#2-5 (lilo)
"lilo"
one of two
1. Prologue (Errors Symptomless and Random)
2. Should We Talk About the Weather
3. Serendipity
4. Being Unconscious
shout out to my homies
1.
"Oh yeah, I know where that is," I told him. "It's down there by the Precious Moments Chapel."
Which I've never been to but I've been down that stretch of Highway 71 many times and I've seen the billboards; in my mind I'll envision it being a little cutesy church stuffed with Precious Moments figurines. I don't know if anyone is familiar with the brand name but probably everyone has seen them, the porcelain figurines of the little kids with the really big heart-shaped eyes like some American evangelical anime, the one where they're dressed like angels and it's a boy and a girl innocently gravitating toward a tentative kiss, the one where there's a little boy with a fishing pole and a puppy dog with its tongue hanging out. It's in the same cultural school as Anne Geddes photographs and the paintings of light of Thomas Kinkade and that's why I've never been there. Apparently it's where some people choose to get married. It's actually in the town of Carthage but that wasn't where we were going.
The man I was talking to is a friend of mine, he's an amateur entrepreneur, in his case meaning he doesn't want to get a real job, don't like to say it but it's true, who recently was sought out through Facebook by a different friend of his that he hadn't seen since they both dropped out of the same college some years ago. The initial incident and then their swapping messages back and forth through the site, catching up; soon the ongoing conversation drifted over to e-mail, then phone calls.
After the university he came back home to Springfield, eventually found a job with a mortgage company and stayed there for a couple of years and got successful enough at it to buy a house in a town about an hour away, not a brand new one, and decided to quit commuting and just start up his mortgage company in the basement. It sounds far-fetched but the zoning in this town was non-existent to where the powers that be didn't care what anyone ran out of their houses, so as long as it wasn't a meth lab. My friend who had also did a brief stint at a mortgage company for a couple of months (before he just stopped showing up) but knew a lot more about getting money in atypical places like squeezing blood out of a stone, was going to come visit him and impart council, but mostly just visit him.
I was asked to come along because for some reason I'm known as a "computer guy." I resent being referred to in that way but it sticks nonetheless, due mostly to the fact that while I don't have much in the way of formal learning on the subject I have a track record of being remarkably intuitive with electronics whether it be PCs or home entertainment centers, whatever. I'll at least admit that. I don't even really like computers, there's the irony, and I wish I hadn't had so much experience with them. Today's personal computer is made too cheaply in cheap countries and thus prone to all sorts of hardware malfunctions to the point where I don't think I could pay any more than $500 for any one of them without feeling swindled and slightly nauseous. The operating systems are rushed out too soon and laden with bugs, and holes, and fixing their fuck-ups seem symptomless and random, no cause at all whatsoever, then people just have to deal with it. Also I'm at a point where I think I've spent more time sitting in front of a screen than what ever should have been in my life, I've missed out on too much. Also I don't like to be thought of as a nerd. I had been offered some money to come along and sort out some networking issues, however, and although exactly how much was never discussed I realized, well shoot, I didn't really have anything better to do that weekend.
We hit the road early but at least he came out to Excelsior Springs to pick me up. "What's a little bit more driving?" he said. Gas at Quiktrip before even the sun was up and I was hungry and the wrapped biscuit sandwiches under a fresh heat lamp looked okay, Diet Coke too. When the car was south of Belton-Raymore we were considered out of the Big City and the traffic cleared up to where it was us and quite a few semi trucks and a handful of others here and there. His iPod playing stuff that I really don't care much for like Rage Against the Machine and Johnny Cash but I can't have everything. Two hours in the car and I've heard "Ring of Fire" twice so far and I say, "Okay...hey, I know you're driving and all but you've had free reign of the stereo for too long, Sir." I pull out my iPod and come to a decision about something I want to hear and begin transmitting mine through the FM radio.
After a couple of minutes. "So what's this?"
"Be Your Own Pet," I say. "It's a punk group from Tennessee."
"Who?" The windows on both sides were cracked from lighting cigarettes and throwing them out and lighting new ones, that familiar roar of air being whistled around at high speed.
"I said it's your mom."
He picks up my iPod resting in an empty cup holder between us and looks at the screen and puts it back down.
"You really don't like Johnny Cash?" he says. "I mean who doesn't like Johnny Cash?"
"I don't know. I guess I should, but liking Johnny Cash is like...unauthentic. It's like, if you like Johnny Cash, in the end you're only just lying to yourself. I can't do that to myself, dude."
"Okay...so Johnny Cash is lying to yourself, but teenage girls screaming about the fire department, that's real."
"Yes," I said. "That's some good times, right there."
They were those types of conversations, caffeine-powered, not exactly real. Already-harvested fields and exit sign after exit sign. If I thought about it, and right then and there I hadn't, the day had few expectations; it was going to be fairly unremarkable in that grand design of things. Being away from town for just a little while felt nice. I hoped the guy we were going to see was cool, there have been a lot of times before when I'm going to meet someone and one of my friends will say oh he's awesome, you'll really like him, I end up not liking them at all. I'm somewhere in between being completely socially inept and a genius on how to win friends and influence people and will wildly vacillate around both of these poles usually during any given day. Too often I'm accommodating and sociable while the other party chooses not to bother returning the favor, then after a few failed runs I grow haughty and reserved and while switching to the defensive I'm besieged by the questions in the back of my mind, did I say something weird or well what if it's just me. When that happens it's definitely better to be able to flee the scene on one's own volition and it wasn't going to be possible.
My fingers were crossed. At the end of the road, in the meantime, an oak tree deposited its last brown autumn leaf on the broken sidewalk, exchanging its annual vitality for a deep sleep. A young raccoon found herself caught in a plastic trash bin during the night, too zealous in her foraging; she was currently waiting for a chance for the lid to open and make an escape. The delivered newspapers from two hours before in plastic wrapping in the driveways, yet to be collected, gathering dew. At the end of our road the wind chimes rang hollow and sweet in the cold northerly breeze hundreds of thousands of miles beneath the faded visage of the moon, visible still in a bright morning.
2.
