I remember running into her on the street, just outside of the Berwyn el stop. It was a mid-summers night while I was walking along…I’d intentionally gotten off the wrong station, I wanted to walk home some…feel the beautiful summer breeze braise gently against my skin. During the summer season in Chicago I found walking to be immensely pleasurable, meditative too.
That wasn’t the way we met, but it was a memorable moment in both of our timelines. We had met only a few weeks before at Dominicks on Sheridan and Foster…I think it was next to the produce department. I’d accidently toppled a mountain of fuji apples in her path, and she tripped…hard…very hard. Everyone seemed to stop in their tracks and give me cold dirty stares. A moment later as I was helping her up to her feet, those evil looks soon transformed. The women were smiling stupidly and going ‘Awwwwwwww’ with their eyes, and the male spectators started rolling their eyes, disgusted by such a display. I felt quite heroic, and she was flustered, quiet, a little pissed? I couldn’t gauge her. I think that’s what compelled me to do what I did. For once my inadvertent clumsiness actually worked in my favor. Don’t get me wrong, I’m highly balanced and well coordinated, it comes from years of martial arts training. But at times I had this strange accident proneness to me. Like I accidently yawn and stretch out a hand to strike someone in the face, etc. I think I have a weird luck factor going. For instance: a mugger who’d tried chasing after me tripped on ice…tripped! That saved my bacon. I’d run forward instinctively, the guy could’ve been packing heat or a knife. So I spun and roundhoused the dumbshit. He struck me in the ear, I was going to do a fight club reenactment at that moment…
While helping her to her feet, I employed my pick pocketing skill and slipped a business card into her purse. Of course, I could have simply given it to her…but where’s the fun in that? However, she promptly invited me out to Club Rocket the coming Fri night after work.
She immediately caught my eye. We’d met briefly, at that meat market club Rocket downtown. I think this time on the street she noticed me more clearly, and I could sense that she was powerfully attracted to this body, this form, this grinning face. I found her very beautiful herself…and she smelled like angels ought to smell. We had striking similarities, and petty differences. She was definitely more sensitive than me in many things, perhaps. But at times she could be more insensitive about things as well.
We spent many nights in her dingy apartment conversing next to the window and smoking Marlboro menthol lights or parliament lights over glasses of cheap table wine. Her small humble digs I now remember with sentimental reverie…we were so happy there…so many clustered memories flood my mind whenever I stop to stare back at that time.
Every morn we’d walk over to Starbucks for some coffee, and I’d walk her to the Bryn Mawr station so she could get to work in time. Remember getting annoyed whenever 24 came on, as her place was right next to the train the blasted Redline train would roar past and scramble our set with static…particularly during the intense torture scenes we were so incredibly fond of. Nothing like the maniacal heroics of a crazy spy to serve as the glue which held us together so tight and snug.

Labels: art of love