Stuck On You

It is Sunday night, two nights after Sean met Athena, and the encounter has stuck in his playing, playing over and over again like a skipping record. He has never experienced such a tangible memory. It's a drug. He is addicted to the memory of her. He is addicted to the vision of her in the smoke filled room, bathed in the effervescent green and red and purple light of the concert hall. Every detail is stitched into his brain. The way her shirt hung off of her porcelain shoulders and dipped, low-cut and perfect, in the front. He remembers the brown thread stitched delicately around the collar and the wide bell cuffs. He remembers the natural frowning shape of her mouth, the glossless pink of her lips, the smattering of light machine gun freckles near her nose, the gorgeous length and blackness of the lashes surrounding her shock green eyes. He remembers the complex highlights and shadows in her hair, the way it hung over her ears and parted over her forehead and how a rogue wisp of it fell across her eye. He remembers her shape, her almost criminally curvaceous figure, her lack of height, and the defensive stance she had when he introduced himself. He remembers the inadvertent flinch she gave, the surprise of being approached and the wariness that crept into her initial smile. He remembers her so vividly. He remembers the sharpness of her chin, the breadth of her face, the slight rose in her cheeks and the almost unearthliness paleness of her white skin. He remembers her voice, especially, how it was the perfect complement to her, how she was the form he'd envision if he'd only heard her speak on the phone or the radio. He remembers the slight crookedness of her teeth, the dissatisfied calmness of her demeanor, and the cool economy of her language. She wasn't wordy. She answered his small handful of questions in a way that was efficient without being terse.

Athena lived nearby and she was a year younger than Sean. She worked as a receptionist at a high school, which is she loathed, but she was putting herself back through college after having dropped out a semester prior to getting a degree in graphic design. She was single and hadn't had a boyfriend in a while. And, yes, she would be interested in having dinner with Sean some night.

She didn't have any paper with her because she never took her purse to concerts. Sean had accidentally left his phone at home. He did have a silver Sharpie, however, and Athena scrawled out her number on the palm of Sean's hand. The silver was barely legible on against his own white skin, so she wrote the number, again, on his forearm. Sean was embarrassed by the way the sensation of her hand on his arm shocked him, and how the force of it fanned out like downed wire electricity through every nerve in his body. It was at that moment he sadly took note of how long it had been since any girl had touched him.

She was very explicit in her instructions. He was to call her on Monday, because to do so earlier would make both of them feel very desperate. And then she left. She didn't stay at the concert. She didn't hang out with Sean after their brief, wonderful little meeting. She just disappeared. It was probably for the best, because it allowed time for Sean to reboot. The anxiety of the moment had pretty much caused every major system in his body to up and shut down. Sean didn't mind, though. The silver permanent ink on his hand and arm more than made up for the cardiac arrest.

And now it is Sunday and he is waiting. The ink is still clinging, stubbornly, to his skin, but he has transferred her number to multiple sources in a prudent act of safe keeping. He is laying on his bed, listening to songs shuffle on his laptop. Every song seems to be about love, and it is torturous. He has spent the last two days fabricating his first date with Athena, mapping out potential sites, creating mental flowcharts of potential disasters and missteps. He is excited to find out who she is. His gut is telling him that she is amazing, that she is brilliant and as dispassionately interested in everything as he is. His gut is telling him that she is cutely misanthropic and that she has great taste in music and movies and books. His gut is telling him that she hates all the same things he hates. His gut, he knows, could be dead wrong, but he can't wait to find out. He contemplates breaking her rule and calling tonight. He wonders if she would find that annoying or endearing.

Somehow he knows that she would find it annoying. And he loves that. He has been a model of self-control for years, now. He can wait another day, even if that waiting leaves him feeling twitchy and pathetic.

As song after song relays the horrors and divinities inherent in loving another person, Sean realizes how long it's been since he's looked forward to anything. Nearly every aspect of his life had been something to endure, something to slog through on the slow march to death. He didn't tell people that very often, as they tended to take a dim view of him and his dreary outlook, but it really was how he felt. Usually. But he was actually longing to call Athena. He wasn't looking past his dinner with her to the point when it was over and he could return to the solitary lair of his apartment. In fact, the time approaching his call was interminable. He felt as if it had been weeks since they'd met. He wanted so badly to be sitting across from her, talking to her, getting to know her. He forgot what anticipation was really like... before Athena, it had all but been replaced with dread.

He was worried, of course, about the impression he'd make on her... about the impression he'd already made, but it wasn't the crippling anxiety to which he was accustomed. Instead, it was the sort of thrilling worry that goes along with a roller coaster ride or a good scary movie. He was ready to be scared.

The vision of her was still there, and he tried to shake it. He didn't want to obsess or deify her. Although, with a name like Athena, it might be completely warranted.

Strangers

This terrible rush comes over, too diligent, too soft-spoken to be heard amidst the clang and clatter of whatever thing he thought to be thinking of falling out. And she wonders at it, whether the voice that sputters out such random and perverse and sometimes, sometimes flattering vapidity is just a construct of her own gray matter folds or if it's coming from anyone's blinking shattered eyes that scream out for a lick of any measure of attention. It's a mess, to be sure, to pull what's real out from what's imagined and she thinks, perhaps, of him doing the same?

She can't be, he can't be
sure.

Oh but this weighs heavily upon them, strangers as they are, struggling with finding meaning in hidden lash bats and bristling mourning as the crowds file up and down like space age computer punch cards... each punch in place bringing the difference to a head until neither can stand it and the one goes in and the other leaps out and there's a vacuum left in the middle again,

like a starry pool of liquid, liquid void
a dead space, hollow and silver and dreaming of

Fists going upward and teeth gnashing and all of this because of a flipped coin or a butterfly's sneeze or whatever it is that causes one foot to turn in one direction and in the blink of an eye everything's gone and changed again.

They don't KNOW each other, and never will, not because of fate or destiny or anything large, but, because of small things, tiny things, microscopic things pushing them one place or another while halfway across the world or halfway across town they are frozen with fear and with disbelief, searching the source for transmissions or heartbeats or something that sings with the primal energy of a calling, one brain to one brain until, zombie-like, they move in a straight line, one point to one point... they wait for it

And wait for it
And wait for it

There might be a telephone call in her head or a letter written out on his desk, but they don't know the numbers or the addresses or even, by God, the recipient. They are throwing the words, the message, the missive, the correspondence and the very thought of it into the atmosphere and praying for some sort of long traveled balloon postcard response from that ideal that's been etched in white hot acid on the leathery flaps and armor of their slowly fading hearts.