camel

She's sitting on the sofa, the light through the windows behind her the husky blue of thick mist, the steam from her mug fading slowly just above her head in a curl. She meets my eye, stopping what she's doing, putting the book down as I step up to the coffee table. Bending down to grip the keys that are resting there, I look back at her, at them, then to the side. Something is bothering me, I say, focusing on the words I want to say rather than the expression on my face.

Do you want to tell me, she asks, a redundant question as I'm nearly kneeling at her feet. I bite my lip though, looking back at her, the stud I've recently replaced in my lip a substantial silver disc than it had been before, a solid knob rather than the more feminine piece of flash. I know what I do, I tell her, adamant. I know every part because I've either re-worked it or written it myself. I know who could have written each one down over the years, and it doesn't make sense for t his one to be vulnerable. I can't pin it down, but I'm sure that something changed behind it. I don't...

What are you trying to say? I don't understand what you are telling me. Do you think someone knows it?

Wincing at her, the reality is that this painful to explain idea (that some information that had been private and no longer seemed to be that way, or even inaccessible) was difficult to understand and far from clear anyway. Having forced the packets of words into the air did not make them fully discernible, only given a hint of what was there, which was likely to be nothing. I couldn't translate the importance of what I'd sensed, this insubstantial belief that some rule of conduct had been violated and required due retribution. Even the importance was without substance, it was nothing but a level of fear that I would have to compensate for or address before I could continue toward any goal. If there was a problem, then I was likely to bring it with me into whatever I went on to do, I wouldn't be safe in sensitive places, I couldn't be confident and honest with respect. The keys clashed as I stood up.

I waved back at her as I opened the door, hearing her pick her book back up as I stepped out the door. By the time I was standing in front of his house, I was soaked through to socks and the back of my neck, dripping so when I sniffed my nose I was drowning and rainwater and coughing. The door opened at the first hesitant step to the porch. In that light his bright sweater looked cozy and warm. His face wasn't alarmed or surprised; he was almost smiling, almost blank. I took two more steps to reach his level, still so much shorter, and stopped at a distance to look. The urge to stand very still and interpret what I saw rolled down my forehead and dripped from my chin, an effort to deny the obvious. A set of keys were dangling from his hand, gently batted by his fingertips. Mine shook and make their own kind of fists, knuckles brushing shaking denim thighs. He asked if I wanted to come inside. The rain falling behind me, unseen water pooling around my feet, I stepped forward and did.

I remember Cortney told me a story once, the elaborate chase after a plane in heeled boots; arriving to have the woman at the ramp tell her- You would have made it if it wasn't for those, pointing at her feet. Running in heeled boots is always ridiculous, but no more so than any rapid crossing made while attempting to maintain a part and keep necessities (lipgloss, purse, cellphone & keys) together. Crossing toward the lit sign, a car horn blew and the crosswalk entered peripheral vision too distant. At the entrance, the voice of my sister reached me through the music and laughing and I wondered if she was powerful enough to hear across the distance from the basement- but she was just inside waiting. We moved to a table in the back, keeping respectable company amidst the dark studded gentleman in foppish hats and right through the ankles jeans. She hugged me, and introduced me to the man sitting there as though he'd already spent the day sitting at the head of a table.

You should tell him about your work, she said, adding that I did some kind of tech as both my palms hit and planted against the edge of the table in front of him. He looked down at my straight, upraised fingers and began to lean forward with a spark of interest. I found myself slowly shaking my head back and forth once, hands updating upward and empty. He sat back again and waited as my sister moved away.

You know, he told me nodding in her direction, she told me what happened at home.

I knew exactly what he meant and my eyes widened. Still, I shrugged out... looking down at my hands I focused on trying to summon something into them for him, hoping a chain of cohesive coherent words would twine up from between my fingers and spool in my palm. Instead only segmented space-fillers rattled there, scared out by a trembling response further inside the cave of memory and explanation, but worthless in content.

The lesson was this- no one gets information about you unless they need that information or they've participated in an exchange. Everything given away is a line that can catch you, pull you out further. Once such a stretched situation is established, your needs can be discerned and exploited. To some degree this is necessary to keep projects moving, to keep the lines getting drawn. The care taken is necessary to secure that those delineations, some of those defining lines, might belong to you. Then I did step back, leaning away and pulling forward.

Smiling, I nodded goodbye and stepped through a clearing in the dance floor, only stumbling once and while it mattered. At the door, the music of my phone recognizable but nameless, generic.

You stepped down? But (Cheshire eyes narrowing, the road pavement dark) you're the president of the company.

This time when a car horn blew it was indicating that I was clear to cross. It waited while I walked, the pedestrian corridor forgotten again.

Laying on my back in some bed somewhere, a big fat juicy drop dripping down my face from a slightly blackened eye, on the phone but keeping it trivial and light-hearted. I did it to myself, what a klutz, knocking myself out of commission for a full 24 hrs. And in doing so, finding myself useful.