Valerie

Valerie returned to town. When he first saw her, Lance thought of the black birds of his youth. Sparrows formed the letter V as they migrated to the south. During various stages of his life, Lance believed the V stood for different words: Va-voom, vitalis, velvet, velocity and, one autumn when trees seemed to have run out of beautiful leaves, Valerie.

One phenomenon Lance marveled about several times a year in the spring, when black birds appeared to brighten the sky, was that the V formation never returned. It was as if the new birds formed from the opening mouths of tulips, or flew from frothy wings of the crocaus. The sparrows never returned. Lance wondered over the mystery for a number of years. He cried over the enigma only when the V stood for Valerie.

The sparrows never returned. Now, suddenly, here was Valerie. She was mature in notes beyond the music of her twenty-one years. But scored in the clefs of the dimples which appeared when she smiled was the motif of the eternal child. Not the brawling brat or the obnoxious urchin, but simply joy in life.

Whoever stood with Valerie felt the wonder of the moon, the patience of triumph, a private perfect perfume prone to neglect worry. Lance was deep into harried concern, pressured absence of life. There is no sunshine in the mall. There is only the tedium of minutes. There are no smiles in retail. There is only the humorless grin of greeting and recognition of a customers' presence. The consumer would have just stepped in from the heat of day, the laughter of leisure time.

Depression drove them indoors to purchase new tennis shoes. Lance was unpacking the latest shipment of Nikes, trying to ignore the dampness under his arms, wiping sweat from his brow, feeling a dull, crawling pain in his back when he noticed Valerie standing patiently, silently, radiantly, beautifully next to him.

His hands suddenly empty, he held his arms open and took the half-step into her hug. Instinctively, he wrapped his tight arms across her back and waist. His fingers moved with a life of memory all their own.
"Valerie," he heard himself moan, a little too deeply, a little too self-pitiable.

"The same," she said, stepping back so she could look at her, cupping his fingers on her own as his arms fell from her.

She was beautiful. Lance hoped he could come up with a different description which did not sound so trite. Nevertheless, the word he had uttered was exact.

"Beautiful."

She dropped her head bashfully. Her hair, longer than when she left, slipped over her shoulders. Waves had given away to curls; the auburn fire had melted into fiery golden patterns. Her cheek was as tight as his squinting eyes, but he wanted to inspect the most subtle changes. Except for the hair, she seemed the same. He kissed her cheek, felt the cool, velvety softness on his lips, and immediately felt foolish. Perhaps she did not want him to kiss her. Eighteen months was a long time.

"Velour," he said, "Your skin tastes just like velour." He heard his own voice as a husky whisper.

"Oh, God, Lance. I've missed you." Then she stepped into his arms again, her tender lips warming his own.

"When do you get a break?" she asked.

"Right now," he said, removing his name badge.

He put his arm around her waist, an odd sensation indicating his every nerve ending. He raised his arm to her shoulders, and then let it drop from her. He was not sure where he was welcomed. She turned, nudged him in the ribs, and pulled his arm back around her waist. He felt the curve of her hip. He had not touched another, had not cared to touch another, since she left. He missed her. He wanted to tell her, but feared seeming foolish as much as he detested being trite. He wanted to say he loved her, mentally trembled over the word 'still,' but did not know what she expected him to feel or what she wanted him to reveal. What was to remain hidden, secret, and silent like the longing of the months? Perhaps loving thoughts ought to remain just that: thoughts which are no longer attached to the manifestation of phrases. Thoughts, his too constant companion these days. Perhaps his emotions ought to be confined to whatever seeped out in the shape of his eyes, the imploring or devotional patterns he felt himself weaving on his brow. If she did not want to notice his sincerity, or desire, she could look away. He would limit himself to the closeness his body language conveyed. He wanted to tell her his tears had cemented October 1989 with April 1991, that only his nose smelled a distance. But he would let himself talk naturally, without words. If she did not care for his appropriation, she could move, sit back, or walk away. He would take the chance. He would be natural, which for him meant reserved, cautious, taciturn, waiting for one, a special one, to pierce the noise of his exterior and awaken the secrecy of his soul. As Valerie had done, once.

