We made plans, Jamie and I, to be together in the fall in the
mountains. I turned down a flattering offer to follow Harry to a
hunting lodge in New Hampshire and from there to Florida for the winter
season. I had a different future. Jamie was coming.
I caught the ferry to Woods Hole on a foggy morning. It was chilly; the
passengers stayed inside. I went out on deck and heard jazz coming from
the stern. A man with his feet up on a chair was playing a trumpet
pointed toward the ocean and an American flag fluttering in the fog. He
played freely, a concert for the two of us, a farewell to the island
and summer.
Jamie arrived for a day several weeks later. When I put her on the bus
to Philadelphia to go home for her stuff, life was bright. I met her
bus that weekend, but she wasn't on it. A terrible emptiness spread
through me.
We wrote to each other for a year. She did, eventually, step down from
that bus. Two weeks later I put her back on. It had all been a kind of
sexual mirage, a passion that had nothing to do with who she was. Watch
out when your throat goes dry and you begin to shake!
We each have a type--someone visually our lost other self, male or
female. I've seen a few since, always blonde, earthy and radiant at the
same time, a particular combination. But they don't affect me the same
way. I shake my head and say, there's another one.
"What happened to Jamie?" W.
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