LETTERS 

The writer wasn't listening any longer. His long-lost friend had an interesting tale without question. In his desire to escape the lawless war he had stumbled into an adventure which was worthy of long meditation. For instance, the people Michael had barely described were, for the most part, from the same splendid area as the writer. They were members of some high ideal, some gargantuan hope that waxed and waned between the gray, cylindrical city with its yapping mad men and evil cars. A city of dogs and blind musicians. A city of many smokes (and how many dreams had gone up those smokes?); a city tilting on a perpendicular plane leading to the ocean and its silicon beaches.

And they had escaped all this wonder? The writer thought to himself. Had they waited a mere decade they would have found a new world right there on the desktop.

He felt a certain guilt, no question. He could hear women he had known say, "why aren't you up there with them, in the mountains, fighting for what you believe?" He didn't know how to answer them. They had the same voice as the old men who asked them how much he was worth, "on the open market." Or the black man who stepped on his shoes to start something and then accused the writer as a "slave master, killer of peoples, master of none!" The two old friends were nearly in dark now. The cafe was shutting down with chairs upturned on the tables and a few employees eyeing them to signal it was time for them to go. The writer could see the night traffic, the lights of the shallow buildings and constant movement of people through the imperial night. The beer was warm.

"Well," Michael told him, "I have a lot more to tell. In fact, writer, you've jarred some good memories for me."

"Tell me, have you kept in touch with any of them."

"One, the most significant one."

"The woman?"

"Yeah, the woman."

"She knows what happened?"

"I think so, she changed when she left the mountain."

The writer felt uncomfortable around his old friend and wasn't sure he wanted to meet with him again. Michael was already planning the next meeting at his apartment and he said he would go there but in his mind was, already, making excuses of why he couldn't make it. There comes a time, he thought, when the past must slip behind one like a booster rocket that falls to earth without its energy anymore.

So young to have a past! It was a significant first past outside of which ranged a world with too many hooks into his sentience; yet, an inviting world, a good one too.

© 2000 David Eide. All rights reserved.

David Eide
June 29, 2000
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