I can change oil in a car and even perform tune-ups and I wonder why nobody ever considers me a mechanic. I know how to deal with an extinguished pilot light, put up drywall, milk a cow, un-clog a drain. I also know how to untangle some wayward ethernet cables, plug one or two in that weren't plugged in yet, and establish network connections in Vista; this was all that needed to be done in order to solve the current dilemma that burdened Jeremy, at least the one he had "wanted somebody fluent in Computer-ese" (as he put it) to help him out with.
The other problems he had going on, or so it felt, he had the ability to deal with by himself. It only took about five minutes for me to decide that I liked Jeremy, his wit and his earthy self-depreciating manner and his intelligence, his hey c'mon y'all drawl, a gleam in his eye that made it feel that just by talking to him you were now a new accomplice of a big practical joke that he was going to play on the rest of the world. He lived in a thirty year-old split-level ranch house at the end of a dead-end street that looked kind of squeezed in as a kind of afterthought in a neighborhood of much older houses built around the time of the Great Depression. One of the guys he lived with was a chubby and sleepy-eyed Latino who had just woken up and microwaved some Hot Pockets for breakfast and spent little time introducing himself.
"Hey man," he smiled and squeezed my hand with a strong handshake. "I'm Edwin, the town's Mexican."
"Pleased to meet you, Edwin," I said. "I've never met a Mexican before."
"You wanna smoke a bong?"
I said well this is a special occasion and he made room on the coffee table in the living room by moving away some of the collected empty bottles of Bud Light and spent about a half-hour breaking up his weed. My Kansas City friend proclaimed he was tired after driving for so long and was half-balled up and listless on one of the living room couches, face buried in the upholstery like a lazy son-of-a-bitch but it allowed me to play a prominent role in the various conversations about Jeremy's business model and the "five-year plan" and what's what in this town and how I make a living and The War. A college football pre-kickoff show was on the television which no one seemed to care about, just on for background. Jeremy's other roommate Ty was still asleep because he had to pull a double the night before and the moment felt like hanging out in a frat house, some repeated scene from ten years ago.
Except unlike ten years ago I was the first one to be handed the bong, once Terry had finally managed to find the best leaves to pack the bowl with. It was awkward for me to saddle the bottom and generate smoke while minding the chamber but I remembered my old training and managed. The pull hit me like a dart; its effects instantaneous. My synapses calibrating and firing now in a slightly-different direction; I meditate and bellow dragon smoke for one, two seconds. Good shit I say, and pass it along.
It should be said: using marijuana isn't my thing anymore, but to refuse Edwin's offer was like a cavalry general attempting to broker a truce with the Lakota Sioux and refusing to smoke their peace pipe. I was alone among strangers, even though I liked them, and unable to leave their company. I was trying to hold my own and make sure my visit stayed harmonious through the next two days. The bong was nothing more than a tool in my hands, like so many other things I used to enjoy before so many other things became so meaningless. I knew that my limit as far as bong hits were concerned was going to be three; due to my lack of tolerance probably any more than that and my brain would be fried for a couple of hours. Thankfully it never came to that, after two-and-a-half passes the bowl was already cashed.
"I can load it again if you want," said Edwin.
"Well. I don't know," I said. "It ain't even noon yet."
Jeremy had been thinking about Taco Bell, and all that going to Taco Bell would do for him on an inspirational level, and he had meant to go last night because he had been wanting it lately but he didn't get around to it, and it's probably open now right. We answered his question in the affirmative: it should be. He asked if we wanted anything from there, and I was a little hungry so I asked him to get me a couple of bean burritos, nothing special, and just take it out of my tab, I guess. My Kansas City friend had stirred back to life and decided he was going to go with him. Edwin decided he was going to take a shower, and when he was done with that, find his Monopoly board. I had been in a car all morning so I declined to go along, and while it otherwise would have been strange to be over at the house of someone I just meant, without him being there, everyone was so comfortable and laid-back that it didn't even matter. We were all friends and business associates, now.
Ten minutes of me sitting on the couch watching the football game, and then someone new walked in. She saw me and looked around the rest of the living room for a moment to make sure I was the only person here and then she looked at me again, and smiled. I smiled back, not quite sure what to say but not too concerned about it, and usually self-conscious about people seeing my smile, just not then, my mind at that particular point in time a still pond without any stones to be found to be thrown and skipped across. And that was the last time, possibly for the rest of my life, that this would be so.
There was plenty of room on the couch to not have to sit close to me, but she did as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do, so close that our arms and legs were now touching. I got a better look at her because what else do you do when this happens and she wasn't bad looking, I decided, but she was dressed...well, like she put her clothes on in the dark. I have to break this down: her outer shell was a lime-green wool pea coat, draped with a black-and-white knit striped scarf that framed the curly dirty blonde hair that went down past her shoulders. On her head was a gray knit cap that was probably three hat sizes too big for her. She was wearing a black patterned house dress that went slightly down over her knees, probably polyester, like the kind that would be a good find at a thrift store, a tiny brown cardigan over that. Bubblegum pink tights and those funny-looking big brown boots, I think they're called the Ugg Boots but I'm not really in the loop. For some strange reason these combinations all seemed to work for her until I noticed her eyes, that is. They were the palest blue eyes I believe I had ever seen in someone that hadn't been a cartoon; the kaleidoscope of color bombarding the senses at once led to a peculiar vertigo I had wanted to attribute to the pot, but I wasn't so sure. She didn't take off her red and yellow and blue and green and white and black-striped gloves and took out a Marlboro Light from her pocket and lit it.
"Who's in the shower," she said with a voice soft around the edges, light in its tone, a contrast to the strong features of her face.
"Edwin," I said. "When he gets out we're going to play Monopoly, apparently."
"I haven't played Monopoly in forever," sarcastic. "It's been at least a month, I think."
"Well, you can be the banker."
"Holy shit," an exhale of smoke. The rays of sunlight highlighting the curls of smoke as they floated around the living room.
"Yeah."
A moment or two of silence.
