Evaporate
I didn't answer email this Memorial weekend. I didn't take telephone calls, either, didn't get the patchwork bits of a Son Volt song, eleven scratchy messages piecing together a song that I played the day I drove to Los Angeles with my zen priest friend. I could hear him hum along with the song, could hear his laugh echo during message number eight, could hear him whisper "where the hell are you?" during message ten.
Waiting for the end
not knowing when
may the wind take your troubles away
may the wind take your troubles away
both feet on the floor
two hands on the wheel
may the wind take your troubles away
He sent eleven emails, too, each one the cut-up words from the song, each email accented with photographs of the ocean, of waves and kelp and seagulls, and one lone picture of my own pirate's flag caught in time during some overcast day. "Please answer your phone, crazy girl," the last email read. I pictured him sitting cross-legged at the zendo computer, green tea cooling in the goofy painted mug I gave him on Buddha's birthday, the one with a hotdog vendor in buddhist robes over the words "Make Me One With Everything."
So I drove the coast road to the marina this morning, to the place my zen friend said he wanted to meet. I thought he wanted to eat at the harbor diner but he stood steady on the pier, an old man's K-Mart blue sunhat perched on his long hair. He looked extra dark and lean in the morning sun, almost another species entirely from the pale tourists wearing fanny packs and carrying expensive digital cameras. He wore the same green cargo pants he always wore, and the sacret geometry t-shirt he wore the day I first met him.
He didn't say good morning or lean forward for a hug. He pointed into the water, to a white sailboat set apart from the others moored in the harbor. She looked young, fresh, fast. He grabbed my hand and pulled me on board.
"Do you like her?" He started unrolling the sails, nodded at the boom expecting me to take the skipper's position. I sat on the windward edge of the boat, didn't say a word, waited for Zen Man to tie the ropes. We sailed into the sea, bobbed past a school of bright orange garibaldi beneath the pier pilings. I reached into the water, let it pass over my right hand, turned to Zen Man, smiled. I still didn't speak, didn't need to say anything. It felt like salt wind forgiveness, some kind of new beginning since the night he criticized my winged menagerie. An egret rested on the shore near us, turned one eye flat to watch the flutter of the sails. I shifted sides to match the changing wind, leaned over the side of the boat and stared at my reflection in the water.
Zen Man didn't look at me. His eyes hugged the shore as if searching for safety, for some answer he wanted to hear. I remembered that traffic kiss the day we delivered the pig, the way our bodies passed secret telepathic messages, the way I wanted some kind of quiet life with him. But those memories came mixed with all the heartache, all the solitary Priest versus overloaded Mom anxieties, and the wind stole those last moments of passion, let them run up the sails, fly behind us, evaporate on a sandbar littered with sand dollars and old stones. I still didn't speak. I swapped sides again, shifted the balance, let the winds carry us home.
I left him standing on the dock, hat in his hands, and I drove to the seaside farmer's market where I dumped a load of Avon books and samples with the Crepe Man to give out with his goods. I bought strawberries and the first ripe cherries, a basket of tiny sweet grape tomatoes, and I thought about an afternoon I once spent napping with a tall funny man, how we laughed at the sequins falling off my pink shirt, how I didn't worry about my crazy life that day, how everything I was seemed normal and good. That's what I want, I thought. Someone happy and comfortable. Someone to nap with. Someone who likes lots of pets and doesn't mind kids. No zen drama.
A woman ran up behind me, grabbed my shoulder, and I whipped around to see her waving my Avon brochure in my face.
"Hey! I need that new Lift and Tuck! Can I get some today?"
And heck. No Avon drama, too.
6:13:48 PM 
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