When I first saw you, I didn’t think you were my type. I was still ten rows away and saw you aggressively cram something into the overhead, and then your friend crawled into the middle and you crashed into the aisle seat like you were already exhausted, though I’d learn later that you were just starting your trip. I smiled an apology as I got closer, letting you know I was coming for the window seat.
“That’s okay,” I said. I can jump over you.You grinned, said: “I’d like to see that.”I was quiet for most of the flight, resting my eyes and recovering from my trip which had started the day before in Guaymas, Mexico on a bus. But I overheard you talking about work. Finally, I said something: “Are you two going to Seattle on business? Sounds like you’re doctors?”“No,” you said, “we’re E.R. nurses, but this is a girl’s weekend. How ‘bout you? Are you visiting Seattle or going home?”“Ah, so you were totally prepared for me to break my leg jumping over your seat.”“You would have been in good hands.”“Well, visiting or going home. Uh….” When you’re essentially homeless, leaving your sailboat behind in Mexico as hurricane season approaches after having sailed for six months, and then hopping on a Mexican bus to Phoenix to get back to check on your staged but otherwise completely empty house and get some real work done at the office before heading to Florida where your kids live with their mom, it’s easy to make conversation but hard to say exactly where your roots lie.“I’m a transient,” I said. “In the truest sense of the word.” You didn’t imagine me sleeping on a park bench so you wanted to know more. For the next hour we talked, you, your friend and I. I told you about sailing far from land, about whales and dolphins, about great restaurants and cheap gas in Mexico and just a very little bit about the friendliest divorce on record. You browsed my iPhone pictures and in the end we drank like I was joining you on your weekend.The more we talked, the more I found myself wishing you’d be in Seattle longer than just the weekend. I noticed your skin, your eyes. I was blown away when you used “quixotic” in a sentence….“What should we do in Seattle?” you asked. “What would you do?”“Uh…. Hmm. Fly to Vegas?” I’m funny, I guess, with one hour’s sleep. And I loved to see you smile.We talked about meeting somewhere. I suggested I’d never pass on a chance to go out with four beautiful girls, so we exchanged numbers. But then we landed and you took out your phone, made a call and teased the person on the other end: “Yes,” you said. “Right, we’re back in Phoenix. It was a wonderful weekend! I’m so glad I went and I can’t wait to see you. Are you outside ready to pick us up?” You giggled and I’m sure he laughed, too.I’ve seen it before, you women who manipulate science and warp the laws of the universe when it comes to the men in your life. I was married to a woman about whom I always said, because of the coworkers and friends and babies who continuously orbited such a small person: “Your gravity is out of proportion to your mass.” And there you were on the phone, like Einstein conducting a beam of light or ripping the fabric of time, somehow making a three hour flight feel like an instant to me, while the very same span was forever to someone at home who wasn’t with you.