He was subtly monitoring his experience of himself with her, paying so little attention to what he was in fact saying, that laughter belonged to their walk to the restaurant, and humor wrapped itself over a meal begun and completed without time or concern for its passing.

"I only laugh when I am with you. I'm nervous right now."

"Those two thoughts contradict, don't they? Laugh, like being happy and carefree, but nervous, like being tense and concerned."

Valerie shrugged her eyes large oval electric blue marbles. "That's me," she said.

They laughed. They talked. They talked and laughed until their jaws felt pain.

"I'm having such a good time, I hurt," she said.

"Ahhh, Ms. Contradiction."

She shrugged again, and they laughed.

"So, how long are you in town?"

Lance could not tell whether she said 'a week' or 'forever.' Her face suggested neither answer. He knew she said one or the other, but could not tell whether wishful thinking had taken over, or whether she really was moving back to Chicago. To him. Him? He would have liked to have known what she said, but she spoke softly, and had immediately allowed her face to skip over both profundity and trepidation. There was a flicker of either, or both, reactions. She blushed, the features of her face resembling wonderful-again Chi town, adoration, features resembling his own.

Time traveled, but was not noticed. Lance did not blink until he began to imagine sparks forming and dancing between their eyes. He smiled more broadly. Her answer was to react in kind, and to place her hand on his cheek.

An ancient song, by the Grass Roots, drifted through his head. Here's where you belong; baby, here's where you belong.

"I've missed you," she said.

A liquid heat, the resistance of tears, surrounded his eyes. He looked away. No emotion. Don't show her how you feel. Perhaps she does not want depth. What if the deepness, which is the human being beyond the superficiality of language, drives her away again? Don't risk it. Surface. Surface. He looked back to her cherub beautiful face and felt he could breath again. Then he realized he had said,

"God, Valerie, I have missed you, too."

Looking in her eyes, he said more confidently, "I've missed you, so much," and cupped her hand on the table.

They gazed at one another. Lance was trying to recall why she had moved away. He could not remember, and thought it must not have been important. The reason must have been attached to her job, but he could not remember, and was satisfied to sit dumbly for a while filled with the wonder of her return. Suddenly Valerie bolted upright, looked at her watch, and said, "Shit!"

"What's the matter," Lance asked, laughing.

"I knew this would happen. Damn you, Lance Jenkins."

"What did I do?"

"I knew if I stopped to see you before I went to the bank I wouldn't care what time it was," she said getting to her feet.

He stood with her.

"I have half an hour to get across town or else I won't have any money to live on over the week end. Oh. Geese!" She stopped scurrying, took his hand, and said deep into his eyes, "I love you so much. I've thought of you every day."

Lance stepped around the table to embrace her.

"I've missed your hands, your great hands. Great hands."

"Mmmmmm," he replied, half a question, half a different kind of query.

"So strong. They go all around me. Your hands have always known exactly what to do. I've missed you so much."

"Me too," Lance said. He was proud he did not blurt it out, or begin sniffling.

"I don't want to leave," Valerie said.

"Then don't."

"I don't want to."

"You have to."

They held each other close, their hands writing the names of their wishes across each others back. She kissed his neck. He turned to kiss her cheek, she lifted her face, their lips remembered gentle days. Her teeth were parted. He probed briefly with his tongue, dizzy with the number of clear dates, places, bodily movement laughing their way into memory. They kissed with eyes open. They always had.

"How do you feel," she asked.

