Valentine

She bought a one-way plane ticket over here around midnight. She bought it on the same week, same day, same *hour* that a couple, same age as us---who it turns out might've got engaged the same day--- got smoked by an SUV that blew through a crosswalk.

The 18 year old drunken kid behind the wheel had stolen the SUV and brought along two younger girls in the back seat. Maybe he was trying to impress them by driving fast. I dunno. I do know that after killing that couple, he ran off and tried to swim across the icy-cold inlet to the opposite shore but a police dog nabbed him before he could get away.

Yesterday I went over to where that couple died. There was a little shrine against one side of a tunnel underneath a bridge.

There were some people milling around trying to find the spot because the story had been front page in the newspapers. They were giddy and confused but also ready to be upset. There are a few crosswalks to choose from pretty close by. The actual location is a bit tucked away. I was alone for a minute and lit up a cigarette after I found a poem by Rilke taped onto the wall of the tunnel and in no time a throng of other tourists piled in.

On Hearing of A Death

We lack all knowledge of this parting. Death
does not deal with us. We have no reason
to show death admiration, love or hate;
his mask of feigned tragic lament gives us

a false impression. The world's stage is still
filled with roles which we play. While we worry
that our performances may not please,
death also performs, although to no applause.

But as you left us, there broke upon this stage
a glimpse of reality, shown through the slight
opening through which you disappeared: green,
evergreen, bathed in sunlight, actual woods.

We keep on playing, still anxious, our difficult roles
declaiming, accompanied by matching gestures
as required. But your presence so suddenly
removed from our midst and from our play, at times

overcomes us like a sense of that other
reality: yours, that we are so overwhelmed
and play our actual lives instead of the performance,
forgetting altogether the applause.

Other people poking around to find the spot saw us and came over. It was them looking for it with a combination of disorientation and slight panic that reminded me of something I've never written about or really talked about either. I mean, what that crosswalk and my girlfriend's one-way plane ticket have in common I'm not too sure. A lot of it is a big emphasis on a *beginning*, a start, a first page, first sight, taking a chance.

Five years ago I took a girl to Madrid and we arrived the day after the bombing of the Atocha train station. It's not Grand Central or Penn Station, but it's an awfully nice place to see and has its own charm. I had a reservation for us at a little pension about 4 blocks from the blast. I'd picked that pension because it was sandwiched between the train station and the Prado. I boxed in Madrid daily and had to pass through Atocha every day to get there and on the way back I'd meet up with Jackie and we'd see El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, Salvador Dalí at the Prado or the Reina Sofia where little boys and girls demonstrate some of the differences between boys and girls with their approach to dealing with pigeons (girls nice, boys evil).

After the horror of the explosion, one of the most bizarre, disturbing things before the ambulances got there was the lack of silence. Hundreds of dinky melodies rang out and clashed for hours that everyone was afraid to deal with. Imagine a decked out Christmas tree except that every ornament is a cellphone: that's how Atocha chimed from all corners as families desperately tried to see if their loved ones were unlucky.

I get spooked when somebody dies meaninglessly. I guess that's why I was a little comforted when more and more details came out about that pair who died at the crosswalk. They felt like supposition to sell papers but still, it was obscenely difficult not to wonder:

She'd found out about the ring but kept it from him to not spoil the surprise. Did he pop the question at dinner that night? Her friends said she'd been looking through bridal magazines. What'd they talk about at dinner? Did they ever talk about how they'd want to die? Did he not leave a very good tip and she suddenly took in, FUCK, I'M GONNA MARRY A CHEAPSKATE! Maybe she even told him as a joke. Did they ever wonder about the possibility of dying at the same time at a happy moment in their lives and sorta hanging up their lives for everyone they cared about on the peg of never spending another moment apart. How violently beautiful is that? Boy, hit-and-run---who'd see that one coming? Probably nobody who knew them. Maybe those two little girls in the back seat for about a split second.

I was so happy when my girl bought a ticket over here to start a life with me I just stared at the confirmation for 20 minutes without it really sinking in. I never said so, but I felt like we had some stacked odds working against us. This long distance thing for the last year is rotten stuff. Penpals with the odd bi-monthly conjugal visit isn't much of a dream situation. And it's clumsy to admit I wouldn't have remembered the day she bought that ticket without what happened to this couple who never get any tomorrows together in the way I hopefully will. Maybe one day some little brat will ask me about when mommy first came over here and even though I'll lie through my teeth and talk about my seven failed Russian mail-order bride-marriages before I'm slapped by anyone within earshot (and they'll hit hard); it was February 10th, on a *choose*day, we both slipped on some kind of banana peel taking a crack on something and I wouldn't have known or especially cared if it weren't for some piece of shit kid who plowed into them. Not fate, just someone who'll have to do or accomplish god knows what to have anything other than this senseless act define him for the rest of his life. Some punk with a chip on his shoulder trades it in for a fucking millstone.

See why I sent this to you and not her?