Fugue # 67

- You want to have contact with people, even if it’s only to be mean. You still want to have contact. I do.

Paul looks across the terraced fields.

- I dunno. Shouldn’t you...you have to organize your life so that each moment means something, right?
- Ha, look who’s talking.
- What?
- That meaningful stuff is sweet, Paul, but you can get used to meaningless, too. Petty disagreements, that’s the problem.
- But those don’t exist if you don’t let them.
- You sound like Mom.
- Whatever. You’re in a shit mood.
- The sun must’ve gotten to me.
- Maybe we should just take a little nap here, ha. Wake up in better spirits?
- No, we’d look stupid.
- Does it matter? What other people think about you? While you’re sleeping next to a haystack?!
- A real man shouldn’t care.
- Does that mean you’re not a real man? Because you obviously care.

Fugue # 66

- How do you even shop for a bed?
- You gotta come with me.
- Why?
- Because I don’t know what I’m doing.
- You’re buying a bed.
- Yeah, but I don’t know how.
- Ha, me neither. Really, how do you shop for a bed?
- That’s why you should come with me. Strength in numbers.
- What? That doesn’t make any sense, if neither one of us knows what’s up. Why do you need a new bed anyway?
- C’mon...
- Fine, but we have to do some research.

The Sunday paper, sale pages: a jumble of prices, bold letters, bolder letters, pictures of...beds.

- Pillow top? Hmmm...
- Shush, keep reading.
- I can’t imagine being a guy who sells beds. That’s a pretty big responsibility.
- ...
- Seriously, think about it. You’re selling somebody a product which they’ll use as a place to dream, literally, dream.
- Not to mention other things.

Fugue # 65

The annual Christmas Party at Neil Marbell’s apartment was always a highlight of the academic yuletide social calendar.

Ana crosses and uncrosses her legs, obviously out of practice wearing hose, and each time her skirt rises a little higher. This is not on purpose. Paul leans over, looks down at her lap, and whispers,

- So...what’s going on there?
- My legs are itching (muffled groan), and I can’t get this thing (pulls skirt) to stay down.
- Not complaining, but, I mean...
- I know.

She stands up (tug, nervous smile), looks around the room, and after a few pointed glances from professorial guests and their spouses, and sits back down.

- Can’t you just take them off?
- (glares)
- I’m serious. Your bare legs would attract less attention than this little dance (wink).
- Paul...
- Not helping?
- No, not helping. Where’s Marbell?
- (points)
- Zed here yet?
- Nope. I don’t think so.

The host was busy, and hadn’t yet missed the guest of honor.

Fugue # 64

"Ana, get back in the car...please. Please get back in the car. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Please...let’s just go. Now? Please?"

We try. We don’t know any better, but we try. We try to know and to find ways of making things better. Things we have no control over. Better and right. More memorable.

"Ana, I’m sorry. There’s nothing wrong with Elvis Costello. I had no idea what his music means to you. I won’t make fun of his voice any more."

Instincts, defense mechanisms against pain. Can we help it? Bitten too many times we hide, behind disguises, from pain but also from happiness. We hold back, and lose the best parts of ourselves and our lives with other people to a repulsive fear of rejection that drives us away from them.

"We can listen to whatever you want. This Year’s Model is good. My Aim Is True? The Juliet Letters? You like that, right? Or Spike? You love Spike. I don’t mind, really. Let’s just go."

She turns her right shoulder just enough to bark, "It’s not about the music," then keeps walking.

Fugue # 63

A chance glance, a face in the crowd. Not as young as you remember, not as sharp. Softer features, wrinkles, graying hair, bangs. It was her.

Remember when we were younger. Everything was so important. Everything mattered. Everything.

The shadows across the sidewalk.
The shadows and the trees outside our window.
The train we could see from that window.
What they meant and how the form of one related to the form of two.

Abstraction: Its end and its beginning. Our beginning.

Marbell to Zed:
- Did you just see her?
- Who?
- Dina.
- Who?
- My ex-wife Dina. I think I just saw her.
- I thought she was dead.
- Me, too.

Marbell bolts after her down the sidewalk.

Fugue # 62

Ana reading Joan Didion...

