Untitled (Part V)
26.
I am not a strong man. I am weak-willed and heavy-hearted with a mind that runs at Olympic levels. I am witty and generous and kind like my father. I am loving and creative and compassionate like my mother. I am a product of parents far too gracious, the epitome of a child raised to near perfection from parents too young and too inexperienced to have a clue what they were doing. They did good and I will never come close to repaying them.
27.
But I am still weak-willed and heavy-hearted and when she looks at me I am undone. If I were a scientist I would investigate the means to overcome the debilitating effect that her eyes have on a man’s composure. I would, if I had the means, fund committees and research groups to track down the cause of this phenomenon, track it down and isolate it, develop a cure, do all they could, so that I could function like a normal person around her.
28.
We’re still walking though now were are away from the pier and back onto the street. People go from bar to bar and I say, “Do you want to stop and get a drink?” She says, “I don’t know.”
“What, do you have plans?”
“Well…” she pauses. Cleary, I think, she has better plans.
“It’s cool. I just thought I’d ask.”
“I don’t have plans. It’s just, I have to drive still and I don’t know if drinking is a good idea.”
“If drinking because you have to drive is a good idea, or drinking with me is a good idea?”
She laughs. “You don’t have plans tonight?”
“Not a one, except to maybe do some writing.”
29.
We cross the street at Madison. An older looking man in shorts crosses the opposite way of us. He walks his dog, something like a cocker spaniel, maybe. I’m not too familiar with dogs. We come to the other side of the street and walk along the boulevard towards some bars. “What are you going to write about,” she asks. “Are you going to write about tonight?”
“I don’t know. Nothing’s really happened yet.”
“Hasn’t it?”
“I suppose, but I can’t write about it now, otherwise you’ll know it’s about you when I put it up.”
“I probably still will.”
“I don’t write about you anymore so don’t worry.”
“I don’t know whether to think that’s sad or not.”
We stop in front of a dive-y looking place. I ask, “Want to go in?”
“Why not? Nothing’s really happened yet tonight anyway.”
30.
“If you don’t want to get a drink that’s cool.” I tell her this, but I secretly don’t mean it. She thinks about it for a second, blowing hot air in to cupped hands. She shrugs her perfect shoulders. “Like I said, why not? I’m having fun. Are you?”
“I’m having fun,” I say with a smile, but for a split second I wonder if I really am. How much of this, I think, will come back to worm it’s way into my head and stay there? Maybe this isn’t a good idea, but maybe who cares?
“Alright then,” she says, leading us in through double doors and towards something unknown.
