatim.

Marvin looks up from the table, his right hand buried in the side of the corpse's head, his left hand holding the jaw, trying to ease everything into place, so that the moment the family sees this poor bastard, this letdown, this, the middle son, who never did a damn thing but cause heartache, and heartbreak, the moment they see him, they'll tear up, and they'll break down, and they'll realize what a bunch of goddamn fools they've been, because what he did, what he really did, was hold their broken family together. And by god, Marvin's going to show them that, because this funeral will be perfect. He looks up at the doorway, where Sue is standing, nervously leaning both in and out of the frame. And his eyes, just for a second, for the fraction of time that it takes for him to recognize her, light up like dancing fireflies in that children's book. He starts to speak, but the words are caught, caught up in what he's doing, and what he's done, and what he can't remember any more. She says, "I left you something up there on the counter" and turns to go. Looking back, smiling, to say "I never know what you're thinking when you look like that." The door swings shut behind her, and Marvin drifts back into his work. It will be perfect.

Stare at it until you go blind. It's either that, or you walk to her door, and you tell her, Marvin. But he doesn't. It's just like that Charlie Rich song, "and that's it". Book over, story done. Marvin drifts away. I realized I'm staring out the window, staring at that same tree, cradling us, remember? And everything's fuzzy, and I can't tell which part I'm looking at, and somebody crosses my field of vision, and it's gone. And I smell something subtly sweet, and I know, turning back to my computer and the final page, and drift back into my work.

{…}
I hear people say they come unstuck in time, all the time. It's hard to think that sentence, let alone say it. Thank god this is all in my head. I know. It comes from that book. But as I lean, too heavily, perhaps, on the sink, and watch the water escape the faucet, covering my hands, catching the grain of my skin, turning to rivulets instead of rivers, and droplets instead of streams, I think I know what they mean. It's trite, and I'll not say that I have indeed come unstuck. That would be ridiculous.

...

I've come unstuck in time.

Serious. I wish I still smoked. Turning off the faucet and navigating the wreck that is our office restroom to find a suitable towel turns out to be a Herculean task. I opt instead for "drying" my hands in my just-this-side-of-too-long hair. Remember that country song, "I Don't Go Around Mirrors"? Charlie Pride? George Jones? Couldn't be Jones, but Pride...maybe. I couldn't even hum the tune at the moment, so I'm not really sure why it occurs to me that it should sound like Charlie Pride, but it does. I ascribe some sort of sweetness, some cleanliness, to him. So slick, so cool. And no, not because he's black. Because he had that calm delivery. Sam Cooke wasn't like that, right? Nope, even in the Soul Stirrer days, he brought the sex. Pride? I don't see it. Maybe I'm wrong. It's happened before; that one time.

It's the cleanliness that brings me back to Marvin. I've started washing my hands...a lot. It's a little odd, actually. Not like I'm headed for OCD-land or anything, but, it's also not that I'm THAT dirty. Marvin, however, is. And it's clear, if one reads in the way that the folks at my old institution trained us to read, that it means something that he's so dirty. Personally, I think that's bullshit. He's a damn mortician. He embalms dead bodies. And that's only after picking them up at the hospital, carting them back to his workplace, and laying them out on the table. It's a dirty job and I just don't see the meaning in overthinking everything about it.

I, on the other hand, am fairly clean. Unless you count the dirt in between the keyboard keys, and the layer of dust gracing the top of my computer monitor. Or the coffee pot. But I don't count those. They don't even compare to Marvin's work, even though we're both in an industry where we're paid to make people look good. The more I think about it, the more I think I'd rather be in his soft-soled patent leather oxfords, staring a dead body in the face, rather than dead prose. No one thinks Marvin can resurrect that body. He can only make it presentable. Here, they expect Jesus to rise with every keystroke.

The faucet's dripping, and I'm leaving it that way.

{…}
Sitting there, listening to my father breathe on the other end of line.

All the references to breathing I've ever heard rustle through my head--Counting Crows, that drug song from Soul Asylum, waybackwhen, Tom Hanks and reminding himself to breathe, which I later ripped off in a song with my high school band. I remember in undergrad, when I took part in a "mindfulness" study. It was about relaxing, and quasi-meditational bullshit, or whatever. I fell asleep. They thought that was pretty good. I had a crush on the girl who was observing and giving me directions. I didn't tell her, and it probably wouldn't impress her to know, that I fantasized about her instead of focusing on my breathing. Come on, though, it was a dark room with a recliner in a college study--I've seen porn that started off WAY worse than that.

I'm holding my breath, I realize, and let it out, as slowly as I can, like that "secret" way that you get rid of hiccups. My dad asks, "are you still there?"

"Yeah."

"So you hadn't heard the news yet? His mother just called. She said you'd want to know. I said I was sure someone would have notified his workplace. She said she was--"

"No, dad. No one said anything. No one but me even noticed he wasn't here." It wasn't quite true. I hadn't noticed Michael was gone either. Not because I didn't care, but because our cubicles weren't close, and I'd gotten to work semi-late, as usual. So, I'd stared at Marvin's story for the better part of two hours, when my phone rang, which I knew to be a bad sign. It was dad. He'd used, "Are you okay?" as his opener. Again, bad sign.

