�I don�t really know too much about you,� she said. This was her usual complaint. I�m too elusive, mysterious, bad at communication, unable to open up. Generally, she said this when she wanted to know how I was feeling about our relationship. She wanted me to �share� things with her. As if telling her the darkest secrets of my life was somehow generous. �I mean,� she continued. �I mean, I don�t even know about this Daphne girl. You haven�t said anything about it.� �Well, you know�� �What? I know what?� Sometimes she interrupted me to ask me what the rest of the sentence she interrupted was going to be. When she did things like this, I remained calm because, generally, I didn�t really have many options. �You know her name was Daphne and I cared about her a lot and she killed herself. There�s nothing else to know.� This, I realized, was a lie. There was so much more to know. The way Daphne would bite her bottom lip and frown when I made jokes that went over her head. The way her laugh was more of a silent smile, punctuated by nodding her head, provided the joke was funny enough. The time we got lost in L.A. because we missed the exit while singing loudly along with Social Distortion songs. The way she walked with her entire body and didn�t really care what other people thought. Or masked her insecurities in a shroud of indifference. Or threw her pride at the opposite sex like a baseball, constantly yearning for validation. The irony was in that she knew she didn�t need it. She wore her amazement on her sleeve. But she had a strange sense of discontentment with this world. The type that people don�t like to talk about. The type that remains buried in crevices and cracks in the sidewalk. The type that infests silently like a tumor, until your inevitable consumption. She had a certain rivalry with the world. Not unlike the neighbor who parks their car a little too close to your driveway, so you turn on that one bent sprinkler. You throw grass killer on their lawn like rice at a wedding. Well the world got her back, I guess. Poisoned her dog. Rang her doorbell and ran one too many times. The world can be a spiteful jerk sometimes. �I�m sure there�s more than that,� she said. This was how she got in the last word. By stating some generality or assumption, based on no evidence, textual or anecdotal, and then quickly changing the subject without leaving so much as a sliver of response time for me. �So it�s my mother�s birthday tomorrow, so we can�t go to That Movie.� Anytime I want to see a movie that she hasn�t heard of, or has no desire to see, she refers to it as �That Movie.� Despite the fact that the actual title of the movie is usually much shorter than saying �That Movie.� In this case, the title of the movie is shorter by two syllables and eight letters. �You are referring, I imagine, to M.� �Yes. That�s the one. Named after the thirteenth letter of the alphabet.� �What? M�s a good letter. And besides, it�s Peter Lorre. He�s rad.� �You know what would be rad? If you stopped substituting art for life.� We were getting to that point in our relationship where I would say something innocent, with absolutely no connotation whatsoever, and she would turn it around into something, usually negative, usually about our relationship. It might have been, at least on some subconscious level, the reason I never talked her about Daphne. Some things I want to keep limpid and uncontaminated. I wanted to keep the enchanted beauty of Daphne intact, frozen in time, without interference from my newer, updated world. �Okay.� I had taken to saying �okay� a lot. �Well, I mean, you do this every time. You�re in your books or you�re lost in your movies or your music or whatever it is. And it�s your way of escaping from your responsibilities to your friends, family, loved ones.� I noticed her voice got louder when she said loved ones. Her voice put that one in bold. That was the important one. �It�s almost sickening. Almost disheartening. You�re lucky you�re just strange enough to not be like other guys, otherwise no one�myself included�would give you the time of day. It�s true.� �Are you done yet?� �It�s true!� �Okay. Are you done?� She paused, thought for a second, and replied, �Yes.� The bus pulled up and we swiped our cards. The driver either hadn�t been home to shave in a few days or was trying to grow something. His facial hair was in that awkward, in-between stage. Not quite clean shaven, not quite a beard. Like the bartender at Tommy�s who has a Master�s in Business Finance and insists to all the new customers that he�s �between corporate gigs.� This is inevitably met by the regulars with groans and rolled eyes. They�ve all heard this story before, and yet they all know he�s been showing up to that bar, pouring gin for the drunks, for the last five years. The black dog began to stand up, but was soothed back to the ground by a raspy voice saying, �Easy Chester. Just some folks.