Not a Train In Sight (2/08/09 Sunday)

Up and ready early, I warmed up the computer to post a couple entries. I checked my email first. Jan had written: She was going to be late; she had stayed up very late (the email had been sent at 3:34 a.m.) and needed some sleep. She'd call around noon. But I was ready and wanted to start my day. I replied as much and gave her my cell number.

It being winter, I dressed for it--t-shirt under shirt under light wool jersey under Gore-Tex rain jacket, and cycling shorts under rain pants. It must've been close to sixty when I stepped out with the bike at eleven. I didn't feel like peeling anything off, and didn't. I stopped on the next block to order two wallet prints of Julie at the photo shop. Four miles more up the road I stopped at Book People. They'd left a message I hadn't quite understood about Flemington. The paperback was out of print, they told me now, but they could get a first from Britain for about forty bucks total. I told them to go for it. Outside, I unzipped and untucked but did not peel. I locked up at the Belmont library and changed inside. Trying to manuever in that tiny stall reminded me of my city hall days when I had a similar space in which to do the same thing every morning. I sat on the toilet to remove my shoes, and stood on them to remove my pants and shorts. I replaced them with my "ass pants." I removed the jersey and Gore-tex, untucked and unbuttoned the shirt, left the t-shirt in. The shirt was green-khaki canvas, the t-shirt a chocolate brown. I replaced the bike shoes with brown Eco-Sneaks. I crammed the excess clothing in the saddle bag after removing the canvas satchel and slinging it across my shoulder, strapped the bike shoes on the rack where the Eco-Sneaks had been, and walked up to Cary Street. It was close to noon. I bought four CD's at Plan-9--Play by Magazine, because I wanted to hear "The Light Pours Out of Me"; The Plastic Ono Band, because Emma wanted to hear "Working Class Hero"; Taking Tiger Mountain by Eno for every bit of it; and Neu! because it was playing in the store and I couldn't stop my whole body from reacting to it. I went to Jean-Jacques from there.

I had nearly finished my second (because it was free) cup of coffee and was pinching together the crumbs off a banana nut muffin to drop in my mouth when Jan burst in. "So you got my messages," she said, breathing heavily.

"No," I said, though she didn't seem to hear me as she sat down beside me at the small, square table.

"So, what have you been doing with your morning?"

"Oh, just wandering around down here."

"I need some protein," she said. "And coffee." She hopped up and peered into the pastry cabinet.

I looked at at her. Except for the athletic shoes, she was dressed less for walking than for a casual meeting--jeans and a form-fitting purple-and-white-striped mid-sleeved t-shirt that just reached the top of her jeans. I admired both her form and her style as she bent to peer through the glass. I would guess she was at least five years my senior, but she dressed much younger, though not in that pathetic pretense of clinging to adolescence. She dressed as herself. What she wore she wore honestly, and that's what I was admiring.

Now, I don't have a photographic memory; I can't recount each word Jan and I exchanged. We were together five hours and shared a lot of words, sitting in Jean-Jacques and walking through the neighborhood. We made all sorts of connections with each other, and never was I uncomfortable. Near the end Jan asked if she'd "talked my ear off." We had to step off the curb to skirt the crowd around a street "magician."

I answered, "No. You talked a lot, but you had something to say. Some people who talk a lot seem to be talking to hear their own voice, but you have ideas." I tried to apologize for "being..."--and couldn't think of the word--

"Vulnerable," she supplied. I had just finished telling her about the blog fiasco and was feeling abashed and exposed at having over-divulged. Vulnerable was not the word I was after, but maybe it was the word I meant, so I didn't protest.

She did not accept my apology. "Men," she said, and I was suddenly alert for a generalization, "seem to want only one thing." We were weaving our way single-file, me in the lead, toward Plan-9. "I can tell you're not like that," she added. "I think it's important to develop a friendship first."

"Oh, I agree," I said, ducking under a low branch of a Bradford pear. "There's nothing before friendship."

In the store I showed Jan Suzanne Vega's first album, thinking she'd like it. She'd never heard it. She pulled it up on Pandora on her iPhone and listened to some of it. She decided to get it.

But I had to go. I had at least half an hour on the bike and sunset was only twenty-five minutes away. Besides, the girls would be there soon. Parting was awkward--they always are for me, being unsupplied with the conventional social graces--but this was maybe not so much about that as the deepening of our bond. On the bottom step of the Plan-9 basement she reached across and patted the side of my arm. But, not satisfied, she offered a hug. We parted with promises of keeping in touch. Never had those sounded more like a commitments than a niceties.

The library was closed. I crammed all the clothing I could in the saddlebag, wore the rest, rolled my jeans up to my knees, and, once again, rode off into the sunset.