mictlan

a long, busy day at work, with the promise of tomorrow being longer and busier. in the evening, I meet a friend at the coffeeshop to return a half-read Sylvia Plath biography and a stack of DVDs two feet high. he's leaving for foreign parts in a week or two.

afterwards, it's still early and I decide that I'll drop in at E.'s place (which is down the road from the coffeeshop) and... I don't know, maybe borrow some DVDs.

so I drop in. E. answers the door somewhat absent-mindedly; she walks around for a good few minutes looking for her key before she can let me in. she and I go a ways back. we've probably gone through just about every possible permutation of relationship possible between two people; indifference, friendship, love, loathing. I'm not quite sure where we are at now; I think we're back at Casual Acquaintance.

H., who shares the house with E., is not home from work yet. I wander into E.'s room, where she's sitting on the bed with the radio on. it's an oldies station.

"Whatcha doing?"

an exasperated look.

"Listening to music. Obviously."

Tone down the small talk, an internal voice notes, and while you're at it, get Engineering to spike up the empathy levels.

I sit on the bed in front of her, and realize that there are tears in her eyes.

I don't know what to say. all the inner voices are silent. I don't say anything. I don't even think about anything. I watch a teardrop swell on her eyelash.

she cries real pretty. she always has; in complete silence, with tears that roll down her cheeks gracefully. in my crueler moments I would think that probably took a lot of practice.

hey, I never said I was nice.

I wonder if I should leave. I don't want to leave. I want to... hell, I don't know. the usual. hug her, tell her that whatever it is will be all right. coax her into telling me what's wrong. be supportive. all that shit. I've forgotten the arguments, the "Casual Acquaintance" status and the indifference. all I can remember is that I once loved this girl more than anything in the world. that's altogether too easy to say. but it's true, and just because the phrase is hackneyed and trite doesn't make it any less true; I could dress it up and say it fancier, but some things have to be said simply, in words of one syllable. and this is trite, but simple; hackneyed, but true; I once loved this girl, more than anything in the world. and though that hasn't been true in a good while, there's something in my head that will always belong to her, just like there are parts of my head that belong to other people that she doesn't know. there's something in there that says, Don't just sit there. Do something.

so I don't do anything. I just sit there.

we sit and listen to the oldies in silence. every now and then we exchange a sporadic sentence or two about nothing in particular.

"How's A. doing? Is he still with D.?"

"Yeah. Hell on earth. The usual."

A song or two goes by. these aren't comfortable silences. they're not hideously awkward, uncomfortable silences either. they're just silences, the sort that happen when there are two people sitting there, not saying anything, not really conscious of the fact that they're not saying anything.

"God, I love this song."

"Yeah? The Temptations."

I lean forward and draw patterns on her knee with my finger with a certain absent-minded concentration. I draw pentacles and hexagons, sigils and veves.

"Hah, Mister Mister. My brother used to play that a lot when I was a kid."

I know that whatever is eating her has nothing to do with me. I know that whatever it is, it's probably too complicated to explain to me off the bat; it would have been easier if we were keeping up more closely with each other's lives. which, obviously, we haven't been. I'm not sure I actually want to know. it's not pleasant to see her in pain; it's not pleasant to know that something is gnawing at someone you do care for, if in a somewhat roundabout way, and that you have so little to do with her life that you can't help, or even listen. it's not pleasant to realize that you may not even care what it is, specifically; selfishly, all you want is for things to be nice again.

"Hindbrain reflexes." I mutter to myself, under my breath. she doesn't notice that one, fortunately. she'd misinterpret that; the phrase once meant something quite different between us.

no, I'm not really like that. or rather, I am, but I'm civilized; I don't care automatically, naturally, but I do care because I know that it's right. I want to care, so I do. sometimes I wonder if that's what everybody does. the people who care, that is; the people who obviously don't care get to skip that little dilemma.

the Carpenters are on the radio, with Solitaire.

we sit there, mostly in silence, listening to the oldies, until H. comes home from work. that changes the flow of things; if you listen hard, you can hear relationship dynamics realign like the subtle shiftings of tectonic plates. I like it better when H. is around. everything doesn't have to be quite so damned other.

and solitaire doesn't have to be the only game in town.

posted by: mictlantecuhtli at 01:34 | link | comments (23) |

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