moment. I don’t know why his gaze is unsettling, but it is. He nods. “It means suffering. It is grasping for things that cannot be obtained. You got it up the kazoo. You will not be healed until you come to terms with it.” He looks at me again for probably no more than three or four seconds, but it seems longer.
He stands, gulps his tea and drops his cup in a trash can behind the bench. “As Hannibal Lecter says, ‘I do wish we could chat longer, but I am having an old friend for dinner.’” He makes with that giggle again. “I like that one. Get it? ‘Old friend for dinner?’ Anyway, I will be here tomorrow around noon.” He nods at me, turns and heads out across the grass. “And,” he says over his shoulder without stopping. “I am happily heterosexual. So do not get your hopes up.”
“What! How did…”
He turns his head back toward the direction he’s walking and giggles again. He lifts his hand and waves without looking back again.
I watch him walk toward the far parking lot. What the hell was all that about? I touch my tender forehead and then lightly rub my index finger on the back of my head. Man it hurts. My hip, too. I’ve been kicked harder there but that fact doesn’t make it feel any better.
Peering through an opening in the park’s trees, all looks normal over at the Coffee Bump, as if my assault never happened. There is no line of customers waiting outside and there are only a scattering of people sitting at the now orderly outside tables. What happened to Tuba Man? Did anyone call the police? How did Converse Man get me over here to this bench? I must out-weigh him by forty pounds. I look toward the parking lot.
The strange man looks back toward me for a moment, waves with both hands, and climbs into a blue Toyota.
*
“You rang the doorbell?”
“Can I come in?” Tiff asks.
“Of course,” I say flatly, pushing the door open wider and stepping aside. “You have to ask?” I’m surprised to see her so soon after last night. With all that’s been going on this morning, I’d shoved our relationship, the end of it, into a Tiff compartment and planned to think about it when my head wasn’t throbbing.
“My God, what happened to your head?”
I move over to the couch and sit down carefully, holding my sore chest. “Bumped it. You look like hell.”
“Thank you. Right back at you.”
“It was a rough morning. My celebrity caught up with me up at the Coffee Bump. Took a cross to the forehead.”
“You?”
I shrug a what-are-you-going-to-do.
“Couldn’t sleep a wink last night,” she says, folding her arms as if she doesn’t know what else to do with them. She looks down at the carpet. It’s new. Beige. Plush. She helped pick it out.
“I’m sorry—”
“Just let me say this, Sam,” she interrupts, lifting her chin to look at me. She takes a deep breath for courage. “I loved you. Love, I mean. I think, anyway.” But I don’t love who you are. And I certainly don’t love what you do.” She looks away for a moment and drops her hands into her jean pockets, Calvin Klines. I was with her when she bought them. Tight. Look great on her.
I don’t want to do this right now. Last night was painful but quick, like chopping off a dog’s tail. Now she wants to talk about it. Why do women always want to talk about it?
She removes her hands and grips her trembling right one with her trembling left. “Our politics are different. We’ve talked about it a lot. Joked about it. You see the world as a violent place, or at least that’s the part you choose to live in. I abhor that. The very thought of it makes me ill.”
Okay, I’m not going to let her make me feel bad about my life. “Look, Tiff, you don’t like who I am or what I do, but who I am is who I am. And what I do is what I do, and it’s also who I damn well am. Okay, that sounds dumb, I know.”
“It makes a lot of sense, Sam,” she says, shaking her head. “And it’s that very thing that is the problem. It’s the ugliness of what you do.”
“Life would be a lot uglier if men and women like me weren’t out there trying to keep a lid on it. I don’t think you get that or maybe you simply choose not to accept it.”
“Then you should have let other men and women do it, Sam. Not you.” She shakes her head and sits down on the edge of the recliner’s cushion, as if sitting any farther back would make it hard for her to get away quickly. “I’m sorry. That’s not right for me to say that. It’s selfish and I don’t want to be that way. It’s just that sometimes I think we could have made it work. But then logic enters and it’s so perfectly obvious that there was never a way.”
Reminds me of something I read on one of those funny cards you give to people. It said: I love you, you’re perfect. Now change.
Tiff stands quickly, moves over to the window and lifts one of the mini blinds, then releases it without looking out. She looks down at her feet.
I take a long, deep calming breath. We’re two different people, plain and simple, both of us rigid in our beliefs. Tiff ’s right on some points and, I’m convinced, wrong on others. I suppose I am, too. I look at her as she toes the carpet. Maybe she’s thinking the same thing. A minute passes, the only sound a far off jet.
“A child! Sam… I just… can’t. I can’t.” She turns quickly and in two strides she’s turning the doorknob.
“Thanks, Tiff!” I say to her sarcastically to her back. “Thanks a whole hell of a lot.” She opens the door three or four inches and then stops. She doesn’t turn around but just stands there, holding the doorknob. I shake my head and look away. “I need to think about all this. I need to put the shooting, the shootings, into some kind of perspective.”
She turns part way around but doesn’t look at me. “I don’t see how you can.”
“Damn-it, Tiff!” I blurt. “Are you so rigid in your… Damn!” I’m squeezing the arm of the sofa so hard that I’m about to rip the leather off. “You have no idea how awful—You don’t even want to know how awful. You live in a la la land. A nice, tidy, and violence-free la la land. Well, life isn’t that way, goddamn-it.”
A few seconds pass and I forget that she’s in the room. “My head wants to explode right now,” I say, or maybe I just think it. “Last night I… My mind…” I shake my head again.
She moves and I snap my head up, startled. She’s turned part way toward me but she’s still looking at the floor. “I…” It’s her turn to shake her head, then she turns away and opens the door far enough for her to pass through it. “I did love you.” She leaves without looking back.
I don’t get up from the sofa; I just stare at the closed door for a while. “Well, that sucked,” I say aloud. At least today’s ending was more civil than last night’s. Still, I could do without having to talk about it anymore. I’m not cold hearted; I just don’t see the point. We both know we’re over. Let’s don’t rub salt in our wounds.
I scoot down into the sofa more comfortably,
