Zeya

               I feel like throwing this watch away but it cost too damn much.  It’s a pretty thing.  Black leather band, married to a gloss black bezel and offset by rose gold numbers and hands.  I can’t stop looking at it.  It has no further message to convey other than that hours are running rare. This I already know.

                I can mark the time better with each fresh rocks glass filled with Grey Goose.  They go down easy… too easy.  The tinkle of the ice against the crystal sounds like wind chimes on a stormy night.  They play their serenade to accompany each forceful lift to my lips.

                I check my damn watch again.  Two hours and thirty two minutes before I’ve lost out on what is the last opportunity I’ll have to see her… Zeya…  That’s how long I have to catch my flight home where a new job awaits me.  The countdown begins as I slam back down the clear intoxicant and motion for another. 

                From the outside, this would look like another normal night on the trade show circuit.  Road warriors the lot of us, bouncing from city to city heading from convention center to convention center.  Imbibing under the guise of networking.  Dulling the ache of it being another day and yet another town.   Most days you forget where you are.  That or you just stop caring.  Just another innocuous hotel room.  Just another shitty continental breakfast.  I rate my stay and mark my location now by how runny the scrambled eggs are or how many assholes there are who don’t know how to re-rack the weights in the gym.  But I’m back in Dallas now… I know the streets of this town better than I know the ones I supposedly reside in.  I say supposedly because most days it doesn’t feel like home.  It feels foreign.  It feels like touching a dream that is barely hanging on to your consciousness.  Like a name on the tip of your tongue.  It’s a place you’ve been before but can’t remember when.

                It’s been a long, hard six months since I’ve seen her last, and that encounter did not end well.  It was my fault… Well, not entirely.  That bastard bartender pouring heavy rounds has some culpability in this by my measure.  But all of this is meaningless now as she enters into the packed bar off from the lobby.  Zeya… more beautiful than ever.

                It’s like a throat punch causing me to choke on my drink at the sight of her.  For six long months my eyes mapped every square inch of every street, lobby, room or show floor they could see, searching desperatley for even a glimps to finally find her here in Dallas.  If they could gasp, they would.  

                She spots me as well.  She offers me a tight smile before pushing deeper into the crowd of miscreants making the rounds.  For some reason these grown men and women forget how to conduct themselves while on the road.  It’s like the parents are away and they are just a bunch of lusty teenagers sipping daddy’s whiskey for the first time.

                My watch screams to be looked at.  Nearly two hours even.  I debate over the remnants of this new drink if I should pursue her or to keep my post at the bar.  I order another.  The bartender looks like he wants to tell me to slow down.  I put that dog down before it can bark by throwing a bill on the bar with a wink and instructions to keep them flowing until I say when.

                I see her reflection in the mirror behind the bar.  She’s stalking me like prey.  I tell the bartender to make her drink.  It’s Corzo with agave nectar.  He tells me that’s a first as he unscrews the top off of his trillionth bottle of piss water merlot for the purple lip crowd standing next to me.

“Hey stranger….” She growls in my ear from behind me.

“Hey there yourself stranger.  I got your drink coming.”

                There are no seats left at the bar so I lean over to the women seated next to me who is doing everything she can not to topple over.  I tell her that her friend just told me to tell her that they met some cute guys by the pool tables in the back.  To which she replies, Debbie?  Yea, that’s right, Debbie I assure her…

                She stumbles off looking for this Debbie, or so I assume.  I don’t really care because now Zeya, the only person I care to see, is no longer behind me but is now sitting face to face with me.

                We have been apart by months and miles yet now we are a breath away from each other and it’s like my damn heart is trying to tear out of my chest and kiss her on her soft velvet mouth.  I peek at my watch out of habit more than concern.  She notices.

“Have you got somewhere to be?” She asks coyly.

“No, I’m good right here.” I say with a wink.

                The bartender hands her, her drink.  She takes a sip, savors it for a moment, and then nods in approval. 

“Wow, I’m impressed.  You remembered my drink.”  She says.  As if I could ever forget anything about her.

“Lucky guess.  So how’s life?”  I ask.

“Same." She sighs. "You?”

                I bite back my tongue and tighten my lips holding back a deluge of weepy, sophomoric clichés about listening to our song in the dark and writing heartfelt prose about how empty I felt without her.

“Nothing much to report.” I go with.

“How long are you in town for?” She asks.

“I’m out tonight. I got to be in the airport in an hour or so.”

“Really, that sucks.  Why are you leaving so early?  There’s still two more days left of the show.”

“This is my farewell stop.  I’m done.  My notice has been given.  I’m just fulfilling this last obligation. I start a new gig tomorrow, in a different industry.”

                She hits me like she always does when I say something she doesn’t want to hear. I relish the sting of her ringed hand stabbing into my shoulder.  It’s a sign she cares.

“Nothing new to report?! Are you fucking kidding me?!  What kind of bullshit is that!?” She screams at me. 

I love the way she curses.   The blunt force expelling from her slender throat sends a chill down my spine.  It’s a vulgar chorus in my ear sung by angels on high. 

