First view

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The next day seemed perfect on the outside, a cloudless seventy-two degrees with the mildest breeze. On the inside, the inside of Lou, there was mental turbulence and emotional trepidation. He had not seen Anne since she moved, for the good reason of giving Anne time to settle in and (if asked) not at all to avoid making a fool of himself due to romantic miscalculations. But now he thought about her and wondered if she thought about him. He speculated, in vain, as to whether Anne was still seeing Philip or not. He considered how their lives might be more or less complicated if they were together. But fundamentally, Lou just couldn’t figure out how he felt about Anne. He holed up in his room, twiddled his thumbs, and stared at imagined patterns on the wall.

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Luckily, Lou had a ready solution for times like this. He sat on his futon, flicked open his Zippo, and lit up a special blend. Lou inhaled, leaned back, and closed his eyes. His mind drifted as effortlessly as the wisps of smoke around his head. With each toke he became calmer, more relaxed, a little hungrier. There were chirps of Oregon Juncos and Song Sparrows flittering by his open window. From somewhere nearby he could hear the low spark of high-heeled boys.

When enough untracked time had passed, Lou had a snack, got dressed, had another snack, and walked the two blocks through flawless weather to Anne’s new home. He looked up, mesmerized by the shifting shades of cerulean in the air currents above. He looked down at the grass, charmed by the multitudes of emerald fingers welcoming his arrival. Lou stood outside the enchanting ivory house, fuzzy bunny slipper cradled in one arm, the end of his quest at hand.

He went up to the front of the house, ascended two brick steps, and rang the doorbell. His stoned mind somehow landed on the idea that someone other than Anne might answer the door, and that he was a random stranger. Lou backed down the two steps to allow for a safe space between them and himself. He stood there for several seconds, heard footsteps approach, and watched the doorknob turn…

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***

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There appear in the lives of the most fortunate of us brief moments that transcend mere sense and sensation, unfathomable visions, miracles beyond human language, wholly unexpected, fully undeserved, filling space and time such that nothing else need exist and nothing more be desired. Lou, in the days and decades to come, if asked what he had seen in that moment at the top of those two brick steps, would be near mute by that ineffable remembrance. He would offer only the vastly insufficient words of a very plain mortal to describe his first view of Jax.

“Her hair and lips were red, her bathrobe cotton.”