Men were supposed to the analytic ones. They were the ones who had a reputation for questioning and questioning until an experience was nothing but a note on a pad of paper. While it was true that Lance was analytic -- he had a major in Philosophy, after all -- Valerie had once seen his emotional side. She had created his emotional side. She was the only person every to have seen Lance cry, something he thought he had since given up. Once, however, he cried with her in joy, and sadness. Valerie was one who wanted to know every detail of every experience. She wanted to analyze and reconstruct each event, but never took notes, never concluded an analysis. Her purpose seemed to be not only to understand everything which happened in her life, but to be emotional with it once again after she comprehended the event. Further reflection would allow her to live, experience, analyze the event again. She had always been the first of the two of them to begin questioning. She questioned ceaselessly. An issue seemed settled, yet would be reborn in the strangest of situations. She did not remember in order to accuse. She rarely berated another for his or her actions, but when she did she was vicious. Rather, she remembered to enjoy, to experience again, to be alive in body and thought. Lance loved this about her. She had taken the place of his books on Kierkegaard, Sartre and Nietzsche. She WAS the existential proposition; a live human being.

Knowing this was true; Lance felt odd answering, "Funny."

Valerie cocked her head and questioned him with her eyes.

"I feel like I don't want to disappoint you. I don't want to do anything you don't want me to do. But I also feel like," he searched for profound words which might be put simply so that there would be no misunderstanding, "like nothing has changed."

Valerie's response was her special enigmatic smile. How he had missed that smile. Agreement, confusion, wonder, carefree abandonment, shared amusement, and secrecy all in a wrap of innocence.

"I know," she said. Lance believed she did.

"Do you still live in the apartments on Western Boulevard?"
Lance nodded.

"Will you be home tonight?"

"Of course," he said too sharply.

The she was suddenly gone, disappeared too soon, although they embraced for a wonderfully long time, an age sure to lock vaults, close the doors of banks, and unwrap the tightest heart. The end of the evening did not arrive sufficiently quickly. Customers traced her presence nearly to the question of reality itself. Or Memorex?

Larry Burgess could not speed him home quick enough. He ran up to his fourth floor apartment, unlocked the door with his heart, threw his keys on the table, and was in the shower before their jingle against the veneer had ceased. Was he imagining she had said she was coming over this evening?

He dressed casually, spending the eternity of the next seven minutes watching Quantum Leap images skip across his television screen. The girl Sam was talking too sounded like the autumn of Valerie's voice. Lance marveled over the way he, Lance, was feeling her, Valerie's, shoulder and arm. He vaguely wondered since when was frontal nudity permitted on network television. He purposely breathed shallow to feel Valerie near him. When she was in the apartment, he could not tell her what was occurring on the screen. He had been remembering who he had been when he was with her. He missed himself. The person he respected as someone he was willing to call himself was but a glow of sun within his throat.

Now she was here. He offered her a drink. She refused.

"That's not what I want."

"What do you want?" He did not know whether he was being foolish, shy, naive or probing for exactitude. Valerie had always had a way of making him feel complex. She was still doing so.

She stared at him. Her eyes stripped his flesh. He felt as raw as muscle on bone. Finally she stepped into his chest, pressed her lips against his, wove her face over his, gently searched the inside of his mouth with her tongue and, when she withdrew, he probed. They began pecking and licking, cheek, neck, ear, lip. He allowed himself no intention, as ready to be satisfied as to be bit. Anything could happen with Valerie. They had done some pretty wild things in their time. They were crazy. Anything for a laugh.

He had not laughed authentically since the last time he was with her. Valerie.

He stepped back, not afraid, but bold. "So," he asked, "How have you been?"

Valerie collapsed on the couch. "Fine. Really. I thought about you every day."

Lance smiled. He wanted to say, "Then why did you leave. There was no good reason to go," but he thought it would sound too like an accusation when he wanted it to sound like a heart-felt expression of concern. He was out of the practice of feeling things and, for too long a time now, thought the only thing he was truly able to do was stock small boxes in size order, left to right, large sizes on top. Such had been the order of his life for an age.

