Rowing in Eden–
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor – Tonight –
In Thee!

Emily Dickinson

A single hair on the edge of Lana’s lip got more visible as winter lightened her skin, an unbalance in her smile, driving me nuts. Being bothered by this flaw bothered me greatly. I didn’t expect perfection. In any contest for the best body, she’d beat me inch by inch. Yet I couldn’t stop noticing. The willing blindness, which carried us in three months from a chance introduction to a shared house, began to wear off. Lovers know this will happen. What’s the big deal?

Yet the hair . . .

January dropped on Pawnee Bend as it hadn’t for years, icing the streets, squeezing all scent of life from the air, and shutting us in. Over a snowbound weekend, our attempts at conversation twisted into defensive comebacks. I started to wonder what small things about me might be annoying her. Our relationship felt as slippery as the ice of a winter pond. The next bright day would show the cracks.An inner voice I’d been ignoring for all these close weeks became louder. Whatever, I couldn’t help asking myself, happened to old Mr. Footloose? I’d headed where I’d sworn never to head again, into the journey of needing. And I knew where those trips ended, didn’t I?

Monday morning while she finished dressing for work, Lana launched her idea without looking at me. "We need warmth."

Just out of bed and groggy, I scratched my head. "Blankets? Passion?"

"No, fool." She buttoned her last button and allowed me her barest indulging grin. "Sunshine, beaches, rum."

This rang with importance. I knotted the sash of my robe. "I’ll call the travel agent."

The next evening, proud of my ingenuity, I showed her the tickets.

"Seattle?" Lana sat on our bed and removed one of her shoes in a businesslike manner.

Trying for spontaneity, I opened a suitcase. "The Caribbean is booked solid. And the agent says Seattle is warmer than Kansas this time of year." I rummaged through her drawer and brought out a filmy nightgown she never wore. "Ever been?"

"No." She wound the lingerie into a ball and tossed it into the suitcase. "You?"

"Nope."

"Well." She let me unzip her skirt. "I guess a ticket’s a ticket."

On the hour's drive to the airport over a frozen and nearly empty highway, our talk flowed away from the doings of Pawnee Bend. We’d both traveled some, and we had a lot of stories to trade. This was the best we’d been for a while. A three-quarter moon drew a pure glow from icy fields and made shadows on her face. Wichita's penumbra came into view surprisingly soon.

When the plane left the runway, Lana rested her head against my arm and squeezed my leg. Lovers burn because while they love, time burns.

At Denver, we hurried to the connecting flight, feeling suddenly cosmopolitan to be out of our small town and into this flowing herd of strangers. The variety of faces made me wonder at the impulse which drives us to single out and strive to keep one and only one.

Waiting the line to buy a magazine, I saw a display of combs, clippers, nail files, and tweezers. Lana handed me her choice of reading material, an astrology guide. Could I nonchalantly pick up the tweezers, add them to our travel supplies, and leave them around all weekend? Something in me feared the result. I left them on the rack.

We boarded, taxied, and lifted off. The airplane's cabin closed in. Human odors battled the ventilation. Lana read her horoscope, intent as usual on the activity of the moment. Her profile made a cameo in the scratched surface of the window. Darkness opened beyond. From this side, I couldn’t see the hair.

She felt my gaze, leaned against me, and used her magazine to hide her hand while she tickled the inside of my leg. Before I could defend myself, her fingers caught the muscle of my thigh and squeezed.

I patted her arm, wishing she'd relax her grip. "I'll try to lighten up. Seems like we’ve been so—"

"You!" She pinched hard enough to make me start forward.

The magazine slid off my lap. People across the aisle stared. "Ok, Ok," I surrendered. "Not we, me."

Lana released her grip, put her hands over my heart, and pushed me against the seat. Everything faded until I could see only her lovely face, and that one damned hair. Shifting her hips in the safety belt, she leaned into my chest and kissed me deeply. My interior gravity imploded.

She nestled and fell asleep. For the rest of the fight, I disciplined my shoulder to stay firm as her support. Our row-mates across the aisle, a couple, ignored us, and each other, and everything else. Bored, carelessly dressed, subliminally angry with one another, they looked as married as you can get.

The captain announced our descent to SeaTac International. We landed and taxied. Lana woke and joined the bustle. When our turn came to shuffle into the aisle, I suddenly needed to show our row-mates how misguided they were to be so obviously sour about life. Hugging Lana, I offered them a big smile, which fell on blank faces.

---

After one look at the plush, posh, sleepy lobby of the hotel our agent booked for us, we went to a pay phone and shopped through the directory for some place with a better attitude. Lana possessed a gift for making arrangements. A cab brought us to a downtown bed and breakfast. The crowd we saw through the windows of the first-floor bar looked more upscale than the building. In a cold rain, with our bags getting soaked on the sidewalk, we wondered if we should retreat to the safe tourist hotel. Neither of us wanted to say so. Gathering courage and luggage, we found the entrance to our lodgings and went in.

