Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Rapture

She was rock guitars and cynicism, Mormon too; that made it all the more interesting. You couldn't find that kind of thing anywhere else in Bicknell, and I doubted that I could find that kind of thing much anywhere else, even if I took the bus up to Salt Lake City and spent the weekend looking.

So I stayed, and stayed longer than I should have. I was there every day and most nights at her apartment, her and me and whatever idiot kid wanted a crack at her. They never lasted long, a trickle of guys who had made an effort to drive two hours to the nearest Hot Topic and buy whatever worthless trinkets they could afford. They were nothing but leather and metal (and cliche combinations of the two), tofted up to the nines without even realizing it; looking less and less like people and more and more like peacocks that Tim Burton had gotten a hold of.

We talked about things, her and I. We talked about books, important ones, and music and movies and all those things that people our age were supposed to talk about. The conversation invariably stalled. There was always that idiot kid, always sitting way too close to her on the sofa, always trying to interject and explain to us how much he liked Green Day or how deep and insightful he thought The Matrix was.

I'd smile, she'd smile, and she'd wink at me in this completely disarming way that made me twitch the first time I saw it.

Yeah, he's an idiot.

She didn't have to say it out loud, of course, and we'd joke about it after the kid had gone and we were drinking tea and the conversation had turned back to whatever we were talking about in the first place. I'd laugh, and she'd laugh, and I'd turn away for a moment and cry.

She was perfect, you know? She was...balanced, somehow. Like you could see her anywhere, equally at home in a mosh pit or in a pew. Every time I saw one of those gilded faux-punks slide up to her and try to put his arm around her, it killed me. Why couldn't I do the same thing? She liked me, you know. We knew each other in and out and up and down and a million other directions that would have to be invented just to explain how well we knew each other.

It wasn't like I was afraid of her. I don't think it was possible to be afraid of anything when I was around her. There was just something around her that kept me from telling her what we already knew. I think I loved her enough not to make her life that complicated.

Maybe that's what she wanted me to do the entire time, waiting for me to say something. I don't know. I keep thinking back, you know? I keep trying to get my hands on every little word we shared, sifting them like sand and hoping some shred of meaning falls out onto the floor.

What's the use? She left two months ago. She's in New York or somewhere like that now, far enough away that I won't ever see her again. I moved into her apartment, she didn't want the furniture to go to waste.

The place still smells like her, you know? Some nights I can't even move because of it.