"Fine," he repeated at last. She had never lied to him before, but he did not want to believe her. How sad if two people spent all their free time thinking about each other, desiring each other, yet did nothing to make their day dreams as true as the night. "Me, too," he said, sounding as if speaking into a pillow.

"You've been thinking about ME?"

He must have looked shocked. She smiled. How can she not believe him?

"How did you think about me?"

What did she mean? The swallows leave in October and never come back. They days grow shorter, darker. The winds blow cold and gas heaters only warm the outside of a person. Chicken noodle soup only warms the inside of a person. A man's soul can do nothing but hover in the sky and dream.

When she left, Lance told himself real men do not cry. Then he broken down with tears, and stayed weepy for weeks. He expended more energy at work, but was listless. He was not lazy, but frequently sat or laid down, perfectly willing for the insanity of wishing or the torture of memory, their images being one and the same, to take over. He had never told her how miserable he was without her, a point she taunted him with early on. But it was hard to talk when half his mouth had flown away, half his brain, half his thoughts disappeared. He remained silent, not wanting to reproach her decision with the intrusion of his feelings. He had thought of "them" as a fused being; ideal when together, their individual chaff discarded forever. Forced into separation, wheat killed by an early frost, he worried himself for her into a bare stalk. Until today, he felt like an implanted plant, a soiled soulless twig. He was an unctuous thing with no face, arms or legs, floating above Sears Tower, unable to see, follow or remember swallows.

A sad smile.

"Noooo!" Valerie laughed. "You can't do that to me. You better talk, buster."

Lance was humored by her unique way of getting him to smile. She was simply herself; a wild eagle, a field of corn, a refreshing breeze in a cavern.

"I love you so much," he said. Suddenly these words seemed to contain everything. He had been afraid to say them, afraid they would elicit the charge that he was not being truthful, which would have been wrong. But he had done little over the last eighteen months to prove that he still felt that way about her. He knew this was true, but he did not know why. His only thought was that being silent when she required gushing emotion, being reserve when she needed the incautious abandonment of his jokes and ironic insight was suppose to make it easier on her. Make what easier on her? He was not sure, but he knew his behavior made everything more difficult on himself, including his conversations with her which he otherwise enjoyed. He had been an ass and, worse, knew it. I love you. The words contained the velvet, the swallows, the soul of the sky, sparks laughing between them; eternal secrets shared in a glance but able to be communicated fully if there was eternity.

"I know," she said, "I've know all along."

Then why do you make me agonize over the care and precision with which words ought to serve you, he thought.

"I just needed to hear you said it. You just needed to say it out loud for yourself."

"Ms. Contradiction."

They laughed joyfully, embraced, kissed.

"I want you to make love to me."

No one was as direct with him as Valerie. No one was more innocent than Valerie.

"No one has ever been able to arouse me like you always have. I've had no desire for another man."

Lance buried his face into her neck. He never responded to these unearned compliments. He could not believer her, and did not want to disbelieve her. He knew in good faith, however, that he was nothing special. She was special. If he was anything, he was a reflection of their togetherness.

"I want to make love with you, too," he said with no real commitment. Suppose she did not want him physically to make love. They had been that route as well, ejaculation without an erection. Closeness was pleasure, tenderness the highest form of love.

"Make love with me, Lance."

A command? A wish? A dream? A vivid memory?

Lance kissed her gently, his lips barely touching her own. She reached behind him, put he hands on the pockets of his jeans and pulled him closer. One hand was on her shoulder, arm, breath, bare stomach, bra, flesh. Their kisses were deeper, more passionate, harder, tenderer, softer, careful with abandon, and lost with care. His lips told her everything he could think to say to her nose, throat, ear, cheek, shoulder, breast, navel, fingers, wrist. He spoke profoundly and nonsensically, all in silence.

"Not here."

He pulled back, uncomprehending.

"Not here," she repeated. The sentence made no sense. Not her shoulder blade? Not the couch? Not Chicago?

"Remember?"

