Page 21 - Sweet Embraceable You: Coffee-House Stories

Sweet Embraceable You 9

“That we’re alone.”
“That you’re off-balance, sweetheart.” He kissed her. “And out-
of-whack, out-of-synch.” He touched her breasts lightly.
“And out-of-bounds,” she said, pushing his hands away.
In his big silence he moved away from her. Something they
both needed more than they recognized, something that had not
quite melded together from their separate spiritual lives, sometimes
hung unspoken between them. He turned at the door, and said,
“Whatever,” as if she, not he, held the mystery.
The ancient front door closed. Beneath her, the garage door
of the old Victorian ratched open. Cameron kicked his bike into
muffled life, paused on the lip of the drive, returned, pulled closed
the garage door, and roared away into the sounds of the City.
Ada put both elbows on the table and interlaced her fingers
across her forehead. She stared down into the steam rising from her
coffee. She had papers to grade. Errands to run. And the telephone
was ringing.
It was Cassiopeia.

*

Unhelmeted, Cameron cruised west out Fell Street, along the green
boulevard of the Panhandle. The morning cool felt wet and good on
his face. He angled his Harley Sportster smoothly into Golden Gate
Park and roared loud down Kennedy Drive. The park lay emerald
in the morning light: meadows, rose gardens, eucalyptus groves.
Every stick and bush and tree transplanted into perfect place. He
passed behind the DeYoung Museum and prowled the tarmac circle
wrapped around the Stow Lake lagoon.
He laughed thinking of Curtis years before rocking Ada insanely
in the rented rowboat. He gunned his bike. Hard. Fast. Breaking
down curds of inertia inside his own flesh as the bike ate up the
parkway. He turned right, in full shot of the ocean, roared past
Point Lobos, Land’s End, and out El Camino del Mar toward the
Golden Gate Bridge.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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