Love, Not Bob …
A few years ago, after the crash and before I could think about feeling anything again, my friend Bob asked me to write a poem or a story he could give to a woman he was interested in and act as though he’d written it. “C’mon, you’re good at that romantic crap,” he said as though it was a compliment. “Just something about how beautiful she is and how much I want to see her naked, but, in a classy way. Don’t make it too good though. I don’t want her to expect too much in case I ever have to write something myself someday.”
I was impressed he said beautiful rather than hot, honestly, as that was the word he used to describe his dates usually. He had been running through a series of them and had joked more than once that there wouldn’t be any left for me once I was ready to get back out there. “It doesn’t work that way, Bob. I need to actually feel something for someone to write to them.”
“Well, give me something you wrote for Sarah then.” He stopped suddenly. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to … “ I let him stew in his own panic for a moment.
“No worries. All that stuff is gone anyway,” I lied. It was all still in a drawer by the bed that I never opened except to throw scraps of things I still wrote to her on coffee cup sleeves and napkins when the urge got too strong to resist; the same type of stuff I’d written before the accident, but that was for her, not Bob’s wanna-be.
“Here, look at her,” he said as he shoved his phone at my face. It was a picture of a pretty woman, a little younger than us probably, but with a sad look in her eyes. “Wait, that’s not a good one. She’s not smiling in that one.” He scrolled through and then showed me a picture of her in a group of friends, a few I recognized from a social group I’d once been part of. She was smiling and looking away from the camera as though she didn’t know it was there, captured in a moment of bliss. “Her name is Allison and she works at the insurance agency downstairs from me. She eats lunch in the courtyard and is always reading a book, so I’m sure she’d like some romantic nonsense.”
“She’s pretty, but I can’t do it. Just write anything for her. She’ll appreciate the effort. Just don’t use the words naked or nookie and you’ll be fine.” He put the phone on the table and picked up his beer. “Plus, the first picture you showed me is the one she’s the most beautiful in. Tell her that's the one that caught your attention. People always get told they have a pretty smile."
“Yeah, whatever. I’m not sure I want to go out with her anyway. She feels like a lot of work. Smart girls always are.” I didn’t reply to that and we soon moved on to other topics before calling it a night. As we walked out the door, his face turned serious. “You need to move on, man I’ve been sending everyone to you and they all come back and tell me how sad you are. You gotta get over it sometime. She wouldn’t want you to be like this, would she?”
“I’ll be ready one day,” I replied, not sure if he believed me. I knew I didn’t.
When I got home, I let the dog out and looked at the moon while she sniffed around the tires on my truck before making her way into the grass to do her business. We went inside and I dropped my shoes at the door and picked up my laptop on the way to the bedroom. After my nightly rituals, I lay down and opened it up and found Bob’s maybe through the mutual connections I had recognized earlier.
She was not from here, but had been here long enough to have a history I was familiar with. The sad look recurred in her collection of photos and I gleaned clues as to the cause from the captions as I worked through them. Every once in a while though, I’d see one in which she was beaming. She was lovely in those as well and looked like a completely different beauty depending on which one I was looking at.
I leaned over and opened the drawer and pulled out a blank postcard I’d picked up on a trip to Chicago. It had a picture of the Bean on it with “I’ve bean missing you,’ printed across the front. I had intended to write a note to Sarah on it, but hadn't gotten to that scrap yet. She would have rolled her eyes at the pun, but she would have flashed that smile of hers as she did so. That memory made me second-guess myself and I almost put it back in the drawer. After a moment, I shook my head, but that didn’t clear anything I had going on in there.
My blue pen, the one that wrote so smoothly, was on the nightstand and I picked it up and put the nib on the back of the card and wrote, “The faces Allison makes when no one is watching.” The rest of the words flowed out quickly and without thought. It had been awhile since every word hadn’t required its own agony before being put on the record. When I ran out of all but the last, little space, I signed it, “Not Bob.” I held it over the drawer and hovered before dropping it in. I pulled it back to my face and read what I’d written. Then, I read it again. I placed it on the nightstand with the pen on top in case a ghost wanted to make a contribution while I slept. I shut the drawer on any spirits that hadn’t already escaped and I didn't fall asleep for a few hours as I worked on where the card should go next.