"What's your name?" And it seemed like such an appropriate question to ask, and she asked it so nicely, like learning how to say it in a new foreign language there was no hint of anything else at all, no pre-conceived notions nor putting on airs, nor irony. It was just three words. That's all.
"My name is Jason," I said. "What's yours?"
"Lilo," she said, and I didn't even think about how strange of a name that was.
"It's nice to meet you, Lilo."
"Nice to meet you, too. I like your sweater."
I had on a dark green and grey tonal striped cardigan I had bought at Old Navy two weeks ago and it had become my new favorite thing to wear about three days a week, this time with my white t-shirt underneath that read VANCOUVER and just a pair of blue jeans (like just about any day in my entire life). The sweater fit well, perfectly in conjunction with all the weight I had lost earlier this year, but the sleeves were extra-long, exactly as I like it, and I thought I liked it even better if I kept the two bottom buttons unbuttoned, one of which I was now playing with idly and realized that I was and I knew I needed to stop fidgeting so stop fidgeting God dammit.
"Thanks," I said. "I...um, pretty much like everything that you're wearing right now."
Another moment or two of silence. I could hear Edwin stumbling around in the shower, just down the hall. My mind was reeling for something to say and I was silently beating myself up, because I'm usually so much better than this. There was a girl, and a really quite beautiful one, why not, in a completely unconventional way, named Lilo and what the hell kind of name is that, who obviously wasn't afraid to get close to me, not at all, and who kept looking at me like she wanted me to be saying quite a bit more and doing quite a bit more than simply sitting on the couch and staring at the television.
"Do you want to go get a drink with me?" she said.
"Sure," I said.
3.
I put on my coat and followed her out the front door. It felt colder outside now than it had been early this morning, two hundred miles to the north. We were walking down an empty street and my teeth couldn't stop chattering. Last Winter I had been way up to northernmost Minnesota and North Dakota where I experienced below-zero temperatures far more abysmal than right now, where actually measuring how-many negative-what plus wind chill was really a waste of time when it was perfectly safe to build makeshift houses and drive 4X4s over frozen lakes, and I don't think the frigid cold had ever truly left the marrow of my bones since then. All this year I've always felt cold in some way, even during the height of Summertime; I've been searching for warmth like a moth trying to find a light.
Lilo sensed what was happening and took her hand in mine and I squeezed to let her know that I was all fine with it. She squeezed back and I felt better and we started talking, about everything, about nothing at all. She smiled; her eyes looked kind. The town was silent save for a couple of cars with the engines running and warming-up, unattended. We walked hand-in-hand for a few blocks, down two streets, past more houses, until she led me to one of them and down a small decline to the entrance leading to the basement. I saw what was probably her car: an older red Cavalier with a fading Kerry for President '04 bumper sticker and a lei hanging from the rear-view mirror.
"DON'T EVEN THINK," a sign said near the driveway, "ABOUT PARKING HERE."
Inside was a mess. Walking in was a living room with two couches, old and mismatched, scattered with various articles of clean laundry and blankets. There was a small kitchenette off to the side, dirty dishes and pots and pans piled in both sinks and a collection of liquor bottles with various amounts sitting on the bar. Tons of photos of her and I guess friends both male and female stuck with dollar-store magnets on her refrigerator. Between the living room and the kitchenette was a short hallway with two doors and I suppose one led to a bedroom, the other a bath. It was warm, however, much more than I've felt in quite awhile. Lilo took my coat and piled it on top of her coat, on top of I think two or three other coats on an old barstool.
"Jack and Coke?" she said.
I said yeah that'll be fine and Lilo said well it's Pepsi and I said that wasn't a problem. "Just go ahead and move any of that shit out of the way so you can sit down," she said, so I did. It occurred to me that this is what she does in the morning, just picking up clothes scattered about at random and putting them on, and then making sure she was dressed she could leave her apartment and go out into the world, and I've certainly felt that way about life many times before. I sat down and immediately a small black-and-white cat jumped on my lap and started mewling and urging me to pet her and I remembered how long it was that I had been anywhere where a cat had been like that.
The Jack and Pepsi that Lilo had made for me was very strong; half of it was probably alcohol. She put ice cubes in it that were shaped like dolphins and I used to have that ice cube tray too. It was from Target and I have no idea where mine went to, I hadn't seen it in years. How does someone lose an ice cube tray, anyway? She sat down on the other couch directly to the left of where I was and she crossed her pink legs, a lock of her hair drew down the middle of her chest, and the bolt of alcohol was opening my mind, allowing it to rest on dirty thoughts. I had a feeling where this could be going, though I wasn't going to just assume. A pretty good idea anyway, and I wasn't so sure I wanted that to happen. Not just yet, at least. But in the meantime this was so nice, not at all what I expected today to be and know I really wanted to know all about Lilo. And Lilo wanted to know all about me. I told her why I was down here, and where I'm from. To my surprise she knew exactly where Excelsior Springs was. She had been there many times when she was a kid because her grandmother lived there, now dead, but they used to go up there for Christmas every year and plenty of times for extended stays during Summer vacation.
The world became smaller and smaller. Lilo had a good childhood and talked about it more than anything else; and I always like it when people do because it makes them seem more human in my eyes, easier for me to fall in love with. She talked about her mom and dad, her older brother and her younger sister. She drank faster than me but always made me a new one anyway even though I wasn't quite done with the one I had. But as she did she grew more animated, regaling me with various stories from her life, acting out the parts of the other people complete with hand gestures and various accents. I did the same and we went past a threshold and just couldn't stop laughing for like ten minutes. I don't even remember what it was we were laughing about and it didn't matter then and it doesn't matter now; if I heard it again now I probably wouldn't think it as funny as what I did in her basement apartment, with her.
What I know of her: about twenty-six or twenty-seven, didn't ask exactly. Went to college down in Little Rock. Degree in English. Doesn't care about money so much. Was married for about a year to a guy named Jeff, down there. He was an idiot but so was she. Favorite book is probably A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. After the divorce she took a trip to Italy, by herself. No kids of her own so she decided to teach first grade at the local elementary school here, where she grew up, she likes the fact that she has twenty or so new kids every year. Has a huge crush on Ryan Adams.
