Letter: September 10

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

We sat in the bed of a pick-up truck and opened the doors of the cabin wide open, and turned up the music so that even the moon could have heard it. We looked at the stars. It was strange to see them after the rain. You hummed Mozart along with the stereo, Symphony in G minor K. 183, in astounding depth. You and I just lying there, and talking. We talked about many things. You asked me many questions about my ordinary life in America. You asked me about Red Shirt Man. Your tone was peculiar and you fiddled with your shirt collar.

"How old is he?" you asked me.

"Twenty-one," I said.

Then you started buttoning and unbuttoning the cuff of your sleeve. I was suddenly thankful for the nighttime darkness and the isolation of the countryside, and only the stars watching us with silent, bright eyes.

"That's only seven years," you said. "Only a seven-year difference."

"Yeah," I agreed. The woodwinds were chirruping out of the pickup speakers and drowning out the crickets. "But it's not like that."

You stopped unbuttoning your cuff and let it hang open. The other one was still closed. You were making a decision in your head. I tried to talk more, to keep myself from knowing more. I was almost afraid of what you might settle on. Perhpas I like self-suspention. So impulsively I kept speaking.

"It could never be like that. He's married to his music."

Turning to me now, now with both cuffs unbuttoned and rolling up your sleeves, that twisted delicious gut-wrenching little smile suddenly visible in the pale light. Innately I knew that at this moment I was supposed to feel afraid. But I didn't. Not at all. If you were dangerous, then you did a fabulous job of fooling me otherwise. I had never felt so at home; safe and happy; lying in the bed of a pickup next to an old Shakespearean stage actor, curled up in his baggy London Fog sweater, hearing him mimic the melodies to near perfection. That's how it was for me. That's how it felt. I was set adrift.

"Only seven years," you murmured again, mostly to yourself. "That is not so terrible. Are you afraid of it?"

"No. I don't want it. So there is nothing to fear."

"You don't want... him?"

"No. If I did, seven years would be nothing. Absolutely nothing com -- "

I halted before what I was about to say.

"Compared to..?" Your eyes closed and you didn't finish, knowing you didn't have to. I think you were trying not to smile. In the speakers, the movement ended. The crickets took over for that short, fleeting pocket of natural emptiness, and slowly, exaggerated, so that you could see me doing it, I rolled up the sleeves of your London Fog sweater.