We took all the wrong turns but found our way. If you want to
call it parking, we parked. The upended trash can, the right front tire
twenty-four inches from the curb. One of us was saying, “It is what it is,” but
I’m not saying who. And that was the nicest thing twirling between us, in the
twilight, in the twilight corrupted by indifferent lumens. Just then a minor
earthquake traveled through our bodies, warm and electric. “Licorice-tickly!”
one of us said, while the other kicked a shoe into the air. It landed near a stupendous
dog, who regarded the skies with suspicion. The car, haphazard. The shoe,
loitering behind a fence. O, the soils and clays slipping beneath us with
tectonic helplessness. Improbably, the quake had kindled a distant car alarm.
LT stared at me until I made the scales of justice with my hands.
“Fine,” she said. She rolled up her jacket sleeves.
“I’ll go,” I said.
“No, no.”
“I’ll go,” I repeated, and I went. I slipped once, catching myself on the slope
of the hill with both palms in the grass, the dewy grass. Could’ve been
needles, there, or a pile of crap.
The dog regarded me with enviable calm. Perhaps he was elderly. Perhaps when
you’re the largest of your species, it’s just too much trouble to get
worked-up.
“Come on,” said LT.
“Okay, okay.”
“Woof,” said the animal, at last, or maybe it was the echo of “Woof.”
“And how are you?” I said, resting my arm atop the chain links. He was a
slobber-dog but didn’t slobber. Yet he had positioned himself, crucially, atop
the shoe. LT’s shoe.
“Hey,” she said, appearing beside me.
“I’m getting it,” I said.
“If getting it is hanging out and talking to this—shaggy fellow—then the shoe
will become some kind of chew toy. No?”
“Yes.”
The dog had clambered up the fence to enable LT’s affection: ear-scritchies. As
for me, I had become some kind of device, with the fence acting as some kind of
fulcrum, waddling me back and forth until I grasped the heel and liberated the
shoe. (My breath almost knocked over.) LT repatriated it by holding the fence
and hiking herself down to her bare foot. She had tattoos, but none visible in
the angles of clothing, the lukewarm twilight. In heels, she was taller than
me. I’d never been able to resist her, in fact, I’d never even thought of that.
LT was physical and may have said, “I’m a crap person,” more than once. When we
had sex (which was never twice in a row) I felt like I was losing control, and
then it expired. The shower would go on. The steam would hiss. It was either
7:15 at night or a few minutes earlier.
We helped each other down the slippery hill. “The slippery hill!” one of us
proclaimed, but I’m not saying who. I regarded the dog one final time when he
sneezed, and in sneezing, shook himself wrinkle-free. If a stranger gives you
the “Hey, how’s it going face,” that’s a good thing, but it has to be a
stranger. Nobody had come outside to investigate the quake. To continue meant
that we’d reenter a world that excelled at division, so we stopped on the
sidewalk, LT with her back to the streetlamp. We stood there, one of us wearing
a worthless smile and the other wearing a malevolent smile, but I’m not saying
who wore which smile, only that we stood there, impossibly rooted to the
sidewalk, knowing that we could not take another step.