Lost in the conversation the little cat reminded me that I had been neglecting her so I resumed petting.
"She's a sweet kitty," I said.
"She really likes you," she said. "I've never seen her act like that before except with me."
"What's her name?"
"Serendipity," she said.
"Serendipity? Um, wow." I said. "I had a cat named Serendipity once. But she ran away."
That was true and I couldn't stop eye contact with Lilo, it was like they just picked hers as a place to rest. She wasn't looking away either and we just kind of looked at each other for a few seconds, that's all we did. And then her eyelids lowered just enough for her pale blue eyes to still be open. Her lips curled into kind of a smirk, kind of a smile.
"C'mere," she said.
4.
What happened next with Lilo was the kind of thing that we're told will happen to us one day, as children, that we'll grow up and meet somebody special and decide you'll want to be with them, a great big happily ever after. Overwhelmingly when I'm with someone and crossing that threshold with them for that very first time, I usually feel like I'm trespassing, like I'm up to something that I shouldn't be. A first kiss and I dream about what's going to happen after, usually with a strong sense of dread, maybe not tonight or next week or next month but eventually everything about this is going to go terribly wrong and then it's all going to be my fault, somehow. It didn't feel that way for me this time. Lilo asked me to join her on the couch and those few tentative first steps, we were in slow motion and in due time everything progressed to its natural finale. By then, it really didn't take either one of us very long. It just felt like, plainly, what it was we were going to do, and I think she felt the same way. It wasn't the best I've ever had but I've certainly experienced much worse. Actually it may have been the very best I've ever had but it's hard to explain why. Actually to this day I still don't know why it might have been.
Jesus fucking Christ she said and lit two cigarettes in her mouth, gifting me with one. She put a glass ashtray on her stomach that should have probably been emptied about ten butts ago. I felt a strain in my chest from inhaling its smoke so after a couple of drags I crushed it out; there wasn't anything that I needed any relief from, not right now.
There's that moment when there isn't really anything to say. I looked at the tiny hairs on her arm, counted the goose bumps on her skin. I listened to her breathe. There was a dog barking outside. She traced her free hand on my chest with a finger, up to my neck, down to my chest again. The boiler down the hall kicked on.
"So...when do you want to get married?"
"I don't know," I said. "What are you doin' for Christmas?"
"I always wanted to get married on Christmas," she said.
"Me too," I said. "Of course you'd have to meet my family first."
"Do you think they'd like me?" Innocent, hopeful.
"Um, they'd probably love the crap out of you, I would imagine."
Neither one of us needed to say that we had only just met three hours ago and we weren't actually contemplating getting married, although I suppose that premise isn't necessarily impossible. Certainly couples have been married like that in that kind of timeframe before, minus those that used to be performed via shotgun in certain locales. The young and incredibly naive, possibly, or people so world-weary by that point and so battered by the waves of this world crashing all around them that they cling to one another, like a life raft. Neither one of those were we, but our pillow talk was such that it harbored some kind of promise that since everything thus far had been going so well, why wouldn't we think that things wouldn't go that way in the future, and if so, why not. So why wouldn't we. There's a saying that I've heard someplace though I don't remember the source, likely from a movie: when you date a woman you act like you're married, and after you do marry her, you act like you're dating. Time goes by and more and more I understand, that's usually so true.
Of course it wasn't established that I was now "dating" Lilo. What we just did wouldn't be considered a date. We didn't have dinner, sitting across from each other in a booth with simple questions and furtive glances, or see a movie, or went out for drinks or coffee, or took a walk around a promenade with her arms wrapped around mine. I didn't pick her up at eight and open my car door for her; she didn't reach out and unlock the door on my side. We didn't back out of her driveway and she didn't ask me where we were going and I didn't say that it was a surprise. I wasn't even sure that we were friends. But none of these questions needed to be asked and maybe we were just Jason and Lilo and there was no reason for us to pretend to be anything else. Close to an hour of talking softly and tracing patterns on the other with our fingers and then everything happened again. And then close to another hour huddling for warmth and talking some more: what kind of food we like, she's part German and part Russian and part Italian, who's going to be President next, our favorite movies, what we wanted to do when we were kids whenever we grew up.
I shouldn't have looked out the window and noticed the sun was had just about set entirely.
"Hey, Lilo..." I said, I trailed off, I didn't want to say it. "I probably really should be heading back over to Jeremy's."
"No..." she spoke into her pillow.
"They have no idea where I went off to," I said. "Come with me?"
One beat of silence in 4/4 time, then two beats, and then three. "It's cold outside," she said. Then notes coming up and octave and then down, "I think I'm gonna take a nap for a while."
I was getting dressed and put on my coat and I looked at her, stared, her hair all over the place, the whiteness of her leg sticking out from beneath a comforter, just allowing the final seconds of the moment that her and I had been a part of soak in, to permeate. My mind was a camcorder, on RECORD. I could feel my heart starting to beat by itself again like it hadn't before, like hers had been doing that for me for awhile and in its preliminaries, in response it had begun to hurt freshly anew. The last things she did before slipping away: she wrote down her phone number on a piece of scratch paper, her e-mail address, then I gave her mine. If you feel like coming over there later, I'd really like that, I said. But if not, and if you do want to see me again...
I wanna, she said. I really do. I said I did too and asked her if she ever comes up to Kansas City at all, every now and then, and she said mm hmm, a lot.
A miniature voice from inside me that said I should leave, and I said goodbye, and I left. I made sure the door was shut tight behind me and my eyes opened wide in the new cold Winter air. This town was just as quiet as it had been before, even more so, maybe. The citizens were all indoors, watching TVs. I listened to my feet crunching on frozen grass, the skirt of gravel shoved around, the mild hum of the street lights coming on. The huff of exhaled air out of my mouth on the wing past the corner of my eye. I thought I had a somewhat good idea what my bearings were and where I needed to set off but everything looked changed, like maybe time had passed much faster while I was in her apartment and now I was emerging from a split in the total continuum, five or ten or twenty years from the current day now, casting a glance down these empty streets at what might be the rest of my life, however long, however to be burdened.
one of two
1. Prologue (Errors Symptomless and Random)
2. Should We Talk About the Weather
3. Serendipity
4. Being Unconscious
shout out to my homies
1.
