the man with no known name. “Good-bye to the night, hello to the incineration of my blue-and-white lacy bra.”
I ignored the three- by-four-foot framed black-and-white photographs I’d taken hanging on my wall. Everyone in them was traumatized and I didn’t need to stare at their eyes today. They were people. They were kids. That bothered me. That’s why I hung them in my loft. So they would never, ever stop bothering me.
That nagging question popped up: Would I ever shoot photos again after what happened?
The man in my bed had been impressed when he’d found out who I was. I am not impressed with myself. I was not impressed with him.
I put the pan down, tore my white fluffy comforter away from the man, then dumped the cold water over his head. It hit him square between the eyes and he shot out of bed like a bullet and landed on his feet within a millisecond, his fists up. Military training, I presumed.
“That was fast,” I told him, dropping the pan to the floor and swilling another swig of Kahlúa.
“What the hell?” He was coughing and sputtering and completely confused. “What the hell?”
“I said, that was fast. Most men don’t jump up as fast as you did. You’re quick. Quick and agile.”
He ran his hand over his face and swore. “What did you do that for? Are you insane?”
“One, yes, I am. Insane. I’m still sensitive about that particular issue so let’s not discuss it, and two, I did it because I need you up and at ’em.” I sat down in my curving, chrome chair and crossed my legs. The chrome chilled my butt. “You can go now.”
I did not miss the hurt expression in his eyes, but I dismissed it as fast as I could.
“What do you mean, I can go?” he spat out, flicking water away from his hair.
“I mean, you can go. Out the door. We had one night. We don’t need another one. We don’t need to chitchat. Chitchat makes me nauseated. I can’t stand superficiality. I’m done. Thanks for your time and efforts.”
I watched his mouth drop open in shock. Nice lips!
“Out you go.” See, this is the part of me that I despise. I truly do.
He shook his head, water flicking off like a sprinkler. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Nope. No joke. None.” I got up and went to the front door and opened it. “Good-bye. Tra la la, good-bye.”
He stood, flabbergasted, naked and musclely and wet, then snatched up his shirt and yanked it over his head. “I thought…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I like you…we had fun…”
“I don’t do fun.” No, I was past fun with men. That died when he couldn’t control his nightmares followed by the rake and fertilizer incident.
“You don’t do fun?”
He was befuddled, I knew that—completely befuddled. I love that word.
I felt a stab of guilt but squished it down as hard as I could so it could live with all my other guilt.
“Tootie scootie,” I drawled at him. “Scoot scoot.”
He wiped trickles of water off his face.
For long seconds, I didn’t think he was going to do what I told him to do. He did not appear to be the type of man who took orders from others well. He appeared to be the type that gave the orders.
But not here.
I took another swig of Kahlúa. Yum. “Don’t mess with me.”
“I’m not going to mess with you. I thought I’d take you to breakfast—”
“No. Out.” Out. Out of my life. Out of my head.
He shook his head in total exasperation, water dripping from his ears. “Fine. I’m outta here. Where are my pants?”
I nodded toward a crammed bookshelf where they’d been thrown. He yanked them on, his eyes searching my loft.
“My jacket?”
I nodded toward the wood table my friend Cassandra had carved. We had met in strange circumstances that I try not to dwell on. There were smiling mermaids all over it, swimming through an underwater garden. She’d painted it with bright, happy colors. Two weeks after that, she jumped off one of the tallest buildings in Portland after a luncheon in her honor. She’d left her entire estate to an after-school program for minority youth, which I administered.
Days later I received a letter in the mail from her. There were two words on the yellow sticky note inside the envelope. It said, “Rock on.”
I watched him toss my pretty, blue and white lacy bra off his shoe and onto my red leather couch. It would soon be ashes, taken away by the wind off my balcony. Hey. Maybe my bra would land on a mermaid’s head!
I opened the door wider.
He stared down at me, his eyes angry and…something…something else was lurking there. Probably hurt. Maybe humiliation.
I nodded. “Please don’t take offense. It’s not personal.”
“Not personal?” He bellowed this. “ Not personal? We made love last night, in your bed. That’s not personal? ”
“No, it’s not. This is all I can do. One night.”
“That’s it? Ever?” He put his palms up. “You never have relationships with people more than one night?”
“No.” I tilted my head. He was gorgeous. Cut the hair and you’d have a dad. But I would not be the mom, that was for sure. I closed my eyes against that old pain. “Never.”
He gave up. “You take the cake.” He turned to go, his shirt clinging to him.
Poor guy. He’d woken up with a swimming pool on his face. “I like cake. Chocolate truffle rum is the best, but I can whip up a mille-feuille with zabaglione and powdered sugar that will make your tongue melt. My momma made me work in the family bakery and darned if I didn’t learn something, now get out.”
I put a hand on his chest and pushed, leaning against the door when he left.
I would burn the bra and the thong and try to forget.
The rain would help me.
Rain always does.
It washes out the memories.
Until the sun comes out. Then you’re back to square one and the memories come and get ya.
They come and get ya.
I grabbed my lighter with the red handle from the kitchen, lighter fluid, a water bottle, my lacy bra and thong, and opened the French doors to my balcony. The wind and rain hit like a mini-hurricane, my braids whipping around my cheeks.
One part of my balcony is covered, so it was still dry. I put the bra and thong in the usual corner on top of a few straggly, burned pieces of material from another forgettable night on a wooden plank and flicked the lighter on. The bra and thong smoked and blackened and wiggled and fizzled and flamed.
When they were cremated, I doused them with water from the water bottle. No sense burning down the apartment building. That would be bad.
I settled into a metal chair in the uncovered section of my balcony, the rain sluicing off my naked body, and gazed at the skyscrapers, wondering how many of those busy, brain-fried, robotic people were staring at me.
Working in a skyscraper was another way of dying early, my younger sister, Janie, would say. “It’s like the elevators are taking you up to hell.”
Right out of college she got a job as a copywriter for a big company on the twenty-ninth floor of a skyscraper in Los Angeles and lasted two months before her weasely, squirmy boss found the first chapter of her first