Cinder and Smoke IV

I sit on the unmade bed for a while. No loose sheets litter the floor now.  I was never given a chance to get irritated, you see. It simply hadn’t been long enough. Once my workday ends I’m not really sure what to do with myself anymore. Leo had always been the driving force at home. Impetuous and insistent. “Bear we have to!” she would shriek gleefully. And we would. Whatever she happened to want at the time. I would go along with her and we would have fun. I remember this one day on the beach. We had been driving because Leo had suddenly had an urge to go for a long drive. It was just that sort of a day where the sea was calling out to her apparently. I had woken up on a lazy Sunday morning to find a dark sky looming and a breeze swirling the leaves outside. “We have to go for a drive, Bear”, she’d said, as soon as she had seen me. I feebly protested and she waved aside my arguments with a kiss and some coffee. She was wearing something white I remember and she had her hair cut short just a little below her ear. She had lost a lot of weight at that point of time, and she looked like a little lost boy, with her elfin frame and pixie-like face. She had been unusually quiet for a while; stressed about this screenplay she had been working on.  We had been driving in silence for a while with the only sound that of the wind and the sheet on the backseat flapping with it. I turned to see her looking at me seriously. It was so unusual for her, I panicked a little, I’ll admit. I thought she was going to tell me it was over and she was bored. Instead she smiled at me so sweetly, it almost broke my heart and said, “Thank you”. “What for”, I asked her, completely mystified, but she just smiled and nodded her head like an adorable little kid. We had nearly reached the beach and you could see the blue temperamental gray of the water. Hardly had I parked the car that she bounded out. She whooped and ran across the soft brown of the beach, spinning, arms flung out, and hair flying in all directions. The beach was empty for once, not surprisingly. The storm was getting close and the wind was strong now. Leo of course, loved it. She danced with wild abandon on the beach. That was something i loved about Leo. Unlike myself who had so many hang ups,, my image, respectability and just, “being proper” in front of people, Leo had no such qualms. She just didn’t care. She let herself go completely and she did exactly what she felt like without a second thought. Her moods dictated her actions. Perhaps, she hadn’t completely grown up, perhaps she was being immature. But to me, she was a wild, untamed spark. She was free. That day she danced with the wind and flirted with the waves. She danced with me.

She was laughing as she reached for my hand. She pulled me into her dance. Clumsy, uncoordinated, stiff fool that I was, I just couldn’t do it. Bound by my limitations, feeling like an utter jackass I tripped along clumsily. I couldn’t look her in the face; for the hundredth time I questioned what on earth this creature was doing with stolid me. Leo drew to a stop and put her arms around my neck. She smiled and then we were slow dancing. Unhurriedly, so close that I couldn’t figure out where I ended and she began. “This we can do, Babe?” She gave me her funny little grin, with eyes sparkling. “Music?” I asked. “I would say something like the music is in your heart, Bear, but you, Mr. Big shot Lawyer would need concrete evidence” She rummaged in the car and brought out a   CD. “Def leppard”, she said grinning, like a ridiculously delighted child.

“Oooh, I miss you in a heartbeat.
Oooh, I miss you right away.
Oooh, I miss you in a heartbeat.
It aint love, if it don’t feel that way.”

The music washed over us and we swayed to it. Looking at Leo then, she looked so fragile, so incredibly/ bafflingly beautiful, I couldn’t say a word. Strangely I wanted to protect her. Leo is a strikingly attractive woman. But that day on the beach, in her white dress, and her little-boy face, with her blazing eyes shining- that is what I think of when I think of Leo.

I’ve never been a romantic person; I don’t have enough imagination I suppose. But nobody has ever had the effect Leo did on me. She was electrifying, she was-free. She scared me by the intensity of what I felt for her. She made me – happy isn’t the word. She made me, alive. She made me alive.

“Give me your hand
The dog in the garden row is covered in mud
And dragging your mother’s clothes”