For Lorenzo by Steve Quirt

I sat next to the window, looking out at the parking lot. The barrista brought me my Cafe Americano and left with the outgoing tide of early morning caffienites. The stool was comfortable enough, and gave me a kind of perch, a few inches above the coffee house crowd, made up mostly of digital-age hipsters, flagrant wanna-be artists, and a few vanishing legends. Legends, like myself.
          Still early enough in the day to be cool, both inside and outside, no rush to rule or relate, no time left for dwindling night. She came in, enveloped in a kind of hurry, long green dress flowing, dreads glowing, a travel pack of life dragging behind her–she had a kind of tweaked air about her, hiding the heart. She presented her laptop to the buffed wooden community table, and paused. She was decorated with turquoise and gold, future and sorrow, with hope and lost longing. She continued to fuss and looked over at me–I was silhouetted against the morning sun flowing in from the plate glass that had just been meticulously polished. I looked out that window at a glassy looking BMW, all perfect in the morning sun, waiting to drive off to glory, and I thought about the green dress goddess for a second or two.
       Very young and very old, she was silently brimming with hope or hopelessness–I couldn't tell. Her impatient brown eyes followed my silhouette, drenching me with an aching radiation of hope and desire, fueled by a world out of control, a kind of miraculous merry-go-round of love and rain, pleasure and pain, loss and gain... I could feel her soul freezing to mine. We communed silently for a few seconds in the subtle, unconscious talk of souls that goes on without words, without persons. Without distraction.  

“Where am I going? Where is there to go? Did you go this way? Do you really know the way? Hold me for a while, so I know you are real....” I pulled my Cafe Americano a little closer and stirred in some sugar, “Young Goddess, how far you have to travel... I love you and want to hold you, but that is for some young warrior. I hold you in my heart, always. My answers are no longer your answers, my open road is finished, your time is upon us. I can only give you what I have been given, and it is all for you, Darling. I feel your arms and smell your breath. Your soul is pure and vulnerable, you travel on familiar paths that I have not tread. You are held in God’s own hands, and His protection is all about you, if you please.”

          I looked over at her, catching her gaze, and for a second, we were one person. Then the world rolled in, the interrupting cascade of confusion that it always is, and the sounds of the room rustled in like the last expiring swish of a wave that has traveled thousands of miles, just to dissolve on the Pacific shoreline.

  •

 The seabirds called out. The surf was good with glassy waves peeling perfect, big oceanic sea turtles spotted the line up, and her and I were the only one’s out. A groomed South Swell Set pulsed in, and we started paddling. I was on the inside, the feathering bowl just behind me. A one paddle instant and the sliding drop filled with air that would set me up for barrel time. I could smell the coconut oil in her hair, her brown, perfect body, painted with bikini glowed as she pushed into the wave next to me. I pulled back, the spray shower pelted my eyes, crystals of purity caressed my face, and slid down the back of the wave. The radiant blur of the Old Sea Turtle next to me vanished, and I watched the long right-hander peel from behind, knowing she was in there, somewhere. The jungle line of green, then the golden sand, the pure white foam melting into deep Pacific blue, framed her as she pulled out and coasted onto the shoulder. Her hands went up and I saluted her from the point. Our arms held high together, palms up... palms up... palms up.