Wordlessly

I called her when I knew she would be out and asked for her to meet me at the coffeeshop on the corner, so that we could give each other are things back. I left a short and straightforward message and did my best to sound happy enough to be living but not so happy that she’d think I was happier than I was when I was with her. I chewed gum to sound nonchalant. I never chewed gum when we were together. I wonder if she picked up on that. I made a little joke at the end about the book of poetry we bought together, the one that we said we would read together, so that we’d have lots to talk about on the swings at the park where we spent our summer nights pretending we were young and uncynical.

She came up behind me when I was ordering myself a drink.

“So tell me a little bit about yourself,” she said, putting on a voice that oozed cheese.

“I’m Dash,” I said, trying to sound gruff, “Dash Van…” They handed me my coffee and I turned to face her. She wore a scarf in July, and I smiled too much.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t catch your last name.”

“Dash Van Awesome,” I concluded, lamely.

“That’s a terrible name.”

“The Awesome Family,” I said flippantly, pointing to a table in the corner where I had left my knapsack, “are well known all through the mid-west.”

She led the way. “For doing what?”

“For being tubular.”

She was trying not to laugh. “For being tubular?” she said, exasperated.

“You make it sound stupid!” I accused, sitting down across from her. “Why don’t you tell me YOUR name?”

“Cynthia Goldsteinberg,” she said, drumming her fingers on the table as she said it.

“Sounds Jewish,” I mumbled, sipping my coffee.

“So?” she shot back.

“You don’t see a lot of blonde Jewish people.”

She smiled a little and touched her hair. “You don’t see a lot of tubular people from the mid-west!”

I took a long satisfied sip. “Maybe YOU don’t.”

She kind of laughed, looking at her hands on the table. I waited for her to speak for far less time than I probably should have.

“How do you define yourself?” I asked her.

“Define myself?”

“Yeah, like, how do you define yourself such that other people could sum you up in a short phrase or sentence? You know what I mean?”

“It sounds complicated.”

“A little bit.”

“Like math,” she said, wrinkling her nose a little.

“Not really.”

“I hate math.”

“I know.”

“How do you define YOURSELF?” she asked me.

“I’m not a pilot.”

She was caught off guard. “What?”

“I think when people see me, they think, hey, that’s Mark, he’s not a pilot.”

“But you’re NOT a pilot!”

“Well, yeah, that’s sort of the whole point.”

She pulled the little porceline dish filled with paper packets of sugar over close to her. She rifled through the packets like they were files, searching for answers.

“I think,” I continued, cracking my knuckles, “that people expect me to be a pilot. They’re kind of surprised when they learn that I’m not.”

“People expect you to be a PILOT?”

“Some people, yes.”

“Why?” she asked, brow furrowed in a confusion that was half-real, half-act.

“I dunno. I’m pretty tall.”

She outright laughed, and I smiled.

“What?” she said, between laughing.

“Haven’t you noticed? I’m pretty tall. I tower over short people.”

“And you have to be tall to be a pilot?”

“I guess so.”

“Why?”

“To reach the gas pedal?”

“Do planes HAVE gas pedals?”

“I don’t know,” I said, finishing my coffee, “I’m not a pilot.”

She laughed again, and started to speak, but then let her voice fall away. I looked at her eyes, but she looked away. I tried to think of things to say, of conversations I had already laid out in my head, of things to tell her, of ways to keep us both there a little bit longer. But I was out of words, and out of time. We exchanged our bags and left.

We never really got to the book of poetry, after we bought it. The only one we read together was a short three stanza piece by some obscure poem named Ruttiger or Owen or something like that. It was simple and about love. All I really remember is that he rhymed ‘love’ with ‘dove’, and later ‘glove’, and we both laughed about how cheesy and bad that was. I never told her, but part of me thought it was pretty cool. You have to to really believe in love to do that. I remember thinking that this poet guy must have had something really fucking pure.