Regarding (a Certain) Sunday...

Once upon a time I worked at this godawful customer service job at an equally godawful student loan guarantor. I worked nights, the only benefit being I usually had no sociopath supervisor staring over my shoulder. In between calls I had too much time to think, but just enough time to write. I wrote a whole series of biographical snippets...this was in the days before blogging was in vogue (at least, I think it was). Many of those witty little missives are long gone, held in the silicon grip of one or more of my former, virally corrupt, PCs.

This story has been in my yahoo email draft file for years. I passed it around to friends via email. Many of them laughed. It became a key element of a novel I have been working on (on and off, now mostly off) for the last 6 years. Funny, I have yet to reach this story's point in my novel.

Mary was a woman I met when I was a freshman in college at the Univeristy of Oregon. I was smitten beyond words. That was in 1985. In 2001, through the magic of the internet, I tracked Mary down. At the time she was living in Portland, but eventually moved to Seattle. We had coffee, we had a great talk, and she invited me to dinner.

I'll post the piece below

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THIS IS A TRUE STORY.

So. I left my apartment at about 5:15pm to beat the traffic and the rain and make it to Mary's house by 6:00pm. I had downloaded the street directions from the internet and called to verify I had accurate directions. Needed finer details; her apartment was around the backside of a two-story house, brick with blue trim. Brick, with Blue Trim. Did I need to dodge dog poop? No, theres a path.

I made it to 83rd Ave North with time to spare. Raining VERY hard. I pulled up to house number 543 at 5:30pm. Way early. Best to sit tight. Breath deep. Have a smoke and listen to the rain. Did that, for 15 minutes. At 5:55pm I put my club on the Duck Truck steering wheel, slung my satchel bearing two bottles of whine over my shoulder, and hefted a cardboard box holding three freshly painted figurines (one for Mary, the other two to simply show-off) and marched up to the house. 543. It was white and the lights were out. I wandered up the driveway. Yeah. There's an apartment back there. But it is dark as well. Brick house, blue trim. I wondered if I had not had a moment of dislexia, inverted the house numbers. I pulled my phone book from my bag, water dripping off my baseball hat...No...It says 543...I wander down the street, looking for, perhaps 543...533...I see a medium sized dog standing in a driveway...533...Mary has a dog...Could THAT be it? I wander up the driveway, the dog barking at my heels.

I have a bag with two bottles of whine slug over my shoulder and a cardboard box with three sculpted and painted figurines in my arms. The next thing I know, the dog has leapt up and bitten into my right arm. Had I not been wearing my leather motorcycle jacket, the bite would have gone clean through and broken the skin. I keep moving and suddely realize I cannot move my leg...I am dragging a dog that has now locked it's jaws around my right calf. I look to my left, and mounted to a mail box post reads a sign...BEWARE OF DOG. Shit. Shit. Shit. I get back in the Duck Truck and start giggling like a madman. What the hell is this? Who is responsible? Is it HORNADAY LUCK? Is it ANDERSON LUCK? TURNER? CHENOWITH? Who is accountable for this freaking Sorry Pass?

Don't panic, Ace, shit happens.

It dawns on me I must call Mary. I do not even LOOK at my watch. I didn't bring any cash, not even a spare quarter. But I remember that my Mother, several months ago, in her infinite kindness and charitability and foresight gave me a calling card from Verizon with 30 free minutes. Please God, let it still be in my wallet. My leg is starting to throb. Do I feel blood dripping into my boot? Or is it just rainwater?

I pull out onto the main drag of Fremont Ave and find a payphone. I dig through old business cards and outdated coupons. There it IS. I dial her number,

"Uh. Hi. Mary. It's Me, um, I think I wrote your address down wrong...543?"
"Yes..."
"Um. North 83rd Avenue?"
"Oh. No, Cole, 84th..."
"urrrr. Okay. I'm Okay now. I'll be right there..."

Brick House, Blue Trim.
Brick House, Blue Trim.
Am I bleeding?

Brick House, Blue Trim and a little black dog-face peeking at me through the doggy-door. CHRIST ON A FUCKING CRUUUUUTTTTCCCCHHHH!!!

The dog barks, sniffs. I reach up and ring the bell, my arm still throbbing.

...and a pause in which all the Great Blue Whales of the Oceans give birth...And Mary opens the door into the dark and Claire, her Lab-And-Something mix rubs up against my leg and wags her tail and says, "Hello."

And I cannot TELL you how badly I had to pee.

I told Mary what happened. I re-introduced myself to her not as Cole Hornaday, but as the Crown Prince of Goobs. Nice to meet you.

We talked lots. I played "kick-the-ball" with Claire while Mary cooked and we finally got down to the nitty-gritty of swapping some stories. She made Salmon and rice with ochra and dessert was some sort of shortcake with peaches, flambe. And Mary was grateful because I got Claire tuckered out enough that she fell asleep at our feet while we ate..And we put away both the bottles of Reisling AND the Chardonnay and I got her to tell me more of her story and I freaked her out (again) with my stainless-steel memory because I recognized an antique globe in an alcove as being the same her Mother had had in the window of her living-room in Salem, circa 1987. And at about 10:30pm I said, "You look really beat, I'm gonna get out of your way."

And I said, "I have really enjoyed spending time with you and I hope you feel the same..." I made some suggestions.

