I am a lonely man. I didn’t dream about her last night. Yes I did. She is always near. I hold her in my arms but she will never be still. Sometimes I dream I am an old man and a young, dark skinned girl is in my house, in a house of alabaster with the clearest blue sky in the background. I sit at my typewriter and write while the young girl cooks dinner. The young girl doesn’t speak or smile. She is my companion but she doesn’t love me. In the dream I am an old man in an old man’s body. Now I am an old man in a middle-aged body, but I once was an old man in a young man’s body. I don’t think I was ever a young man. I was a child once.
The reason I left her seems ridiculous now. I guess it didn’t at the time. I never told her why. I just gave her excuses. It wasn’t for another woman, although there were many women to follow. I left her because I was not willing to risk what came so easy for me later on. I don’t live my life with regrets. If I did, I would go crazy and I have been crazy before. My subconscious does have regrets though and sometimes they flourish in my dreams. Sometimes when I dream about her, it leaves me with a bittersweet feeling for the rest of the day. I guess that is a small price to pay for memories. There is an elemental risk in life and the more we risk the richer our lives. I am not rich. In fact I am on the verge of poverty but I have led a rich life and as I contemplate death, I know many men would give their fortune, great or small to have led my life.
I was living with the archeologist when I first saw her. The archeologist was beautiful. She lit up the room whenever she entered. She had lovely long blonde hair, blue eyes and a sway in her walk that I loved to watch. But she was also temperamental and flighty. She told me she loved me, but I think it was just for the moment. She left me for another man. I would have felt better if he had been more respectable but I guess it really doesn’t matter. The answer to a simple question is she had never lived without a man and probably didn’t feel she was capable.
I would see her occasionally as I came home from work, walking her small schnauzer. A beautiful African woman with her hair in corn rows. Beauty comes to the lover but I saw other men look at her the same way I did. I don’t think she ever noticed the gazes of other men. She walked with an athletic grace, patiently following the dog. The little dog was friendly and loved everybody and helped introduce her to everyone along her trail.
The archeologist left for the north in April, never to return. In the summer I was walking to my car and the little schnauzer came running to greet me. I rubbed his head, smiled and gazed into the eyes of the woman for the first time. I guess it is redundant to say she had beautiful brown eyes. All African women have brown eyes. But as I said, beauty comes to the lover and her beautiful eyes and warm smile met mine. I am by nature a shy man but I did not feel any shyness when I looked at her face. She invited me into her world. We stood and talked an arm’s length apart and there was a natural comfort between us. She spoke in a perfect, lilting British accent as she flipped back the hair out of her eyes. She was a flight attendant and London was her hometown. She flew out of New York to Europe. To places I had only read about. She seemed to genuinely like me and I was inclined to ask her to dinner, but why would such a beautiful, exotic, worldly woman have an interest in an enlightened rube like me. We parted with a smile. I didn’t see her again for six months and when I saw her again it was just happenstance or maybe it wasn’t.
In October I went to spend the weekend fly fishing in the upper Sacramento River. It was a beautiful fall weekend with plenty of trout. The salmon had spawned and were spent. Wading back to my car I saw a spent salmon waiting out her destiny in an eddy by the shore. She did not even move when I waded up to her. I reached down and picked her up and held her in my arms. The battered body beautiful even in its last days. I held it long enough to admire and then released her to die her death, as natural as her life. That evening I sat on the porch of the little cottage with the river bubbling below and pondered life and death.
The next morning was Monday and I had to get back to Sacramento. I hadn’t slept well that night and was tired the next morning, but I had driven all over this country from the age of 14 to 40 and had never had an automobile accident. I had gotten away with driving when I was very tired for years, but that morning I didn’t. A few miles north of Lake Shasta I fell asleep at the wheel and launched my car off the side of Interstate 5 and down an embankment. The car seemed to travel through the air forever and I came to the conclusion that this must be the end and I was traveling through a tunnel to heaven or hell or maybe just to a simple grave. But the car came to a rest upside down and I was hanging upside down. Why I wasn’t killed, I don’t know. I had cuts and bruises but was remarkably intact. In relating the story to someone a few days later I remarked that “Maybe God just wasn’t ready for me.” They replied, “Maybe it wasn’t God that wasn’t ready for you.” It was a thoughtful statement.
