The BUCK stops WHERE? Part.02

A recent story by Bob Buckeye of Middlebury, VT.

Buckeye links:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3544/is_200203/ai_n8361544

http://lakewoodobserver.com/home.php?which=columns&col=14





At Columbia, a sea of expectant faces, the country of the young.
Part .02
by Robert Buckeye


--Gayle, right? he asked. I remember you. You were always with Jake. I can't believe it. I remember how he looked at me, Kim, as if he had seen my photo in a magazine, and, there I was, in front of him.

He had a pot-belly, his hair was combed forward to cover a receding hairline. His face was blotched and his eyes sunken in his head. He wore what looked like a J. C. Penney's white shirt, creased khakis, a paisley tie. I put those guys down in the Sixties. Gayle laughed.

--I'm not the woman I was then either. I was just a girl. It was the Sixties. I remember my mother say late in her life I don't look in mirrors anymore. I know if I do, she would add, I won't like what I see.


No one saw her face the day Jake left. You can't go with me, he said. I'll drag you down, and I don't want to do that. You can't make that decision for me, Jake. Only I can. For a moment he touched her cheek. I know, he said. I can't, but I am. She watched him as he went down Houston to the subway in that slouched walk of his until she could no longer see him.

I never thought it was over, and even after I could no longer see him, I could not believe it was.


--Jake had a broad Jewish nose, Kim, chestnut brown eyes, long, dark charcoal hair. I saw him in a bar. There was something about how he sat and talked to the bartender. You could tell he liked people and people liked him. He was not like other men I had met. I told the waitress to get him another of what he was drinking and when he turned towards me

For a moment she looked over Kim's shoulder. Down the street the old man who always wore a plaid jacket and walked stiffly like a penguin picked through a garbage can for returnable bottles. I can't explain it, she continued. No man looked at me that way before. Her laugh was thin, resigned. I know. Everyone says that.


Except the one she cannot talk about. The one her father's brother. The one an agent in Hollywood. The Sunday he stopped for a visit while he was in town he must have answered questions about the movie business, laughed about what they thought about it, listened to what her parents said about their lives.

How deep-set his eyes were in his head. How he looked at me.

When he pulled back the sheets of the bed in the motel the next day, she could not say anything. It was already too late. The first time I saw you, he said. I've seen movie stars. Beautiful women. I don't know what it is. We shouldn't be doing this, she told him. I know, he said.

I did not care. I wanted it.

He hesitated, awkward, and she went up to him and put her hand against his cheek. She cried afterward. She was fourteen.

The face I see in the mirror now is the one I saw that day, the eyes larger now, brooding, lips a tight band, a frown lining my forehead.