[Intake – The awareness of possibilities (versus the awareness of endings in Three Tokens)]
Ska’s long dyed dread locks are knotted together like so many bundles of rust and purple tumble-weeds. Her crazy hair reflects her vibrancy. She’s singing “Work” by Bob Marley and grazing in the bulk food area at Healthy Pleasures.
“Hey I know you. From my class.” She leans over and kisses me – patchouli scented air wafts from her onto me.
“Peter, right?”
“Patrick.”
“Hola.” She doesn’t care that she got my name wrong.
As she says this she smiles and slowly takes her hand out of a bin of walnuts. Then she just strikes a pose, not an attitude pose, but straight and loose, slightly swaying. She looks like something thrown together by the wind.
“What are you up to?”
“Just getting some lunch. Then going home to the east village. ”
“I’m going that way too.”
“Wanna hang out at the park and eat?”
“Sure.” We go to Tompkins Square Park. Some IKON dancers are singing Hare Krishna – very melodically – and assorted freaks and drunks lie around us. The days when this park was owned by junkies and crack ho’s are long gone.
Ska comfortably sits down on the bench in a position that would snap my spine should I attempt it.
“You’re not from here. Can’t quite place your accent.”
“Canada. Toronto.”
“Yeah. I’ve been there. I’m from Arizona.”
One of the groovy parts of Arizona, no doubt. “Sedona?”
“Close. Jerome.”
“It’s way up on that mountain.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s beautiful. Family still there?”
“My mom has a Bed & Breakfast there, right beside the old mine, but everyone else has moved…. So what do you do?”
“I work for an investment bank. Computers.”
“What do you think of working on Wall St.? Does capitalism look better from the inside?” Her chill manner belies the weight of her question. I realize that she’s interviewing me.
“On bonus day. Just kidding.” I hastily add. The joke fell flat. I continue, “I never thought I’d wind up here. It is really interesting work. Before I came here I didn’t understand how the world works politically, economically and now I have a much better idea.”
“Its all about money, isn’t it? Don’t you think it’s really creepy when a bunch of traders get together and trash an entire country’s currency. I remember traveling in Thailand in September 1998, and over the course of a week I could buy twice as much stuff with one dollar. Twice as much and everyone was out of work. Crazy.”
“Yes, it makes me feel weird.” Shrug. I remember how crazy it was at work when the Thai baht crashed. “I’m in IT so its doubly unreal, because we’re so far removed.”
“You do your bit to make the whole system work.”
“I do.” Ouch.
“So what are you going to do when your boss throws you away like a broken doll? Or when you get so sick of your job that you have to leave?”
“Depends on whether that happens when I’m 40, when I’m 60 or when I’m dead.”
“Say it happens tomorrow. Say your boss realizes that your job is on the wrong side of the bottom line and fires you.”
“I dunno. Probably grow my hair down to my ass and bum around Asia.”
“Any plans to grow up?”
“Maybe.”
“Have kids?”
“Maybe. With the right person.”
She catches me with her eyes as I look at her. We just look at each other. I smile at her and it works – she smiles back.
“Where do you live?
“Downtown. Beside the World Trade Center.”
“Really. It’s a bit dead down there at nights.”
“Yeah, but I don’t mind it. I walk to work. Where do you live?”
“I live right there.” She points to an apartment at the intersection of Avenue B and 6th St. “Why don’t you come up for tea?”
I’ve been here before so I know where these next steps can lead. After the terrible ending of my last relationship I’d been thinking what it would be like to come around to this place again; I wondered whether I’d hesitate; or even if I’d ever cross the line again. But decisions are tricky things because they don’t happen in theory, they become real only when they change our actions. In the event my decision requires no more effort than to go to where I want to go. I nod assent to Ska’s invitation and smile.
“Let me escort you then.” She slips her left arm through my right and guides us across Avenue B to her home.
It’s late afternoon by the time we arrive. She begins to light candles [, flames from which illuminate the evening gloom]. I look around and don’t see any electric lights. Her apartment is painted in bright earth tones; even though it is early spring, it is warm and sunny; the air is moist and flowers are blooming everywhere.
“Nice flowers. Its amazing to see so many blooms at one time.”
“They are beautiful aren’t they?” She lays out a bowl of fruits and nuts, which she hands to me as I sit down on her futon bed, which is in a couch position. This afternoon’s interrogation has exhausted me. She continues to stand, watering and doting over her plants. “Just before I left for California they were ready to bloom and I asked them to wait just one more week for me because I really had to go visit my family.” As she says this she leans over and kisses the blue petals of an iris. “Even though I think that my plants really like me, and I take good care of them, I was certain that they would have bloomed by the time I returned.” I watch her closely as she speaks, charmed by the complete absence of guile in her manner. “But they didn’t! They still hadn’t bloomed when I returned! I was so tired from my trip that – even though I arrived home at noon from Cali – I immediately had a nap.”
“BUT! When I awoke there were flowers everywhere!”
It’s impossible not to smile at the image. “Not only are your plants are very patient, they have a sense of fun.”
“They are wonderful. I love them.” I imagine I hear them reply, as they rustle in the breeze created by her desktop fan.
Ska plops down beside me on her futon and puts her right arm around me as if that were the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps it is. “What would you like to do? Let’s watch a movie.”
We watch a DVD of Casablanca on her laptop computer and slowly get drunk on wine. Then we sleep with each other. In fact we make love and it is beautiful. In the morning I awaken before her and watch her breath animate the curves of her body, her face a picture of serenity in the muted tones of the early morning light. How could her flowers not have waited to bloom?