Splat! Paul was a forty-year-old man from Seattle, Washington, who lived only ten minutes from the house where Kurt Cobain shotgunned himself, and only fifteen minutes from the stretch of Jackson Street where Ray Charles and Quincy Jones began their careers in bygone jazz clubs. Splat! Paul’s office, and the headquarters of his small used-clothes empire, was down the street from a life-size statue of Jimi Hendrix ripping an all-weather solo. Splat! Paul bought his morning coffee at the same independent joint where a dozen of Courtney Love’s bounced checks decorated the walls.
Paul believed American greatness and the ghosts of that greatness surrounded him. But who could publicly express such a belief and not be ridiculed as a patriotic fool? Paul believed in his fellow Americans, in their extraordinary decency, in their awesome ability to transcend religion, race, and class, but what leftist could state such things and ever hope to get laid by any other lefty? And yet Paul was the perfect example of American possibility: He made a great living (nearly $325,000 the previous tax year) by selling secondhand clothes.
For God’s sake, Paul was flying to Durham, North Carolina, for a denim auction. A Baptist minister had found one hundred pairs of vintage Levi’s (including one pair dating back to the nineteenth century that was likely to fetch $25,000 or more!) in his father’s attic, and was selling them to help raise money for the construction of a new church. Blue jeans for God! Blue jeans for Jesus! Blue Jeans for the Holy Ghost!
Used clothes for sale! Used clothes for sale! That was Paul’s capitalistic war cry. That was his mating song.
Thus unhinged and aroused, Paul turned around and ran against the moving sidewalk. He chased after the beautiful woman — in her gorgeous red Pumas — who had rebuffed him. He wanted to tell her everything that he believed about his country. No, he just wanted to tell her that music — pop music — was the most important thing in the world. He would show her the top twenty-five songs played on his iPod, and she’d have sex with him in the taxi or parking shuttle or town car.
And there she was, on the escalator above him, with her perfect jeans and powerful yoga thighs. Paul could hear her denim singing friction ballads across her skin. Paul couldn’t remember the last time he’d had sex with a woman who wore red shoes. Paul dreamed of taking them off and taking a deep whiff. Ha! He’d instantly developed a foot fetish. He wanted to smell this woman’s feet. Yes, that was the crazy desire in his brain and his crotch when he ran off the escalator and caught the woman outside of the security exit.
“Excuse me, I’m sorry, hello,” Paul said.
She stared at him. She studied his face, wondering if she knew him, or if he was a gypsy cab driver, or if he was a creep.
“I saw you back there on the moving sidewalk,” Paul said.
Wow, that was a stupid thing to say. That meant nothing. No, that meant Paul had noticed the lovely shapes of her green eyes, breasts, and ass — their mystical geometry — and that made him as ordinary, if slightly more mathematical, as any other man in the airport. He needed to say something extraordinary, something poetic, in order to make her see that he was capable of creating, well, extraordinary poetry. Could he talk about her shoes? Was that a convincing way to begin this relationship? Or maybe he could tell her that Irving Berlin’s real name was Israel.
“I mean,” Paul said, “well, I wanted to — well, the thing is, I saw you — no, I mean — well, I did see you, but it wasn’t sight that made me chase after you, you know? I mean — it wasn’t really any of my five senses that did it. It was something beyond that. You exist beyond the senses; I just know that without really knowing it, you know?”
She smiled. The teeth were a little crowded. The lines around her eyes were new. She was short, a little over five feet tall, and, ah, she wore those spectacular red shoes. If this didn’t work out, Paul was going to run home and buy the DVD version of that movie about the ballerina’s red dance slippers. Or was he thinking of the movie about the kid who lost his red balloon? Somewhere there must be a movie about a ballerina who ties her dance shoes to a balloon and watches them float away. Jesus, Paul said to himself. Focus, focus.
“You have a beautiful smile,” Paul said to the stranger. “And if your name is Sara, I’m going to lose my mind.”
“My name isn’t Sara,” she said. “Why would you think my name is Sara?”
“You know, great smile, name is Sara. ‘Sara Smile’? The song by Hall and Oates.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s a good one.”
“You’ve made me think of two Hall and Oates songs in, like, five minutes. I think that’s a sign. Of what, I don’t know, but a sign nonetheless.”
“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard a man say nonetheless in normal conversation.”
Was she mocking him? Yes, she was. Was that a positive step in their relationship? Did it imply a certain familiarity or the desire for a certain familiarity? And, by the way, when exactly had he become the kind of man who uses nonetheless in everyday conversation?
“Listen,” Paul said to the beautiful stranger. “I don’t know you. And you don’t know me. But I want to talk to you — and listen to you; that’s even more important — I want to talk and listen to you for a few hours. I want to share stories. That’s it. That’s it exactly. I think you have important stories to tell. Stories I need to hear.”
She laughed and shook her head. Did he amuse her? Or bemuse her? There was an important difference: Women sometimes slept with bemusing men, but they usually married amusing men.
“So, listen,” Paul said. “I am perfectly willing to miss my flight and have coffee with you right here in the airport — and if that makes you feel vulnerable, just remember there are dozens of heavily armed security guards all around us — so, please, if you’re inclined to spend some time with a complete but devastatingly handsome stranger, I would love your company.”
“Well,” she said. “You are cute. And I like your suit.”
“It used to belong to Gene Kelly. He wore it in one of his movies.”
“Singin’ in the Rain?”
“No, one of the bad ones. When people talk about the golden age of Hollywood musicals, they don’t realize that almost all of them were bad.”
“Are you a musician?”
“Uh, no, I sell used clothes. Vintage clothes. But only the beautiful stuff, you know?”
“Like your suit.”
“Yes, like my suit.”
“Sounds like a cool job.”
“It is a cool job. I have, like, one of the coolest lives ever. You should know that.”
“I’m sure you are a very cool individual. But I’m married, and my husband is waiting for me at baggage claim.”
“I don’t want this to be a comment on the institution of marriage itself, which I believe in, but I want you to know that your marriage, while great for your husband and you, is an absolute tragedy for me. I’m talking Greek tragedy. I’m talking mothers-killing-their-children level of tragedy. If you listened to my heart, you’d hear that it just keeps beating Medea, Medea, Medea. And yes, I know the rhythm is off on that. Makes me sound like I have a heart murmur.”
She laughed. He’d made her laugh three or four times since they’d met. He’d turned the avenging and murderous Medea into a sexy punch line. How many men could do that?