by Robert Lane
Kathleen.
Kathleen.
Kathleen.
And she was walking away.
“Walk with me,” I said.
She turned back. “What?”
“A short walk. Right now.”
“I can’t…not right now. Maybe in—”
“Walk with me.”
I took two steps toward her and extended my hand.
“Walk with me.”
An involuntary smile flashed on her face and then she erased it just as fast. We would be OK. But as I had informed her once and she had reminded me a few nights ago, “just OK” was for losers.
She took my hand and I led us to the park across the street. We sat on the same bench I had sat on after my first visit to the Gulf Beaches Historical Museum. I let her have the clean end.
I handed her the letter.
Dorothy Harrison never knew what her husband wrote to her the last night of his life. His words would speak for me. His letter would serve its intent, just in a different time and with different lovers. Sometimes we can do that, have lives that we’ve never known intertwine and affect our course. Everyone’s into the future, but it is the past that drifts us like a leaf on the water.
“What’s this?”
“It’s Jim Harrison’s letter to Dorothy, written the night before he died.”
“How did you—?”
“There were two, make that three, letters in the envelope.” I explained the first letter as well as Sullivan’s handwritten note.
She asked, “Jim was shot down by either the CIA or a Mafia CIA team that was actually gunning for Sullivan?”
“Yes. But that’s for later. Read the letter. And K?”
“Yes?” Another smile, but nothing involuntary about it. I had never referred to her as a single letter. I was making headway here. But I had done serious damage. You can always go back to your books was a little left of the heart.
I paused. “Nothing. Read it.”
Her eyes left mine and she read the letter. She blew her breath out and read it again. She sniffled and stood and walked over to the dark hedges that were out of the glare of the light pole that was behind the bench. I went to her. She spoke before I stopped, her back still toward me.
“She never read it?”
“No.”
“No one?”
“No.”
We were silent for a minute. Her back rose and fell several times and I heard her breath shudder from her.
“It’s for you, Kathleen. He wrote it, but it’s—”
She spun around to me. Her face was moist and mascara streaked her cheeks.
“You do that, don’t you? I noticed that you do that.”
“I do.”
“Do it now, Jake.”
I put my arms around her shoulders and hovered my mouth over the corner of her mouth, and as her breath escaped I inhaled until I could breathe no more, until I had taken all I could and there was nothing left. Mother Earth would be pleased, for we wasted not a molecule of air.
My lips had only graced the surface of her lips.
I pulled my head back. “What I want to say is—”
“Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
I did.
Hotel Florida
Havana, January 4, 1961
My Dearest Dottie,
You’d be so proud, for I’ve secured a room with a window, which is not a given in this hotel. I have the symbolic spot.
I spent the evening with Ted at a rowdy expatriate joint called Sloppy Joe’s. We were toasting the folly of our government’s thinking, for by the time you read this our disastrous invasion of Cuba will have faltered.
I am sorry to be away so long. I have been increasingly aware of the compression of time and how fortunate we are to share the same time. It seems I get caught in events that are not me, yet extracting myself from such situations is not easy.
Do events change us or, like a creeping dawn, does life finally make its presence known and kill the false gods of our idealistic youth? And if so, how much of the day remains?
What alcoholic rubbish. I’ll go again and leave nothing at the edges.
I risk my life. For what? A world that will never know I was here? To never again run my fingers along the curve of your hips? All I want is to hover my mouth over yours and to breathe in as you breathe out so that we share the same air. There is nothing I crave more than to take life from your lips and use it for my own lungs, my heart. To fuel my lust for you.
I am finished. A few months to tidy up loose ends and then I am home for good.
Know that when you swim in the Gulf, that I am the water that envelopes you. I am the tide that moves gently in and out of you, our rhythm one with the moon and stars.
And even when mine are gone, I will love you tomorrow.
Yours, forever
Jim