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Fractal Mode
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Fractal Mode |
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quietwaters Junior Member
since 2002-02-04
Posts 30delray beach, florida |
Note to the reader: This is a story of two people who came from the same country, about 3,000 miles from the U.S. They met somewhere in the States. On hindsight, I could see a lot of things I could have changed. I chose not to do so. If you would, please do it for me.  By the way, this is a first story. I do not know if this will be the last. Ray FRACTAL MODE It was a day like any other; sunbeams dappling leaves to golden yellow as they brought light through foliage and onto the thick glass of the car window, limming her face in shadow, but turning the straying strands of her hair into brown and gold. This woman I hardly know, this professor of languages who has been, like me, away from her real home for a long time. She didn't look her age -- a self-professed 40 -- and she, i thought, probably regained her slenderness while sharing a vegetarian diet with the old woman whose housekeeper she has been for the past years. I let her voice wash through my senses while I looked at her and mused at what tangled paths she must have had to traced in her thoughts alone, to be able to reconcile what she had been in the past with what she had now. She had animation, this paragon. I was sure she was a very good teacher,still would be if the right circumstances had gone her way for once. She had the body that went with the easy confidence she had shown when I had first met her earlier, at the mall, where she had asked me to show her an Oriental Store where she had heard she could buy phone cards, for calling home. She had said then, on our way to the parking lot for our cars -- truly the only incongruity to my impression of that self-assurance -- that she only feared she would not be able to follow me to the store, only saying she had never been good at tailing someone, much less one whose driving she had not seen before. I had said then, unselfconsciously I hoped, that she might as well ride along with me, anyways the mall would still be on my route on the way home, going back, and had smiled a quickly brilliant, spontaneously disarming smile, and said, "Whew, thank You!" So here we were; the phone cards bought ( she wasn't halfway joking, she bought about 20 of them ), her seated, me back on the wheel, and she had stopped me from starting the engine with a quick, light touch and a whimsical "Might we stay here a while? Bring the windows down, yes, right there, thank you...I'd like to chat with someone from home; truly, it has been a long time,not being able to see anyone at all...from home...my boss won't be expecting me to be back so soon..I was just in the mall looking for the right phone cards, and I was so very glad to see you, don't think that I wasn't...someone from home,I was that happy, you know..." and her eyes clouding a little bit, starting to film over, and I had said, hoping to be quick enough, Lord knows I have never been able to abide tears well, "It's fine, I have time to kill, too!" Dolt! I had half-chided myself, using such a poor pun, and me with neither the natural grace nor the easy manner of a social insect. Duh! She had told me her story, not easy about it at all, but I could see the telling was doing her something good -- as if it was something she had never told anyone before, or had never met anyone to tell it to. And I watched and listened to everything; all the nuances of the moment, I swear I could almost taste the bitter crinkling of a leaf while a sunbeam tried its damnedest to crisp it, the way she's wave a slender hand about, making a point, the certain way her lips would curve down or up, I could almost taste this moment take on a life of its own, separate itself from the one before... Old story. Husband a bank officer. Her a University professor. Three sons, and two gone to pot, and more. Familiar words; rehab, not enough money, social embarassment, decision to leave everything familiar to give their sons another chance, another lease on life. Six years in New York, not enough time for social life on off days; there was always the reminder that she would have to make arrangements for going back home later. The will to debase herself personally, bring her pride several notches down so she could function at the menial level. Her spending a third part of every year in Florida with her boss, her world often limited to four walls and a patio or balcony, the phone calls home...missing home, missing companionship. I sat there, yeah, listening. I felt I was born for this moment, listening and taking in the story of a world unfolding; the unfairness of it, the choices that were but weren't, everything...and she talked, cried -- those tears had to follow gravity -- and talked again, while the afternoon sun took its way down; abandoning its sport of trying to crisp green leaves to brown, trying to persuade the tree barks it passed to let go of their grip to its tree. Until finally it was done, the telling, and this stranger was straightening up her clothing, taking huge deep breaths, simply saying, "Thank you!" And I smiled. She smiled back, both of us thanking each other, both of us grateful for small mercies. And then she kissed me. Cheek, then lips. Gently at first, and when I kissed her gently back, she just sank into me, a fire. Another moment then, and me tasting every little nuance of it, until I was consumed. I found that she was halfway lying across me, her skirt hiked up, her head and mouth still tilted up to my own, lips glued seeking moist warmth, her tongue connected to my own. I felt the heat coursing all over me, a softening up, a hardening up, and my right palm was suddenly on silk, then on flesh, and her skirt was up to her waist, and my fingers were tangled up between the back of her thighs and up,caressing. I don't know what happened. I was suddenly awake. I didn't understand what I was feeling, just instinct. I just had to ask her, and I did, "Do you want to make love?" She kissed me, never less hard, and said, "No." And I said Ok,and kissed her back again, warmth for warmth, honesty for honesty. Until it, too, was gone, and we were back to our separate seats, my hand and lips left with distinct memories of silk and skin, and velvet warmth, and my nose crammed full of the smell of jasmine. She said then, "It's been so long, you see?" And I said, "Yes, i do understand." And I smiled back, the warmest I could. It was enough. I debated for a while if I should ask her her name, or where I might find her. But asking simply didn't belong with that moment. It wasn't what she needed. So, I drove her back to the mall, went straight home myself, in a daze, with a hard-on I sought to drown in the coldest shower I could run. But I sang to myself in the shower, a wordless hum that was, also, enough. And then I went for my jog, around my little lake, watching the afternoon sun segue into the sunset. White and blue, to amber and orange, and then to gold. Like brown hair framed in need, like lips that asked for warmth, and for that day, got what it wanted. Gave back what it got. I never saw her again.... |
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| © Copyright 2002 Ree Joy Baldonado - All Rights Reserved | |||
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nakdthoughts Member Laureate
since 2000-10-29
Posts 19200Between the Lines |
well, I usually don't come in here to read, but thought I would give it a try. Funny thing is this story seems so familiar to me a part of my past, although I am not a University Pofessor...so similar Ray that it is spooky. Almost to the words you quoted etc...*s M...maybe not ever seeing her again was a good thing...it would have been in my case. |
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