Aftermath of Dreaming(3)
“Do you not want me to continue or what?”
“Yeah, no, let’s hear it,” Reggie says. “Have you eaten even a bite, ’cause I’m halfway finished over here.”
His crunching of toast can be faintly heard. I know it is almost burned, buttered right when popped out, then quickly slathered with boysenberry jam to allow as much melding of the two as possible. Early on in our morning-call ritual, we described our favorite breakfasts to each other, making it easier to imagine the other person was there. Ever since then, I have kept my eye out for an all-in-one spread—like they do with peanut butter and jelly for kids—so I can buy a case of butter’n’jam and leave it at Reggie’s door as a surprise. His breakfast ready in one less step.
“There’s not a lot more to tell,” I say in a voice that indicates how completely untrue that is, as I take the mostly uneaten oatmeal to the kitchen sink. “It was your basic nonmythic brunch.” I turn the hot water on, causing a spray to shoot up from hitting the spoon. “Until the end.”
“Yvette, turn the water off. You wash more dishes than any person I know, yet you barely eat. What do you do, take in your neighbors? Tell me what happened.”
Michael’s words were swirling around me in Wisteria’s sun-drenched air. “There’s definitely an increase in our listeners. The new shows I’ve started are pulling them in; the numbers are like nothing they’ve seen before.”
“That’s great, Michael, I’m so happy—”
“Yeah, so—thanks! So basically the station is where I want it to be right now. Okay, Tuesday nights—maybe Monday, too—could be better, though I think this new deejay I found is going to hit them out the park.”
I was trying to stay focused on Michael’s business talk, which I always loved. Michael makes radio programming sound exciting and revolutionary and capable of transporting you higher, like some perfect legal drug. But my thoughts were drifting. I kept trying to figure out if enough time-space coordinates had shifted in our relationship, so we could kiss, make out, whatever…and still have it not appear on the Relationship Radar screen. So it could go by undetected. By us.
“And the weekend morning shows still aren’t doing what I know they can, but sometimes synergy takes time.” Michael was alternating bites of crab cakes with bites of asparagus that he expertly extracted from the mound of grilled vegetables on the table between us.
“You’re great at this stuff, Michael.” I had no idea what to say about synergy, being unsure I’d ever experienced it myself. It always sounded unreliable to me, like an outfit that is fabulous one night, but two weeks later is boring as hell. “You’ll be the Ted Turner of FM radio; soon every car will be cruising with your station on their dial.”
Michael momentarily beamed, then quickly sobered. “No, no, I’m just doing my job.” He speared the last asparagus tip nestled among the ignored-by-both-of-us zucchini. “So, You. How are You?” The pronoun sounded capitalized.
But before I could respond, Michael’s cell phone rang, causing the couple at the table next to us to dance the win/lose two-step as they each grabbed their phones, then realized the call wasn’t for them. Michael read the number on his phone’s screen before clicking it on and saying, “What’s happening over there?”
Michael’s cell phone. Which is also a pager. But only for “extremely, extremely urgent messages,” as the cell phone’s voice mail tells you when you call, but the whole time we were together last year, everything I wanted to say to Michael felt “extremely, extremely urgent” to me, but I couldn’t get rid of a terrible little feeling that it really wasn’t to him, so in fact the only time I ever felt qualified to leave an “extremely, extremely urgent” message was when I called to say that I was constantly, all at the same time, both too urgent and not urgent enough for whatever it was that we were doing together, so maybe we should just not do it anymore and do something less urgent like…be friends.
Which we did. Quite easily, really. He even called a few times to see how I was. I still haven’t been able to decide if that was a particularly good sign or a bad one, because tumult and despair are the only yardsticks I’ve ever known to gauge true love by. At least that’s what I went through one time before when I knew it was true love. Not that my breakup with Michael had no ill effect on me. I do remember a rough couple of weeks when I was sure the only thing that would save my sanity and entire personal future history would be to drive to his home and just bury my face in his groin until both of us forgot the past we had together and could start a new one over, like some weird kind of prequel that makes the original ending obsolete. But I never did.
“Sorry about that.” Michael put his phone down on the table near his hand. “Things at the station are just…Wow. You know.”
“Right,” I said brightly. I glanced at the salmon on my plate. It was so lovely, pink and firm, lying there ready anytime. I took a bite that was melty and soft, as if my teeth were unnecessary.
“So.” Michael broke into my fishy reverie. “How are the accessories? I mean, jewelry.”
“Great, it’s—”
“Right. Rings, pendants, bracelets. Are these…?” He reached out his hand, briefly touched my earring, and then cradled my cheek as he might a small bird.