Angelina, the proprietress, had black hair streaked with henna, and wore a black sweater over a short, short denim skirt and net hose. As I followed her and Lana up the stairs, I noticed how the snake tattoos on Angelina's calves writhed with each step in their cages of nylon. Under the light in the hall, Angelina’s face appeared too innocent for her costume. A silver bracelet wobbled on her wrist when she put a skeleton key in Lana's hand. Promising our room would have an excellent view of Elliot Bay, she wished us goodnight.

Inside, the furnishings gave us our first taste of Seattle retro. The couch's crimson brocade must have worn thin in a 1960's suburban living room. Chairs and lamps appeared to have come from the back room of a thrift shop. A brass bed sagged enough to make me suspect the mattress knew prior owners. Velvet curtains covered the windows. The place seemed used but not sad, a lighthearted contrast to the overstuffed hotel we'd rejected.

"Want to check out the natives in the bar?" I started to open the curtains.

Lana put her hand over mine, stopping me before I let in the view. "I've been rubbing up against you in crowded airplanes for five hours. Do your duty." She pulled me to the bed.

---

At six Kansas time, four in the morning in Seattle, my half-waking mind wouldn’t release my images of the strangers who’d sat across from us during the flight. I imagined their history: a commitment to love and marry, and then the long, long playing out of disillusionment. Leaving Lana asleep in the bed, I tiptoed across the creaky floor and opened the curtains. Rooftops below our room descended in steps toward a bay. Lights circled dark waters like a spangled arm. A ferry eased away from a dock, venting a steam-horn moan. Comforted by the city, I lay beside Lana. Her thick head of hair made a soft mass in the silver glow. My breathing kept time with hers.

We got up late, to rain, and watched people strolling under umbrellas on a sidewalk along the piers. Evergreen trees amid the houses on the hills across the bay made a dark union with the misty sky and the slate water. Tugboats pushed a ship toward a dock beneath a huge red crane. Watching Lana dress, a treat she always allowed, I shook away my nighttime misgivings and called myself a cold-footed idiot.

Our parkas looked heavy. We went out in sweaters, found a place selling raincoats, and followed the aroma of coffee to a sidewalk espresso stand. Pastries from the carryout window of a French café made our breakfast. We strolled through Pike Place Market, where at ten in the morning men in rubber aprons hawked fresh fish. A row of stands offered fruit and vegetables. I looked at a box of plump Asian pears, each wrapped in a styrofoam skirt like a wedding dress.

The man behind the stall, a Chinese, offered me a good morning in deeply accented English, then spoke over his shoulder in his native language to his co-worker. When she turned, I saw she must be his wife. The baby wrapped across her chest in a denim envelope slept contentedly. She answered her husband in dialect, her words swift but cheerful. I wondered what they did at home, how they lived, if they were happy. They noticed me staring and paused, curious only about whether I wanted to buy their wares. Grinning my apology like a simpleton, I hurried to catch up with Lana.

The market turned out to be a three-story-deep warren of shops and restaurants. Lana lingered in a bookstore specializing in the occult, mythology, astrology, and New Age crystal power. While she bought books and a net bag, I wandered into a dusty-windowed shop filled with old posters and sheet music. The man at the counter gave me a nod and went back to his paper cup of espresso and his Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Nothing in the shop interested me enough to look twice, but I didn’t want to leave Pike Place Market empty-handed.

In a stack of old sheet music, I found a plastic-wrapped turn-of-the-century song book called Tear Jerkers Everyone Loves. I paid the price and found a seat where I could inspect my buy while Lana made another turn through the bookstore. The song titles were so maudlin I was sure no one ever had taken the music seriously. "At the Cost of a Woman’s Heart," "Father, Dear Father, Come Home with Me Now," "Here Lies an Actor." A title leapt out, more full of portent than anything Lana could have found in the mystical book store. I turned the pages to the lyric called, "Fatal Wedding."

Lana’s bag, filled with half a dozen books, swung in front of my eyes. I looked up, found her curious, and raised the edge of the song book to hide the lyrics.She peered over the edge, teasing. "A nasty?"

"Old ditties." I stuffed the song book back into its plastic wrapper, the damn thing sticking and refusing to get out of sight as quickly as I wanted. "Souvenir, I guess. Stupid." I tucked it under my arm. "Let’s get out of here before I throw away any more money."