� We made our way to the back of the bus, taking care to sit as far away from any other patrons as possible. We wanted to be alone, away from these white-cloth draped lepers. The company of each other, at that point, was bad enough. I stared at the tiny metal coping atop the step to the back of the bus. Due, I supposed, to the large tires, the bus was elevated in the back, placed on a pedestal, and, though generally the most coveted spot on the bus, at this point was empty aside from the two of us. I thought of Daphne some more. Since it had been brought up, I couldn�t get her off my mind. I wondered what she must have looked like in her final moments. Was she crying? She must have been crying. She must have been scared, depressed, irrational, hoping, maybe, in the back of her mind that someone would walk in and stop her. The world had always thrown someone in her life to stop her, some sort of human life jacket. A floatation device. But not this time. This time it was just her, alone, with the burdens of existence. And it must have weighed so much more than I�ll ever comprehend. Encumbrances as big as planets dropping like hail on the hood of her dignity. Pounding, pummeling, surrounding, obliterating, incinerating� I thought of her at her happiest. Running down the stairs of her house, having allowed fifteen minutes for a make-up application process that takes at least thirty. She never grasped the idea of giving herself more time. She had a set amount and she squeezed, strained, and pushed her behaviors to meet said amount. Things would always come pouring out the sides, through the holes, like a child�s candy bag on Halloween night. She�d run down the stairs and jump in the car and make me drive so much faster than I ever really wanted to. These were the types of sacrifices I had made. And it always seemed to affect me so greatly, but I could never tell Daphne that. Nothing would change, anyway. I had begun slowly sacrificing my entire life for her, while she raced through her own like Wile E. Coyote, often flying off the cliff and always, always able to bounce back up, accordion shaped, with an ACME anvil imprinted into her skull, and race off into another day, seemingly unfazed by such events. I guess sometimes these things catch up to you. A whiny, �Are you mad at me?� roused me from my hypnagogic state. �You�ve been staring at the ground, not saying a word for the entire bus ride.� �I�ve just got a lot on my mind,� I said, as I squinted, yawned, and scratched my head. It was something I do to appear less alert and, therefore, less inclined to talk about serious issues concerning our relationship. I could tell she wanted to talk about �us.� I was through talking about �us.� I wanted to run away to a little cottage by myself with maybe some cats and a few sheep outside and rolling hills and serenity. I wanted to exist in a state where, if I wanted to shut all else down and just think about Daphne, I could do so with no qualms, no hard feelings, no interruptions. This was healthy, I thought. Thinking things like this. This was how I was to get over the whole ordeal. �You know?� she said, less as a question and more as a way of letting me know she was about to say something important, though, at this point, I certainly did not know. �I�m sorry. I don�t really know how you�re dealing with what you�re dealing with, but it�s probably not my place to be pushy and ridiculous. I�m trying to make you into some sort of crazy devotion to me, some shrine to the notion that I�m noble enough to try helping you through this, but that�s even more selfishness. Like I�m latching on to your tragedy. It�s just so hard to tell what you want sometimes.� All I really wanted, by now, was for her to just be quiet. �But,� she continued. �I don�t want to be suffocating you. I don�t want to feel dependent on you, but I do. And that scares me.� I wanted to shove my shoe in her mouth. I wanted to sick Chester on her. But I�ve been so defeated lately, so worn out, that I just sat quietly and let her words pour over me like Gatorade to a winning coach. An annoying but sadly inevitable part of the deal. Daphne was never like this. Daphne feared confrontation, strayed from serious talk. Always wanted to talk about music or friends or the show Friends. My patience was tried with her at times, too, but largely, it was more tolerable than this. If Daphne was alive, she wouldn�t want to hear about her death. She would want to ignore it, throw it away like an empty coke can, but not before crushing it to maximize compaction. That�s how she would deal with her own death if she weren�t her. She�d breeze through it, never speak of it, keep it in the top bureau drawer with her cigarettes and birthday cards, never even allowing her mind to think about it, covering it with socks and undershirts. But that was her. That was Daphne�s mind and this is my own. And I refuse to pay some ridiculous sort of mental tribute to it�keeping her sanctity by thinking things through the way she would want them thought through. Sometimes I lose sight of the fact that, despite my best efforts to conform to my own images of the dead, I am my own person. And I, sadly, am the one that is alive. I remain. I grabbed hold of the request-a-stop string and pull, hard; harder than necessary. The Stop Requested light flickered, then flashed, illuminating this dead crowd of defeated travelers. The bus slowly pulled to the side of the road, its behemoth weight barely able to control itself. We sort of looked at each other as if to say, �This is our stop,� but only silence and fatigue emitted from us. We stepped down, onto the curb, and she grabbed my hand while we walked down the dark, damp, lamp-lit street. The moon looked so low, so close, and crooked as a dentist�s diploma. It could have fallen out of the sky right then and we would likely be the only people to take notice. And in a way, I waited, truly thinking it might come unhinged, but it just hung there on its nail, as the cracks in the street continually fell behind us and the sidewalk pointed in an arrow towards the horizon. A concrete reminder of the places I�m going and the places I�ve been. Her hand was warm and I realized this world�this giant ball of accidents�was once again tolerable, livable, even, maybe, a little exciting. |