I pick you up in Midtown Atlanta by rolling up to your corner and yelling a catcall out the window. We laugh about how it feels like you're a call girl and I'm the sleazy/lonely John. I remember thinking how strange it is to have you sitting in the seat next to me, mainly because we haven't talked much in a few years and perhaps deep down don't really know each other that well. I make you decide where we'll go eat, and you do so immediately. I love this, because no one ever wants to be the decisive one.
We catch up about life and loves. I eat a salad and try to think myself thin, you talk about all the madness of being in a big city and living young and crazy. When it's my turn to tell stories, I realize that they're so tinged with being old that I'm a little embarrassed. And I realize immediately after, probably when the waiter asks to see my I.D. for that rum&coke, that I'm not really old physically but somewhere deep in the heart or soul. Or I've gotten older in my head, and it only makes me wish harder to be young and wild again.
***
We make plans to meet at my favorite breakfast hangout in Atlanta, and when I get there I see that it's closed so I pout in my car while I wait for you to arrive. In the empty parking lot, I begin to remember you more clearly. Times we sang together, what you drove, laughs, deeper talks. I remember that once I had put my arm around you and said, "This guy is great." It was a warm memory, which are the best.You get there late, which I remember as being typical so I chuckle slightly. You look dramatically different: your hair is long, down to your shoulders, and you've gained a little weight. You seem scruffier than I imagine, but I imagine singing praise & worship songs with you in front of hundreds at church. I cringe slightly and wonder if I'm very different to your eyes. We laugh a little, hug once. I say that we should walk down the road to a nearby restaurant and you love the idea because it seems so European to you, the novelty of walking. I don't know how to respond to that, so I just smile.
It's not as polished as it was before, so our friendship takes some time to get used to. When your girlfriend meets up with us, she asks a lot of questions and I like that because I can respond to concrete things. You make me repeat the funny parts of our conversation from before, and it's just a little embarrassing because I don't feel very funny. But I do repeat them, and she does laugh. You give me a CD of your music, our common connection, when I say goodbye. I like the CD and listen to it on the way home. You were right: the second song isn't very good.
***
When the phone rings, I don't expect it to be you. I had called you that morning, thinking maybe we could meet up later on in the day; as the day wore on I forgot that I had called you. You begin the conversation with shared jokes, doing funny voices. I laughed, because those voices were some of my favorite things about you. You are great at those voices. But the voices fade, and you get very serious when I ask you about your life right now. You're teaching English to non-natives, and not sure that you like it too much. I laugh, because we have more in common than ever now. I wait for a funny story about "the crazy things they say," but you can't really think of one. I try to tell my favorite one but I'm not sure if it is funny to you. I secretly begin to hope you'll do one of the voices again.You ask if I'm going to church at the same place as four years ago. I try to shrug the question off quickly and get back to the voices, to work, to your degree, to anything else. This is not part of that shared common ground anymore, and I know that you know it. I wrench the steering wheel from your grasp and, by asking how your Spanish host family is, accidentally turn the topic into the miscarriages of your Spanish friend. I grimace, and decide it's not the best idea to meet up with you later today. I don't say this. When I'm about to hang up, you tell me that the Lord lays me on your mind, and when He does, you pray for me fervently. Or something to that effect. I thank you and hang up. The phone clicks, and I listen to the dialtone. I wonder how the world can stretch two people so far apart that you can physically feel the words and emotions between you go taut, vibrate for a moment, and snap, hurtling back to their points of origin.
