Subtext

I took my usual place on the far side of the L shaped bar from the door, grabbed the stool and pulled it out. I cleaned a sticky little spot with a napkin and some water from a left behind cup.

“What’ll it be Percy? Cognac or Sangria”

“One Sangria tonight please.”

I gave Trish my card. She ran it and gave it back.

“What’s the book today?”

“Same one.” I pulled it out of my backpack. It was a small one, a present from Corin: Letters to a Young Poet.

She took it and turned it over and smiled as she scanned, “I told me husband you were reading this. He likes books. He said he thinks you would like—”

That’s just how it goes with books, one leads to another. I won’t listen though because I need to finish this one.

“Sounds like a good one.”

“You just holler if you need a thing honey. I closed you out.”

I thanked her and lay the book on the newly cleaned spot. I fought hard to focus. I’d left my phone back at the house but I still saw the TV and the neon lights that would flicker. I would still have to politely chit-chat with the old men who would lean over my book when they came up to order a beer. They were okay. They wanted to share things with me about their life. They probably had no one else to do it with. Old cynical men.

Tonight no one disturbed me and I read ten pages which was twice as many as last night. I considered that enough for now and closed the book. It wouldn’t be long till I’d finished and I would show Sal how it was no defect of my character that started many books at once.

I went to stand, feeling full chested and then heard Corin’s voice clamber into the low ceiling from the stairs up to the street. He ducked under to low doorway. His head was shaved and I nearly didn’t recognize him. A girl followed him in with a quiet face and a big coat.

Corin was big in space and energy. The girl seemed his anchor for he swept down the bar towards me only to swing back around on those long limbs to where she’d sat. He poked and teased and the girl ordered.

In my distant corner I felt like a small little boy hiding in the dim light who says “if I can’t see you you can’t see me” and hides behind the taps on the bar, peaking. My hands knew not what to do. They picked up the book and closed it only to open it again. Here was my dilemma: to read on and pretend, or to venture over like a child. I say like a child because Rilke would ask me how my inner child felt to see Corin. My inner child was shy and thought maybe Corin was not my friend anymore. I watched him with his smile and wondered where he’d been.

Then our eyes met through the taps and he stopped talking. His face relaxed long and gaunt and he walked up to me.

“Percy?”

“Oh hey Corin.”

“What the hell man? What are you doing here?”

“I’m just,” I fiddled with the book, “just reading Rilke.”

He picked it up, “This is Rilke! You’re finally reading him!”

“I am.” It was silent. “It’s a good book, thank you Corin. I really like how he talks about his inner child.”

Corin didn’t remember that part. He didn’t know a lot of the book actually, as I tried a few different ideas out to see what he remembered. He laughed and it felt so good to hear that I didn’t mind if he’d never read it. I grabbed my glass of sangria and followed Corin back to where the girl was taking off her coat.

The girl was familiar. She played with a single pearl on a long necklace that was thin and hung down to lay the white opalescant ball between her decently sized breasts. Her eyes stayed on me, pale and hazel.

“Oh Percy, you remember Maria right? From the bike incident.”

“The—yes. Um. Oh, yes. Hi I’m Percy.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

She was bad. I shook her little hand.

“You were reading at the bar?”

“Yes.”

There’s always a subtext with women. I suppose it’s there with men — maybe, but for women it’s always overwhelming. She asks me what I’m reading and her eyes squint and say ‘are you a man or a boy’.

“I’m reading a poet’s letters to a soldier on being authentic.” She seemed pleased enough with that because her squint disappeared.

“Oh you’re reading Rilke?”

“Yes! You know him?”

“My father used to read his poems to me at night when I was little.”

There’s a sweetness in a woman’s eyes. I ask my inner child — as Rilke would advise me to do — what I felt in Maria’s eyes, and my inner child responds: a place to curl up and fall asleep.

“Do you feel like you live authentically?” Her eyes were still warm.

