When I woke in the morning I lay still and let the dusty sunlight caress my eyes. Rainbow colored streaks of sun traveled on tiny highways around the room. I noticed the cat litter box was occupied.
I thought about Maureen and what she would have looked like in the shower.
Her guitar stood upright in the corner and I remembered how beautiful her songs were the night of the coffeehouse concert.
A while later Maureen got up and we spoke a bit.
I must have said something wrong, because as I lounged on her couch she became hysterical and said "get out, I don't want you in my house!"
Hearing it was like finding a purse in a refrigerator - bizarre, and misplaced.
I'm not one to hang around when I'm not wanted so I slowly got up from the couch, pressed my hair down to my forehead with my hand, put my jacket on, and started to walk out.
"Wait!" Maureen said in a half frantic voice. "Don't go. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it."
Maureen the folk singer is mentally unstable, I thought to myself.
Her face looked tired and her eyes were black and fearful.
I wondered what had happened to that cheerful, somewhat maudlin voice which echoed in my head. I didn't know whether to stay or go, so I stood in the room looking perplexed.
Maureen began telling me about her ex boyfriend, how she never should have left him. "Danny was good to me, Oh why did I leave him!" She seemed to be talking more to herself than me, so I just listened.
She told me she had the clap, but she had it treated and it should be fine now.
She used to hang out at the No Exit cafe, but the owner banned her because he blamed her for intentionally breaking the front window.
She had once threatened Danny with an ice pick.
By the time I got up to leave, I was thanking my heart for its infinite wisdom. If I had taken a shower with Maureen there is no telling where I would have ended up.
Out on the cold spring streets of Rogers Park, I wandered around, a bit dazed. I looked up at a street sign, someone had painted a T on Estes Avenue. The sky was a cold blue, the wind kicked my hair around, and I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.
I walked to the beach and picked up oval glass pieces that had been worn and smoothed down by sand and water. I put one in my pocket.
A few weeks later Barry called. He mentioned that he had been seeing Maureen. I was surprised to hear this, and asked him what they had done together.
"We watched Chariots of Fire at her apartment", he told me.
I wondered what he thought about the cat litter box, and if Maureen asked him to take a shower.
I told Barry I had been over to her apartment also, and spent the night, and left it at that.
Later in the year I made it to Paris, wandered around Montmartre and the Seine, and was thankful the world hadn't come to an end.
When the fateful day in September came and went, I wondered about Barry and how he was going about putting his life back together. I lost contact with him soon after, and didn't have the chance to see if he kept his faith in the bible.
The following year I was riding on an elevated train, returning from a trip to a west side photography store.
I had pulled a framed photograph which I had recently made out of my backpack and was admiring it. It was a solarized picture of a book with some chess pieces scattered about, and a large dead fly in the middle of it all. I planned to give it to a friend that day.
I looked out the train window, the scratched, milky glass softening the edges of the city buildings.
I sensed that someone was standing next to me and I looked up and saw Maureen. We said hello, and she took the framed photograph from me and studied it.
"It's beautiful", she said as she handed it back.
We chit chatted for a minute or two, and then she walked away.
I sat alone with my thoughts, thinking how strangely connected life was.
I knew I would probably never see Maureen again, yet it seemed to me that we were destined that day to pass each other on the train, really for no purpose other than to gain a glimpse of what might have been had I not listened to my heart.
Lovely music on a train platform :
No comments:
Post a Comment