Sculpture Garden

Caitlin tasted like smoke.

She had reservations, he could tell in her careful demeanor, in the quiet nervous way in which she constantly attended to the task of pushing her read hair behind her ears. So they talked slowly, like two people circling each other. Some questions found answers, others were deftly parried. They sat for some time like that, talking across some seemingly unbreachable gap, on the long bar, the lights dimmed and the rain picked up.

The conversation languished and with his hand on the small of her back, they exited one bar for another. He was a stranger not only to her, but here so she picked. And as they walked in silence, her smoking, and him staring down the street he assumed led to their intended destination he thought on how similar this particular part of broad street was to so many other places he had once lived.

Caitlin tasted like smoke.

The bar she picked was her own. He could tell, he remembered very acutely that wonderful feeling of having a place one felt comfortable. They sat and she order and they played one four twenty four. He feigned dismay as she won nearly every turn, but every dollar he turned over to her he though was well spent, her laughter would tumble out of her.

It was a beautiful flitting thing, a laugh that pirouetted with the joy of little girl. Her eyes were so light they were nearly clear, and the dress she had chosen was dark, over the knee, and the prettiest she owned. He could tell.

Caitlin tasted like smoke.

A band was setting up. She asked him a question and choked down her room temperature shot of gin- rule of the house, the consequence of an errant die. He told her about this boy he had seen in birmingham in a strip mall bar. He wasn't much to look at thin with shaggy blonde hair, and he assended the makeshift stage shirtless he couldn't have been much older than eighteen. But the sound that came from the guitar for the next twenty five minutes he would never forget. The boy played with a frantic youthful energy, building a cathedral of sound moment by moment.

She said that the best things in life were like that, surprises in ordinary places.

Caitlin tasted like smoke.

This bars band began, and he thought while it was not like that night in alabama, it was still quite something. The sound of the four of them and the way the girl wailed filled all the empty spaces.

Instincts take over in small places full of sound. The crowded swayed in their silence, and when a passerby nudged her without thought he braced her.

He thought then he had forgotten, or almost forgotten, how soft girls were. He maneuvered her on to the stool, her skin so pale had taken on a drunken glow. There nose to nose they lingered.

The sound stop and the room gave up the ghost. Unfettered what was once whole drifted apart and the choir of individual conversations rose and their moment dissipated.

Caitlin tasted like smoke.

He walked her to her apartment, a block and a half from the bar. The kiss seemed conceived in e that lingering moment nose to nose even if it was born on her porch. And what followed was mostly the inertia of the alcohol. But there in the yellow haze of the exterior lights, he heard a little lustful gasp. And as only a sound can do he remembered what he had not be able to feel for months.

A timid invitation and his less than graceful decline.

Walking he lost himself again, in a memory. He couldn't remember how many times he done it. Made those sounds on an empty sidewalk. It seemed all great repetition: his footsteps, the blocks, the nights, the particular feeling of walking home alone. The only thing he found that could break that terrible feeling were was clinging to a little truth.

And as all the particular drifted into commonalities he did his best to remember what couldn't be ignored.

Nevada

She thought highway 80 was a dream; sliding through the cool green valley with ease before they ascended. He was comfortable with the quiet, and she paid him little attention in those moments gawking without reservation at the trees, each a defiant spear thrust into the rocks. The engine churned under the weight of his foot, pushing his well traveled pickup truck up the cutbacks. And though at first she started to write in her little notebook of disconnected thoughts, it sat there opened and unmarked for some time. While they had only been in the vehicle for a short time there were things she felt confidence in; that he drove in the lanes closest to the guard rails so that she could enjoy the view, that lack of music was a shared opinion, that his chuckles at her childish excitement at the trains they passed as without judgment.

It was not always complete silence, they would go through spurts where they would talk vigorously, each waiting for the pause that followed the end of a sentence so that the other could begin. And then the conversation would conclude, or collapse, each of them almost having to catch their breath. In the decent down towards Reno, she took some time, discreetly to take him in. Measuring him as he adjusted in his chair, noting the particular way in which he seemed to grip the wheel with disinterest. His hair and beard were a mess, and she suspected that a look that was once of feigned in-deference had tumbled over into actual disinterest.