Back on the street amid the rows of fish markets and vegetable stands, we mingled into a growing crowd. Lana hugged me. I found her hand and threaded her fingers into mine. Together we made a path through the streams of people. Food stands gave way to craft booths filled with cheap rings and gaudy scarves. Two arguing voices rose ahead of us, sharper as we came closer. When we passed, I recognized the fighting pair as our row-mates from the airplane. They were disputing the worth of some trinket she wanted to buy, bitterly enough to open a circle around themselves. Lana passed by them hardly noticing, and stopped to admire a table of dried flower arrangements put together by Korean ladies. The couple kept stabbing words at one another, apparently without doing any damage. As if this was their habit. Watching them scared me down to my toenails. I wanted away.

An outdoor stair took us to a bayside trolley. We rode to the end of the line and strolled a green oceanfront park. Sun broke through the clouds. The sky lightened to reveal mountains on the Olympic Peninsula, while to the south, Mount Rainier became a presence.

Lana drew back her hood. "Let’s see what made you so interested." She pulled the old song book away from my grip, flipped the pages for a few seconds and handed it back. "Show me what you were reading."

"Nothing. This is silly."

"The way you had your nose in the pages, you could’ve been reading a mystery."

"Really, nothing."

"Charlie . . ."

I could see this moment sliding into something serious, cutting a distance between us wide enough to last the day, or longer. "All right, all right." I took back the book. While I found the pages, I considered faking, turning to some other string of purple lyrics. She’d see. I went to the refrain of "Fatal Wedding." These were the words she’d caught me reading for the third of fourth time. I didn’t know musical notation enough to make a guess at the tune, so I read sotto voce.   

"While the wedding bells were ringing,
While the bride and groom were there,
Marching up the aisle together,
As the organ pealed an air,
Telling tales of fond affection,
Vowing never more to part,
Just another fatal wedding,
Just another broken heart."

Lana took the music and sang the words softly. She pulled the hood off my head and stoked my hair. "Charlie, what do you want?"

"This place is a little too public."

"Please."

The placid bay let me form words I wouldn't use in more familiar surroundings. "Harmony. I want us to fit."

"This song." She handed me my music. "You’ve never spoken about marriage."

"Maybe the song found me."

"But you’re chicken."

"Cluck." I stroked the mist away from her cheek. "Lana banana, shall we have a wedding?"

"A fatal wedding?" She caught my hand, and pressed her face into my palm.

"Fatal or not."

"Then let's marry now."

If the hour of my death is lucid enough to let me recall the moments of my life, this one will shine. We kissed, melding in the cool wind.

"As soon as we’re home." Against my will I let my eyes find her single glaring defect, he little bit of hair. "I’ll get the license."

"We’re not dogs." She tweaked my nose. Taking her cellular out of her rain coat, she sat on a rock beside the ocean, drew me around her, and made arrangements.

The staff at the downtown department store dressed Lana in lacy white, and me in black, including a black collarless ruffled dress shirt the manger of the men's department insisted I buy. Lana received a gift of flowers. The doorman hailed a cab. Our turbaned driver caught the spirit, talking excitedly in his exotic accent about restaurants we might choose for our wedding dinner. He drove across a bridge above a channel where the fishing fleet docked, and into the city's bohemian Fremont section.

We invited him to our wedding. The church at the edge of a ragtag commercial district must have belonged to a Christian denomination at one time. The cross was gone from the steeple. A painted-over sign read:

CELESTIAL CONVERGENCE SOCIETY
Universal Harmonics
Daily, 7:00 p.m.
Projections and Readings
by Appointment
Enter

Crossing the mossy yard, Lana picked a sprig from a holly bush and twined leaves in her hair.

Our pastor wore a purple robe over denims and bare feet. Half his head had been shaved. The other half bore shoulder-length hair. A couple recruited from the street acted as our witnesses. The man was dressed like a castoff from three branches of the armed services, with a blue jacket from an Air Force uniform, white sailor’s pants, and paratrooper boots. At the back of his head, his hair was buzzed close to reveal a tattoo of an eagle. His female partner wore a black leather jacket over a tight black body suit, and boots as military as his. A silver stud pierced her tongue. Arm in arm, they encouraged us with moony smiles.

Our cab driver sat in the last pew and offered prayers to his own god. The wedding rite the pastor recited from memory rang oddly traditional, an Anglican service with all Christian references gone. Lana's face reflected her peace. I couldn’t stop looking at her. Beeswax candles blessed the air.

As we drove away in the taxi, she leaned over the front seat, steadying herself with one hand on the cabbie’s shoulder while she brought her face close to the rear view mirror. With a deft pluck, she pulled out the hair at the edge of her lip, then she settled against me, turned my hand up, and placed this little bit of her in my palm. I searched her face, her perfect face, already missing it there.

[ back to top ]