Chapter 7

She saw me

To read all seven chapters completed thus far together in one place, go to my writing web site, keithkindred.com. We have almost 16, 000 words and I’d estimate are about half way through the story. Thanks, as always, for following along :-)

Chapter 7

We woke up in the morning, made love again, and then she went into the kitchen to make coffee. It was another sun filled summer morning and I laid in the bed, half awake, in that slumbery haze unique to partners early in their courtship.  The novelty of our love obscured early signs of trouble, like when she made derogatory comments about labor unions being just as useless and exploitative as corporations during one of our many conversations about injustice in the world.

I was from a strong union household and my father promoted unions from the time I was a young child.  Later, as a student in college, I learned about the crucial role unions played in working for social reform, not just raises and better working conditions.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis the day he got assassinated, I had told Nica, supporting a strike by sanitation workers.  If he recognized the significant role unions played in uplifting the disadvantaged, that told you something.  Economic justice is social justice, I added, like it was my own original thought.

She doubled down on her position with what I perceived as an insufficient amount of time to truly consider the merits of my own and, just for a moment, I questioned whether we possessed a complimentary worldview.  Then again …she was pretty and she made me feel alive.  Maybe best to just sweep those concerns away and hope for the best.  If only I could go back in time and whisper in my own ear to more fully heed that unquiet stirring. She came into the room with two mugs of coffee and set them on the end table next to her side of the bed, and I sat up straight and pulled the covers around my legs and waist.

“What do you have going on today?” she asked.

By this point in our relationship, I had quit my job at the shoe store and was driving a forklift at a building supply warehouse.  Nica still had her same job but talked about quitting on a daily basis.  She told me about a lot of help wanted signs she saw or classified ads, but she never seemed to follow up on them.

“I have to work at three,” I said.  “But no plans before that.”

She slurped a sip of coffee but was looking out the window now that she had raised all the blinds.  The bright rays of the sun obscured her expression.

“I don’t work today,” she said.  “I should do something productive, but I probably won’t.  Maybe do some yoga, maybe some journaling.”

Her last idea gave me one.

“Hey,” I said.  “How about we do something creative?  If we get up soon and get dressed we should have plenty of time before I have to go to work.”

She turned in my direction, which moved her head enough to obscure the sunlight so that I could see her face clearly now.  Her smirk made me melty.

“Okay,” she said.  “You have my attention.”

*******

We were in her car once more and I was, again, the driver.  Nica had a spiral notebook on her lap and a pen with purple ink in her right hand.  While she looked out the passenger side window she kept tapping the head of the pen on the notebook, making a spasm of purple dots all over the lined, white page on top.

“So what do we actually write down?” she asked.

“Anything you want,” I said.  “Anything that catches your attention.  A building, people, litter on the streets.  But don’t prejudge, or whatever.”

She angled her head to the side and pursed her thin lips.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

I chuckled at my own confusing directions.  I had suggested to Nica that we drive Michigan Road from Carmel in the north all the way downtown, writing down notes about images that captured our attention, for any reason at all. Carmel would later develop into one of the wealthier and boujee suburbs of Indianapolis, but in the 1980s it had a blue collar vibe, replete with hippies and artists and the like. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not explaining it well.”

I turned my head to the right, taking my eyes off the road long enough to notice her sweet smile. 

“Clear your mind of any expectations or desire to construct a theme or that you are looking for something in particular,” I said. “Just observe and see what strikes you as noteworthy or attention getting.”

She turned her head in my direction but looked at my hands on the steering wheel.

“Have you done this with other girls?” she asked.

“No,” I said, laughing.  “But I’ve done it in my head a million times. Then I use the images that stick with me in my poetry, or I just think about why something stands out to me, try to appreciate the beauty of everyday things instead of just passing them by.”

“That’s nice,” she said, stroking my forearm.

Nica turned her head back the other way and was staring out the passenger side window, as if practicing for when we got started.

“So what is it for?” she asked.  

“What?” I said.

“The list we compile,” she said. “Our observations …our notes or whatever you want to call them.  Is it just for its own sake, because I can’t write poetry.?”

I saw a funky looking atrium to an newer looking warehouse type building that said “Everton Plumbing Supplies” on the side of it in large, block letters.  I activated the blinkers and quickly turned into the parking lot, jolting the car enough to provoke a look of alarm on her face. I pulled over to the side so as to be out of the way of any cars that might come along.

“You see that atrium?” I said pointing at it.  “Its overall shape is kind of dome-like and it’s made of glass panels.  It almost seems out of place, kind of this old fashioned entrance to a modern looking, utilitarian warehouse full of plumbing parts.”

“Okay,” she said, waiting for me to explain why that mattered.

“There’s a story in that,” I said.  “Or maybe there isn’t.  But it’s unusual, wouldn’t you agree?”

Her expression suggested she still didn’t get my point.