"Oh. I'm sorry son."

I breathed. Michael was dead. We held the line for another fifteen seconds. The only reason I know it was that particular length of time is because my computer, still logging my progress through the morning, beeped to tell me it was break time. The time when Michael and I would make, drink, and subsequently hate, the coffee. It's not like we're lovers, but we are...were, are, screw it...nerds. And we disliked most of our co-workers due to their inability to see us as humans.

"Thanks for calling dad. I appreciate it. Really. I gotta go."

"Yep. His mom said she'd love to hear from you."

"Okay."

We hung up. I said, to anyone who was within earshot, "I'm taking out the trash."

...

Taking out the trash, which is one of the few things that ALL of the people in our office understand, happens for two reasons. One, it needs to be done, and because the people in charge of us refuse to pay a cleaning service (waste of funds) we (underpaid copy editors) can do it. ("I mean, you've got college degrees right?") Bastards. It also happens, because someone is pissed off at someone else in the office, and under what appears to be an office-wide understanding, no one else makes any bones about it. (I have no idea what "making bones" might entail, but no one seems to care about that either).

I grabbed the two giant green trashcans, and wheeled them out the back door, taking very little pleasure in heaving them (completely) into the local dumpster. I would, actually, have to climb in to get them later. Walking behind the dumpster, I found the "office garden". It consisted of a ten by ten foot area of rocks and what appeared to be grass, and a single bench capable of fitting two normal-sized people. It was a replacement for the bench, which, two years ago, would not fit two normal-sized people. I hate this place.

I remembered the one and only time I'd been here with anyone, in this case, Michael. We had had the following conversation:

him: Dude, I think I'm in love.

me: Really?

him: Yeah, a girl.

me: Wow. That's a fairly new population for you to be considering. (Michael was in fact, not gay, but that didn't stop me from making jokes at his expense.)

him: Shut up. I'm serious. She's, she might be, I think she's, you know, the one.

me: That's pretty impressive. Does she know she's the one?

him: Yeah. We made out.

We then went back to work. It was nice that at least one of us got some that year. Michael and I had been friends for three years, as we had been hired during the same week. We also had in common that everyone else at the office either didn't notice us, didn't like us, or didn't care.

The girl had indeed been the one, I might add. It's not a brilliant story of unrequited love--it's certainly not the Marvin-Sue-Jennings love triangle, but it was love, and I both hated and loved him for it.

I miss him already.

{…}
I've never been good with funerals, mourning, or grief. I don't berate myself for that. But sitting at my desk, trying in vain to process how things are, versus how they might have been, versus how they were, I feel like I've missed something.

And so I turn back to the screen, where I'm dutifully doing my job, staring at line after line of text, trying to give the submissions that we've been sent "meaningful, yet critical feedback" (as the mission statement reads) and I know I'm done here. This isn't the work that I wanted. I went to school. I got a degree. I found a job, at least somewhat related to that degree. I've always said that I could do any job, no matter where, or what, and find happiness in it. I'm beginning to think that this is what grief does to us. And I turn to the last page of Marvin's story, placing the page I've finished reading in the upturned lid of the giant box it came in to the left of my keyboard, and staring down into the now seemingly cavernous box at the final page. It's barely half a page really, and it reads:

Sue stood over his plot, after the other few mourners had gone. She'd told Jennings that she'd meet him at home for supper. Reaching into the recesses of the dark woolen coat that she reserved for funerals, she found it, the small bit of paper, gently folded into quarters, and then quarters again, to reduce its size to virtually nothing. She had no more tears to shed, only resolute desire to let things be...to let things go...

Letting it unfold in her palms, she grasped at it gently against the winter wind.

She read, quietly, barely aloud,

"You're a bird that's flown away.
You're the spiraling plume of smoke in the distance
You're the unexplained palm and fingers, too high up on the wall.
You're what no one thinks of, when they think of love.
It's not what I miss, but everything I dream."

And she let it go, letting the wind take it away, across the plots, twisting and dipping around the headstones, and into the countryside.

I had no comments for that page.

Later as I walked home, climbing the steps and finding my way to the living room, I understood, for perhaps the first time, grief, and mourning, and loss, and funerals, and dark woolen coats kept in the back of closets, under plastic, to only be worn for such moments. I don't own a coat like that. I refuse to. Instead I sat down at the piano that I hadn't touched, save to brush the dust off of it, since before I lived alone. It was the family piano--dad had moved out of the old house after I did, and didn't have the space, and so asked that I take it. Grudgingly at the time, as was the way that I did everything then, I engineered its removal and replacement in my apartment.

And I played a waltz, like the ones that I'd heard grandma play at family gatherings when I was little, and I missed some notes, and then missed them on purpose the second time through, deciding to call it revision instead of mistake. And it went like this...

You're a bird that's flown away.
You're the spiraling plume a smoke in the distance
You're the unexplained palm and fingers, too high up on the wall.
You're what no one thinks of, when they think of love.
It's not what I miss, but everything I dream.

{…}