two inches

In the middle of the night, Imogen awoke with the slightest of startles.  Her eyes opened wide and looked around but everything was silent and dark.  The warmth and slow breathing of the body next to her was her only proof that everything was still real ... time hadn't stopped after all.  Imogen moved her elbow a couple of inches until it touched Ren's back--until she was connected to the warmth--and slowly fell back asleep.

* * *

Ren and Imogen sat down on a park-side bench and unwrapped their sandwiches.  They ate quietly together and impartially surveyed the patrons of the park.  Ren, always the faster eater, gobbled down his sandwich in probably three bites, took a swig of tea like it was a flask of whiskey, and lit up a cigarette.  He eyed Imogen from the side and waited patiently for her to finish her tuna melt.  He hated tuna.

"Where did you go last night?" asked Ren.

Without looking his way, Imogen's brow furrowed and she continued chewing.  

"Whah ah you toggin' abouh?" she replied, mouth still full.

"I'm talking about in the middle of the night, I woke up and you weren't there."

Imogen swallowed her final bite and looked at Ren quizzically.  She remembered waking up.  She remembered Ren asleep next to her.  She didn't remember ever leaving the bed.

"You must have me mistaken with one of your other girlfriends," she riposted and smiled from the corner of her mouth.

"Uh huh.  No, but seriously, I could have sworn you left for part of the night."

"Maybe I did. I don't remember leaving, but that doesn't mean I didn't," Imogen offered.  Ren just stared at her for a moment, wondering if he was actually dating a sleepwalker.  "And no, I'm not a sleepwalker," she added.

Ren looked down in abashment and realized that his cigarette had turned into two inches of ash.  He flicked it away and dropped the subject.

Flux, California

Time had decided to take the day off and Stella was left to overheat in her small mountain cottage, doing nothing. Everything Stella wanted to happen was not going to happen today, so why bother doing anything at all? She was ready to move to Beirut or Cuenca, or to finally find her dream home in which to raise a family. She still wanted to have secret rendezvous with spies and fly a shuttle mission to Mars and run a dive bar in New York. She was ready for it all. But Time wasn't. Time couldn't move fast enough. All day, Stella was silent and she tried not to think of the future.

"I just got to this town and I just started this job," she reminded herself, "so just be patient."

All the time she had given to Ren was wasted. She felt that way, anyhow. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. So did Stella, but the problem was that they weren't eating the same cake. Stella was a great baker, unlike Ren, and it was beginning to affect their relationship. If Ren had ever wondered why Stella might have been holding back a little, it would have been due to his lack of baking skills--that and, perhaps, Stella's knack for abusing metaphors like baking. Either way, Stella detested building relationships in vain. She felt some resentment toward Ren for having led her to believe that he wanted to get married at all.

 * * *

During this state of change, a dark stranger from a foreign land entered Stella's life and eventually came to visit her in her new town. He knew she had a life already, but he was so magnetically drawn to her--and she to him--that being together, even for a moment, even in a crowded public space, could shut out the entire world around them and all its problems. This was something he had been searching for and he found it in Stella. Stella didn't know what to do with this stranger. At first, she thought he would just be an exciting blip on her emotional timeline. But soon, she began to feel that there was something more going on.  It was at this point that she felt she had to let him into her life, come what may.

Sunday, December 14, 2003

The most beautiful thing….. a Sunday morning… we had just woken up.. laid in bed for hours.. there were no lights… didn’t need any…. It was snowing outside and the light from the snow shone through the windows… it was a cool, calm, colorless light.. he got out of bed, wearing gray boxers.. put on a green brmc shirt.. walked across the room and grabbed a Nikon camera.. I leaned up in bed and watched him as he did this.. he came and sat down next to me, fidgeting with the camera, loading new film. Never said a word. He stood up, leaned against the dresser, and started taking pictures through the window. He was so beautiful.. his chocolate cherry hair… all scruffed up.. he went to the other window.. and I looked out through the one his warmth still surrounded.. “oh my god..” I put my hand to my mouth… out the window, over the snowy courtyard, to the apartment building across the way—pink balloons. Someone was letting go of these pink balloons through their window, one by one, as if it was just because it was snowing….We both stared in awe.. four balloons danced around in the air above the courtyard.. he tried to take a picture of one. .. pink balloons ..in snowy whiteness.. it was ….the most beautiful thing.. I fell in love today.

We walked.. tip-toed here and there.. actually just about everywhere… the streets were nothing but pools of ice-water. Our feet were already soaked but I slipped my arm through his to keep from slipping.. “this way, if I slip, you’re goin down with me” ..he wore diesel jeans.. he had old school vans.. I wore his fleece jacket.. it was raining… he drew me under an overhang, pulled me close and kissed me hard… he doesn’t wanna smoke anymore.. said I should buy cigarettes and lend him one.. so I did. We walked down the street, a cigarette in one hand and each other’s hand in the other. We went shopping at von dutch and puma.. tried on binis for each other… slipped into each other.. time was slowly but surely running out.. but we took our time.. enjoyed each other like we had all the time in the world. I tried to sing for him.. but I couldn’t.. any song that came to mind, quickly slipped away and I was left utterly wordless.. I was too nervous and excited. Oh but I was so calm. This is where I belong. I promised him I’d practice a song and sing it next time. We stopped at an Italian coffee shop… it was warm, the windows were foggy, the lights were golden and red… I sat on a wooden seat and he held my hand cross the small marble table.. he asked what I was thinking. More than once. …then…. “I wish could take a picture of you right now. The light from the walls hits your face perfectly… but its so dark, it probably wouldn’t come out”…..he played ‘we wish you a merry christmas’ on my fingers like they were piano keys… then he pulled out his camera and took a snapshot of me. He didn’t want to say goodbye. At the subway, he held me close and smiled. He says my lips are so incredibly kissable. “this is sad… saying goodbye,” he murmured.. i took off the jacket… and handed it back to him.. he kissed me one more time, then we separated.. he went down one end of the tunnel and I went down the other end…. ….i left the cigarettes in the jacket pocket for him.

sweet surrender

like a tadpole swimming aimlessly until it sprouts legs,
like a student discovering his or her talent,
like eating fresh strawberries straight off the vine,
like waking up in the morning with perfect hair,
like the unknowing caterpillar finding itself a butterfly,
like your parents complimenting you for something you thought they didn't care about,
like a cat that comes to lay with you when you're feeling down,
like coffee that's so good, just one sip makes you smile,
this is right.

close.

