Two Stories

Devotional

‘Thank god you don’t hold a grudge,’ he said, and I discovered a refreshing feeling in the room Seth Sharples and I decided to share.

He is an inamorato from years ago.

Of course, this feeling vanished as soon as I left that town.

At the airport ticket counter for my return, the fake eyelashes of the clerk nearly jammed themselves against her eyeglass lenses with her every blink. And this was, I was certain, an ugly matter of near misses.

A seat was hard to come by at the gate and I didn’t get one, but there he was – another one! – Gus Radt. How these people turn up.

Radt was there – game to accompany me anywhere, or to happily send me on my way.

I used to visit Gus in Buck’s County where he lived in a classical clapboard house set on a lawn that dipped into a stream. He seemed to be the most polished and accomplished human being, and far too splendid for me.

So often I spend time with these men in my mind, nowhere else. In reverie neither one of them is bigger than a nickel or a dime.

And when they smile – possibly elated? – enamoured? – drunk? – their effect on me is wholly pleasing.

Area of Surprise

She may have been on the brink, whatever that means.

She had set her teeth upon the edge of it – a gift from me – her lavaliere, that she next swung side to side, even as its chain cut into her throat.

And I guess everybody knows how to fall in love. I did and I do.

I kept on with it, watching Jacquenette, and then there she was – as if with her wings spread.

She stepped into the shallows of the sea for her somersaults and for her handstands and her shining legs were pointing skywards when a gull – taking long draughts of seawater by the water’s edge – distracted me.

Occasionally, it tossed back its head, its neck curving slenderly, as if it were half snake, to permit the sluice to slide down.

The bird assumed an uncommonly coy pose, and Jacky was silvered by the sea when she neared me.

Her mere walking movements touched my mainspring – how she changed her foot positions, her arms gliding at her sides – yet I could see she was in a bad temper.

She turned away and arranged herself at a distance, while simultaneously a child and its mother arrived.

I considered, for starters, the mother’s mouth that was moderately open, her lively gestures – how she shielded her eyes, curled her upper lip and petted her small boy’s head. Her elaborate hairstyle was held in place by gold-coloured hairpins.

This mother said, ‘I have a question –’ as she came closer to me by way of graceful shifting, and then she squatted.

‘Could you look after my boy for a bit? You’d be doing me a big favour. He likes to try to skip stones. I’ll be back very soon. He has a bunch of flat ones.’

And so might begin a new life for me with Melissa Mulhowald. Must it be necessary to think this woman irresponsible?

Usually, I am aware of some slight pain, mostly tingling, while I am rising to the occasion.