“Who made that decision?” I asked. “And why did the owner or whoever paid for building it sign off on it?  Is it an intentional homage to the company’s first warehouse or something like that?”

I was on a roll now.

“Maybe, for example, the plumbing supply business started downtown in the early 1900s but they had success and needed a bigger place and so they relocated out here in the 1960s and had this building built. Except the son wanted to honor his now dead father and founder of the company by having the entrance look similar to the original building downtown.”

“Or maybe it was the 1970s and the architect was high,” said Nica.  “Maybe they were all high and said, shit man, it looks sooo coool!” 

We both laughed, me silently as was my custom, and her melodious chuckle, like a young school girl.  God, I loved her laugh. It was the kind of laugh that made other people smile.

“Okay,” she said.  “I think I get it now.  This is fun,” she added, stroking my arm again.  

“I wish I could claim credit for this being entirely my idea,” I said, “but it’s really just a variation of something my mother would do with me when I was a kid.”

“Like what?” she said.

“In the summer months, I would beg her to take me to the ice cream shop.” I said.  “She would usually relent and often we would sit in the car, me with my mint chocolate chip on a sugar cone and her with her butter pecan in a cup, and we would play a game she called ‘Who Am I?’ where we would pick a person or a couple and describe everything about them.  Married or single, job, did they have kids, how many, stuff like that.”

“How old were you when you did this?” she asked.

“Pretty young,” I said.  “Maybe nine or ten years old.  But the funniest ones were their hobbies!  My mom was so good at that one.  She’d come up with the funniest shit, like a big burly dude who collected garden gnomes.”

Nica looked at me like that wasn’t so funny.

“It was the way she would say it,” I said.  “She’d make up voices for them, act it out.”

She nodded her head and stroked my arm again.

“It’s one of those things where you had to be there, I guess,” I added.  “Anyway, we all have those childhood memories that stay with us,” I said, instantly regretting the words as soon as I remembered Nica’s childhood situation.

“Yeah,” she said. “I get it.”

I tried to give her a look that said I’m sorry without actually saying it.  The scars from her childhood clearly impacted our relationship, but she didn’t like to talk about her experiences either directly or explicitly.  It felt to me like she was burying trauma instead of processing it, but I didn’t see it as my place to tell her that. Looking back now, I wish I had.

“Let’s try one together first,” I said in order to move things along.  “Then once we have the hang of it, you can write down whatever you want and I’ll tell you what to write down for me when I can see you’re not writing something down for yourself.”

“Sounds good, baby,” she said.  “Not just buildings, right? It can be people like with your mom, or lawn ornaments, litter, junk cars …anything?”

“Exactly,” I said.

We drove for a few blocks in silence and a bit of awkwardness until she sprang up in her seat and shouted, “There!” she said, pointing. “Look at that building! The one in psychedelic colors!  Pull over so we can really look at it, would you. baby?” 

I looked in the rearview mirror, pulled over, and parked on the other side of the street about half a block down. It was a one story building all by itself on a huge lot, at least two blocks from any other buildings.  As Nica said, it was painted like the Partridge Family bus or something, a swirl of rainbow colors on every wall, nook and cranny.  Only the roof and the glass door and windows were exempt from the hippy dippy color scheme.  And painted in gold, cursive writing on the glass of the storefront were the words, “Uncle Willie’s Smoke Shop and Other Curious Items.” 

“Should we make up the story of the building now?” she asked.

“That’s not usually how I do it in my mind,” I said.  “First, I don’t usually write it down because I’m driving or walking, or whatever.  I usually just remember it later and then think up the stories.  Like I said, sometimes I might use something for a poem or something, but most of the time it’s just a game I play in my head.”

She nodded and smiled.

“But we can do it now,” I said, laughing. “It’s not like there’s rules. I’ve never done it with someone else besides that thing I told you about with my mom.”

Nica looked at me sweetly once more and then looked down at the notepad and began to write intently but in controlled strokes.

“Just a minute, baby,” she said.  “I got an idea about the building and I don’t want to lose it.”

I was going to ask her what it was but knew that would disrupt her focus, so I watched her face instead and waited patiently.  She was muttering and laughing under her breath as she wrote and I could tell she was enjoying herself. That made me feel good inside, but I didn’t understand why until later, after everything blew up and I started replaying our whole relationship in my mind: In that moment, she got me, or that creative part of me, at least.  She saw me.

I felt like she saw me.

We continued all the way down Michigan Road until we got downtown, but I can’t remember any other buildings or people we put in the notebook, though I know there were lots of them. I remember laughter and that our conversation would go off on these tangents and then circle back to our observations. I also remember that we stopped at a diner and had a late breakfast and then rushed back to her place so I could get to work on time. 

It’s funny, though, I can’t remember anything from the rest of the day after work or the next few days.  But that part of the day is as clear to me now 30 years later as when it happened.