He sat crouched in the room by himself for a long time after she left. He could still taste her lips on his lips and feel the warmth of her body against his, but they were a reproach now. He stared at the three wilted blossoms on the desk where she'd sat. He still had a piece of her dress in his hand.
There was only regret left over. And disgust at himself. He didn't want to move for fear of opening more cracks and letting all that in, and worse. He wished he could bathe in the touch and smell of her rather than in his failure, but the failure overwhelmed him. He'd destroyed all hope of her. He'd hurt her and upset her. How could he have done that to her?
She remembered me.
That was his worst weakness, his most toxic drug. He was so eager for her to remember, he would tell himself anything. He would do anything, believe anything, imagine anything.
She did. She knew.
In a daze he left the school long after everyone had gone. There were a few security guards left over, cleaning up the mess. Nobody bothered with him. His failures were private and invisible.
But not to her.
He'd pushed her. He's scared her. He'd besieged her. He'd vowed he wouldn't, and he did. He's kept himself together so scrupulously for so long, but when he came apart he did it with the force of centuries, he hated himself and every intention and desire he'd ever had. He hated everything he'd ever planned or wanted.
I love her. I need her. I have everything I had for her. I just wanted her to know me.
He walked until he was away from the sights and sounds. He found a clearing past the soccer field and lay down in the damp grass. He couldn't go any farther. There was no place to go, no one to see, nothing to want or hope for. He had built up his vision so patiently for so many years and wrecked it in a matter of moments.
She is my doing and my undoing.
She always had been. And what a price she had paid for it, too. He couldn't stay there. He still saw the red of the police lights beating against the heavy June sky. He got up, and his back was wet with the ground. He walked down the hill away from the school towards a two-lane road.
I've lost her again. Nobody remembers but me.
He walked along the river, and it felt good to be close to something older than he was. This river had a long memory but, unlike him, wisely kept it to itself. He thought of the Appomattox campaign, the Battle of High Bridge. How much blood had soaked into this river? And yet the river flowed. It cleansed itself and forgot. How could you cleanse yourself if you couldn't forget?
What would it be like if you didn't come back?
He sat at the edge of the river, minding the cold, muddy soak of inclinations. No matter how long you lived. Like the death bound convict glancing at the clock. You could never quite fit the small rotations to the big ones, could you?
He pulled mud covered rocks from the riverbank, small enough to fit in his pockets. Bigger ones he threw blindly into the riverbed, listening for the hollow crack of stone hitting stone of the merciful slap of soft water. He pushed rocks and mud into the pockets of his good pants, just daring his dumb autonomic brain to resist him. He stuffed a jagged few rocks into his breast pocket, a little abashed at his own stagecraft in a moment like this. There was no moment so momentous that it strangled all the little notions.
Except when you kissed her.
Decision like this were more dignified in the future or the past, or when they occurred in the lives of other people. The petty workings of your birdlike mind brought you down, and forgetting was your only salvation. It was his curse to remember lifetimes of those moments.
Appropriately burdened, he trudged to the road and followed it onto the bridge. The dark air moved cooler and faster over the water. Headlights of a car appeared and grew on the other side of the river but passed without crossing. He got to the highest point, climbed into the guardrail and sat on it, facing the river, dangling his legs over the water, feeling strangely young. He observed the rocks cutting into his skin as though they hurt someone else.
He climbed up to standing, balancing the guardrail under his stiff-soled shoes. He waves his arms to keep from slipping. Why did it seem important to jump and not to fall, when it came to the same thing? The heavy moisture in the air made his face feel wet. Another car passed.
Of all the millions of possible things he could take with him, he had a piece of her soft purple dress balled up in his hand and the sour taste of bourbon in the back of his throat. In his mind he held the look of fear on her face as she tried to get away from him and he wouldn't let go, ruining centuries of carefully nurtured hope, knowing he was ruining it, and still not being able to stop himself from ruining it.
That was enough to make him hold his balance and jump.
