Josie (2)

November 10

Just got off the phone with you again and it just occurred to me that I have been looking for you everywhere. I have been looking for three long years. I have sent e-mails and post cards, I've picked up phones and listened for messages that I hoped would stop my heart. I have talked about one thing or another, hoping that a spirit, your spirit, would be sitting there waiting for me to unfold myself. I've looked into crowds, thinking you up, looking to see recognition in blank faces. I tried to scare you up on the buses and on the trains.

There was Marlene -- who should have been called Marlee; some said to 'always smile,' they should have said, "smile back."

And then, you appeared. Not knowing what the hell this poetry reading was all about. You listened and later, at the restaurant, when your Visa was turned down, I was turned on to you. I watched unpleasant emotions run over your face and recede. There, at that point, something in you looked at something in me and winked, and smiled. And we shook hands.

November 11

Spoke to you last night: The conversation was good, long and varied. And I could sense you backing away from me. Telling me, "Look, Zap, don't get all serious on me, okay? Let's just hang up." So we did.

Now at 8:30 p.m., I call you for the second time today -- two too many calls in retrospect. I called you in the afternoon for no good reason and satisfied my hunger for your voice. The times between meals are getting much longer for me and for you, well, I'm not sure if you're just picking or what?

I tell you Ingrid has a blind date for me and you say, "Well, you should check it out. I'm keeping my options open." I tell you I know (and believe me, every bit of me knows) that tomorrow (Friday) is "National Warren Day." You laugh and say, "Yeah, you're a free man, unengaged and single..." As if I've been asleep these past three years. As if I didn't know my own biz.

Then I'm quiet and you, I imagine, are uncomfortable and get off the phone. And I'm left cradling this sensation: I'm the airbag in that Nissan commercial where there's a man sailing through the air, flying, floating, and all of a sudden he lands on this huge pumped up air bag; The air bag collapses under the weight (of your words) and that sinking feeling that the airbag might have -- that's me.