Triptych
Tucson is a night city. Oppressive days are to be endured; nights to be savored. Darkly lit roads, orange and amber and black and blank. Balmy desert night-air, before things turn decidedly cold, gives lift, comes from underneath, buoyant. Desert daylight air comes from above, beats down, dry and dessicating, installing torpor front and center and circumlocuting the mind. Carrion eaters draw funnels in bright skies, drop through onto a next meal—something else's last meal, some other creature's last breath.
Omnivores, metavores cruise the Tucson streets at night, honey glow of streetlamps hides all except motion. Stealth requires nothing but stillness. High Science too busy looking at the stars, a task so necessary to Big Futures that this town must remain so lit.
No beacons proclaiming. No cannons of light nor canons of bright for Everyman and Everywoman. Just so, serendipity descends. No crushing glare, no defensively-aimed shafts of haze.
Shoulders drop in relaxation, the rough rumble of an old engine doing its best, sighing relief at each upshift. The head clears; the laser-straight streets are becoming known...manual transmission goes to auto-pilot and anticipation builds: him.
Parking lots are measured in football fields, even less well lit than the pavement of the streets. White jeep is night-white, sits, quiescent, cooling in tick-ticks and slight-spoken groans.
He arrives, and for a moment, just a moment, he's a stranger. A deadly handsome stranger unknown to me. Blood races, heart throbs in my ears and my throat, and in ten fingertips. Night knows that it doesn't see what it sees; "I was never here"; "this never happened."
The moment passes as moments do, and he is the One, again. The blood races on, the heart throbs happily now as the fingertips reach for the car door. He is over there, and that's too far away.
We walk into the fast-food place together, the harsh fluorescence thrumming danger at 60 cycles per second. This light is where tragedy happens. This light is where nerves fray to the point of impact or knifepoint or trigger-squeeze. Menace, a contrapuntal baseline, drives the crass, comical calliope of saturated fat, high sodium, cholesterolic infinitude. No one can live peaceably at this speed.
Fast food that is anything but fast. The queue fills up behind us. Two men in uniform. I check myself unconsciously, subconsciously, way too consciously to be sure I don't cause alarm or alert. Then I remember that these are military persons, not police. Then I remember when they used to be different things. Then I remember that any conflict that might arise in this en garde, en passant, on the corner dive is beneath such. Expecting to feel safe because of their presence is expecting a jumbo jet to appear graceful on the ground: wrong millieu.
We eat in near silence. Alien spaces, compared to our usual haunts of home and high-tea. He must return to his duties at work. I must return to my own work, my own schedule time-shifted to match his.
We speak softly, walking to the car, attempting a semblance of selves, falling short of the mark. I get in my car, he in his. Peripheral vision catches motion and I turn, contrapposto, and he stares me down. My face is a mask, matching his. He's giving space to those parts of each of our bodies that cannot say no; pure animal thrill. He tips his head back and I feel the throbbing in ten toe-tips, then all twenty-one "digits". I remain motionless, except for the tip of my head, acknowledging.
He breaks the spell, smiles his dazzling smile. He breaks the spell only to replace it with other, more powerful magicks: familiarity and love.
He backs out and heads off. I do the same, back on the bedimmed streets. By now, the desert has claimed enough heat that the windows must be closed. No matter, the comfort remains, the pale of the dim lights lets the wild things frolic for a bit, as they must.
For my part, this atmosphere, this town, this man, this love, slows down the pace, restores the knack of moderation in all other things. "What now?" gives way to Now; "What's next?" is sated by "just more of this, here."
The human heart is a night city; the human soul can be seen only when in motion, only when the world is darkly lit.