Love Story

Well truth is I don't know where this one came from, and part of me doesn't want to read it again. Make of it what you will and Freud can eat his heart out.

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Sit down kids, I'm going to tell you a love story. There is no princess and no prince charming. There is no salvation and no hero. There is only distance and despair. And just a hint of magic. Most stories start at the beginning, unraveling the yarn of the tale as the cat plays with it much like most stories have happy endings. Not this one. This one starts in the middle and I'll work my way back to the beginning.

See, she was scraping a living as a waitress in some run down suburb of New York. He was a life long truant, vagrant at best and a bum all other times. Never showed up when he should, never stayed in one place longer than he needed to.

They met at the airport one summer afternoon. He was leaving New York for smaller worlds, rougher parts. She was picking up her girlfriend from back home, in town for two days of whirlwind fun in the city. I'd like to say their eyes met across the concourse and they ran to each other. Or that they sat next to one another at a small bar and grew close over meaningless small talk. I want to tell you they bumped in to one another near the security line. That as he bent to pick up her dropped bag, their hands touched, then their eyes met. But no. He bought a Cinnabon, she got a latte. They stood next to one another in line, but there was no chatting. No destiny sparked them into falling for one another.

It was nothing so simple as that. No, it never is so simple.

See, he kept his wallet in his back pocket. And in his hurry to get no where in particular, he dropped his credit card. Rather than pull out his wallet to place the card in it securely, he attempted to just slip the card into the pocket. Or perhaps she needed money and lifted the card from his pocket. She never admitted to it and he never asked.

Regardless, she had his card and he went about his merry way, catching his flight to Kansas, or Ohio, or Washington. Where ever his gypsy soul took him that particular day, that week, that month. He didn't notice the loss and she felt too guilty to ever use the card. Perhaps she looked him up to return it, but no... he couldn't be found so simple as that. So her friend arrived and was disappointed by New York. He didn't find whatever it was he needed on this trip either. So they continued living for a year.

And then another.

She was just like every other young girl. She wanted to be an actress, left home at eighteen to pursue her dream. Made it to the big apple and found that she'd bit too much off the core. A seed had dislodged and it was growing inside her, dark and hard against the daily grind. Broadway shunned her, and the seed found root. The side stages and back up roles passed her by and the first tendril wrapped around her heart. More than that, she was continually disappointed by the men that passed through her life. I say passed through because none could ever get close enough once that seed had taken root. It constricted her heart, and she pushed at them with all the strength she could manage.

He came from some money. Not much, but first one relative passed, then another. And with each one, he gained just enough capital to continue funding his rambling soul. Soon enough the States proved they lacked what he was looking for, so he took to Canada. When Canada too disappointed his need, he tried South America. Brazil, Ecuador, and even Columbia for a stint. As with all the others, they provided only beautiful scenery and thrilling, but fleeting experience. So it was back to New York to work for a time before he left for Europe, or maybe Russia. He hadn't decided when yet when the plane touched down at JFK.

So some time passed as he went through the routine at a meaningless job and she served tables at two two-bit diners while the acting jobs fell through time and again. As hunger is wont to do, it struck him at an odd hour of the night while he searched the darkness of his small aparment for what he couldn't find all across the States. He walked four blocks in the dead of night and found himself being served by a pretty young girl with hair darker than the moonless night outside and eyes to match. And he saw a light there.

It was the flickering of a match before it hisses and leaves only acrid smoke. The last drag of a lonely cigarette in the night before it is crushed under the heel of an unforgiving boot. He found recognition there, and it burned him like a moth to the flame. He recoiled from it, hiding behind his cheap burger and watered down coffee.

And while he hid, she felt the seed tighten around her heart ever so slightly. But she recognized him and that was all it took. She remembered the credit card, long forgotten, but kept. Days passed and neither could shake the other from their mind. There were no butterflies in the stomach though, nothing so sweet as that. He dreaded what he'd seen in her eyes. She was too scared to look him up. And while both would likely have rather been rid of the other, some part of them persisted in the other's mind.

An apparition of themselves held on when all they wanted was to give up. A piece that took on a mind of its own, growing into something it wasn't and building expectations that couldn't be met. So when he returned to the diner a week and a half later, she had been carrying his credit card for five days.

The conversation was halting and awkward. In turns dying like the wretch it was and falling like a bird with clipped wings. If only it were tangible, the mess of its wreck would have given them something to talk about. But no, that would be too simple.

In some manner that befuddles even the best logisticians and mathematicians, they managed to write down fourteen numbers in a shaking script. They each left that night with a folded napkin, white save for the darkness left by the other. Pure except for the marks they made.

If you've been following closely, you should be able to tell me what comes next.

First a day passes. Then another. And yet one more before she calls.

"We're sorry. The number you are trying to reach is no longer available." He's all the way in Moscow, and he might as well be back in the USSR. I'd like to say she cried at this point, but that wouldn't be the truth. She fumed, sure. But most of her had expected something like this to happen, so there were no tears. No real pain because there'd never been any real risk. The match that he'd seen in her eyes caught the kindling of his departure and a flame grew inside her. Burning at the seed that wrapped her heart and burning it away.

All that was left in the end were the black marks and the scar tissue from the burns.

She got an acting job the next week. Nothing major, but it beat where she'd been. And Russia was just the same as where he'd been. I'd like to say that somewhere between Berlin and London he realized something. That the train ride was all the time it took for those black marks on the napkin to burn a hole in his pocket. But again, that would be lying. Those seven digits rode shotgun for another six months before he ended up back in New York. From Dublin to Dubai he'd been just as empty as he'd ever been.

Finally he called. Three rings til the answering machine. Which was really out dated at this point, but sounds better. He got her voicemail, and left a message. Name, number, call me.

She didn't. See, six months is a long time. She was with some aspiring director, working part time at that same diner but with enough acting jobs to keep the land lord away. His relatives dried up in all senses of the word and he found himself in Seattle without rent money or a rent to pay it with.

The keen observer will note by now a key element of the plot is conspicuously absent. And this is where I hate to disappoint you, but I have to. See, there is no magic here. He eventually found work and room in Seattle, then he found a girl. She wasn't anything special, and there was no fire in her soul. They weren't unhappy together and they could tolerate one another. She married that director and was never more than a passing part in some B movie, but it paid the bills. He eventually lost that napkin and her number. She deleted the voice mail he'd left and lived an okay life with her director.

She never regained that flame that had haunted his dreams and he never found what he was looking for again after all those miles.