"Oh yeah, I know where that is," I told him. "It's down there by the Precious Moments Chapel."
Which I've never been to but I've been down that stretch of Highway 71 many times and I've seen the billboards; in my mind I'll envision it being a little cutesy church stuffed with Precious Moments figurines. I don't know if anyone is familiar with the brand name but probably everyone has seen them, the porcelain figurines of the little kids with the really big heart-shaped eyes like some American evangelical anime, the one where they're dressed like angels and it's a boy and a girl innocently gravitating toward a tentative kiss, the one where there's a little boy with a fishing pole and a puppy dog with its tongue hanging out. It's in the same cultural school as Anne Geddes photographs and the paintings of light of Thomas Kinkade and that's why I've never been there. Apparently it's where some people choose to get married. It's actually in the town of Carthage but that wasn't where we were going.
The man I was talking to is a friend of mine, he's an amateur entrepreneur, in his case meaning he doesn't want to get a real job, don't like to say it but it's true, who recently was sought out through Facebook by a different friend of his that he hadn't seen since they both dropped out of the same college some years ago. The initial incident and then their swapping messages back and forth through the site, catching up; soon the ongoing conversation drifted over to e-mail, then phone calls.
After the university he came back home to Springfield, eventually found a job with a mortgage company and stayed there for a couple of years and got successful enough at it to buy a house in a town about an hour away, not a brand new one, and decided to quit commuting and just start up his mortgage company in the basement. It sounds far-fetched but the zoning in this town was non-existent to where the powers that be didn't care what anyone ran out of their houses, so as long as it wasn't a meth lab. My friend who had also did a brief stint at a mortgage company for a couple of months (before he just stopped showing up) but knew a lot more about getting money in atypical places like squeezing blood out of a stone, was going to come visit him and impart council, but mostly just visit him.
I was asked to come along because for some reason I'm known as a "computer guy." I resent being referred to in that way but it sticks nonetheless, due mostly to the fact that while I don't have much in the way of formal learning on the subject I have a track record of being remarkably intuitive with electronics whether it be PCs or home entertainment centers, whatever. I'll at least admit that. I don't even really like computers, there's the irony, and I wish I hadn't had so much experience with them. Today's personal computer is made too cheaply in cheap countries and thus prone to all sorts of hardware malfunctions to the point where I don't think I could pay any more than $500 for any one of them without feeling swindled and slightly nauseous. The operating systems are rushed out too soon and laden with bugs, and holes, and fixing their fuck-ups seem symptomless and random, no cause at all whatsoever, then people just have to deal with it. Also I'm at a point where I think I've spent more time sitting in front of a screen than what ever should have been in my life, I've missed out on too much. Also I don't like to be thought of as a nerd. I had been offered some money to come along and sort out some networking issues, however, and although exactly how much was never discussed I realized, well shoot, I didn't really have anything better to do that weekend.
We hit the road early but at least he came out to Excelsior Springs to pick me up. "What's a little bit more driving?" he said. Gas at Quiktrip before even the sun was up and I was hungry and the wrapped biscuit sandwiches under a fresh heat lamp looked okay, Diet Coke too. When the car was south of Belton-Raymore we were considered out of the Big City and the traffic cleared up to where it was us and quite a few semi trucks and a handful of others here and there. His iPod playing stuff that I really don't care much for like Rage Against the Machine and Johnny Cash but I can't have everything. Two hours in the car and I've heard "Ring of Fire" twice so far and I say, "Okay...hey, I know you're driving and all but you've had free reign of the stereo for too long, Sir." I pull out my iPod and come to a decision about something I want to hear and begin transmitting mine through the FM radio.
After a couple of minutes. "So what's this?"
"Be Your Own Pet," I say. "It's a punk group from Tennessee."
"Who?" The windows on both sides were cracked from lighting cigarettes and throwing them out and lighting new ones, that familiar roar of air being whistled around at high speed.
"I said it's your mom."
He picks up my iPod resting in an empty cup holder between us and looks at the screen and puts it back down.
"You really don't like Johnny Cash?" he says. "I mean who doesn't like Johnny Cash?"
"I don't know. I guess I should, but liking Johnny Cash is like...unauthentic. It's like, if you like Johnny Cash, in the end you're only just lying to yourself. I can't do that to myself, dude."
"Okay...so Johnny Cash is lying to yourself, but teenage girls screaming about the fire department, that's real."
"Yes," I said. "That's some good times, right there."
They were those types of conversations, caffeine-powered, not exactly real. Already-harvested fields and exit sign after exit sign. If I thought about it, and right then and there I hadn't, the day had few expectations; it was going to be fairly unremarkable in that grand design of things. Being away from town for just a little while felt nice. I hoped the guy we were going to see was cool, there have been a lot of times before when I'm going to meet someone and one of my friends will say oh he's awesome, you'll really like him, I end up not liking them at all. I'm somewhere in between being completely socially inept and a genius on how to win friends and influence people and will wildly vacillate around both of these poles usually during any given day. Too often I'm accommodating and sociable while the other party chooses not to bother returning the favor, then after a few failed runs I grow haughty and reserved and while switching to the defensive I'm besieged by the questions in the back of my mind, did I say something weird or well what if it's just me. When that happens it's definitely better to be able to flee the scene on one's own volition and it wasn't going to be possible.
My fingers were crossed. At the end of the road, in the meantime, an oak tree deposited its last brown autumn leaf on the broken sidewalk, exchanging its annual vitality for a deep sleep. A young raccoon found herself caught in a plastic trash bin during the night, too zealous in her foraging; she was currently waiting for a chance for the lid to open and make an escape. The delivered newspapers from two hours before in plastic wrapping in the driveways, yet to be collected, gathering dew. At the end of our road the wind chimes rang hollow and sweet in the cold northerly breeze hundreds of thousands of miles beneath the faded visage of the moon, visible still in a bright morning.
2.
