Stories from When We Were Not There

Lemon-scented, flippant, smiling woman but with a smile that is neither knowing nor interested, only kind.

A tired smile. But she knows what it means, even the aloofness, which isn’t about her, but about the fact the she finds everything around her amusing, and because she is with her friend, there is a safety there from whence the flippancy can roam uninterrupted, for the delight of them both.

The cake-eating girls on a summer’s day, the sensuousness of eating together after such a long time, I know it is so good I may faint, or come, or both.

Summer dresses wasn’t it what the writer said anyway, the girls, and it isn’t over yet, the hot and mighty summer, although it may be a bit sad, too.

They were playing Art Tatum and Ben Webster and Florence’s new album and imagining things that were long ago, like the white sheet being lifted from the line by the autumnal gale, the white sheet a phantom rushing by their second-story window with the perpetual bird shit. Oh god I remember, and how they ran after it, to retrieve the no longer clean linen from the field nearby, a sheet with her mother’s initials embroidered on the top, right below the lace.

Add lime into everything, she ordered, because it just smells so good, here, smell my hands, but the other woman smells only the fresh garlic, one of the most gorgeous smells in the world: fresh garlic, lime, sand on their skins from spending the day on the beach.

Sparkling wine and she adds berries from her friend’s garden, the ones she brought along as hello stranger long time no see. Laughter gets caught in between teeth much like the small raspberry seeds and pieces of currant and the brown navel of a gooseberry. I am sorry I’m so drunk, the pink champagne is just so good on a hot day like this, but you’re not drunk at all. I love you.

Hold still, will you, the wasp is underneath your hem now! But there is no way she can hold still, and while she does an impromptu bunny hop dance to rid herself from the unwanted insect, her friend doubles over from hysterical giggles; moments later, she gets a small fly in her eye, just as she is without her shades to wipe off tears of laughter. I have to get it out, the rocks are dangerous enough with two functional eyes, let alone one. Yeah yeah I know, have some of my water, rinse it. And it is the combination of the sweat and the sun screen and the density of the hour that makes her heart expand now. When was the last time she laughed with a laughter that was both sober and robust, raucous and untamed, full-bodied and mysterious? A girl’s laughter.

After the storm, a chapter or two on the terrace. The wicker couch is not really large enough for two grown people, so they sit shoulder to shoulder, thigh to bare thigh, in their towels and nothing else, taking in the sun. Talking about how their lives are now and all that happened and how incredibly delicious the cake, how tiny or enormous their dreams, how fast the years et cetera.

Strawberry lemonade, non-carbonated, the swifts outside her window and their most beautiful whistling while they fly. The long afternoons with nothing but classical piano on the background, the books. Do you still keep a journal? Of course I do! Ohmygod what is that scar you never mentioned that! Are you sleeping? Do you sleep these days? Did you sleep well, oat milk or normal, let’s go buy chocolate from the chocolaterie, but it is so hot, won’t it get all smushed? Yes, it will. Well okay then, let’s go!

Like that time the strawberries from the farmer’s market, forgotten inside her backpack, like that time her dog ate the baguette straight from the shopping bag, like that time when she bought the coffee table from the art exhibit. How much for the wooden table in the corner? You mean the one with the brochures on it? Yes, that one.

The midnight blue dress with the ship wheels she got rid of before they ever met, but she always laments selling it, to this day, the legendary lost blue dress.

Long hair short hair punk indie corporate anarchist volleyball gasoline breakfast chicken breast red wine white wine writing laughing happiness sadness car ride bike ride classroom restaurant makeup leg wax philosophy anthropology vinyl playlist amity fury snow storm rain storm and sitting on the hood of her green car, winking, and when she lived by the river they would walk back to her place and make pancakes and sad, tasteless pasta and eat it all with great gusto.

They were wonderful then. They are wonderful now.

For M-L.K.