The week went by with little fuss. I received a voicemail from my father that stated simply, “Templar Time.” I didn’t find out nor was I curious to what he meant by it and what he did. Rebecca never called me. I was sad and disappointed but not surprised. Her mom might still be in town. At least that’s what I told myself.
The lack of drama or suspense in my week was much appreciated. It’s strange to thing that everything that happened occurred on the same day but sometimes when the world wants to throw you a curveball, it just keeps them coming.
I did come to some strange form of understanding with my father’s situation. I can’t say I agree with the harder drug use but people drink for similar reasons and society accepts that. The confrontation did leave me a little shaken through the week. My personal issues with him aside that was an unpredictable and chaotic moment and those tend to unsettle me.
As for Rebecca, I still wished I had heard her reasoning for our separation but the way I figure it, I would not like it or be better with it if I did know. I have my suspicions but they will go unverified until the next time we speak. As a last mention, I do miss her.
With all these things in the back of my mind I found myself excited about the conscious meeting that I would be having with Seattle. Everything about her so far, which I admit is just short of nothing, whispers familiar and comfortable. That she contains within her the same wicked humor that allows me to get through a day serving people who purchase laxatives and anti-itch powders while not meeting my nonjudgmental eyes. That’s a lie. I play a game where I create the story in my head explaining the genesis of their ailment. Call it my gallows humor but on a consumer level.
Apparently the movie I’m to see on Friday with Seattle is some little indie flick that will be premiered in a quiet little dark place with no more than a dozen or so in attendance. The name is ambiguous, Block. It doesn’t even give me anything to work with. The only flier I see for it displays a white background with a shadow cast by a white cube. So essentially it’s just a picture of a shadow.
Aside from the vague cinema rendering we would witness, I felt excited. I also admit I felt a little self satisfaction that I was seeing a girl no more than a week after “taking a break”. Who knows, the evening might go very well.
The evening started horribly. Describing the plot or even what was occurring on screen as we sat in the dank, quiet, long forgotten corner of the world that just happened to have a projector and a large screen would have been impossible. There was a small cast of characters but I didn’t know if they were related, friends or actually all the same person. At one point two of them had sex but please don’t ask me which I just knew that I would need to take a cold shower and reaffirm my sexuality later with liberal amounts of computer time.
Towards the end of the movie, which occurred no less than one-hundred and forty minutes after we were seated, I witnessed a live birth. A slimy ball of hair poured forth from what had once been one of my favorite places. Poured is too lenient, it tore, like a mascot through a team banner at a football game, it tore. My feelings toward the female anatomy were altered there and then. There was nothing but respect and a bit of sympathy for the moment I witnessed. All in all though, I was greatly confused, scared and feeling a strange sensation in my feet, a need to run.
The few people who were in the cinema clapped. Someone turned around in front of me and bowed. Seattle clapped and smiled, turning to me, then back to the man basking in adulation. I wondered who this girl was and why I had thought that she could be more normal than it had turned out to be.
We stood outside and talked to the other movie goers for a while. I stood back with my hands stuffed into my pockets fingering my phone and wondering if I could call 911 without having to pull it out. The people were pleasant enough. They smiled and praised the movie for its cinematography and risqué themes. All I could remember about themes were color schemes and they were mostly red especially the sex scene and birth. I shook myself to unhinge those images.
Seattle bade them farewell and turned to me, the smile on her face gone. “Thank you for sitting through that.”
“What? That delightful piece of work? I haven’t been that entertained since A Clockwork Orange.” I said with a mock surprise. To myself I added that I understood Clockwork Orange better.
“They like to make art like that.” She watched me carefully, looking for something in my posture.
“If you didn’t enjoy it why did you come?”
She tilted her head, which allowed the mane of rust colored hair to fall to one side and looked up thoughtfully. “They’re friends. Who happen to be art majors and wildly inappropriate.”
I pushed a loose stone around on the floor. “So you’re an art major?”
She smiled. It seemed that she did that a lot. “Economics.”
I blanched and she laughed.
We went to dinner at an Applebee’s nearby. The hostess greeted us and bared her teeth at us in a mock display of happiness. She had some fish and I had a burger. For the first half of dinner she tried to explain the film to me. I couldn’t understand her explanation any better. Not that it was her fault. I found my thoughts floating back to Rebecca. She would never have taken me to see such a film. She knew my tastes and had a remarkable set of her own. Plus if something was crap, she’d say it, I’d mock it and we’d laugh. Deriving the worth of the film from its comedic failure to entertain.
Finally I told Seattle to stop trying to explain the film. An uncultured specimen as I was would gain nothing from a video of open weirdness.
“So then what do you do?”
“Me?” shoving a french fry into my mouth, “I work at a drug store catering to those who’s pelvic regions itch, sport infections and diseases that I gracefully get by without catching.”
“So you don’t go to college.” Her eyebrow was raised.
“Already did.”
“And?”
“And I got a degree.” Feeling strangely defensive, “What are you going to do with your economics?”
She sat back, and watched me eat. “Look I’m sorry you came to see that movie but you didn’t have to come. I just thought you were nice.”
I sighed and wiped the ketchup from the edges of my mouth. “I apologize. It has just been hard since graduating.”
She leaned forward again, “Personal problem hard?”
I nodded, “Among other things.”
“Tell me about them.”
I stared at her for a moment, studying the expressions in her face.
“Who am I going to tell?” She asked, “Plus if you feel that strongly afterwards, you can just disappear.”
I thought for a moment. That feeling of something familiar demanded to be recognized. “Fine, but at the end you’ve got to fess up about yourself too.”
“We’ll see.” Was all she said.
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