knew it.
I hadn’t thought about him in
years. So when we bumped into each other, I felt recognition, hesitation and a
bit of scrambling inside, like the awkward dance performed by people who try to
pass each other on the street.
He used
to bring me home, once in a while. He was absentmindedly kind and I was somewhat
on his way. The last time he did, we found ourselves in a window-fogging clinch,
the kind that leaves you with swollen lips and jelly for knees, and if there
were any policemen with flashlights around, we would have been out at least 500
bucks. (It was a long time ago.) I remember the way he looked at me. It
was not absentminded at all. We asked each other: What is this? Is this
anything? Is this going anywhere? He said we could at least see if it would. I
said, why not.
And that was the last of
it – he disappeared, without even a take-care-and-see-ya-around, and I was left
to wonder.