High-Speed Connection

Yesterday, I stopped at Big Lots, a discount goods store, and bought a canvas wall art kit for $5 (included 8”x8” deep edge canvas, six 12ml acrylic paint tubes, Taklon brush plus paint color mixing guide). Last night, I used the acrylic paints, mixing a few colors together and created an abstract design on the canvas. Later today, I’ll use some seed packets I bought at Wal-Mart to decoupage a tribute to home gardening, including portions of a newspaper article about the growing trend of local farming cooperatives where people “rent” land/resources in order to grow their own organic food or pay someone else to do the farming for them. Kind of like a franchise on farmers markets. Get close to nature without getting your hands dirty.

Speaking of getting close, I hadn’t finished telling you about the train ride.

While I write this, my Internet connection (or rather, the wireless radio chipset in my laptop computer) doesn’t have enough power to stay tuned to the local 802.11g two-way radio station so I can’t see what I last wrote, which means I don’t know exactly where I left off in my retelling.

After Sommer and I finished our meal, we talked for a while. I asked Sommer for a special favor, knowing that I was stepping out of my comfort zone but willing to take the chance.

Sommer leaned closer.

“Would you be willing to pretend, for the next two hours, that we are alone together?”

Sommer raised her eyebrows, deepening the tiny creases of the future wrinkles on her forehead, without changing the expression on her face.

“What I mean is … let’s put the past behind us.”

Sommer smiled. “I don’t understand. We have no past together.”

“You’re right.” I smiled back. “But what if we had no worries for a couple of hours?”

“I am not worried. Are you?”

“About our meeting with the customer, yes. But not about this moment.”

“No worries, Rick.” Sommer looked out the window.

I glanced at the trees whizzing by. While Sommer continued to focus on the landscape, I looked at her right ear and the blemish-free area of her neck behind and below her ear. An empty palette. I wanted to paint a masterpiece on that neck.

Sommer looked back at me. “With you, I don’t worry.”

Why do people tell me I make them feel comfortable when I worry all the time, uncomfortable in the presence of any human, not sure who or what I am from moment to moment?

She reached a hand across the table and placed it on top of my hands, which were clasped together. “Are you worried?”

I took a mental inventory of my body, feeling the quickened pulse at my temples, the constricted blood vessels in my neck and the tightened shoulder muscles. Tense, tense, tense. But Sommer didn’t see that. Very few people did. They only saw my smile.

I unclasped my hands and placed a hand on Sommer’s. “Why should I be worried?”

Sommer nodded, squeezed my hand and let go. “I feel tired. If you want another beer, we can stay. Otherwise, let’s return to our seats.”

I tilted the glass back and swallowed down the last of the beer. The server took the glass away and brought it back in a bag for me. I gave him some money, generous with a tip.

Sommer made me walk in front of her on the way back to our seats. Having completed a marathon the previous year, my body was in good shape so I only hoped that something about my body appealed to Sommer the way hers did to me. I don’t know what she thought.

We sat down and both checked our cell phones for email messages, spending 5 or 10 minutes responding to “emergencies,” urgent requests for information about dire circumstances if customers weren’t updated on sales figures and technical support issues. In other words, the usual.

Sommer is shorter than I am, especially in torso height (length from hip to head). After we put away our phones, Sommer looked up at me.

“We have some time before we arrive in Augsburg. I am tired. Do you have any questions?”

Questions? I looked from Sommer to the nearby passengers. Many of them sat half-asleep, their heads bouncing up and down like daffodils in the wind. A few worked on laptop computers and some read newspapers, books or magazines. None of them seemed to pay any attention to me.

“Who are you?” I said out loud.

“Hmm?” Sommer placed a hand on my knee. “What?”

“Did I just say that?”

“What did you say?”

“’Who are you?’”

“Oh.” Sommer moved her hand to my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should get some sleep.”

“But…”

Sommer massaged my shoulder for a few seconds. “You are worried, aren’t you?”

I relaxed.

Sommer laid her head on my shoulder. “Here, we can both get some sleep. We will feel much better after a nap.”

I lifted my arm and Sommer’s head slid into my armpit. She snuggled up against me and placed a hand on my chest. I wrapped my arm around her and held her close to me. We fell asleep immediately.

I had a dream. In the dream, I smelled shampoo and body wash. I detected a slight scent of body odor, as if someone had been lightly exercising. I smelled old leather boots and airplane sanitizer. I kissed the top of my loved one’s head and pulled my arm tight up under her chest. She rubbed her nose on my neck. I had a flashback and remembered a similar scene from a camping trip with another woman. Then, like wheels spinning on a railroad track, scene after scene of similar events spun on a wheel in my thoughts. I felt like I was tripping. Either that, or I’d reached nirvana, where ecstasy is the eternal moment when the most pleasurable memories fill your thoughts for the rest of your days.

I breathed in deeply and smelled packaged snack chips. I heard the crinkling of plastic or celluloid wrapping and woke up. My mouth and nose were buried in someone’s hair. My arm was asleep, bent and crooked, wrapped around the body that belonged to the hair in my face. Where was I? Why was there an older woman and her husband eating a snack and smiling at me across the aisle of this train?

Train? Oh yeah. The smells in my dream. It was the scent of Sommer in Germany that I was just getting used to. I looked at my watch and made Sommer stir. I had been asleep for 30 to 45 minutes. Still another hour until we reached Augsburg.

Sommer patted me on the chest and lifted her head. “Do you feel better?”

I nodded.

“No more worries?”

I shook my head.

Sommer lifted against my arm and I did my best to unhook my dead limb and bring it back to life. Sommer sat up. She stretched her arms out.

I looked at her disheveled hair and ran my fingers through the back of it to straighten out the kinks at her collar.

Sommer turned to me and smiled. “Danke.”

“Bitte.”

She picked up her purse and excused herself to go to the public toilet.

I opened my laptop and jotted down a few quick notes, wanting to remember and savor this moment later on, finding the right time to share it with someone like you, who understands someone like me and what makes both of us tick. And I still have one more hour to tell you about. Another time, perhaps? I want to finish my new masterpiece first.