| |
Away
By
Caroline Lackey
The
front desk was closing so I hurried on up – way up, farther than it
looked on the map – to check in. My undershirt was shellacked to
me and my breathing rasped as I bragged to the ownerclerk of the boutique
SRO that I had run from nearly Market & Hyde.
In the room, I lay on the bed, feet on the floor arms flung out, thinking
I should wait, wait. I thought about the walk through the Tenderloin
and the hills, too, the hiding from you.
Across your shoulder, around the long-healed collar bone, I crouched there
in the fine hairs of your neck. Aching and shifting, sometimes
losing focus, there I wept until almost dark when I knew you'd be gone
from me, poof. That's when, right when I got up, slid the keycard
into the lock to make sure I could get back in, and I advanced, or
retreated, down the hill to your office, where my clothes, my
“things" were locked, discreetly bagged for me to creep in and
collect.
San Francisco
at twilight is electrifying like a movie set might be to a kid, or an
adult from
South Carolina
. It’s gripping and intense, but mainly safe. The night felt
removed, or maybe overdone in parts such that I was removed. The
walk up Hyde had been elegant, just hours earlier. The trees mingled
with railroad apartments which for themselves ended abruptly only to open
at the sidewalk, cleavage at the blouse, my shadow on your door. How
unlike walking the same road in the opposite direction. The sky is
the backdrop going up into Nob Hill, but heading down,
Market street
with its streetcars and beggars is the setting and soon the trees were
behind me, I couldn't remember them at all. And all I saw were
the homeless, the mentally ill that Reagan turned out and we continue to
turn out. Captured in the revolving door of self-loathing I say,
"sorry," and still look down when they ask.
There were drug deals and whores but it was the intact body of a dead bird
with no head that woke the baby. Losing you, losing even me, not
even against the odds anymore, I swatted angrily with one arm at the many
questions as I shed myself, tapped lightly my sternum, and sang under my
breath. Or, more precisely, stopped at the crosswalk I did the
talking-in-your-head equivalent to this.
Then, when the journey fell quiet of N self-examination, S paranoia, E
enlightenment, W depression, I stepped INTO that intersection, arms wide.
But no buses came. There would be no shaking it off, for this night
would be the memory standing in summation for why I chose whatever I
choose.
As I got closer to your office, I was amazed to find how unfamiliar it
was. How alien the change in light and the subtraction of the usual
characters and the pink Cadillac out front replaced by a much smaller rust
(colored) car with no windows and a family miraculously asleep inside.
People lingered in front, your co-workers, saying good-bye so I slipped
around the block and inadvertently passed Herman.
"What are you doing in the Tenderloin at this hour?" he boomed.
"I'm lost," I said couching sincerity in uncomfortable irony,
the springs wearing through the thin cushion.
"Obviously," he answered with a broad smile. We passed
without stopping.
Now, for the third time, I cut a path between the TL and the hotel where I
was either to begin putting a life together or mending what we once had,
assuming I was able, assuming you even wanted that, or reviewing at long
last the third option, primarily a mathematical dilemma = finite energy x
variable time = worth it?
In the room, I rearranged. Many times with the lamp but the
extension cord got in on some of the action.
All in all this first night away was a sweaty affair and I hate to focus
heavily on such logistics but really it was quite a lot of work and my
skimping on the dinner -getting only a sandwich- in order to get back to
the room sooner was just a foolishness I could only realize after, as I
lay hungry the rest of the night.
I turned down the bed. I observed TV, the ritual if not the full
transfiguration. And, often, too often, I checked for messages from
you.
As the half hours split and timbered, I estimated your movements.
They were unconcerned, domestic movements, gentle, warm.
What I came to – caught, as it were, in or given to this moment of
clarity, of tenderness – was that I would wait, to presently try to
improve myself, to sharpen my love and sand my tongue. To do
less would be lazy. And the other two options aren’t going
anywhere.
Copyright © 2005 Caroline Lackey
|
