Michelangelo's Shoulder Part 8

Sure, you can quit when you're ahead. But then you're out of the game; you're not playing. That's what I've done with my life, he thought. But he would lose too, in the end. Maybe the best strategy was to pa.s.s along the winnings, if you had any, the way he had last night. Penn had done that in Guayaquil--a good thing, as he'd put it--although he hadn't finished the job. Probably wouldn't, either, the way his life was going. Arthur felt for his notebook and Constanza's address. That was at least something he could do, for himself and for Penn--he could help those kids. That was something, anyway.

Bells and sirens exploded in the next aisle. Jackpot. An elderly woman stared at flas.h.i.+ng lights, bemused, a bit bewildered. Arthur realized that tears were running down his face, that he was both sad and grateful, and that it was time to leave.

Four Pictures and a Flower Thief

I have these pictures--two in fog, two in sun. Fog: a man in a deck chair is playing a trumpet, his feet on the stern railing of a ferry.

Fog: a telephone pole seen through a winds.h.i.+eld. Sun: a young woman on a bicycle is climbing a cobblestoned street, blonde hair bouncing, white blouse, solid b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Sun: a snake falling back to the bank of a stream, a dragonfly in its mouth, dazzling, iridescent.

Put in a certain order, riffled through, they make a silent movie--until sounds grow more insistent. A Jeep honks twice, accelerating past the biker, driver and pa.s.senger turning to look. She ignores them. She doesn't notice me watching from a doorway. I suppose my heart leaping toward her made no sound. She was locked into my blood and bone before I knew any words for her, her name even. The shock of recognition left me wide-eyed and strangely blind. Nothing would be seen for itself, only in terms of her--whether she was there or not, how likely it was that she might appear, how _not her_ everything else.

Nantucket is ten miles long with one central town. I worked in a restaurant on the main street. The following day I saw her stop at a bakery/cafe which became my hangout. When she came in again, my throat went dry and my knees shook. I don't remember what I first said to her, but she responded to some sort of signal. She was willing for me to pay more attention. We began to meet in the cafe.

It is hard not to put what I know now into what I knew then. I presented what plumage I had--no money, but a small currency of integrity. I had survived childhood by learning to please. Eventually, I could no longer do that and I started over, was reborn at nineteen.

While I was only five, by that count, when Jamie (her name) pedaled up the main street of Nantucket, I was uncompromised; I offered myself for whatever waited inside that white blouse.

One wet morning, she agreed to a picnic on my next day off. I stood in the bakery entrance and listened to water running from the roofs and downspouts, down the sidewalk and street. It didn't matter that I would be soaked by the time I got to my room. Nothing mattered except that we had a date. Because we had a date--were together already, really--the universe made sense. The rain fell equally on us all, rich kids with Jeeps, waitresses, cooks, masons and roofers, the young and the old.

It's raining, I said to myself. The words meant more than they did before. It's raining, I said again. All over the town.

Harry, the chef, made a mixture of spices for me. He handed me a plastic bag and told me to shake a swordfish steak in the bag and not to broil the fish too long. She'll never forget you, he said without smiling. Harry cooked breakfast at the Gray Gull and lunch and dinner at The Upper Deck, a sixteen hour day. Our relations.h.i.+p was respectful.

Eight hours a day was enough for me, but while I was working I did my best. When Harry, under stress, snapped at me, I learned to hear him say, "Take another shrimp, Joe." c.o.c.ktail shrimp, waiting in the cooler, out of sight from the grill. I acquired a reputation for good humor.

I borrowed my buddy Morgan's truck on a clear evening in late July and picked up Jamie. Madaket was her favorite beach, less known, wilder. We drove out and made a driftwood fire, opened a bottle of wine, and talked as the sun went down and the moon rose. We were easy with each other by then, although we had never touched, let alone hugged or kissed. The swordfish was a success. The moon sent its ivory path over the wave tops, inviting and promising. Jamie told me how she liked to swim that path and how, several times, she nearly hadn't made it back.

We were young.

I was giddy with accomplishment as we finished a second bottle of wine.

She was wearing a tight T-s.h.i.+rt and shorts, apparently unaware of the effect her body had on me as she told me about her parents and her friends on the island. She had summered on Nantucket for years. She was in a suspended state--too heavy for ballet, too young for graduate school. She did not want to marry an engineer and live in a suburb of Philadelphia. She was clear about that. I offered a possible alternative: an honest life built one stone at a time.

