the quarantine waltz

In the time of Telly’s quarantine, the space outside below the second-floor window of his granddaughter’s house has stood in for my screen porch as a place to come together.  Friends of his visit, standing in the side yard, looking up at the man in the window.  He likens it to a drive-thru for fast conversation.  The Stop & Chat, he calls it.  Toby and I have done our fair share of stopping and chatting.  My friend says he hasn’t socialized this much since the last funeral he attended. 

“But,” he says, “it’s not enough.  I don’t know if it’s because I can’t touch anyone…or if this virus is just getting into my brain and throwing switches and pulling wires.  But I don’t feel like my usual self.”

“You’re not wiping your nose,” I list for him.  “You haven’t lost your sense of taste.  But your wires are coming loose.  I don’t think I have heard that as one of the symptoms of the virus.”

But I am inclined to believe the old guy’s loose-wires diagnosis when he says he feels bad about the new scratches on Ed Filbert’s Cadillac, the same scratches caused by the new eight-year-old on the block.

“Since when do you have tender feelings for Ed?” I ask him.  “He’s that guy in the corner house you don’t like.  Remember?”

“Look, if Tabby wasn’t riding that bike, she wouldn’t have hit his car.”

“Twice,” I tell him.  “She hit his parked car twice in two days.  Twice, because Ed absolutely refuses to park in his driveway.  Why?  Nobody knows.  He doesn’t have a basketball goal on the side.  I’ve never seen him roller-blading in the drive.”

“I know.  I know.”  Telly says he knows.  “I think it worries Ed to back up that long car.  He’s so thick-neck’ed, he can’t turn to look behind him.” 

“Thick naked?”  I heard two distinct syllables in his use of the cervical predicate.

“Please don’t conjure that image of that person,” Telly says with a hand over his eyes.  “My point is…Crap!  Now I can’t get that image out of my head.”

I wait.

“If I hadn’t given the girl the bike,” he continues, “she wouldn’t have been riding it to run into Ed’s car.  And the only reason I had it to give to her is….”  He kind of peters out, glosses over an ancient history of illness and loss, and wraps it up with “It belonged to Alexi.”

Selfishly, I wonder if I have the energy for the conversation I think is about to dock.  

“I know.  And it was a wonderful gesture, letting Santa give Tabby your wife’s bicycle.  But what I’m hearing from you is that Alexi makes you care for Ed.”

The preposterousness of the idea makes him smile, at least as much as the thought of thick-necked naked Ed makes him shudder.

“I see your point.  I guess a better explanation would be that this old widower is losing it.”

“No.”  Toby and I shake our heads sympathetically.  “I’m sure that happened years ago.  This is something else.”

There is the type of conversation you have with the politically opposite family member you can’t divorce or impeach.  There are the varied and meaningful conversations you have with friends more simpatico.  And there are the conversations, word-laden or threadbare, that you have with those empowered to fill your heart.  It’s not the scope of their knowledge or their familiarity with a subject.  It’s who they are to you.  What part of you they touch.   

“Maybe I need a cat,” Telly says with an eye on Toby. 

“Now I know you’ve lost it.” 

Now Toby puts an eye on me.

“Listen to me,” Telly says.  “With a cat, I can have different types of conversations.  About anything I want.  You know, because, really, you speak for them.  You project their half of the conversation onto them.”

“Don’t listen to him Toby.”

“I try to do that with my sick son-in-law, but he resists.  So, I have these conversations with myself.”  Telly holds up his hand to stop any smartass commentary.  “Here, too, there is a manner of projection.  A conversation needs at least two sides.  But when the projected side speaks to me, it is Alexi’s voice I hear.  It’s been eleven years and I can still smell her skin.  Still see the quickness in her eyes.”  Another image momentarily blinds him.  “We used to dance.”

Just like that, he changes the subject and forces me to consider just how much my half of the conversation is projected by him.

“Are we talking about get-down kind of dance?”

He waves off the idea.  “Something slow…and meaningful.  There’s such a thing as dancing with your pelvis, and there’s dancing with your heart.  Alexi liked to waltz.  She liked how it looked in the movies, old ones before your time.  When she danced with me, her arms made me forget my worries.  When I looked in her eyes, she was the only woman in the world.”  He laughs at himself.  “I’m guilty of doing a little of that now.  Waltzing around the house while you-know-who is conked out, staring into Alexi’s eyes.  Silly of me.”

“Telly, that is the least silly thing you’ve said in our session today.”

“Session, is it?”  He raises his crazy brows.  “And just who should be billing whom?”

We laugh.  

After leaving Telly’s Stop & Chat, I find myself actually envying the old man and his projected dance partner.  Imaginary or not, his reaction is real.      

