Austin Nights

same thing as moving cross-country. This isn’t apparent when we first look into our options, but it doesn’t take us long to see that moving over great distances prohibitively raises the cost of a rental truck or movers, and this premium, in turn, raises the overall price of the furniture you like enough to move. Is that couch really worth it? What about your bed, is that worth paying extra to keep? What if you can only sell it for a fraction of the price? These are critical questions that aren’t obvious at first, but the truth is that almost all furniture, when you pay to keep moving it, is a money pit. Family heirlooms are one thing, but that generic furniture you like a lot should be jettisoned without stutter.

  2

  “Tater tots.”

  That’s Bridget calling my attention to a woman lounging poolside with many tattoos plastered on her body. We’re about to join her at the community swimming pool.

  “You also have a tater tot,” I remind her.

  It’s true. Bridget has a beaded infinity sign on her right hip. It’s hidden behind fabric most of the time. But even in a bikini, when most of her body is out, it’s discrete. I’ve seen it countless times – privileged man that I am – every day for the last three years. I have traced my thumb along its infinite loop, watching the ink under her elastic skin distort.

  There’s significance behind Bridget’s infinity sign. It’s not haphazard, not the result of a reckless whim. This so-called tater tot is a reminder of what Bridget has been through, so she won’t forget the things that sometimes happen to the people she loves.

  This tater tot is her empathy.

  But I won’t get too much into the relationship between Bridget and her tater tot. All I’ll say is the girl by the swimming pool doesn’t have an infinity sign. Her tater tots are unsightly: too colorful, large, and over-exposed. I can’t see what any of them are even though her body is bombed. Too busy, too abundant, so that every tater tot devalues its neighboring tater tot, like digital photography versus film.

  Reluctant at first, Bridget straps on her blue goggles and gauges things with a breath stroke. Then she makes me proud and plunges. Bubbles break the surface. I begin to want the water. The bombed girl, a witness to the same temptation, walks over from the deep end and stands on the first stair, water up to her tater-totted canklebones.

  “When it’s this cold,” says Bridget, treading, “I think it’s easier to dive in.”

  “It’s icy,” says the bombed girl, heedless to the advice. She steps out of the water, her arms wrapped around her stomach, and asks about our respective ages.

  Since she’s looking at me through plastic bumblebee sunglasses, I answer first, “30.” Bridget is busy swimming, so I also answer for her, “And Bridget’s 22. How old are you?”

  It seems appropriate to reciprocate interests in age.

  “26,” says the bombed girl. Then she explains, “My boyfriend’s bringing beer, and I’d feel strange offering any if either of you were under-aged.”

  I wonder if she’s actually offering, I think. I think, I wouldn’t mind a cold one.

  To increase our chances, I act as if we’ve already accepted the beer that’s about to arrive. The bombed girl tries getting in again. This time she makes it a little farther before admitting, “It’s too cold for me.” She retreats up the stairs and to her chaise lounge by the deep end, where she thumbs through some glossy magazine.

  I look at Bridget swimming happily and say, “How’s the water now?”

  “Fine,” she taunts. “Aren’t you coming in?”

  “That’s it,” I say. I say, “I’m going back to our place and changing.”

  On the way, I recall the ocean water of Miami Beach, how it opened my sinuses and clung to my skin and hair. How it dried out my pores and left salt trails on my face and arms. Its perfect temperature. I love seawater, but I have to enjoy what’s here. I have to work with what I have.

  Honeyed Cat rubs against my legs after I walk through the front door. She’s hungry. Her bowl is empty. I fill it with cat food, change into my bright orange trunks that last were in the ocean (and, in fact, still smell of the ocean), and walk back to the community swimming pool, thinking about how amplified my flip-flops sound in the courtyard.

  “Ooo whew, whew, whew, whew, whew,” goes the Grackle. “Crewhewwhew!”

  3

  Bridget is asleep with Honeyed Cat curled on her lap. Underneath her corduroys: the beaded infinity sign that has no beginning and no end.

  I’m driving through Alabama. I don’t feel tired and my jaw is taut. In fact, I feel like I could drive all the way to Austin.

  I slowly lose the station I’ve been listening to for the last 60 miles. I have the radio balanced full throttle to my speaker. That way Bridget can sleep while I make time.