Ren stood at the bathroom sink, tapping his finger on the porcelain. He stared into the mirror and saw nothing in the black limpid pools of his eyes. He was debating on whether or not to shave. Shaving was something he did not really like to do, but he was unable to grow a proper beard. It always grew out about half an inch in patches and then stopped, leaving him to look rather scraggly. He could probably get away with this, since most young men these days were walking around with half a day's growth of beard on purpose. However, there remained a small bit of guilt every time Ren decided not to shave, because his father had always insisted upon a clean shave. He used to say that an officer and a gentleman always keeps a clean-shaven face. That's just regs.

Ren never became an officer in the military but he knew what it meant to his father. So even though his father was no longer around to see Ren neglect his shaving duties, he still felt he owed it to him to shave.
In fact, when Ren thought about his father, he could not remember a single day he had ever seen the man with stubble. And that man could probably have grown a serious beard. He used to have a mustache when Ren was about 9 years old (that was allowed for an officer), but he eventually shaved it off and never grew another one. No, for the life of him, Ren could not remember any stubble. He wondered how the old man could keep such a smooth face as well. All he had ever seen him use was an old wet brush, a shaving soap stick, and a double blade razor. None of this Triple Mach 5 Blade business. The old man really turned shaving into an art.

Ren, on the other hand, had hardly anything to shave and still knicked himself every time. He chalked it up to the fact that he never really concentrated when shaving. His mind was always somewhere else. Either on work, or how he was going to fix the kitchen sink. But usually, more often than not, his mind would wander back to Stella. She was, like many things in his life, a girl he was completely unable to figure out. He didn't bother with most girls after a while, but Stella had a hold on him. The frustration she caused him by being so lovable and yet so unloving was the main reason he had a hard time falling asleep at night.

Then Ren knicked himself. A slight tenseness cut off by a release of breath as he felt the blade slice into his chin. Soap sting. Another sigh of failure. Ren looked down at the blood on his razor.

"Damnit, Stella..."

the visitor

Imogen gets up early. Soft, white-blonde swoops of hair rest on her forehead and tangle on her crown. She sits, blankly staring ahead, her leg shaking. It always shakes, but she never notices it. She doesn't feel awake or asleep. This must be what a ghost feels like. Or the undead. No impulse to make a decision or even look in a particular direction.
A bird lands outside the window--a black bird with a bright orange beak. It looks hungry as it hops around, silently twitching its head from side to side. Suddenly Imogen's thoughts turn to Ren.
"Why am I thinking of him?"
The black bird jumps down from the fence, landing on the deck. He is cautious but slowly comes nearer the window.
"What did he think he'd find?"
The black bird hops closer to the window, looking around as if waiting for a secret rendezvous.
"He doesn't care about anyone else."
The black bird stops and looks directly at Imogen. He's frozen. She looks right back at him. It could have been two seconds or two days, staring into those beady little black eyes.
Then the bird flies away.
"He shouldn't have let fear get the best of him."
She got up and made herself a cup of coffee.

Consequences of a Perfect Date

The refrigerator hummed mildly in the corner and Stella couldn't sleep. It was 3:10 in the morning. Wednesday. Really, it was still Tuesday but officially, the time was 3:10 am on Wednesday. She had last seen Ren on Monday.

The first date turned out to be perfect and surreal. Like a movie. It hadn't even been 48 hours since the date but already it seemed so far away, as though it had never happened at all. This worried Stella. It wasn't the actuality of the date that bothered her so much as the fact that she felt she was losing touch with reality. This was a very, very bad sign for her. This meant that she liked him. A lot. She instantly wanted to talk to him again, make another plan to see him soon, but she had nothing to offer. No clever ideas, no witty remarks. Should she wait for him to call? How soon is too soon to start saying 'hi' just to say hi? She was jello.

Funny thing about a perfect date--it doesn't matter how many dates or partners you've had in the past; once you have that perfect date with someone you're completely infatuated with, all the coy moves you had and all the dating etiquette you learned fly right out the window, laughing at you and disappearing off into the distance. Stella couldn't even remember how she had gotten any boyfriends in the past. Maybe none of them were as dashing and cool as this guy. Dashing? Wait a second, this isn't the 19th century. What's another word for dashing? Intrepid? No. Smooth? Better. But smooth still could have that negative connotation to it... like player. He didn't have that way about him. Debonair? Maybe that works.

Ren was just so much of everything Stella liked. He basically embodied what she really wanted. Yet Stella had always been too scared to believe someone like that could want her back just as much. She realised she had been settling in the past for men who were safe--she liked them and they loved her. The encounters she did have with perfect guys never quite worked out because of timing or they just weren't that interested in her. Or they were, but she was too scared of getting hurt to let them go on being interested. This time, all the variables seemed to be right and Stella wanted to go for it.

"I just don't want to ruin it," she thought. And the refrigerator continued to hum, and she still couldn't fall asleep.