Calendar of Regrets

January

January February March April May June July August September October November December   & & &95' It was a stunning day outside. Even before I opened my eyes, I could tell an unconditionally blue sky would greet us. I took it as a sign. A prophecy. Events would go as they needed to go. I rolled over to wake Iphi and found her already lying on her back under the comforter, right arm cocked behind her head. She wasn’t looking up at the ceiling. She was looking up at the unspoiled Sunday morning beyond it. It’s here, she announced to herself. We’re here. We arrived the day before yesterday. Minneapolis to Kennedy, Kennedy to Heathrow. This was what we were told to do. This was what we had been told to do twice before, our flight routes different each time. My ideas still gauzy with jetlag. My lower abdomen tingling. We lay in the B&B across the street from Marylebone Station. Our bed took up so much space we had to shuffle around it sideways to reach the bath. In the next room, a man and a woman jabbered in a language that didn’t sound as if it could possibly be a language. We listened because we didn’t have a choice. I snuggled my nose into the skin between Iphi’s neck and collarbone and took long deep breaths. I mounted her. She was dry. I got off, rummaged through our suitcase, returned with a tube of KY. I tried again, but the moment was behind us. 96 b & LANCE OLSEN ' At the bathroom mirror, trimming my beard with scissors.Touching up the black in my hair with the kit I purchased yesterday. Stepping into the shower. Soaping up, rinsing off. Soaping up, rinsing off. Farsi, I think. Loose black slacks, white knit sweater, a pair of highly polished black shoes. I flipped on the television to the morning shows. A famous young underfed woman who was famous only for being famous and underfed stood before a congested counter watching a fat man in an apron and chef’s hat make flamboyant waffles with whip cream, strawberries, banana slices, blueberries, maple syrup, large lozenges of butter. She wore a silver mini-skirt and frilly white blouse and looked tired and lost. The shower tunked off. The hairdryer roared. I couldn’t hear what the famous underfed woman was saying or wasn’t saying. The hairdryer stopped. Iphi appeared and began dressing in her burqa and black slip-on shoes. She was careful to braid and tuck back her long black hair first. I clicked off the television set, and then we kneeled and prayed silently at the foot of the unmade bed. Eyes shut. Listening to the worlds inside us and out. It was difficult to say whether the people in the next room were fighting or just talking loudly. This is what their language had done to them. Beyond their commotion: doors opening and closing up and down the hall, footfalls thumping. Engines thrumming on the street three floors below. Horns. Air brakes. A police siren ululating. & calender of regrets ' b 97 Above us, a plane either gaining or losing altitude. All this noise. All this doing. For what? Sitting across from each other at the tiny table in the cramped dining room in the basement. The air damp and pungent with bacon fat. It seemed to us our words described things other than the things that seemed important to us, and so we didn’t use them. Iphi studied her eggs. Beans on fried toast. The surreally red wedge of tomato and three fried mushrooms. I reached over and picked up a newspaper a businessman had left behind on the chair at the next table and tried reading. Nothing from its pages reached me. I folded it again, returned it to the chair, sipped my espresso. Staring over Iphi’s head, I waited for her to finish. 9:37. Flossing and brushing. Spearmint mouthwash. A longer urination followed by a shorter one. 9:51. Iphi standing framed in the bathroom door, eying the ugly gray rug. Language was never important for us. It isn’t what comes out of your mouth that matters. We understood such things from the day we met three years ago at the church retreat in Voyageurs National Park. I was seventeen, Iphi sixteen. We happened to sit together at the campfire one evening...