first dates when romance was everything and the world slipped away from her attention. For a time. And that was the key: for a time. Reality always steps back in. Pure romance is meant to give way to the sturdier, though sometimes less flattering, realities of genuine love.
‘Always been a traditional man,’ the male’s voice continues, ‘loving the lovely. She was the traditional woman, too, the kind any guy would want.’
A silence lingers between them. Finally, the sound of Pauline leaning in towards the recorder.
‘I told you before that something was troubling me about your recollection of the murder.’
‘I haven’t forgotten. Your reaction was just … sick. Most people, normal people, would be horrified. But you, you’re “troubled”.’
‘It’s not that I don’t find killing repulsive, Joseph,’ she continues. ‘I do.’
‘Then are you going to get to just what it is that’s “troubling” you?’ Sarcasm clings to his syllables.
There are more sounds of bodily readjustment. When Pauline’s voice returns, it comes from a place closer to the microphone. She’d positioned her body carefully, the memory still fresh in her mind. She’d brought her face closer to his, lined it up directly with his eyes.
‘I’m troubled, Joseph, because there’s a fact of this case that simply doesn’t mesh with what you’ve confessed.’
‘There’s lots of details. Not everything “meshes” in real life, and murder isn’t an everyday occurrence that follows ordinary rules.’
‘No, but usually the pieces fit together, once we look at them. The details of the crime, and of the criminal.’
‘You can’t expect me to remember every little detail perfectly.’
‘It’s not a little detail, Joseph.’ Her instinct, Pauline recalled, had been to offer a compassionate smile, something almost maternal. She’d forced herself to hold it back.
The man’s voice grunts in impatient displeasure.
‘Just get to the point, would you?’
‘Joseph,’ she answers, slowly, ‘the simple fact of the matter is, you didn’t kill your wife.’
Thirty-seven seconds of sustained silence. Not even the sound of breathing. As if the microphone has dropped out.
Then, the last word recorded on cassette #014A.
‘Bitch.’
I’ve chosen a frou-frou coffee for my lunch break today: double latte with caramel syrup and whipped cream. There’s no particular reason I’ve switched from my usual black filter selection; perhaps it’s the slightly overcast sky, the nip of a chill in the air. Some days are bright on their own. Some need to be brightened up and sweetened, however artificial the sweetener.
I walk towards the park along my usual route. I have a full hour for lunch today – an extra fifteen minutes occasioned by the manager training in a new employee. ‘I’ll stay in and watch the counter with her for a bit,’ he said. ‘She can use the practice on the till. Have a good walk.’ That’s Michael. Not a bad man. Looks like death warmed over: pale, gaunt, waxy eyes and a head of hair so sparse that at a polite distance you can make out individual strands emerging like sprouts from a desert dry scalp. And he still manages to run a successful shop that sells health supplements and vegetable-based ‘miracle’ hair products.
Today is a ‘Free Day’ in the SF Botanical Gardens, meaning that as I approach I see larger than usual crowds strolling over the Great Meadow. They have these, every so often: days in which there is no entrance fee, even for non-residents – so the throngs of tourists ambling through Golden Gate Park have a chance to see one of the finer places in the city. A noble, civil attitude. I support it wholeheartedly. As long as it doesn’t become everyday and we locals get entirely run out.
Cindy is in the entrance booth, the one marked Tickets. ‘Good morning, Dylan,’ she says with a broad smile as I walk by. Cindy volunteers Tuesdays and Thursdays, and normally checks my driver’s licence each and every time I arrive, even though she’s known me for two years now. She’s a law student up the hill – a career that makes for that kind of attitude, I suppose. But she’s delightful in every other way. I smile back as I pass by, noting her kind eyes behind the massive orange plastic rims of her eyeglasses and the nod as she beckons me onwards. No IDs required today. Not on a Free Day.
It takes two left turns, a brief jaunt down a main pathway (today covered in people), and then a right onto a short, planked path into the trees before I arrive at the dirt walkway that leads to my pond. All in all, no more than five minutes from the entrance. Five minutes, and I’m in another world.
I set the caramel latte on the bench beside me, bid hello and a pleasant afternoon to the memory of Margaret, and pull out my notebook. Its home in my back pocket has left an indelible imprint on my khakis, every pair of them; and the shape of my ass has left the notebooks slightly bent. Every one of them. There are stacks, piled up at home. A lifetime of poetry, thus far read only by me.
I am not alone this afternoon. Free access and not-too-miserable weather have brought others into what is normally a rather secluded area. A group of children plays with stones off to my left, down at the water’s edge, their parents chatting idly behind them, visibly relieved that for the moment their offspring don’t require active observation. Further in the distance, a clutch of tourists with enormous cameras stops and starts along the beds by the water. I’ve never understood the fascination with taking pictures of plants, but these kinds of visitors are the standard, not the exception. The kind that take photos of flowers rather than actually see them – smell them, feel the way they reflect the light into your eyes, standing before their simple, unadorned magnificence. Surely this is a far greater thing than converting them to pixels. But I suppose there’s a whole generation, now, who simply do not know how to encounter anything directly. Human experience is mediated by a small screen held up between face and reality. Only what it captures is truly real. The memories of life have become confined to a span of 2.5 x 5 in (3.5 x 6 if you’ve got the latest model). On the periphery, nothing truly exists.
There has to be something tragic in this, there just has to be. I know we’re more connected than we’ve ever been, that it’s become the norm for the anonymous ‘us’ of the world to tweet and post and link to a degree that wouldn’t have been imaginable a generation ago. And I’m not against occasionally stepping into the public library and accessing the Internet with a swipe of my ID, to visit an online story or revel in the latest news of the day. But I cannot be the only one who feels more detached there than anywhere else. When I’m sitting beneath my trees and the water ripples beneath me, I feel more connected to the world than in any other spot. Even when there’s not another dot of humanity around me. But when I ‘connect’, when wires and satellites link my data stream to that of everyone else in creation, it’s then that I feel the most lost. The most alone.
And they make you pay for the experience.
Still, today is not about being
