She said this oozing between the stacks like the daughter of an amoeba, and he followed
because he didn�t have a choice. She continued, irked as hell, conjuring his old last-year�s-
boots-self, the self that idled and stumbled and she was raising it from the dead with her
words. Feeling it fill in his places like rubber cement, and the shining new parts of him
spilling away onto encyclopedias�crumbling to dust in the reference section. She pulled
over his head all those ancient insecurities and wrongdoings like a torn leather suit. The
distinction of her memories frightened him more than what she could do.
He had piloted a rusting-off pickup to Arizona in the winter to escape the swirling-gutter
collective talk that buzzed and swished around him whenever he took a step. Arizona
taught him in the sand and the prickling static-heat how to shave a soul patch and how to
meditate in a way that made his mother check his pulse again and again. He was happy.
She had waited, curled tightly in the autumn leaves of residential streets and strip malls.
Suctioning her mouth to bottles of vodka and bottles of water, she had drunk deeply,
waiting loudly. She had gone to the airport in a cold sugar-heart and platinum ice shine,
flickering with a deep satisfaction, not knowing and yet knowing exactly how he would
react.
What impulse does it take to make a man pull on his too-tight old-news worn-thin body?
He hadn�t been lonely in the desert. But in the sweet-smelling rotted darkness in the
summer library, hidden in the microfilm room, he was lonely.
And she found him, the way she will always find him, crouched in the dust in the milieu.
�Baby.�
It�s not a statement or a question or a pet name. It�s a key in a lock.
He lifts arms up, pries his feet from the floor to hover gently behind her. Blue ice cream
neon eyes scraping the dusty floor.
�What are you doing to me?� all whispered down her spine and superheating the marrow
to bubble through her nerves. He�s going for secrecy but she is just letting the years melt
like chocolate in her hand. She is letting him kiss her with bribery and the desperate kisses
of someone who is trying to escape. She is singing a little song in her head about how
much he loves her.