Now I know what it is to be entangled. It means to be tangled up in your own frustrated desire: a sad joy. Not bittersweet, two emotions dissolving into each other, but two emotions entangled: both whole and solid. I was in a seven-year relationship with a man at the time. I could neither admit nor seek sexual fulfillment.
When I met Lucia I met someone entirely new. She completely amazed and astounded me. She told me how impressed she was with my accomplishments when I thought they were nothing. She told me I was beautiful, she hugged me every chance she got. I knew it was just her: the way she is with her friends. She says such intimate things to everyone. She stands that close to everyone. She whispers so close to her friend's ears. I never met a person who was in such intimacy with the world.
I wanted my heart to wake up like her's, my mind to stretch like her's, my bitterness to dissolve. I wanted wonder at her age, even again at mine. But still, the magic falls a little short of that. She makes me sort of uncomfortable sometimes, when she says such intense things to me. Especially when her husband is right there. Or if she whispers in my ear, and can he see me panic? Can he see that I am afraid he'll think something of it, when I don't act that way with people?
"My husband is going out of town," she says. "I'll be lonely. Come on over if you can." She never makes me feel like our age difference makes her opinions superior. She carries 50 like it's the status quo; her short salt and pepper hair like it's the latest fashion. She's standing two inches away from me, smiling to make it warm the way she always does. It's a lie. She'll never be lonely: not someone like her, drawing everyone closer, making us all feel like the only person in her world. I know what she means: a movie, a discussion, maybe some wine.
Definitely not, "come over and do all those things you want to me. All those things you know my husband is good enough to do, but you want to anyway."
"I will." I know I will make time for her, anytime. Just to feel her touch my hand is more intimacy than I've ever had with anyone. How can I miss that chance?
She greets me with that same warm smile. I know hospitality is something in her bones. Her apartment is so warm it feels like someone's home and not just a place to stay. Everything is so clean and polished, all the colors and shapes in sync, like she had a decorator come in, when I know it was probably just her sense that everything fits together, if you know how to make it. I used to think that maybe a sense like that would come with age—she does have almost 30 years on me—but now I realize it's just her.
"Sit down." How can she make an offer sound like a command? She's in charge of lots of things: always taking control so easily.
I sit on the couch and she follows, so close to me our thighs are touching: her's bare under that short, tight black skirt. Mine covered in thick jeans that I now regret. She could have chosen the chair right next to the couch—could have sat away from me—but she chooses to sit right up against me. She takes my hand in hers. I know that if I don't look at her, force myself to look serious, she'll know how I feel, but if I look in her eyes too hard she'll know how I feel there too. I have to work so hard not to reveal my feelings, so I'm lucky she seems so oblivious. "So, you want to know about Portugal." She knows I do, though I didn't exactly say that in my emails. I can't get away from it.
"If you are comfortable talking about it." As she begins to recount the tales of her childhood in another country, she moves her hand from mine. She places it on my thigh, and the other on my shoulder.
She's talking into me now. I'm used to it with her: she burns her words into people.
"You're new to me," I say. "A person like you is new to me: so free, so open, so alive. You're not of my world."
She blushes. Why is she so humble when she's so much of the way, the truth and the light? She burns so brightly—the sparks of God were never brighter than when lit by the spark of her soul. I know that if I really knew her I'd be embers, but I am her scorched moth: hoping she will revive me so that I can burn again. And I should run, but I can't. Her very friendship is too much. I should not be on the same continent.
I chalk her close talking; close standing up to being from a Latin culture. That is, until she's rested her tiny body on top of my lap. Her movements were so slow. She's a swan. Every moment closer so graceful, as if it were something she'd always done. Sit next to me; put her hands on me, climb on top of me: just lift her legs an swing her body forward as if I were an old chair. Her fiery amber-chestnut eyes never moved from mine.
"Uh, Lucia?"
