Part One of Two
Here’s what happens when two people fall in love: cliché abounds, of an ominous nature. They don’t climb upward into love, they fall, heel-over-head, implying serious injury. They get swept away, as dirt on the floor, or trailer homes in a flood. They are under the spell of that old black magic—occult forces they previously dismissed as superstition now become the organizing principle of their lives. Struck by a bolt out of the blue—a violent electrocution that only by some freak of lightning does not cook their internal organs, but leaves them alive and dazed—and fearful of golf courses. They walk on air, or run about with their heads in the clouds like imbeciles chasing kites over cliffs. They are bitten by the bug, whose venom is the same as that on the tip of the arrow that runs them through. The ensuing delirium is fraught with grandiose notions of uniqueness, though the infection is as common as birthdays or funerals. Yes, they know that their love is different because they have “chemistry.” But the chemist knows that whenever the same ingredients are combined a predictable substance will be synthesized—the same every time. It is true, however, that on rare occasions the chemist makes some little mistake and a new discovery is made: anti-gravity toothpaste perhaps, a useful mold, or maybe a volatile explosive that reduces the laboratory to rubble.
They, the lovers, had a history up to this point that was comprised of less than a chapter—only a few pages really—describing a handful of raucous dinner parties thrown by mutual friends over the last six months, where they had met, experienced a misunderstanding, suitably resolved it, and in doing so started the chain reaction.
He was suffering from a previous laboratory experiment of twelve years incubation, with inconclusive results. His marriage had long been without any chemistry at all, only a sort of bleak geography: a vast country with only two inhabitants, stripped bare of vegetation.
His separation was mediated by a crafty psychologist, as is the custom in Los Angeles, and the rules of disengagement were laid out with great specificity. Perhaps the most important rule, No Dating, was broken, or rather bent, almost immediately. To maintain the fiction that no date was occurring, he asked her to accompany him on an outing with his stargazers group, rather than inviting her to dinner alone. It wasn’t his group, strictly speaking, or anyone’s really, but a semi-monthly gathering he had once participated in. She would surely have declined the offer, however platonically cast, had he been still under one roof with the wife. She showed only moderate enthusiasm in her acceptance, perhaps somewhat less than she actually felt. Though she was unmarried, she was not unmarred by her own chemistry experiments, which had yielded substances as useful as non-adhesive glue.
The night before the stargazing was to take place he came down with a cold. Fearing the night air would worsen his condition, yet not wanting her to feel stood-up, he offered her the compromise of a dinner at a suitably unromantic restaurant. Again, she accepted. They ate, they talked. When the staff began to set up the karaoke equipment, they left. Neither could be sure that the valances of their orbiting particles possessed the necessary charges to create a bond. The goodnight kiss was all cheek.
The second outing followed a week of chatty phone communications. She was bound to attend a one-woman show in a small playhouse that Saturday night and asked if he cared to tag along. He accepted. Being that it was on the way, she swung by his place (a modest guest house he had taken pursuant to the guidelines laid out by the psychologist) and picked him up. The show was by turns wistful and wisecracking in the beginning and, by the end, delved into the dark goings-on between fathers and their girl-children that are a base ingredient of one-woman shows. After, the would-be lovers gathered in a drab café with the entire cast and a smattering of her acquaintances. The group conversation played heavily on his ears (a bit dulled by his lingering cold). She was catalytically converted that night, in his eyes, from potential to kinetic energy. She shivered with Brownian Motion.
It was after one when she returned him to his crib. To decrease the chances of a refusal, he offered her two reasons to come in before driving home: pit stop or tea. She accepted on the basis of the latter. He led her in through the gate where the landlord’s dogs, one large and drooling, the other small and incontinent, gave them a burglar’s reception. Here it might be said that no two lovers ever reached the depths that did not feel the same way towards dogs, be it for or against. Being of the former group, our lovers soothed the dog and pup with endearments as they moved along the walkway to the guesthouse. By now, the ice was shattered.
After the preferences were sorted out and the tea was made they sat on the sofa. At times they talked with the sense of discovery one would expect from two castaways having just discovered each other on a desert island. The subject of personality led him to show her a questionnaire from an intellectual magazine that happened to be on the coffee table. The questionnaire purported to classify the taker as one of 16 possible personality types. He had her take the test and compared the results to his own. They ended up in a cozy corner of the personality continuum as adjacent types, close, but not quite incestuous. This empirical evidence sanctified the First Kiss.
It happened within several seconds after she decried the hour and announced her leave. They were still on the sofa and not looking at each other when they abruptly fell upon one another. The kiss was generous yet controlled, deep yet tactful. The lovers seemed to share an artful sense of drama, the kiss building from a chaste nibble to a wanton plunge, then resolving with a tender parting that left no excess moisture on their now swollen lips. The kiss was better than either of them had anticipated—not only mechanically, but because of a startling chemical reaction. They tried again and again, two mad scientists replicating the discovery of radium, making certain before they announced the results to the world.
They kissed like they were following shampoo instructions. They kissed as she gathered up her bag, they kissed on the way to the door, and they kissed at the door, each time confirming the experiment’s results. He walked her to her car where they kissed under a street lamp, looking like undivided cells under a microscope. An unanticipated by-product of the experiment was a proof of the existence of ESP, for without uttering a word, the lovers planned exactly what would happen the following weekend.
To Be Continued…
David Warfield
