"Man is born broken; he lives by mending."--George Vaillant
It was many years ago. We'd been playing hide and seek for a few weeks, and had reached that awkward place in a boy-girl friendship where one or the other has to risk an overture.
We hadn't talked about how we felt for each other, but we'd talked about everything else: childhood, and things we'd hoped for and things we'd lost. Whenever we were together we were always kinder and braver. Or rather, since we gave each other nothing to fear it was safe to speak truthfully. I remember thinking, "This is what it feels like to really be free."
When you feel like that around someone you have to find out whether she feels it too. If you don't you'll always regret it. But when you feel like that you already stand to lose something precious. And being aware of your predicament won't save you--far from it. So I tried to put it out of my mind. I just wanted to savor every day with her while it lasted.
But I knew things couldn't go on like that forever. One night I dreamt that a scary black cat was yowling on my back porch and I wouldn't let it in. I didn't want it, but it was mine. When I woke up I realized I'd been dreaming about her. That cat was getting hungry.
"I used to be very angry," she said one night not long after my dream. It was almost closing time. We'd hardly touched our beers. "Did you already know that?"
I nodded. "What was it like?"
"I think... I think I just felt broken and alone. And it was because of someone else. And I didn't think I would ever be right again. You know?"
I knew. "What changed?"
"Nothing. No one can feel like that forever. I remember thinking, 'I will never forget this.' But you do. I mean, you don't forget, but you choose not to remember. One day you find that you can do that, so that's what you do."
She paused for a moment, alone with her thoughts. Then she said, "Why are you so shy?"
I balked and she sipped her beer. "There's a story there too," I said. "Only I don't know how to tell it yet."
The truth was that my affection for her was so infused with admiration that I felt ashamed to make direct pass at her. And besides, I was afraid to upset the delicate emotional ecology we'd established.
Someone had left a keychain on the bar. It was a tiny toy robot attached to a ring with no keys. It had a little red LED bulb for a nose and a button on its back and when she pressed it, it flashed and wailed like a siren.
"Oh my god," I said, stunned by its tawdriness.
She giggled. "What is it for, do you think?"
I thought, there's a girl in a robot keychain sweatshop somewhere asking herself that same question.
"Maybe it's a mind control device," she said. She had a habit of inventing elaborate fanciful secret histories for everyday things. That sense of whimsy was one of the things I liked about her. It made her seem a little exotic. Any piece of litter on the street might be part of an elaborate Rube Goldberg device. And if a restaurant wasn't doing much business she'd say for sure it was really a money laundering operation. Sometimes she said she believed in magic. Tonight a keychain could control your mind.
"Think about it. You take it with you to the bar, find someone you like and zap them with it. After that they're your willing sex slave. Someone probably left it here by mistake. I'll bet he's at home right now fucking some poor girl senseless."
She slipped the keychain into her pocket. "Imagine how he'll freak out when he realizes it's missing and comes back and can't find it. I hope she was worth it."
"How do you know he's a he?" I said.
"Hmm," she said, raising an eyebrow, as though considering a new angle. "A girl could have fun with something like that."
"Do you read those kind of stories?" I said.
"Mm hmm."
"But aren't they always about some hideous creep using mind control to sleep with models or to make his wife do degrading things or something?"
"Sometimes," she said thoughtfully. "But I like some of them. Once I read one about a rich, eccentric inventor who lived in a mansion outside a small town."
"That's original."
She stuck her tongue out at me before continuing.