“I’m done with the life, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid!  We’re the same age.”

“Fair enough.  That’s why I agreed to come back though, even if it meant dead-ending this job into the next.  I had to see you one last time, especially since how we left it last time.”

“Left it last time, with you being a drunken dick!”

“Yea, I was a little faded.” I said trying to argue down the point.

“You were a lot faded.” She said with a huff.

                She put on her pouty lips.  It was such an over exaggerated expression.  She knows that it drives me nuts.  I just want to grab her and kiss her right there.  It’s not the move though.

“Yea, I messed up.” I conceed. 

“You did, and now you’re leaving before you can make it up to me.  I mean after all we’ve been through… Fuck.” She’s half teasing, half serious. 

                She begins to twirl the one streak of purple in her otherwise raven hair.  Just a bit of hippie left in the professional.  A tell tale sign that she is upset.

“I bought you a drink, didn’t I?” I joke.  She gives me the look of death and I could die right there.  I’d be happy to.

“So what does being done with the life mean?”  She asks.

“It means, I can’t keep running anymore.  At first this job was cool.  New places, new people.  Now, nothing is new.  It’s the same damn places looking at the same damn people.  I go to a different town, and they’re all there too.  I go to work they’re there.  I go back to the hotel, and they’re there.  Hell, even when I go home these pricks are sending me friend requests like we have some real world commonality because we both sell the same shitty type of things.  I need a god damn change of venue.”

“What are you going to be doing now?” She asks.

“Doesn’t matter.  I just need to be done with all this.  It’s more than just that.   I can’t keep chasing apparitions.  You’re a big part of this.  I can’t let your ghost continue to haunt me. ” I say harsher than I want to.

“My ghost?  What are you going on about?  You think I’m like the rest of these people? I’m a problem to you?” She says sounding hurt.

“If you think for one hot second that you’re lumped in with these people you need to get your head examined.”

“So you think of me differently than them?” It’s more of a statement than a question said in typical Zeya defiance.  

“I think of you differently than everyone on this godforsaken planet…” My words hang in the air like the pendants above the bar.

“What do you mean?  How do you think of me differently?”

                My phone buzzes in my pocket.  It’s a text from the car service.  He’s in the lot saying we need to take off now if I want to make take off later.  Tick, Tock and all that.

“My cars here…”

“Answer the question damn it!  What do you mean by differently?”

“You remember a year ago, sitting in this very bar right over there downing drinks and waxing on about time and dimension and all that?  How I told you that there are an infinite amount of universes and thus possibilities?  I told you how there was probably a version of us on the verge of kissing right there in that quiet booth as they shut this place down?

“Of course I do…” She admits.

“Well, drunk talk or not, I wanted it to be this version and for it to be that night as we were a whisper away from it. Or so I thought.”

“What are you saying?” She asks.  I’m not sure if she’s playing dumb or not so I make it real simple.

“How the fuck do you not know that I love you?  That I am stupidly and maddeningly in love with you?  You can’t be that blind?  Why do you think things went so wrong last time I saw you?  I was all hung up on that night we shared here and I tried to force it.”  I drain my drink and get up to go.

“Six months of silence and all of a sudden you’re in love with me?” She spits at me.

“Exactly! Six excruciating months of radio silence giving me all the time in the world to figure out that all I want in this world is you.”  My words silence her.

“Look, I didn’t mean to lay the heavy at your doorstep." I went on, "I just wanted to say goodbye.  I got to go.  Maybe I’ll see you around.  Who knows?  Maybe if we get another go at this life we could be something.  Maybe this jam is playing out some other way in some other version of this universe.”

                I give her a hug and kiss her cheek a mere millimeters from her lips.  She holds me like she doesn’t want me to leave.  She smells as if warm had a scent all its own.

                Hesitantly I let go and push my way through the crowd of drunks out into the lobby.  It’s far brighter out there and the light is brutally white and sharp.  It takes me a few steps to stop appearing like I’m walking against the wind.  Staggering in part due to the piercing light laying me bare, part due to the drink but more so from the dagger stuck in my chest.

                Outside the night air is stagnant.  The heat and humidity are oppressive.  Status Quo for Texas in June.  I practically gag on my first breath.  The air is nearly too thick to swallow.  The driver stands with the rear door open on the town car.

“Sir, we have to leave now if you want to have any chance of catching your flight” He says.

He’s calling me sir even though he’s easily twenty years my senior.  It sounds dirty in his mouth.

                Just before I step into the car, I hear her voice.  She’s calling for me.  I hold back and wait.  The driver lets out an exasperated sigh that guarantees his tip just got quartered if he even gets one at all.

“You can’t leave like this.”  She says.

“Zeya, I don’t want to leave like this but…” I’m interrupted by her lips pressed to mine.

Fucking fireworks…

She kisses me deeply as I bury my fingers into her wild hair like I’ve dreamed of doing on so many lonely nights before.  My watch stops.  The countdown dissipates.  The heat consumes us.

They’ll be other flights.  They’ll be other jobs.

Zeya… more beautiful than ever.