I'm sittting in a cafe window. I'm in one of those writing zones that, if I could maintain this zone, I would be famous. It's the zone of all zones. It smells like dusk. It's good. There are clouds swirling around in my brain. A film has coated my brain. Creative armor has embraced my being. I am God. I should vanish. I should levitate and be on a mountain building a fire. People should be chanting behind me. I should not know if the chanters are wind or monks. I should be so calm the whole world sounds like the whole world and a tree's skeleton is a fishes skeleton. I should sink my heel into the earth and wrap my toes around the core. Bottled, I should be expensive.
A man taps on the cafe window and races in.
"Oh my god,"he says. "You're here now."
His noise is the boom made when a plane breaks the sound barrier.
"Huh?" He awakens me from a pleasant sleep.
"I wondered where you went. It's so good to see you."
I have two choices here. I either offend this person and pretend I don't see him, thus salvaging my creative shell....or I interview him, slowly moving away from this literary utopia, thus making him feel seen. The fact is I have no idea who he is. Maybe my mother could penetrate this zone. Maybe my husband, but not this passer-by.
At this moment, I feel I am making a decision about my entire life. If I choose my work, I will be an artist. If I choose the man, then I will be sacrificing myself for the greater good of humanity. I'm an intense girl. That's how I roll.
I choose humanity. I interview the man with random questions.
"Are you still working there?"
"No."
"Are you still living there?"
"Yep."
"How's it going? What's new?"
His face is falling like the snowman under a leafless tree. I've been outed. He leaves, shoulders not in their hanger, invisible.
Half way down the block, as I watch his lifeless shirt, I recall him. B. B from three cafes past. B from Ohio, who plays guitar in a band called "Yes, man." B, whose girlfriend left him last summer for a man named Dan who did stand-up comedy with too many props. B, who told me all his dreams when I took breaks from my writing.
I tell someone how bad I feel about B. My friend looks at me incredulously.
"Jesus. It's not like you saved his life," he says. "And he ruined yours."
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