The Dish and the Spoon - 3

Distant, she had said. That is what she said she feels I am these days.

I watched the ground some as I chewed these thoughts in my mind, trying to process everything. Maybe I was, probably I was. It was something I hated to face, didn't want to believe.

The beads of asphalt continued to race past beneath me as I churned the pedals of the bicycle, moving ever onward. I squinted back up into the freezing winds, gripping the rubber of the handle bars tighter with fingers that were turning blue. The weather had grown older since I left the coffee shop and had matured from nipping to biting. The winds blowing helped neither the temperatures nor my ride, but it hardly mattered. Nothing really seemed to be helping right now except every step in the right direction.

As usual, that was the real question.

I looked back into the sky but still couldn’t yet see it. As late as it was growing, it was still too early. It would not be long, though. It wouldn’t be long.

It’s been a long time, she had said.

I sighed. It hurt. I was in no state to be mulling this over. I was tired and weak and sore, but then again, I also had a job to do. My eyes hurt, but were no longer tired. My body ached but was no longer dead.

I leaned to the right, into the turn as I just caught the light.

It wouldn’t be long now at all.












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The Dish and the Spoon - 2

I’ll always have a great deal of respect for the power of forward physical motion in tapping the stowed tanks of energy and keeping you going, even when the main valve is running on fumes or just the memory of fumes at all. Of course, caffeine also helps. I took another sip of my vanilla Frappuccino and decided that if today was not my day to be manly, I might as well make it my day to be cool, drinking the rich flavors that inspired artists, musicians, poets, and the like.

There is nothing ‘cool’ about sissy coffee… I thought back to myself, sighing.

“It’s not sissy coffee!” said the voice of my friend David in my mind. Oh David…you make my life simultaneously more exciting and more complicated… I smiled.

Discarding the now empty cup and making a face at the feeling of all that cream and ice in my stomach, I threw a leg over my bicycle, pausing to pull my bag snug against my shoulder blades. I could feel the wind pick up again and looked off behind my shoulder as one hand grabbed the brakes, keeping me steady. Beyond the flickering bulb of the streetlamp above my head, I still couldn’t yet see it. I shook my head, kicking off the ground. I had left the speed on the highest gear, so the start was arduous and against the wind, but I pedaled fiercely out of the sidewalk foyer and around the corner, climbing the hill as cars passed me, honking while they rode by.

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The Dish and the Spoon - 1

There I sat, listening to the soft humming sound of the vacuum cleaner as the man in the gray shirt pushed it along, cleaning the carpet of the dining area. The windows became translucent mirrors around us as the last rays of sunlight turned into the blackness of the falling twilight and sleepy frustrated students massaged their temples before the glowing screens of their laptops and the stationary papers scattered across the tables before them. There was a strange collectively calm aura sitting upon the air, a kind of conclusive knowingness that permeated the night air as it drifted through the window panes.

I was paddling my own boat up a creek without a paddle, drifting away between the soreness of my bones for having supported my weight standing for so long and the heaviness of my eyes as they watched their thirtieth hour tick slowly by. They had known no rest, save sporadic breaks and dozing, since I began this project.

No…since this project had been due. I started weeks ago. My inability to follow through and finish something quickly is and will always be my greatest vice.

I pushed the little wisps of hair behind my ear, not because they bothered me but because I knew they were there and needed something productive to do. As if that were true… I knew, or thought I knew, subconsciously, where I needed to be. I thought I might have an idea who I needed to see too. If nothing else, I had to talk to her.

But that would have to wait.

I stood up, packing my things and opened the double door into the cool evening air.

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