She’s easy, she writes like she talks and reads that way, too. She never says much - at least not for pages. Then you get something like this, from The White Album:

"I was supposed to have a script and had mislaid it. I was supposed to hear cues, and I no longer did. I was meant to know the plot, but all I knew was what I saw: flash pictures in variable sequence, images with no ‘meaning’ beyond their temporary arrangement, not a movie but a cutting room experience."

Ana thinks, she looks out the front window of her apartment. Her mind wanders: And there she is, there’s Little Ana. Sitting on the floor in her parent’s bedroom, surrounded by snapshots, playing. She sings, "This after that, that before that, and this between those." Look? See? She does. Things begin to unravel. The warp and the weft of the now and the then get confused, and dissolve into each other - disappear, reappear different...poof.

The rules are gone. Gone for good. We are everywhere, all at once. We are together, we are apart, and together again. The past is now, it lives with us inside us, just like we are now who we will become in the future. Our faces will change, maybe our ideas, too. But we won’t. Look, see?

Fugue # 61

- It’s inconceivable to me that ten years ago we were making choices that would make it impossible for us to be anything more than acquaintances today. That is fucked up, Em.
- Gene, that’s called life. You weren’t here. You left, you left me. What was I supposed to do?

(She goes back in her mind to the day she met him. A homecoming fraternity party, sophomore year. The afternoon light was strong and angular, and their faces were half-shadowed. Victory smiles, the smell of the grill, the taste of tap beer, the feel of fresh air, of autumn’s evening chill rising as the sun fell. And the hopeful clean flutter of the new, floating like oak leaves to the ground. She was eager to impress, profane, done-up in jeans and a sweatshirt that covered her freshman fifteen. He was cooler in jeans and a sweater and a thin gold chain. "Hey," he said. She said, "Hey." They traded heys, and that was that.)

- I know, I know. The choices I made before there was a you for me to know again, and the choices you made, placed us too far apart by the time our lives crossed. I know... and now I barely know who you are. And there is no way - No Way - for me to know who you were or who you were becoming this whole time, even if you told me every detail. Even if you showed me every picture.

(Pause)

I can see the pictures, but I didn’t take them. I can see the pictures, see what happened, but never...it’s just...it’s my fault. My timing always sucks. And now I just want to jump out of my skin and run away from myself. Run away from me and you, and me thinking about you.

Fugue # 60

I can’t think about anything else. Do you think about me like this? I can’t imagine.

I close my eyes, and focus on what I can remember. And I breathe, and I try to see you (my brain, a cd skipping - your eyes and your eyes and your eyes). And I say your name to you: Emily. I say it loud inside my head, and then say hi - hoping you’ll hear me, think of me. And call. Or do something, to let me know you hear me.

A note in study hall, a hand in my hand, a wink, something. Something anything that will take away the uncertainty, remove the doubt, tell me what to do.

Emily.
Hi.
Tell me what to do.

The sound of bare feet in the hall pulls me back home.

- What is it, Paulie?
- Nothing. I can’t sleep.
- Do you want to stay here and listen to music while I study?
- Yeah, is that ok?
- It’s ok. If you’re quiet.
- I promise.

My little brother isn’t so little any more. He crawls into my bed, lays on his back, and looks at me.

- Gene? Is everything ok?

" Yeah," I smile, "Shhhhh...I need to think."

Fugue # 59

There’s a hopeful, early-Donner-Party sense to a line like this (from Gene’s baby book):

"Don and I have been married for one year, and I’m expecting."

Paul reads on, aloud.

"The baby is coming next month. I’m excited but nervous! Don has been great. He rubs my sore back and my swollen feet. He even gets me ice cream and pickles when I get cravings! The nursery is set up. We painted it white with yellow trim, so it will look nice for either a boy or a girl."

- Too good to be true, Mom.
- What?
- You were like, right out of a movie from the ‘50s.
- Try ‘60s. I’m not that old, Paul.

She looks down to wipe her hands on her apron, and looks back up at him, wistful.

- What can I say? That’s how I felt. Like the whole world was an open book in front of me. I was in love with your father, and every day I loved the baby more than I thought I ever even could. I’d get butterflies just thinking about the day I’d get to meet him. Still do, when I think about it.
- Was it...
- No. It was terrible. Hard and long. And Gene was so sick for weeks. But then he was fine. And we started building our family.