Waiting for the Light to Change
Romance – - past, present, or future – was the farthest thing from my mind as I stepped
off the curb. With my neck bent back, I squinted at the traffic light, decidedly red but pale
in the noonday sun. My arms cradled a lidless box of 496 freshly-addressed mailing labels which I was to convey from the gritty print shop (where I worked) to a posh law office (where I didn’t.)
In the brief delay I idly glanced at my destination across the street. Among the cluster of pedestrians on the opposite corner, there he was. Lucian! I recognized him in a nanosecond: a little balder, a little broader about the beam, maybe, but it really was he. Same chiseled facial features and – - I guessed –- the same irresistible grin, except he wasn’t smiling, merely frowning as he impatiently stared up at the traffic light, same as I was.
Would he, I wondered, recognize me with my hair gone gray, my eyes grown dull in the space of so many years, the ever-widening distance between two divergent paths? Under my feet, the aging pavement was crumbling: decades of traffic had passed this way.
It wasn’t as if I had forgotten him – - God, no. In my reflective moments his face or the sound of his voice would suddenly motor into my mind. The resurfacing memory of him had always been a personal keepsake, frequently taken down from the shelf, dusted off, and cherished. In the few moments it took for delivery trucks, buses, scores of late-model cars, and a phalanx of motorcycles to roll by, I recalled the long days cut down by quick quips, the all-too-brief nights stretched out with passionate conversation. Hand-held hikes on the beach, midnight walks. Sand flea bites, moonlit kisses. In the balmy stillness, light-years away from this busy thoroughfare, the sun had smiled its blessing on us. Away from brash city lights, the stars had looked as if some goddess had spilled her jewels on the floor of the night sky.
What is it about selective memories? They place so much value on the good recollections
that they chase away the bad, which scatter away from one’s consciousness as pigeons on a crowded sidewalk. But the unexpected sight of Lucian in the flesh caught me off-guard; within a split-second span I was startled, then embarrassed. What could I possibly say to him?
Then I heard the click of the light changing to pale green. Some brakes screeched, and other vehicles stopped in sudden silence. Both sides of pedestrians made their way through the crosswalk, as if we all were innocent Israelites winding through the parted
Red Sea. At midpoint we were nearly shoulder -to-shoulder, Lucian and I.
Didn’t it take courage for me to make eye contact? Was I as unsightly and unrecognizable as the unfaithful Criseyde? I had not been the betrayer! What Chaucer says is true: “For time ylost may nought recovered be.” Lucian’s head turned toward mine and he looked - -
not merely past me, but right through me.
The next thing I knew is that all 496 labels had fallen from my hands. A cruel gust of wind disturbed their alphabetic order and scattered them all over the sidewalk. I could pick up the cards, if not the lost pieces of my life. At least I was on the other side of the street, which was neither sunnier nor shadier than its counterpart. The traffic resumed where it had left off, and the world continued going about its business.