"I will give you a call week after next."

And I got two hugs and I walked back into the night feeling just fine. Feeling like, "Yeah, I AM okay." And today I am really proud of who I am and who I represent and how I was raised and what I believe in and even if she doesn't feel the same way about me, which she most likely does not, that's okay too, Because I got more than I had ever hoped. I got to finally hear her story. I want to hear more chapters...But I also am wise enough to not be greedy. I made her laugh and I made her nodd her head at my insights and I did a good job. I gave her the deer sculpture I had made and I think she liked it. I did a good job of just being me.

This morning I found I was sporting a bruise the size of my nephew's fist on my left calf. No blood.

Brick House, Blue Trim.

THIS IS A TRUE STORY.
By cole hornaday, age 36.
the end.
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Epiloque. 2006

Nothing really happened with Mary and I. We went out to dinner a few weeks later. She was distant and distracted. Clearly uncomfortable with what I was willing to pay for our meal. Several days later, she sent me a terse email saying, basically, "Thanks, but no thanks." That was okay. It wasn't entirely unexpected.

Making contact with her, again, was the equivalent of fantasy come to life, but the reality was, we really had very little in common. I don't know how I thought we ever did. I was young. Really young.

But one thing that has always kind of bothered me, and maybe this is all simply my ego at work; Mary had no recollection of me. She didn't remember the time we spent together in school, she didn't remember our talks over coffee, nothing. Even with my efforts to reach back in time, to find this woman again, she is now, as she was to me over 20 years ago, a mystery.

Sometimes mystery's never get solved. And that's okay.

I keep a picture of her framed on my bathroom wall. I look at it every day. It is there to remind me of some things, and to keep other things in perspective. And, sometimes, to simply remember to let go.

Addendum. May, 15, 2009

It was a hurried afternoon. I'd been out of town all weekend covering the McMinnville UFO Festival for a potential freelance project. My cat was sick and not eating. I was rushing around trying to catch up on all the things I didn't get done over the weekend, like buying canned cat food instead of dry in a desperate attempt to get her to eat. I stopped in at the QFC on Holman Drive on the way to several other errands. While pushing my cart past the check-out stands I saw a familiar flash of gold and blue.

"Naw. That couldn't be...she's long-gone from here. Grad school or some such."

I half-heartedly piloted the cart down the spice aisle, all the while taking delicate glances over my shoulder.

"Geez, girl, lift up your head from your pocket book so I can be sure..."

I decided not to bother. This was old ground that I'd passed from long ago. I finished my shopping and trundled into the checkout line. Good God if she wasn't still there. I looked her up and down. It was Mary. How old was she now? She looked amazing. And her frame was as lithe and compact as I remember. I tried not to stare. I was close enough to smell her. She didn't look up or see me.

Usually a steady stare laid on a person unbeknownst will kick in at least some kind of sixth sense and they will look up at you...not this time.

She rebuffed the bagboy's offer to help her out with her groceries and pushed her cart away. I heard her voice. I check the music against those engrams, deeply buried. It was the same. I numbly paid for groceries and let my eyes follow her out of the store.

While stuffing the sales receipt into my wallet I looked up to see her returning her cart.
What the hell. I'll head out that way and see if I don't intercept her. I did.

"Hi. Mary. Do you remember me this time?" There came that inevitable bland look someone gives you while there brain flips through file cabinets and dusty rollodex.

Pause. "Oh-YES! How are you..."
"Cole."
"Yes--Cole, I knew that..."

And we talked a little. She'd gone to graduate school in Switzerland. Switzerland--wow. And was now back at Harborview Medical working on AIDS research.

"Wasn't that what you were doing before? Or something like it?" No. It wasn't.

For some reason I felt I SHOULD have felt as though I'd put my foot in my mouth, but this time I did not.

She had problems fitting into the culture of Switzerland, felt out of place. I commented on how I discovered fitting in somewhere is not about the established culture's resistance to you, but your need to simply build yourself an island of like-minded people. When you're young, that takes little time at all because we are all so many blank slates and so very malleable. As adults it is a struggle and something I live with daily. But once you've built that island, you have to work very hard to keep it 'shored up.' Pun failed. Moving on.

She asked what I'd been up to and there I was unwashed, graying and portly--never expecting to ever see her again--I took a deep breath, found my light, my pitch of voice...and stopped myself. There never was nor ever would be a need to put on a show for this woman. There was no point.

The needles came down, the dials twisted counter clockwise.

I told her about quitting my job, going back to school, lucking in to becoming a professional writer, radio theatre, and my efforts to get involved with Seattle fringe theatre. I gave her my card saying, "You can visit my website to get an idea of what all I've been working on." And then I broke it off and said I needed to get moving.

But I did say that to her that I was probably happier now than I have been in a long time. I had to throw in the obligatory, "Granted, I live alone with my cat..." comment. I couldn't help it. I've got to create those Checkovian 'Laughter Through the Tears,' moments or I simply don't feel fulfilled.

She said, "It's good to see you, Cole. I'm so glad to hear you are doing well." Pleasant, clinical. She owes me nothing.

But her eyes are still that very spring-glacial blue and her hair is still of molten honey, and though I saw a little more age peering back from the wells of her eyes, I still cannot help but feel there is a pantheon out there missing a goddess.

But that's just me.