We put out the fire and walked along the beach. Fog blew in, softening the lines of the horizon and dune, thickening as we reached the truck.

We drove back happily involved with each other, unconcerned with anything else. A telephone pole appeared directly in front of me. I whipped the steering wheel to the left and almost missed the pole. The right headlight smashed and I was thrown against the wheel, striking it with my shoulder and bending it nearly double. Jamie went through the winds.h.i.+eld. After the crash, there were only hot sounds of metal uncrinkling and moans from Jamie. Don't let me die, she was saying over and over.

I pulled her back on to the seat and rea.s.sured her. Her hair was b.l.o.o.d.y and glinted with broken gla.s.s. She was half-conscious. I took her in my arms and walked away from the wreck. We were at a tiny unmarked traffic circle with a house nearby. Lights were on in the house. I carried Jamie to the front door which was opened by a woman who had heard the crash. I waited while she spread newspapers on the floor, and then I brought Jamie inside. An ambulance came within a few minutes and took her to the hospital. I was taken to the police station to answer questions.

She was all right, thank G.o.d, after a few days in the hospital. Some dental work, a small scar. I had bruises. We got off easy. Morgan's truck was totaled. The cop was tired and made a typo on the accident form. I paid a fine and didn't even get a mark on my out of state license. The little traffic circle was notorious, I learned. I went back and nailed reflectors all over the place.

Every afternoon I visited Jamie in the hospital, and we became close.

Two days after she was released and life was getting back to normal, I took a walk during the break between lunch and dinner. Things had been happening fast; I needed to slow down. I followed a stream through a marshy area to a dry bank shaded by a tree where I stretched out and listened to the sounds of birds and insects. It was hot and the sounds began to still. A dragonfly darted back and forth above the stream.

Movement caught my eye. A snake, three feet long, was winding along the opposite bank, unhurried, almost casual. A dark snake, unremarkable. It struck, too fast to see. It was falling back to the ground before I could focus, the dragonfly in its mouth. The snake caught the dragonfly in midair without coiling. Impossible. The most athletic move I've ever seen. It was as though the universe had stopped, allowed the snake to strike, and then started again for everyone else.

We made plans, Jamie and I, to be together in the fall in the mountains. I turned down a flattering offer to follow Harry to a hunting lodge in New Hamps.h.i.+re and from there to Florida for the winter season. I had a different future. Jamie was coming.

I caught the ferry to Woods Hole on a foggy morning. It was chilly; the pa.s.sengers stayed inside. I went out on deck and heard jazz coming from the stern. A man with his feet up on a chair was playing a trumpet pointed toward the ocean and an American flag fluttering in the fog. He played freely, a concert for the two of us, a farewell to the island and summer.

Jamie arrived for a day several weeks later. When I put her on the bus to Philadelphia to go home for her stuff, life was bright. I met her bus that weekend, but she wasn't on it. A terrible emptiness spread through me.

We wrote to each other for a year. She did, eventually, step down from that bus. Two weeks later I put her back on. It had all been a kind of s.e.xual mirage, a pa.s.sion that had nothing to do with who she was. Watch out when your throat goes dry and you begin to shake!

We each have a type--someone visually our lost other self, male or female. I've seen a few since, always blonde, earthy and radiant at the same time, a particular combination. But they don't affect me the same way. I shake my head and say, there's another one.

"What happened to Jamie?" W.cat and I were sitting on a bench that looked out toward the White Mountains.

"She married into a wealthy Boston family. She escaped Philadelphia.

Thirty-five years ago. What did we know?"

"Not much," W.cat said. "Shall we go?"

As we were walking through the West End, she pointed to a poppy that had fallen over on the gra.s.s at the edge of a flower bed. We crossed the lawn, and she held up the blossom while I looked around for gardeners and German shepherds; W.cat is sometimes unable to resist flowers. The poppy had four unusually large petals, deep lavender, each bearing a dark, nearly black, irregular circle. It might have been a hall of flags or a gallery of abstract sunsets, regal and empty, waiting for its visitors. I suppose it is the fleetingness of life that makes us story tellers and flower thieves.