I can change oil in a car and even perform tune-ups and I wonder why nobody ever considers me a mechanic. I know how to deal with an extinguished pilot light, put up drywall, milk a cow, un-clog a drain. I also know how to untangle some wayward ethernet cables, plug one or two in that weren't plugged in yet, and establish network connections in Vista; this was all that needed to be done in order to solve the current dilemma that burdened Jeremy, at least the one he had "wanted somebody fluent in Computer-ese" (as he put it) to help him out with.
The other problems he had going on, or so it felt, he had the ability to deal with by himself. It only took about five minutes for me to decide that I liked Jeremy, his wit and his earthy self-depreciating manner and his intelligence, his hey c'mon y'all drawl, a gleam in his eye that made it feel that just by talking to him you were now a new accomplice of a big practical joke that he was going to play on the rest of the world. He lived in a thirty year-old split-level ranch house at the end of a dead-end street that looked kind of squeezed in as a kind of afterthought in a neighborhood of much older houses built around the time of the Great Depression. One of the guys he lived with was a chubby and sleepy-eyed Latino who had just woken up and microwaved some Hot Pockets for breakfast and spent little time introducing himself.
"Hey man," he smiled and squeezed my hand with a strong handshake. "I'm Edwin, the town's Mexican."
"Pleased to meet you, Edwin," I said. "I've never met a Mexican before."
"You wanna smoke a bong?"
I said well this is a special occasion and he made room on the coffee table in the living room by moving away some of the collected empty bottles of Bud Light and spent about a half-hour breaking up his weed. My Kansas City friend proclaimed he was tired after driving for so long and was half-balled up and listless on one of the living room couches, face buried in the upholstery like a lazy son-of-a-bitch but it allowed me to play a prominent role in the various conversations about Jeremy's business model and the "five-year plan" and what's what in this town and how I make a living and The War. A college football pre-kickoff show was on the television which no one seemed to care about, just on for background. Jeremy's other roommate Ty was still asleep because he had to pull a double the night before and the moment felt like hanging out in a frat house, some repeated scene from ten years ago.
Except unlike ten years ago I was the first one to be handed the bong, once Terry had finally managed to find the best leaves to pack the bowl with. It was awkward for me to saddle the bottom and generate smoke while minding the chamber but I remembered my old training and managed. The pull hit me like a dart; its effects instantaneous. My synapses calibrating and firing now in a slightly-different direction; I meditate and bellow dragon smoke for one, two seconds. Good shit I say, and pass it along.
It should be said: using marijuana isn't my thing anymore, but to refuse Edwin's offer was like a cavalry general attempting to broker a truce with the Lakota Sioux and refusing to smoke their peace pipe. I was alone among strangers, even though I liked them, and unable to leave their company. I was trying to hold my own and make sure my visit stayed harmonious through the next two days. The bong was nothing more than a tool in my hands, like so many other things I used to enjoy before so many other things became so meaningless. I knew that my limit as far as bong hits were concerned was going to be three; due to my lack of tolerance probably any more than that and my brain would be fried for a couple of hours. Thankfully it never came to that, after two-and-a-half passes the bowl was already cashed.
"I can load it again if you want," said Edwin.
"Well. I don't know," I said. "It ain't even noon yet."
Jeremy had been thinking about Taco Bell, and all that going to Taco Bell would do for him on an inspirational level, and he had meant to go last night because he had been wanting it lately but he didn't get around to it, and it's probably open now right. We answered his question in the affirmative: it should be. He asked if we wanted anything from there, and I was a little hungry so I asked him to get me a couple of bean burritos, nothing special, and just take it out of my tab, I guess. My Kansas City friend had stirred back to life and decided he was going to go with him. Edwin decided he was going to take a shower, and when he was done with that, find his Monopoly board. I had been in a car all morning so I declined to go along, and while it otherwise would have been strange to be over at the house of someone I just meant, without him being there, everyone was so comfortable and laid-back that it didn't even matter. We were all friends and business associates, now.
Ten minutes of me sitting on the couch watching the football game, and then someone new walked in. She saw me and looked around the rest of the living room for a moment to make sure I was the only person here and then she looked at me again, and smiled. I smiled back, not quite sure what to say but not too concerned about it, and usually self-conscious about people seeing my smile, just not then, my mind at that particular point in time a still pond without any stones to be found to be thrown and skipped across. And that was the last time, possibly for the rest of my life, that this would be so.
There was plenty of room on the couch to not have to sit close to me, but she did as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do, so close that our arms and legs were now touching. I got a better look at her because what else do you do when this happens and she wasn't bad looking, I decided, but she was dressed...well, like she put her clothes on in the dark. I have to break this down: her outer shell was a lime-green wool pea coat, draped with a black-and-white knit striped scarf that framed the curly dirty blonde hair that went down past her shoulders. On her head was a gray knit cap that was probably three hat sizes too big for her. She was wearing a black patterned house dress that went slightly down over her knees, probably polyester, like the kind that would be a good find at a thrift store, a tiny brown cardigan over that. Bubblegum pink tights and those funny-looking big brown boots, I think they're called the Ugg Boots but I'm not really in the loop. For some strange reason these combinations all seemed to work for her until I noticed her eyes, that is. They were the palest blue eyes I believe I had ever seen in someone that hadn't been a cartoon; the kaleidoscope of color bombarding the senses at once led to a peculiar vertigo I had wanted to attribute to the pot, but I wasn't so sure. She didn't take off her red and yellow and blue and green and white and black-striped gloves and took out a Marlboro Light from her pocket and lit it.
"Who's in the shower," she said with a voice soft around the edges, light in its tone, a contrast to the strong features of her face.
"Edwin," I said. "When he gets out we're going to play Monopoly, apparently."
"I haven't played Monopoly in forever," sarcastic. "It's been at least a month, I think."
"Well, you can be the banker."
"Holy shit," an exhale of smoke. The rays of sunlight highlighting the curls of smoke as they floated around the living room.
"Yeah."
A moment or two of silence.