  I scroll through the FM dial until I hear the familiar voice of Delilah. She’s laughing. I know her laugh well. Delilah has ten children, some of them adopted. She believes in God. She’s a three-time divorcée. She lives somewhere in Washington. She tends to a garden. She’s the most listened to woman on the radio, at least in this country.

  Her catchline:

  SLOW DOWN AND LOVE SOMEONE

  Delilah is my friend because of these times on the road when she somehow finds me. Even when I’m in the middle of Nowhere, USA, on a pitch-black stretch of road, not another headlight or taillight in sight, Delilah finds me.

  “If you aren’t deeply moved by this oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico,” she says, “if you don’t feel a profound sadness at the destruction of so much helpless marine life and by the damage it will cause to the environment, then you have to rethink your life. Say a prayer tonight, say a prayer for this horrible catastrophe. Scientists are saying it will take 100 years for the environment to recover. 100 years! This is a terribly sad thing that we’ve done to our world.”

  Cut to song.

  Her music is mediocre mush. Her advice is just that: her advice. She doesn’t claim to be wise. She’s a real person who has lived and messed up, a person with foibles. But her god-like presence on the FM makes it easy to associate her with the goodness in life. And her callers, her callers are all real people like her. Her callers are trying. Her callers are doing the best they can.

  I listen to Delilah as I drive west on I-10. Bridget is asleep in the passenger seat, and Honeyed Cat is drugged-up in her lap. Of its own accord, my hand rests on Bridget’s thigh. I think of the goosebumps from that icy latte. Back then, we were still in Jon’s Silverado with a whole lot of driving to do, and we still have a little ways to go in our trusty red Civic, but we’re making it, and that’s something.

  Bridget is meaningful, I think. She’s taught me so much about the big questions in life. She’s made me think about infinity and love molecules. She’s proven logically that our love can exist forever. There’s a chance our love will be infinite. Let me see if I can get this straight. Bridget started by saying matter can neither be destroyed nor created. Then she said our love is chemicals in our brain, our love has a physical form, in other words, our love is matter, it can’t be destroyed. When we stop living, the earth will absorb our indestructible love molecules and, because of pheromones, there’s a chance these molecules will find each other in the Infinite just like they did in Life. Therefore, our love can exist forever.

  Q.E.D.

  The fuzz flashes its emergency lights ahead. I get nervous and slow down. When I pass, I hold my breath and wait to see if I’m going to be pulled over. But the lights must’ve been fair warning. I whistle softly to myself. Honeyed Cat momentarily comes out of her drowse and perks up her ears, thinking it’s mealtime. I pump Bridget’s thigh three times. Then the speedometer is back at 85 mph.

  “You’re listening to Delilah.”

  Cut to commercial.

  0

  “I’m the piano teacher.”

  I stand from the sofa and extend my hand. The piano teacher and I exchange one or two sentences about my dealings with the piano, but he isn’t here in our apartment on my accou
nt. Bridget found his number in a local coffee shop. After she used the ladies’ room, she sat back down at the counter with me and showed me a slip of paper she tore off the bulletin board with his contact info.

  The piano teacher is in a hurry. He has five more sessions today. Bridget’s free trial isn’t worth more than 20 minutes of his time.

  He takes a seat on our hard wooden chair and says, “Play me something.”

  Bridget’s fingers sound out the expository notes of a classical piece. She’s nervous, but that’s only natural when playing for the piano teacher.

  He stops her after several measures. He asks, “Are you counting?”

  “No,” she says.

  “I like my students to count aloud. One, two, three, four, or one and two and three and four. It’s better to hit the right keys with a slower tempo rather than hurrying. If you hurry,” he says, “you get used to hearing the piece played that way, and you start to think it’s correct.”

  Even though I’m not looking in on their lesson, I’m certain Bridget’s underarms are sweating.

  She plays what she can in 20 minutes. The piano teacher is jumpy in his assessment, asking if she practices scales, asking if she has Hanon, asking if she can sight-read, asking if she knows how to count triplets. Based on her playing and her answers, he says he can teach her. He knows where she’s at, and when she’s ready to pony up $30 for 45 minutes, he can commit to a lesson a