Fingerspelling

On the bus, and three people get on together -- a man and two women. They sit near each other, but not beside each other, which is strange; watching them through the window, before they boarded, they seemed so obviously together, parts of a whole. Watching them, sitting across aisles apart, it suddenly becomes clear as one of the women begins to flex and shift her fingers in crisp deliberate staccato, hands hovering in the air close to her chest, her face. Fingers painting invisible worlds, fleeting. The other woman glides her fingers through the perhaps now-liquid air, low noises deep in her throat punctuating certain thoughts, gestures. The man, a row farther back, able to see both of them, mostly just observes and remains silent, still.

You call me as you always call me -- not drunk, perhaps, but certainly un-sober -- halfway-maudlin. (And you told me, recently, that I was your last link to reality, and it made me laugh sadly, gently. Because I know what you meant, really -- whether or not you even know it -- and it's that I am the last link you have to the reality you'll never live as real. Somewhere there is a universe of maybe-almost-could-have-been, and in it you're a dentist, or no longer living, or living a silent and monastic life, or something else entirely. And our beginning was not a kind of ending, and the impossible exists without that all-intrusive im.) You said that I'm the only person who has ever said anything truly horrible to you (and rush to add that you deserved it); maybe I'm the only person who has ever said anything truly honest to you. And you pause, and think, and say, You have always been better to me than anyone.

It is a small pleasure, to eavesdrop when there's no hope of comprehension. A scene that is all image, all raw impressions, nothing more. The woman nearest me, on my side of the bus, does most of the communicating; her hands are magical, fingers like needles stitching sentences together in the air, her face elastic. I could watch her talk silently for hours; I would, if it was possible. (But I get off the bus before them, and they are gone.)

What we are doing here, now, after all this time -- all of these words. This is nothing, or not much more than that. If I could see you, now, I would stay silent (leave all the words unspoken, talk with just my hands and fingers).