“You’re pretty Aryan,” she said. A slight, perhaps, but, in any case, he agreed. He mentioned a hint of Native American in his bloodline and the fact that he couldn’t grow facial hair. “I can’t grow facial hair,” he said, “not in any real way.”

Nope. Neither remembered the other. It had been a long train ride, but years had passed since. Even without the years, there probably hadn’t been much between them. A hand on a knee, maybe, a joke that led to more than expected. She’d clearly expected somebody else. He’d only expected somebody who’d expected him.

The meal was quiet, full of pulled teeth and yawning sails.

She said she didn’t know whose face his face reminded her of, said it just like that. “But,” she said, “it reminds me of someone’s face.”

He didn’t respond. He just pulled out his journal and wrote it down, wrote it just like this. And then the music started, a jukebox, maybe, and they set aside their forks and pens and danced, and the scene resolved into a grainy, black and white image—four-hundred-eighty lines of resolution. When he whispered, his words were the right kind of charming. When she laughed, her smile was the right kind of lovely. The times, for a time, were the right kind of high for hats and pocket squares, for stockings and pearl earrings.

It couldn’t stay that way, not with the speed of things absent music, the ugliness of faces absent beautifying rooms. They figured as much as they walked to the parking lot, her arm in his like things had always made that sort of sense. At her car, they kissed. He didn’t ask her to see him again. He only closed the door for her. He only stood in the yellow light and watched his reflection warp in the glass as she pulled away.

He counted the things in his pockets as he found his car. “Seven,” he said aloud. He hadn’t included his keys. He didn’t wonder if they should be counted as a single whole or as individuals; seven was good enough. The car started. He drove.

Timestamp: 01.31.08 at 09:43 AM. Filed under: Fiction.