Gnossienne

I was working in a little run-down bookstore one night when this brunette I didn't know walked in and up to the cash register and asked how old I was and what time I got off. I told her twenty to the first question and that it depended on why she was asking for the second. She invited me to a movie. She hadn't even said which. I liked that. When it became clear she wasn't going to, I threw out the only customer in the store and closed down the bookstore by way of accepting the invitation.

While I was pulling down the iron curtain over the entrance, she told me she had to swing by her apartment next door to get her purse. She asked if I wanted to see her apartment. I followed her inside, up the stairs, through a hallway, past her door. Her smell kept playing bumper cars with the smell of the lobby, the rug in the hallway, her kitchen. I stopped at the fridge and she went into her bedroom and closed the door.

There were photos of a boy stuck by magnets to the fridge. He had a lazy eye and in most of the photographs he was holding a cat. In two he was holding the cat in the living room of the apartment I was in. I like cats. I like other men who like cats. I like girls who masquerade as girls because secretly or not-so secretly they *are* cats. I had a sinking feeling looking over these intimate pictures of the boy with his cat. My cat was living with a girl who'd left me and kept the cat. Tiamoo had declined my tentative separation agreement with the girl of dividing him up between us, with her keeping the asshole and me the remainder. That wasn't funny Brin. Tiamoo seemed to think so.

The brunette came out of the bedroom and approached me in front of the fridge. I didn't look at her.

"He's just gonna be a sec."
"Who?"
"Him." She pointed at the boy with the cat. "I woke him up."
"Your roomate?"
"My boyfriend."
"You said we were coming up here to get your purse."
"I know."
"Where's the cat?"
"Died."
"How's the boyfriend getting over it?"
"Working a lot."
"What kinda work?"
"DJ-ing. Too much E though. He's impotent."
"Say what?"

Boyfriend exits the room.

"Hi there," he says.
"Hi."
She smiles.
"You work at the bookstore next door, right?"
"Kinda."
"I've seen you in there."
"Once a week. There's a poetry reading night thing I help out with for the owner."
"How's that?"
"Catastrophic mostly."
She continues smiling. He notices her smiling and turns back to me, extending his hand.
"It's nice to meet you. What's your name?"
I reach for his hand and shake it and look over at the girl watching me.
"You have small hands."
Very observant. And you're impotent, DJ limp-dick. And anytime now can someone tell me what the baker's fuck is going on with you and your girlfriend, man?
"Does he have small hands, John?"
"Yeah. Look at them." He grabs my hand and displays it to his girlfriend. "What, are you Hungarian or something?"
"How's that?"
"It's a trait. I'm Hungarian too. Look at my hands."
So I do for a second, not entirely sure why.
"John, we have to hurry to catch the movie."
"Yeah. Let's go."

They walk ahead of me up the street. He has his arm over her shoulder and she pries it off and as compensation agrees to hold his hand. He lets go of her hand to light a cigarette and offers me one. After I tell him I don't smoke he lights his and puts his arm over her shoulder. She takes the cigarette from his lips, flicks it into the street and removes his arm while I watch the cigarette hit the side of a car zooming by and toss up sparks like a miniature roman-candle that another car plows into. She takes his hand and he releases in order to go for another cigarette.

I look up at the power wires and telephone poles rolling under the sky like sheet music. Look down cozy side streets with the trees lining the street and in the moonlight pick out the ones that have bird nests in them. At a crosswalk a Cadillac Escalade waits for us to cross. I can't see into the tinted window to make out the driver's seat so I glare at the license plate to see if it's my ex. I don't remember her license plate number. I try and remember. I realize if it *is* her she must feel sorry for me trying to read her license plate. My ego can handle being pitied, however, her feeling sorry for me significantly reduces my chances of a possible revenge fuck and as we've been the one-night-stand-revenge-fuck that lasted four years any chance of resuscitating us is going down the drain. What a doozy that reality is. Shucks.

We walk for a few more blocks toward the Hollywood Theater. They carry on their private conversation a few paces in front of me while I shove my hands into my pockets and investigate why exactly I've been invited to share this evening with an unknown couple.

We arrive late and I follow them up the stairs to the darkness of the balcony where we sit in the front row with her between us. He holds her hand and she removes some wine gums from her purse. She unwraps them, takes out a handful, holds them up and inspects the colors against the glare of the opening screen credits, selects her favorites and offers the rejected articles first to her boyfriend, and, finally, all the blacks to me. When I decline she gives them to me anyway.

I have no memory what that film was. When I wasn't obsessing over the couple I was with I leaned over the railing and looked at all the other couples there that night. First-time couples and regular couples and lesbian couples and falling apart couples and aging couples straining to hear anything and fat couples with greasy butterfingers eating each other's popcorn and interracial couples and maybe Suzy with some old dirty Greek looking fucker in the 4th row whose probably fucked her in front of Tiamoo on the couch for all I know...

The next thing I remember was her boyfriend leaning over and whispering something in the brunette's ear. She nodded as he gathered his coat and turned for the aisle and headed up the stairs for the exit. Some light splashed into the theater and got swallowed up as the door closed.

I leaned over to the brunette and whispered, "Did he, ummm, *leave*?"
"Yup."

I awaited her clarification on this seemingly important point. When it became clear I wasn't going to get any I nudged her arm.

"Why did he leave?"

"I dunno." She tossed another wine gum in her mouth and sucked on it for a few seconds before tucking it in against her cheek. "He wasn't feeling well."
"You're not going to go with him?"
"The movie's not over."
This was unquestionably true. "Yeah, but are you sure he's okay?"
"He's just not feeling well. It's fine. He just went home."

That was all she said for the last half of the movie. When it was over she put on her coat and weaved through the crowd to get outside the theater. She moved so fast I'd figured she'd taken off to get back home to her boyfriend. But she was standing outside waiting for me.

"I'd like to have a drink. There's a bar on the corner."
"What about your boyfriend?" WHAT ABOUT DJ LIMP-DICK!
"He'll be fine. I need a drink."

She knew the bartender when she got inside the place. He started the drink before she'd sat down in the corner. I sat across from her and looked at the menu when she reached for it and slowly palmed it to the table. I tried to keep a straight face while she glared at me.

"How old are *you*?" I asked her.
"I want to ask you question."
"Okay."
"What do you want out this?"
I gave that one a second because I was pretty sure even the bartender had heard her pose the question. He'd stopped poring something.
"You know what I want. I wanna get you out of your relationship."
She smiled. 

"I'm thirty, Brin."