Love In a Maze

Chance Meetings

1989

Thumbing through a magazine in the lobby he sat perched in his chair. It had seemed as if he had been waiting hours for more news, anything really about his mom. They had told him to wait, stay put, she was fine. But he wasn't very good at waiting. He would give them a few more minutes and then he would slip back to see if he could find her. He looked up as a young woman approached the guest desk. A look of sheer panic on her face, but she composed herself and held her voice steady without showing it.

"Ma'am?" She whispered as if the very sound of her speaking would disrupt the quiet drone of the hospital lobby.

Her dark hair fell down her back in tight ringlets. The short skirt she wore billowed against her tanned legs. As she leaned over the counter it rose a bit exposing the supple flesh of her upper thigh.

A smile crept over his face. After all these years a woman in a short skirt still held sway. It probably always would he mused to himself. He held up the magazine we was thumbing through to hide the smile that had found it's way across his face.

"Ma'am?" She began again a little louder this time. "Has a book been turned in by any chance? A journal, light blue with a red ribbon?" She went into the description though the woman behind the desk clearly was not interested.

"The journal." He thought to himself. He remembered when he came across the poor abandoned book the week before. Picking it up from a puddle outside in the gutter, his fingers gliding over the unknown script. There had been some damage to the pages, but what it held within was astounding. It was like looking into the memories, experiences, and emotions of a woman he had never met, in his dreams possibly, but never actualized. The way she interpreted, analyzed and romanticized life took his breath away. Reading over her daily struggles and triumphs was intrusive... emotional voyeurism, but he couldn't put the journal down. Now that the woman had materialized in front of him he had wondered if she could really be all he had imagined her to be.

"No. Honey I'm sorry." The desk clerk clicked her lips and shook her head in sympathetic distance.

The young woman's shoulders rounded and she began to rustle through her bag that was recklessly thrown over her arm.

"Thanks." Handing the clerk a business card, she asked in desolation. " Can you call if maybe something turns up?"

"Yes, honey." She responded not looking up and closed the window.

He watched her as she sighed and began to walk to the front door. Her head down still rummaging through her bag.

"Miss." He called almost as an afterthought.

Hearing the voice she whipped around to see the caller. Her bag not following the trajectory of her body quite quickly enough, it fell to the floor with a thud. The contents flying out scattering like a crime scene around her. She dropped to her knees and started picking up her belongings shaking her head at her own clumsiness.

"Miss." He said again walking over to her. His oversized white tunic grazing his knuckles as he stood over the scrambling woman.

Noting the figure in front of her she looked up to him through a mass of dark curls.

"Damn." Almost escaped his lips before he could cover his smile with his fingers. Looking at her on her knees in front of him, he thought back to her journal. She had often wrote about her coiled hair and tawny skin as a negative trait, her perception of herself was clearly wrong. "Here I think this belongs to you." He smiled smoothly handing her a small book of Keats poetry. "Of course, the romantics." He thought to himself.

"Thank you so much." She took the book and his hand that he had offered to help her up. "I'm sorry, I've been outta my mind lately. I lost this journal and..." She trailed off a stranger would not be in the least interested in her story. For the first time she actually noticed the only other soul in the lobby. She felt a tinge of regret. She made a ridiculous spectacle of herself and who knows what his situation was.

"Thank you, again. I'm so sorry..." She whispered noticing the gold cross that hung around his neck. The collar of his white shirt hung wide and loose around his shoulders exposing the soft brown skin of his neck which led to a familiar jawline she couldn't quite place. His large round mirrored shades hid the eyes behind, only reflecting her own quizzical expression, the large black brimmed hat he wore casts a shadow over the rest of his face.

She nervously said sorry one last time and turned to walk out of the lobby.

"Miss." He uttered one last time and she stopped in her tracks. This time her body didn't move and he gingerly reach out for her hand from behind. "Listen you're the only Miss in here. I'm beginning to wonder if "Sir" would get your attention any better."

He spoke lowly and close enough she could feel the breath from him standing next to her.

"I think I can help you."

"What?" She snapped her body to face him, her bag slipped off her shoulder, but thankfully he was able to catch it before it fell to the ground.

"Nice." She smiled brightly astounded by his reflexes and appalled by her own. "Wait you have my journal?"

"Yep." He said so coolly she couldn't tell if he was even telling the truth.

"Yes." He tried again a little more sincere this time placing the bag's strap back over her shoulder.

"Where do you have..."

"Is this where I can reach you?" He flicked her store's business card within her view. He must have picked it up when her purse scattered. The bright electric blue letters read, Between the Lines Book Emporium.

"Yes.. but.."

"O.K. see you at 7."

"But I close at 7."

"Exactly." He said his lips curling into a slight boyish grin.

"But..."

Bringing down his shades he revealed his eyes, dark and wide, rimmed in thick black kohl. She knew him instantly, the fabled purple son of Minneapolis. What the hell was he doing here? How did he come across her journal. Her jaw dropped with her recognition and unfortunately her bag made it's way to the floor for the second time.

"You dropped something." He leaned in and gently pushed her chin back up with a finger. She couldn't tell if it was her bag or her chin he spoke of.

"So 7?" He flicked the business card between two fingers and turned with a quick movement, not waiting for a response he slipped through the doorway and down a long hallway marked Staff Only.

Watching as his slinky white figure disappeared, she stood in the middle of the lobby speechless possibly for the first time in her life.

"Was that?" She questioned to no one possibly the walls would answer her back.

"Yes, honey, but I'm not at liberty to say." The clerk said looking up from her desk.

She realized the whole encounter had been witnessed by someone else and it brought her back to earth real quick. She scrambled to grab her bag from the floor. Thanked the less than helpful live audience and rushed out the door back to her store.

"What if he called and she wasn't there? What if he didn't have her journal... what if he did." She couldn't tell which was more terrifying. "The Kid the Mother Fucking Kid... I can't believe it."

Chance Meetings:

In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive,
The shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves,
In the drowse of the sunlight, among the low voices,
I suddenly face you,

Your dark eyes return for a space from her who is with you,
They shine into mine with a sunlit desire,
They say an 'I love you, what star do you live on?'
They smile and then darken,

And silent, I answer 'You too-I have known you,-I love you!-'
And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves
Interlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlight
To divide us forever

Conrad Potter Aiken