any time you pick up a guy at the airport with no luggage, no coat, shorts and a goofy smile on his face, you’re gonna have questions.
although, even before we even left the LAX-it car convention of weary travelers, i knew his vitals.
bro had just dropped off his ex gf who he was so smitten by, he took a lyft to the airport and dropped her off at security, where they had one last hug and kiss but it lasted longer than the driver could stand — who then drove away.
so bro had to walk past four terminals in order to use the app to find me.
you gotta tell me about this chick bro, i said, but he laid his head on the window. 45 years old. peering out at nothing and everything. but mostly nothing. like a dope. like a stoner. like he had seen something he didnt expect.
they hadn’t kissed in 10 years, and they hadnt been naked together for almost 20.
he told me that she had wanted to get married, and he didnt, so they split. i stopped taking her calls after a while because it was too much pressure, he said.
we drove down sepulveda past kevin hart’s failed vegan burger shop, where a taco truck out front had a solid line.
yesterday was my birthday, he said, and i got this wild hair to finally see her
you’re ready for marriage? i asked, thinking of different ways to talk him out of it.
he said, i just turned 50 and i cant say that im ready, but i would commit to her, sure, but i was hung up on the age.
youre 50? i asked. you look 35. 38, tops.
black don’t crack! he sang, and asked if he could vape.
my brother, i said, rolling down his window a crack from my door control.
we had the weirdest time, he said. it was only a few days, but every night stretched on as we tried to fall asleep and just kept talking. holding hands under the sheet, talking about old travels, when we lived together, how we met, the little baby fights, and everything we had been through over the last fifteen years. we had to literally say each night, ok, no more talking!
see, thats the best, i said.
it was like a sleepover. it was like camp. it was like opening a treasure chest and there we both were from the past. nothing had changed. even the way i speak around her: this sing-song goofy thing i had forgotten all about. it just surfaced.
it was like a time capsule of a romance that got buried for no good reason, he said, staring at the hazy mountains to the north
like a volcano had erupted and sealed the past perfectly, then someone added water, chiseled it open, and poof! it was alive again, undamaged, and if anything, better appreciated with hindsight.
we zoomed onto the 405 and he looked deeply at the vape like he was seeing it for the first time again, too.
love exists, he said.
more to himself than to me,
though i was interested in his findings.
it’s real, he confirmed. it’s pure. it’s alive.
we drove past a cell phone repeater tower disguised as a palm tree.
when will you see her again? i asked.
i want to drive to her right now.
i tapped the location bar on the tesla ipad and asked, where to romeo? whats stopping you?
what is stopping me? he asked himself
sucking on that vape and blowing it out the window crack.
then he remembered: ive got a dog, shit, and a cat.
i looked at where we were going and said, ive got a pet sitter. good girl. shes so good ive never met her. everything is handled via text. she sends you pics of the pets after she feeds them. maybe too many pics, but whatever.
he pulled out his phone and said, whats her number? and i gave it to him.
we were listening to the new box set of old springsteen acoustic songs. the tempo moseyed. the echo was haunting.
he said, we would talk about something, she would disagree with me on something, and tell me why, and i’d see her point and say oh, ok, yeah, youre right. and sometimes she’d do the same with me. it was so easy. it was something i had forgotten about. it’s a little like when you have a small cut on your finger and before suppertime it would already be starting to heal without you having to mess with it.
everything heals around her, he said.
my inner voice said, dont ask, dont ask, dont you dare
but i dared
was the makeup sex incredible?
he laughed
there wasn’t anything to make up. when we split, she understood why. when i stopped taking her calls, she got it. she was the only person i ever knew who always understood my intentions, and my drunken-master zigzag way of thinking.
you never really had a big fight? i asked.
in the five years we were together, he said, we had one fight. one summer night. n the middle of it, she said, come in here. she was lying naked on our small bed. she pat my side and she said, take those off, lie next to me, and hold my hand.
and when i did, she said, looking at the ceiling, tell me why youre mad and why we’re fighting. but whisper this time.
i laughed, imagining the scene.
he said, i laughed too! and you know what? its impossible to fight when youre naked, holding hands,
and whispering how someone wronged you.
and soon, he said,
we were asleep.
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