It was early December, at least I think it was December. Anyhow the warmth of summer was gone and the tule fog that plagues Sacramento in the winter had descended. It was a day I should have been at work but I hated my job and I had other things to do. I had taken my truck to my Jewish mechanic friend for some work. I am a mechanic among many other things so maybe I was tired or busy. Or maybe I just missed my friend. I always liked visiting him. We were both oddballs with a quirky sense of humor. I think we enjoyed each other’s company as neither of us really fit in anywhere. He had rheumatoid arthritis and it pained me to see him struggle, but I could always make him laugh. I am not a lonely man for people but his was a soul that I sincerely miss.
He gave me a ride home and when I stepped out of his car there was the little grey schnauzer waiting to greet me and the African lady not far behind. I sat down on my haunches to coo the dog and then stood up to smile at the lady. We were at ease again. Six months of time had passed but not a second had passed in the connection of the souls of two people. “I thought you had moved,” she said, “your car was gone.” “My car died saving my life,” I said. “I don’t think my new car would be willing to save my life, it is more concerned with self preservation.” She laughed. It was a Friday when we saw each other again after six months. Sunday night we had dinner in a favorite restaurant. They were patient as we stayed long after closing. I am sure they could tell we were enamored with each other and it was courteous of them to allow us our indulgence.
It was a love affair that was alive from the beginning. I remember the events, but I don’t remember the dates, other than her birth date. The only way I can determine time in the past is by remembering the weather. It was a cold night and I knew she would be home late, back from Europe. I built a fire in the fireplace and we made love on the floor by the fire. It was still cold and I called her on the plane as she was leaving for Paris, Nice, Moscow, Rome, I don’t know. I told her I loved her for the first time. The winter was spent and dying, and in the moment of passion one night, she whispered in my ear, “I want to have your baby.” At the time I thought it was just curious since neither of us was capable of conceiving. Now I remember it as endearingly sweet. I doubt she remembers it. It was just raw emotion expressed in passion. It was early spring, the water was cold and we took my little boat to a lake close by and she fell in the water. I wrapped her in a tattered blanket and took her home. In the summer we drove to the mountains in my convertible and spent the weekend soaking up the mountain sun and making love in the morning. It was summer and she went hiking in Argentina and brought me back a lovely clay pot wrapped in goat skin. The days were getting shorter and I barked at her cruelly over nothing. My nerves had been stretched taught from work and worry. After sixty days of work without a day off, I went to visit my parents and slept just about every hour of the time I was there. It was getting cold again when she came to my house dressed for dinner and I told her it was over, but I couldn’t explain why. It was the middle of winter when we walked around the neighborhood and then went to my house and made love on the couch. I think she wanted to remind me what I had lost. She didn’t need to remind me. I wanted her back, but I had broken her trust and she is a woman that places great British stock in trust. I had broken it and it could not be mended. Every time I saw her after that I would step back in amazement at her beauty. Beauty comes to the lover.
In my dreams, she lies with her lovely body nestled against me, the smell of her fills my nostrils with love and passion. I stroke her hair. Trace a line along her face and cup her breast in my hand. But she won’t be still and I can never hold her for very long. Then I am a lonely old man sitting on the patio of an alabaster house on the banks of the Mediterranean Sea. There are no clouds in the sky. It is as blue as unlined turquoise and the sun shines bright and clear against the walls of the alabaster house. The dark skinned girl leans against the wall of the house, but she doesn’t speak or smile.
It is seven years since we first spoke. I know this, not because I am a great keeper of dates nor do I note the passage of time. I only know that my dog is seven and half years old now and he was only six months when I first smiled into her eyes. Some people believe a spirit greater than our own governs our lives. Maybe they are right, maybe they are not. I tend to believe our lives are governed by random acts, random thoughts and random decisions, but of course I am a natural cynic. This is just a simple love story and all love stories come to an end. By death if for no other reason and in my mind the decision I made was just as random as life or death. It doesn’t haunt me, but sometimes it haunts my dreams.
© Kevin D. Burgess 06/26/2008