Lance struggled for what was to be remembered. She was the very best sex partner he had ever had. He enjoyed passionate activity with her more than with anyone else, but was honest when he told her he was not interested in mere sex. There were three stages of sex: making love, which did not require intercourse, mere sex, which was nothing but intercourse, and shooting sperm. Lance, odd for himself, he constantly thought, was satisfied to be with her, and did not need the codification of semen to make him happy. He never expected to have intercourse with Valerie, never. Although they had, during their three years together, experienced every position conceivable, and one or two which were not, he was always surprised when they made love. And she called him the expert! Physical contact with Valerie was sufficient. Only his body, a wee part of his body, required explicit sinking of furniture into the house of warmth. Lance, mentally, was always satisfied to roll as if in the house of mirrors, to fly over Chicago, over the moon. Lance had been around. He was always pleased to be satisfied. With Valerie, he was satisfied to be pleased. He had been through a dozen girls before Valerie, and was happy when he was finished with them, or they with him. But Valerie.

Every climax, every ending, every flight was too soon. Time diminished with her departure. Time resurrected with her arrival. Yet, like before, he was not demanding. He never initiated the act himself, except that short period when her leaving was inevitable. Then he needed to penetrate her, needed to cleave his body with her own, thinking they could eventually meld together and she would not want to leave. He did not think this would be so because of his laughable 'superiority in bed,' but because the oneness of their relationship would be cemented in the act, made physical at the same time they each knew it was the case mentally. If we love each other, we will always be together, even when I am in Orlando!

"Remember," he said. The problem was he remembered too much!

"One more time, Lance, Let's make love in the car."

Lance drove a seventy-two Bonneville which he polished every two months and had turned regularly every 3000 miles. He laughed, remembering her attraction to his car. Never was the phrase 'penis symbol' more true. Their eyes lit up and they giggled as they arranged themselves and ran to the parking lot. Down four flights of stairs, pushing open the glass doors, out into the misty, warm air.

"Oh, Jesus," Lance laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"My damn car is in the shop."

Valerie smiled. "I don't give a damn about that car of yours. It was always your prize possession. I only liked it because I saw how happy it made you."

"Then you should only like yourself," he said.

Valerie smiled. He always said the nicest things. "C'mon, let's climb into someone else's car."

"Are you kidding me? Man, you are a crazy woman."

They stood, a street light intersecting their shadows on the grass. They embraced and turned toward the garage. An '89 Mustang with unlocked door welcomed them. The moon welcomed them. The tenderness of air and space, time and instinct welcomed them. They welcomed one another. The music of sighs and moans rose to a crescendo, and then faded.

"Will I see you tomorrow," Valerie asked.

"Do you remember tomorrow?"

They smiled, hugged one another into one flesh, each repressing thoughts about the cramped quarters.

"I remember," Lance sighed with satisfaction.

They had never actually spent the night together, the two or three times they tried to do so, their bodies refused sleep for the sake of being together. They frequently joked about not sleeping together, even after she left. Lance's eyes were very heavy; Valerie was snoring beside him. At last, he thought, we have cross another gate. Then he drifted to a place where the sun was shining even in the comfortable evening. Flowers grew healthy and tall, although it never rained in that special place. Birds, in V formation, like souls from the sky returned, waved after wave to Chicago. They slept.

Before the morning sun had a chance to peek into the garage, Lance and Valerie were awakened by the creek, yawn, spring-spring and slam of someone getting into the front seat. The ignition coughed the engine into a whir. Valerie and Lance looked at each other, eyes wide with humor. Lance sat up in the back seat, saying, "I know this is crazy, sir..."

They both broke out laughing.

Lance only laughed when he was with her.

^

Biography

G David Schwartz is former president of Seedhouse, the online interfaith committee. Schwartz is the author of A Jewish Appraisal Dialogue, and coauthor, with Jacqueline Winston, of Parables In Black and White. Currently a volunteer at Drake Hospital in Cincinnati, Schwartz continues to write.