chap 2: v

I met V late in high school. She was smart and cute and I thought she might be the one. Or anyways I thought that she was smart and cute and that I was so so single and so why not. We had no chemistry though and, as it turned out, not even so many things to talk about together. We went on exactly one date, to a bookstore.

She called me as I was walking out of a gray, squat office building the summer before my sophomore year of college. It was the kind of building where the cubicle walls look like carpet and the carpet looked like concrete, and it was raining outside. By that time I'd already found myself another girl, broken up, slept with a third who wore a pair of my khakis to our high school reunion, and gotten back together with the second.

V was crying on the phone. She explained that she was really sorry but could I please give her a lift to her boyfriend's house. She had to either break up with him or talk him out of killing himself, or both; it was hard to tell exactly what over the phone. She didn't know who else to call. I waited outside for her, in the car. What else could I do? We got back to her house in time for her to run up the steps and quickly shut the door, just before her father pulled into the driveway.

She called later to thank me, but I didn't see her again after that.

chap 1: c

C was the coolest kid in kindergarten, and my best friend. It wasn't until some time later that we realized that we had mistaken his reticence for aloofness, and what was probably shyness for a deft social touch. (We had however already begun to rank each other on this capricious scale, a habit which none of us has broken yet.)

This probably made me the second coolest!

C has an easy if slightly goofy smile. He has a much older brother, and a little sister that takes after him, a little. When we were younger, they would stage large-scale battles between C's blocky yellow Lego men and his brother's. Both of them had extensive collections of knights and castles and pirates. I only had a handful of the little yellow guys to offer, but outfitted them with motorcycle helmets and lightsabers made from translucent Lego antennae, and told him that they were better-trained. By this time, though, he was reluctant to declare war on his brother's considerable forces. A war could take a whole week, he explained, and I was only sleeping over for one day.

I think that C wants to be an artist, but I am not sure if he really just wants to doodle. (His doodles are very, very good, although his notes are correspondingly atrocious.) I don't see him very often anymore, but I think he might need to try a little harder to really make it. I think he is probably very talented, though.

C wears that smile when he thinks that no one is watching, or to deflect attention. (Ironically, it is a very winning smile, and I think it's earned him some number of admirers.) When you tell him something, his eyes widen, even if it is already the second or third time you have told him this story. He is happy to hear your second-or-third-time story and he wants you to know it. When he is trying to make an arrowhead out of a pointy pebble, though, or whittling a whistle out of some promising piece of wood, or watching an army of ants crawl up a dirt ramp he just built, he is smiling a slightly goofy smile. Especially when no one is watching.