About Face

She Hisses ’til He Kisses Her ’air

109 She Hisses ’til He Kisses Her ’air Every morning a young woman, wearing loose clothing she slips into upon waking, leaves her house, crosses the street, enters the playground and performs a string of physical exercises. She understands the sequence as a kind of meditation. She appreciates the calmness and heightened sensibility she feels these movements bring to her. This morning she notices the same unlikely pair sitting across one another at a table set beside the playground fence. Recently, they were always there nursing beers, picking up and reading scraps of newspaper and sparring with over-exuberant gestures. As she passes by their bench, the younger one jumps out of his seat to imitate the movements of the character in his story who, at the time of the telling , is dead drunk. She stares long enough to notice the warm reddish-tan color of his face. The man seems too young to be sitting out the day with this overweight waster. But looking more closely into his face she can pick out signs of physical decay. His pretty blue eyes, for example, are bloodshot. Deep furrows cross his forehead. Others gather at the corner of his eyes. She finds his association with the other man unsavory. This older one is pale and flabby. She knows he follows her with a leering yet unfocused gaze. To her, the broad surface of his unshaven face is nothing more than a stubble trap for food and dirt. She cuts across the asphalt square and then circles partially back. As usual, she takes her time, undulating her arms to emulate a river and then imitating the movements of a bird pulling in his claws. She wraps her arms around a large invisible sphere and carries it from the front to the rear tracing a continuous arc in the air. She is concentrating on what she is doing and performs as slowly as possible. She imagines her head as an egg rolling back and forth but never fully detached from the rest of her body. Her eyes close for several perfectly concatenating moments and then open to the shells inner side. Repeatedly, her breath hits its concave surface hissing as it 110 slips through the shell’s pores. The whole thing: egg, shell, seeing, breathing, hums. When she is finished she pauses for a moment to let the recognizable soft buzzing settle more deeply and evenly throughout her body. “Aaah.” she sighs, sensing that she has once again reached her goal of a calm, even bearing. She opens her eyes to the late morning sun appearing from behind one of the park’s enclosing blank walls. The young woman moves towards the break in the playground fence. She had wanted to avoid an encounter, scared of spilling whatever it is she is balancing in her head but it is already too late. The younger one is walking towards her cheered on by his bloated friend. “You must be a dancer,” “No, not really, I was just doing some morning exercise.” She is beginning to tense up and wishes he would move out of the way so she could return home. But still she refuses to be rude. He has not yet actually offended her. “I’m a good dancer, right Jim? Jim, tell her how good a dancer I am.” He grabs his friend around the middle, draws him into an embrace and demonstrates to her what he means. “Now hold on there, Jack, I’m not that sort of guy. You let me go!” The broad face is grinning ear to ear, exposing too many stained teeth. She starts to turn away. “Come on honey, let’s give it a try, Right here. Do you need music­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­—I don’t need any. I would just really like to dance with you.” he holds his arm out to her, and puts such a soft expression on his face that she can not resist. He looks straight at her, his blue eyes begging she take his hand. It happens so slowly, maybe because of the absence of music or the unexpectedness of it all, but she moves in towards him, into his arms. They begin to dance, step by dragging step. She relishes in it, in the break in routine and in his warmth. As though the music ended they separate and she walks out of the park, crosses the street, and returns to her house feeling full and strong. She pulls away the...