Along Came A Memory

by Jeff M

When the storm arrived, I turned off the television and pulled the chair close to the window. When the hard rain starts, it falls straight before it slants against the window for a brief moment, filling up all the small squares of the screen mesh; and when the rain stops, I watch the water inside those small squares pop, one after the other, liking very much that I noticed that, waiting for a pair of arms to come from behind and wrap themselves around me.

I spent the day alone. When I woke that morning I thought, I will go to the water park and float around in a circle on a large cheerio-raft and feel the hot sun on my skin and the cool water around my legs. And I did. I went. I sat in a pool chair and waited until I was hot enough so that the water would not feel so cold, and when I got in it was warm. It smelled of chlorine and sun tan lotion. I floated and I looked up at the sky and at the pretty lifeguards pacing back and forth along the cement wall like lions, their tanned legs, their dark manes of hair, their arms holding the life preserver. I think one of the pretty girls waved at me, but I'm not sure. Probably she did; probably she didn't.

I didn't stay long. Once I floated around a few times, I decided to leave. I had read the introduction to Fernando Pessoa's collection of poems there by the pool and decided that I was ready to get out of the sun and go home and eat some lunch and decide the next thing to do.

When I got home, I heat up a bowl of brown rice and stew meat. I ate that in my chair near the window and lay on the floor in front of my futon and fell asleep. I woke up a half hour later and decided that I wanted to find an abandoned factory near Kansas City and look at it, maybe take a picture or two. I don't know why I wanted to look at an abandoned factory; I've stopped asking why I come up with these thoughts.

I drove west along Truman Avenue, past Harry's house, to the unincorporated section of the metro area where all the homeless panhandle. Then I head due north on 435 and took the Front Street exit, approximately 15 miles south of the airport and 10 miles south of Worlds of Fun. I head west again, driving near the industrial park, then the Kansas City Southern Railroad home office and the Power and Light District, twisting south at one point and entering the city market area where everyone was dismantling tents and packing up cars and vans. I was detoured and I eventually found my way again due west, passing a bike path that ran beneath a steel bridge. I drove a little while longer and decided to turn around and I went back to the bike path and I parked my car and I walked the length under the bridge and took some pictures and it was a humid afternoon suddenly and the pictures felt like they would be good --- especially the iron and steel sculpture of what appeared to be a human being lifting a dragon baby into the sky.

I got in the car and drove due east and found the warehouse district. There was no one around. Phantom signs and old bricks. A VW bug with a smashed windshield and two flat tires. I wanted to get out and walk but I was afraid to because I was thinking about the car that passed me on the way here, the one with the little fellow driving and the good looking girl in the passenger seat with her bare feet propped on the dash, her hair whipping around her head. She looked happy and I think he did, too. That whole thing, what I saw there in the car passing me, happened to me once a long time ago.

I drove around in circles, much the same way I floated around in circles. It was a day of circles, I guess. I stopped at a gas station and got some gas and I saw another pretty girl with blonde hair and I intentionally held the door for her and she said thank you and maybe I said you're welcome but maybe I didn't. I walked around the store, made an oval, looking for something to catch my eye and instead of finding something I just paid for $23 in gas and pumped it and for the first time in my life I had found a gas station with a windshield scrubber with a long handle so I didn't have to go around on the other side. That pretty girl --- she was from Kansas.

When I got home, I sat down and looked out the window. The storm was approaching from the west. I poured myself a drink and it didn't go in circles; it went down straight. And the rain came down straight, too.