"What's your name?" And it seemed like such an appropriate question to ask, and she asked it so nicely, like learning how to say it in a new foreign language there was no hint of anything else at all, no pre-conceived notions nor putting on airs, nor irony. It was just three words. That's all.
"My name is Jason," I said. "What's yours?"
"Lilo," she said, and I didn't even think about how strange of a name that was.
"It's nice to meet you, Lilo."
"Nice to meet you, too. I like your sweater."
I had on a dark green and grey tonal striped cardigan I had bought at Old Navy two weeks ago and it had become my new favorite thing to wear about three days a week, this time with my white t-shirt underneath that read VANCOUVER and just a pair of blue jeans (like just about any day in my entire life). The sweater fit well, perfectly in conjunction with all the weight I had lost earlier this year, but the sleeves were extra-long, exactly as I like it, and I thought I liked it even better if I kept the two bottom buttons unbuttoned, one of which I was now playing with idly and realized that I was and I knew I needed to stop fidgeting so stop fidgeting God dammit.
"Thanks," I said. "I...um, pretty much like everything that you're wearing right now."
Another moment or two of silence. I could hear Edwin stumbling around in the shower, just down the hall. My mind was reeling for something to say and I was silently beating myself up, because I'm usually so much better than this. There was a girl, and a really quite beautiful one, why not, in a completely unconventional way, named Lilo and what the hell kind of name is that, who obviously wasn't afraid to get close to me, not at all, and who kept looking at me like she wanted me to be saying quite a bit more and doing quite a bit more than simply sitting on the couch and staring at the television.
"Do you want to go get a drink with me?" she said.
"Sure," I said.
3.
I put on my coat and followed her out the front door. It felt colder outside now than it had been early this morning, two hundred miles to the north. We were walking down an empty street and my teeth couldn't stop chattering. Last Winter I had been way up to northernmost Minnesota and North Dakota where I experienced below-zero temperatures far more abysmal than right now, where actually measuring how-many negative-what plus wind chill was really a waste of time when it was perfectly safe to build makeshift houses and drive 4X4s over frozen lakes, and I don't think the frigid cold had ever truly left the marrow of my bones since then. All this year I've always felt cold in some way, even during the height of Summertime; I've been searching for warmth like a moth trying to find a light.
Lilo sensed what was happening and took her hand in mine and I squeezed to let her know that I was all fine with it. She squeezed back and I felt better and we started talking, about everything, about nothing at all. She smiled; her eyes looked kind. The town was silent save for a couple of cars with the engines running and warming-up, unattended. We walked hand-in-hand for a few blocks, down two streets, past more houses, until she led me to one of them and down a small decline to the entrance leading to the basement. I saw what was probably her car: an older red Cavalier with a fading Kerry for President '04 bumper sticker and a lei hanging from the rear-view mirror.
"DON'T EVEN THINK," a sign said near the driveway, "ABOUT PARKING HERE."
Inside was a mess. Walking in was a living room with two couches, old and mismatched, scattered with various articles of clean laundry and blankets. There was a small kitchenette off to the side, dirty dishes and pots and pans piled in both sinks and a collection of liquor bottles with various amounts sitting on the bar. Tons of photos of her and I guess friends both male and female stuck with dollar-store magnets on her refrigerator. Between the living room and the kitchenette was a short hallway with two doors and I suppose one led to a bedroom, the other a bath. It was warm, however, much more than I've felt in quite awhile. Lilo took my coat and piled it on top of her coat, on top of I think two or three other coats on an old barstool.
"Jack and Coke?" she said.
I said yeah that'll be fine and Lilo said well it's Pepsi and I said that wasn't a problem. "Just go ahead and move any of that shit out of the way so you can sit down," she said, so I did. It occurred to me that this is what she does in the morning, just picking up clothes scattered about at random and putting them on, and then making sure she was dressed she could leave her apartment and go out into the world, and I've certainly felt that way about life many times before. I sat down and immediately a small black-and-white cat jumped on my lap and started mewling and urging me to pet her and I remembered how long it was that I had been anywhere where a cat had been like that.
The Jack and Pepsi that Lilo had made for me was very strong; half of it was probably alcohol. She put ice cubes in it that were shaped like dolphins and I used to have that ice cube tray too. It was from Target and I have no idea where mine went to, I hadn't seen it in years. How does someone lose an ice cube tray, anyway? She sat down on the other couch directly to the left of where I was and she crossed her pink legs, a lock of her hair drew down the middle of her chest, and the bolt of alcohol was opening my mind, allowing it to rest on dirty thoughts. I had a feeling where this could be going, though I wasn't going to just assume. A pretty good idea anyway, and I wasn't so sure I wanted that to happen. Not just yet, at least. But in the meantime this was so nice, not at all what I expected today to be and know I really wanted to know all about Lilo. And Lilo wanted to know all about me. I told her why I was down here, and where I'm from. To my surprise she knew exactly where Excelsior Springs was. She had been there many times when she was a kid because her grandmother lived there, now dead, but they used to go up there for Christmas every year and plenty of times for extended stays during Summer vacation.
The world became smaller and smaller. Lilo had a good childhood and talked about it more than anything else; and I always like it when people do because it makes them seem more human in my eyes, easier for me to fall in love with. She talked about her mom and dad, her older brother and her younger sister. She drank faster than me but always made me a new one anyway even though I wasn't quite done with the one I had. But as she did she grew more animated, regaling me with various stories from her life, acting out the parts of the other people complete with hand gestures and various accents. I did the same and we went past a threshold and just couldn't stop laughing for like ten minutes. I don't even remember what it was we were laughing about and it didn't matter then and it doesn't matter now; if I heard it again now I probably wouldn't think it as funny as what I did in her basement apartment, with her.
What I know of her: about twenty-six or twenty-seven, didn't ask exactly. Went to college down in Little Rock. Degree in English. Doesn't care about money so much. Was married for about a year to a guy named Jeff, down there. He was an idiot but so was she. Favorite book is probably A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. After the divorce she took a trip to Italy, by herself. No kids of her own so she decided to teach first grade at the local elementary school here, where she grew up, she likes the fact that she has twenty or so new kids every year. Has a huge crush on Ryan Adams.