“I mean,” there’s no right way to answer and deal appropriately with the subtext, “for the most part. Though I suppose i have my indulgences and my vices. But we all have those I suppose — or rather—” she leaned away in a way I could feel moreso than see, “but, I’m sorry, by indulgences I mean nothing serious. I might ruminate too much, but I don’t — or well, don’t you think most people—or some people must be allowed certain allowances?”

Maria rocked back and forth possibly deciding how to respond. Corin asked for a sip of my sangria. I handed it to him.

Maria felt like a thing I was holding that had woken and looked over my palm’s edge sleepily to see if it could step off and walk away. I’m not the type to clamp my hands around it. Not that I could.

But then she began to respond and so I knew I was okay. “I believe some indulgences are healthy, it’s not so good to be all buttoned up.” I had to avoid eye contact with her as she said that because the subtext would’ve been too much I might’ve smiled. I wouldn’t talk of my indulgences. I always have to prove myself to women. I have to prove I’m not a pervert.

“So are you a student around here?”

“Yeah, at SMCC.”

“Oh, what do you study?”

I could feel her lean back in. Corin left to go outside for a smoke and invited us but she said she was okay so I said so too. I sat down on the stool next to her and went to grab my sangria but it was empty.

We sat there and for no reason I could name she opened her heart to me. She didn’t say anything about her heart but her eyes did. The subtext of her being close to me distracted every thought that could’ve formed. Who can ignore it? I would skip the middle steps if I could. The middle steps make me feel like a fake. I am a liar to be here and not address the subtext. I would skip to holding her, laying my head in her lap. Or naked in bed we would expose all the subtext. I would be the man and her the woman. I wouldn’t feel fake then. But then again, I’m not a man, I am a boy, so how can I ever cut the subtext? It wouldn’t be through sex — as pleasing as that would be I would only be a man for a fleeting and misleading moment. Her perfect tantalizing figure, ripe and so blatant that any man not drooling is a detestable liar. I think she would want a respectful nod towards her attractiveness — as a woman.

“You have an amazing — oh I’m sorry, I interrupted you. I just wanted to say you have an amazing smile.”

“Thank you, you’re pretty cute yourself.”

A layer of subtext was peeled back and I could breathe smoother. I turned towards her and her bare knee slipped between mine.

“I’m sorry, what were you saying before I interrupted you?”

“I only have one more semester at SMCC and then I’m going to move away from Maine.”

“Oh right, that was it. Where would you go?”

“Anywhere—I’d like to see San Francisco.”

She played with her pearl again. It struck me as a bit lewd placed between the open buttons of her white blouse. If she were a man I’d probably comment on it, but as it was her I was left to wonder if it was part of some constructed subtext meant to lay a trap for my impressionable and helpless animal brain. I asked my inner child for advice and it said to ignore it. It said: “I have no context for a sexual interpretation of her necklace, I am pure and see the world with an innocence unprotectable and yet still within you.”

“I love your necklace.”

“Thank you—”

I saw Corin over her bare shoulder and he saw us turned focused in towards eachother, smiled, pulled out a cigarette and walked back up the stairs outside.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“It was my mother’s.”

“It’s beautiful. Can I see?” I leaned in and she looked down in a tender way at my hand grasping cautiously and clumsily at the pearl. She looked so pretty looking down, then her eyes came up to meet mine as I held the pearl. There was no more subtext, just tension. It was sweet and fogging my senses. I must be closer towards her. I pictured her again naked in my bed. But that — as my inner child knew — was inauthentic closeness. I wanted more. I wanted to build a reality with her, knit of two interwoven dreams.

Our faces were inches apart and I listened to her in hopes of learning the dream I would try to connect to my own. I was so giddy and eager by the hope of true closeness I felt compelled to say into the inches of space between our faces, “we don’t even have to have sex.”

She moved not but became a great stretch removed. I realized she had been explaining the necklace to me and as I replayed the sounds to reconstruct their meaning I found that she had spoken, “It was the last thing she gave me before she died last year.”