He was strange to her and at times all too familiar, as if by some particular angle of the fall sun's light some how the boy she had known all those years ago would be illuminated, only to vanish as they slid behind a mountain. She was no novice with boys though, she had known them almost all her life.

'You're pretty you know,' she began while staring out the window, 'but you would be a hard boy to love.'' In the window she saw him raise and eyebrow, throw her a sideways glance, a look that seemed well practiced. Which was fine she thought, girls honed an arsenal of looks by middle school, it seemed only egalitarian that boys should put some effort into such things. Boys, she was sure, were mostly lazy.

'Am I now?'

'Well, under that beard. And maybe with some even halfhearted maintenance to that hair and yes I feel very confident. Pretty.' His laugh that followed made her smile, it was low and rumbling, as if it began somewhere deep within him, and that it couldnt be contained.

'That's not the part I was inquiring about.'

'You weren't specific.'

'Ah.' he shook his head, then quietly laughed to himself, 'I'm out of practice at banter'.

'You'll pick it back up,' She shrugged nonchalantly, one of her practiced looks.

'So?'

Suddenly, she didn't want to tell him. She wasn't sure if it was because she was sure he knew and so there was no point in telling him, or because he didn't know and she was afraid to hurt him. He waited though, without asking again for a few minutes. She considered the flat parade of browns that approached them, sun hammered sand as far as her eyes could see.

'You have this look about you as if you always want to be somewhere else. And I don't know how many women could spend their lives with you always having that look.' He didn't flinch but he didn't respond, at least not at first.

'It's not just a look.'

'I know.' Quietly, and then more quiet. A moment, a pause, the bizarre blur that is speeding through downtown Reno. 'Why do you think that is?'

'Deep down,' he began, then paused, and with a smirk resumed, 'I think I'm a pirate.'

She couldn't contain her smile, but she turned half away to conceal it. “A pirate? Where's your treasure?'

He seemed reflective for but a moment, then admitted, 'No treasure.'

'A pirate with no treasure, seems a curious thing. What do you have?'

He responded without consideration, ' A few scars and a few stories.'

'No treasure. Just scars and stories. Sounds like a pirate's life to me' and without missing a beat he said 'Yo Ho'. She giggled incessantly.

They cut south nevada as the day drew to a close. In those last minutes she watched, not wistfully, at the sunset, concealed behind the mountains they had earlier made their way through. She had hoped for an explosion of orange and pink but was surprised by the indescribable purple she found. It was indescribable, she made many efforts in her notebook from the rock she sat upon. He had stopped, without asking, to let her watch it. He was skipping rocks, poorly, in the salt lake they had found while she watched her failed sunset.

Hours later she stood in a convenience store bathroom, running hot water over her hands. She hadn't thought to bring gloves. In the mirror she saw someone she knew completely, but often didn't recognize. She never felt old. Never. But sometimes in the mirror she would see this person that looked old. Not too old, she wasn't yet even 40. Just older than she remembered being. Boys would marvel at her. The energy of her laugh and the light in her eyes. She had good skin from the old country and good taste from her mother. But sometimes, just sometimes she thought she looked old.

She wondered if anyone every could truly see themselves. He couldn't see him self. He could know himself but she knew he couldn't see himself. Perhaps she too suffered the same plight, perhaps all people did. She thought she might ask him about herself, then decided not to do so. That was silly and perhaps even desperate. She was willing to admit that she could be prone to silliness but she was resolved never to be desperate.

He hadn't even started the car yet when he asked her, turning to face her, what was wrong.

'Sometimes I hate myself.' She said more honestly than she wanted.

He looked at her, then out at something through the buzz of the overheard halogen lights. Shrugged. 'Anyone who doesn't hate themselves a little, doesn't know themselves that well.'

She thought that was probably true. But before she could respond he followed. 'But anyone who doesn't love themselves, doesn't know themselves at all.' She thought on that while he turned the engine over. It was strange collection of seemingly necessary sounds, the engine's rattle, the click of his seat belt, and the hiss of his coca-cola bottle.

'Oh I bought you these.' She felt them land in her lap, two little purple mittens, with yellow and brown stripes.

She held them up, 'They're hideous.'

'I know, I picked them out for that reason.'

'I love them.' she admitted gleefully.

'I know.' He turned left out into the darkness and they drove on.