Through Smile and Eyes

I just realized you resemble a woman I once knew. Someone from when I was a much younger, hardly wise, and with the attention of gnat. It hadn’t hit me until after I got home, thinking about our afternoon together. Thinking of all the reasons I might be falling in love. 

It was the radio that did it.  A song I used to listen to when I first moved out on my own. 

I was thinking of that very first day. I moved a futon into my bedroom. A bedroom no bigger than a futon. I sat down. I stared out the back window at the alley cats and brazen rats. Pulled a bowl- inside my room, I couldn’t believe it!- and listened to music I had never heard before. Music a friend had dumped onto my computer a few days earlier. One by one, I processed the songs, and acknowledged this one moment for its particular uniqueness in my life. How many times do you move out for the first time? That first day, those first few hours, the moments that are like none other. You can have a whole year of that moment, but sooner or later it fades like childhood memory. 

But a song- sometimes a song is what can really bring you back. 

You see, that memory came back, and then of course it linked story to story, until I came upon an image of a girl. She had those big green eyes, just like yours. Her hair short and curly. An innocent bounce that seemed to hide a dark interior. A lower lip that seemed to hang on every word. A mouth just open enough to want to kiss it all time. So much like you. 

I guess, though, I don’t really know this. My memory is like a San Francisco morning: fog so thick you can barely see your hand. But the dew settles, and you interpret what you can. So let me try:

I was working downtown Chicago at the time as a shop-boy in H&M. The girl worked in a real classy restaurant about three doors down, somewhere I could never afford to eat and probably still couldn’t. Always these men with teeth as white as their hair, and young pieces sitting next to them nibbling on salads. Women a third their age not even close to interested in what they had to say. Daughters or mistresses, probably didn’t matter to the man. I’d watch them in their fresh ironed lapels, some gold pin attached, and a colorful tie. 

The building had knees to ceiling windows, and a large area for dining outside, right on State Street’s sidewalk. Dump trucks zoomed by every few minutes. A preacher across the way, microphone and distorted speaker, calling just about everyone under the son sinners. A homeless twenty-something, crossed-legged on the corner, repeating, day after day, “money to get some food, money to get some food.” 

It’s not often you can find a corner with some of the most desperate people next to some of the poorest. 

All the waiters and waitresses wore blue uniforms with black ties. They all had white towels around their arms. Treating mere humans like gods. It could make one sick. 

This girl was a waitress. Our relationship lasted through smiles and eyes. Through a connection neither of us could name, but yearned for like a child and a teat. 

I’d pass this place two to four times a day; coming and going from work, sometimes during a break. 

I’d pass and just wait until I saw her. Sometimes she was inside, and I’d peep through the glass to the deep colored carpets and walls, and grab her attention. Other times, she’d be pouring a glass of wine outside, just a few feet away from me. Sometimes we’d mouth ‘hi’ or ‘hello’. Nothing more.

Months passed and I finally built the courage to to talk to her. I psyched myself out through five hours of sweater folding before I finally took a break with the determination of a king. 

She saw me head for the door, and must have sprinted to the entrance. I stepped forward to her waiting at the host’s podium. The host, nowhere to be seen. 

There was a hi. 

There was a hello. 

There was an awful wit. Hey, took me long enough. 

There was a forced laugh. 

Can I call you sometime? 

Yes, yes, a thousand yes’s. 

I’ll call you tomorrow. 

There was one thing. Always a thing. 

She left for Delaware tomorrow. A family holiday. She wouldn’t be back for two weeks. Could I wait?

I’d wait a century, I knew I could. I’d wait until the sky burst to flames, the oceans dried, and all that was left was my body and yours.

But, of course, the romance of a build up always guarantees a disappointing climax. 

A week into my waiting, a woman walked into the shop, and like magnets, we pulled toward each other. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She was the opposite of the waitress. A short and frail girl with blonde hair. But her eyes were like a solar eclipse and I couldn’t look away. I blinded myself looking into those eyes. 

I didn’t gain my sight back for two years. Two years I don’t regret, but maybe only because regret is a waste of the present. 

I never saw the waitress. I avoided the restaurant at all costs. I walked four extra blocks everyday to avoid it. Thankfully, soon after I talked to her, she had left the waitressing gig. 

It’s funny how things work out that way. The person you might belong with a day too late, a week too far gone. 

Anyway, for some reason that girl really reminded me of you. And now I’m here, and I’m determined not to miss my chance.