So you want to watch that movie?
Me: If youre up for it.
Unless you want to hang on there.
No.
Okay.
Well, I’ll see you over at your place. I can pick you up.
No need.
Oh, yes, let me pick you up.
Youre not home?
I’m at Craig’s.
Are you ready now?
How about in ten minutes?
I’ll walk down.
I dont drive down because there is no parking without a permit on Gower. It’s good I found out that she wasnt home. Because I would have been locked out, without a key. With no lights on. We often talk with a misunderstanding, like a boulder, that we have to lean around to see the other person. Even when we’ve safely navigated the obstacle, the effects of the obstacle can never be fully eradicated. Clearing something up doesnt dissipate the residual feeling. It lingers as if the misunderstanding were in fact the truth of the happening. To assume a false thing for any length of time makes it true. And I have pictured her with Craig Regular. Assuming the worst is the basis of grudges and resentment.
6 I’m in bed feeling anguish. I can’t even write it down properly. So I dress and walk down to Lydia’s and leave a note hanging out of her mailbox. That I’m upset that she invited Craig to supper with her parents. I thought she would at least call to say what was up. I can’t stand not knowing what she’s doing.
I decide to go for a walk. Walking is the correct speed for rumination. Cars and even bicycles propel the body too fast through space.
I walk towards Quidi Vidi, to the graveyard on the hill. And down a straight paved path. The penitentiary is glowing in a rhomboid. I can see into its perimeter. There is a grave with Pinto on it, born in Vega, Italy.
As I walk back Lydia’s brown Cavalier slows, red tail lights. Reverses. It is slightly misty. She’s dropped off Craig at the Battery. She kisses me, with a strong tongue. I tell her all this. As we sit in the car in my driveway.
In bed, I ask her what Craig’s like.
Oh, nice. He says he’s a loner now. Lives in Seattle. Pause.
Me: That’s all?
What’s wrong with that?
Youre starting to sound like me. You spend seven hours with a new guy and all you can say is he’s nice.
He isnt new. I knew him back with Earl. My parents knew him then, too. They wanted to see him.
Well he’s new to me, then.
Tell me what you want to know.
This, said in a stiff way.
What he’s doing, his life, his ambitions, his humour.
He’s managing this software design, which is a two-year project. He’s kind of goofy, he doesnt get a joke right away but then laughs and that’s sort of cute and he’s handsome and he doesnt own any possessions. He’s given them up except he has a dog, which he loves, and he remembers Tinker in his youth. He wears business kinds of clothes now, but you soon realize he’s someplace else.
So youve got a little crush on him.
Lydia: And what do you think of that?
What, should I be jealous of a handsome man who lives on the Pacific and has cute ways and a dog and youve spent seven hours with him?