Lost in the conversation the little cat reminded me that I had been neglecting her so I resumed petting.
"She's a sweet kitty," I said.
"She really likes you," she said. "I've never seen her act like that before except with me."
"What's her name?"
"Serendipity," she said.
"Serendipity? Um, wow." I said. "I had a cat named Serendipity once. But she ran away."
That was true and I couldn't stop eye contact with Lilo, it was like they just picked hers as a place to rest. She wasn't looking away either and we just kind of looked at each other for a few seconds, that's all we did. And then her eyelids lowered just enough for her pale blue eyes to still be open. Her lips curled into kind of a smirk, kind of a smile.
"C'mere," she said.
4.
What happened next with Lilo was the kind of thing that we're told will happen to us one day, as children, that we'll grow up and meet somebody special and decide you'll want to be with them, a great big happily ever after. Overwhelmingly when I'm with someone and crossing that threshold with them for that very first time, I usually feel like I'm trespassing, like I'm up to something that I shouldn't be. A first kiss and I dream about what's going to happen after, usually with a strong sense of dread, maybe not tonight or next week or next month but eventually everything about this is going to go terribly wrong and then it's all going to be my fault, somehow. It didn't feel that way for me this time. Lilo asked me to join her on the couch and those few tentative first steps, we were in slow motion and in due time everything progressed to its natural finale. By then, it really didn't take either one of us very long. It just felt like, plainly, what it was we were going to do, and I think she felt the same way. It wasn't the best I've ever had but I've certainly experienced much worse. Actually it may have been the very best I've ever had but it's hard to explain why. Actually to this day I still don't know why it might have been.
Jesus fucking Christ she said and lit two cigarettes in her mouth, gifting me with one. She put a glass ashtray on her stomach that should have probably been emptied about ten butts ago. I felt a strain in my chest from inhaling its smoke so after a couple of drags I crushed it out; there wasn't anything that I needed any relief from, not right now.
There's that moment when there isn't really anything to say. I looked at the tiny hairs on her arm, counted the goose bumps on her skin. I listened to her breathe. There was a dog barking outside. She traced her free hand on my chest with a finger, up to my neck, down to my chest again. The boiler down the hall kicked on.
"So...when do you want to get married?"
"I don't know," I said. "What are you doin' for Christmas?"
"I always wanted to get married on Christmas," she said.
"Me too," I said. "Of course you'd have to meet my family first."
"Do you think they'd like me?" Innocent, hopeful.
"Um, they'd probably love the crap out of you, I would imagine."
Neither one of us needed to say that we had only just met three hours ago and we weren't actually contemplating getting married, although I suppose that premise isn't necessarily impossible. Certainly couples have been married like that in that kind of timeframe before, minus those that used to be performed via shotgun in certain locales. The young and incredibly naive, possibly, or people so world-weary by that point and so battered by the waves of this world crashing all around them that they cling to one another, like a life raft. Neither one of those were we, but our pillow talk was such that it harbored some kind of promise that since everything thus far had been going so well, why wouldn't we think that things wouldn't go that way in the future, and if so, why not. So why wouldn't we. There's a saying that I've heard someplace though I don't remember the source, likely from a movie: when you date a woman you act like you're married, and after you do marry her, you act like you're dating. Time goes by and more and more I understand, that's usually so true.
Of course it wasn't established that I was now "dating" Lilo. What we just did wouldn't be considered a date. We didn't have dinner, sitting across from each other in a booth with simple questions and furtive glances, or see a movie, or went out for drinks or coffee, or took a walk around a promenade with her arms wrapped around mine. I didn't pick her up at eight and open my car door for her; she didn't reach out and unlock the door on my side. We didn't back out of her driveway and she didn't ask me where we were going and I didn't say that it was a surprise. I wasn't even sure that we were friends. But none of these questions needed to be asked and maybe we were just Jason and Lilo and there was no reason for us to pretend to be anything else. Close to an hour of talking softly and tracing patterns on the other with our fingers and then everything happened again. And then close to another hour huddling for warmth and talking some more: what kind of food we like, she's part German and part Russian and part Italian, who's going to be President next, our favorite movies, what we wanted to do when we were kids whenever we grew up.
I shouldn't have looked out the window and noticed the sun was had just about set entirely.
"Hey, Lilo..." I said, I trailed off, I didn't want to say it. "I probably really should be heading back over to Jeremy's."
"No..." she spoke into her pillow.
"They have no idea where I went off to," I said. "Come with me?"
One beat of silence in 4/4 time, then two beats, and then three. "It's cold outside," she said. Then notes coming up and octave and then down, "I think I'm gonna take a nap for a while."
I was getting dressed and put on my coat and I looked at her, stared, her hair all over the place, the whiteness of her leg sticking out from beneath a comforter, just allowing the final seconds of the moment that her and I had been a part of soak in, to permeate. My mind was a camcorder, on RECORD. I could feel my heart starting to beat by itself again like it hadn't before, like hers had been doing that for me for awhile and in its preliminaries, in response it had begun to hurt freshly anew. The last things she did before slipping away: she wrote down her phone number on a piece of scratch paper, her e-mail address, then I gave her mine. If you feel like coming over there later, I'd really like that, I said. But if not, and if you do want to see me again...
I wanna, she said. I really do. I said I did too and asked her if she ever comes up to Kansas City at all, every now and then, and she said mm hmm, a lot.
A miniature voice from inside me that said I should leave, and I said goodbye, and I left. I made sure the door was shut tight behind me and my eyes opened wide in the new cold Winter air. This town was just as quiet as it had been before, even more so, maybe. The citizens were all indoors, watching TVs. I listened to my feet crunching on frozen grass, the skirt of gravel shoved around, the mild hum of the street lights coming on. The huff of exhaled air out of my mouth on the wing past the corner of my eye. I thought I had a somewhat good idea what my bearings were and where I needed to set off but everything looked changed, like maybe time had passed much faster while I was in her apartment and now I was emerging from a split in the total continuum, five or ten or twenty years from the current day now, casting a glance down these empty streets at what might be the rest of my life, however long, however to be burdened.