When I get home, I don’t even think about it.  I turn on my laptop and log into my online dating dashboard.  I stare at the list of names in my in-box.  Their profiles and winking emojis suggest different kinds of women.  But the kind of woman I want to see is not in the box.  I’m looking for the kind who walks on rainbows. 

Fortunately for me, I know her number.

With each ring, a thousand reasons to hang up occur to me.  I have avoided calling her for months because I didn’t want to squash my hope.  Brilliant strategy, I know.  There is only one reason to hang on.  And the one prevails.

When the ringing stops suddenly, I lose my place in my thoughts.

“Lo’och?”  The voice is so familiar and yet so unexpected it brings tears to my eyes.

“Teri Lin.”  God it feels good to say that name.   

“What is it?”  She sounds alarmed by the crack in my voice.

“Three aliens just showed up at my door and told me I need to get off this rock before life as we’ve known it this past year continues…and that I can only take one person with me.”

She doesn’t miss a beat.  “I’ve had my bags packed for weeks.”

I truly feel I have already lifted off and gone to Teri Lin.

“So why haven’t you and your aliens called sooner?” she asks. 

As they say in every interview these days: it’s an excellent question.  “I guess I figured you were busy dating all those guys you said you were meeting online.”

“I’ve only been dating one,” she says. 

One is bad, because one is serious.  At once, I regret not deleting her number from my contacts. 

“But I’m always looking for a reason to break up,” she says.  How unexpected it must have been for Moses to finally get an olive branch from his trusty dove.  Right now, it feels as though my dove has just returned and brought back with it the whole olive tree.  “He is frustrated because I won’t meet him in person.”

“Unless he’s from another planet, like my friendly alien abductors, he should know that this one is in the throes of a pandemic.”

“That’s the word I was looking for.  Throes.”  She laughs and I hear music.  “I hope when we finally see each other again, I will still look the same.”

“After this year, a year apart, you will never look the same.”

“I’ve gained weight,” she says in a confessional voice.

“I’ve amassed in my affections.”

“Loch, seriously.”

“Listen, you’re not the only one.  My right foot has never been this big.”

“Stop it,” she says, but her laughter tells me to Go, go, go.  “You and your foot.”

“Let’s turn our cameras on.  I’ll prove it.”

She hesitates.  “I didn’t know you were going to call.  I didn’t prepare for this.”

I don’t push it.  “Okay.  Talk is good.  Your words in your voice…that is what I miss.  The rest is just icing.”

If the next level of our conversation is restricted by a combination lock, I somehow speak all the right numbers.  At once, she appears on my screen. 

“Oh..my..God,” she says slowly and with wonder. 

Now it’s my turn to uh-oh.  “I guess I should have told you…I look a year older.”

“No’oooh.”  Tears roll down Teri Lin’s cheeks.  “I have missed your crazy hair.”

“Crazy?”  I’m trying not to get choked up.  “You couldn’t find another word?  Like handsome, sexy, brushed?”

“All of the above,” she says with a smile so big I can feel it crowding out the organs in my chest.

“Now, not that I care, but I don’t see an ounce of extra Teri Lin.  Is all your weight-gain below the ankles?  Maybe it’s just in one hand.”

“Trust me.  Extra Teri Lin is here.”

“I can’t wait to see her.”  And a thought occurs to me, a next-level thought.  “After nine months in lock-down, can you still sing?”

“Can I still sing?”  She tries to act indignant.  At least, I think she’s acting.  “That is all I have been doing for nine months.  Can I still sing?  I can sing anything,” she claims.  “Make up my own melody, my own introspective life-divining lyrics.  Can I still sing.”  While I make mental note of the button I have just discovered, the owner of the button narrows her eyes at the caller who dares to question can she sing.  “Just give me a beat.”

“I’ll give you three.”  I hold the phone away from my body and cup one hand over my mouth.  “Pkooh…czk-czk.  Pkooh…czk-czk…”

“I’m waiting.”  Her voice is singsongy. 

“This is it.  Pkooh…czk-czk.”

“Pooh…chick-chick?” she questions me.  “What…are you trying to clear your throat for both of us?”

“I’m beat-boxing in a three-four time signature.”  I raise a cynical eyebrow.  “Or is that outside your singing range?”

Oh, the buttons one should push only at a safe distance!

Still holding the phone away from me, I project Teri Lin’s waist under my right hand, her right hand in my phone-hand.  I don’t even have to explain myself as the picture on my phone begins to turn and gently bob.  She follows my lead, twenty miles away.

“Lah…la’la,” she sings, not with words but words’ element.  “La’la.  Lah lahh.”  She tries not to laugh.  “La’la….la’la…la’la….Lah lahh.  What are we doing?” she asks sweetly between the la’s.

“I don’t know,” I say, because I really don’t know.  But I must be doing it right, because Toby gives me a thumbs-up and motions for me to keep going.  “Just don’t stop.” 

Safe waltzing by phone.