A Name For it

There isn’t a name for it, that thing when you make a memory, lifelong. She was 23 and pregnant. Just a girl walking up the stairs to sign a real estate contract with her first, soon-to-be-ex, husband. Just a man coming down the stairs, their hands sparked on the rail, a connection, a jolt to the system. Not her type, late 40-ish, drab Mister Rogers cardigan, penny loafers, scraggly moustache, prematurely graying hair with an unlit pipe clenched between uneven teeth. She was a pretty girl, but he looked past her pretty into “I know you, you are someone to me.” 

Their eyes met full, unembarrassed. Neither apologized, as is customary when you touch a stranger on a stairwell. Neither dropped their eyes or glanced away from invading personal space, like an invisible force field around modern society they stared directly into the eyes of not a stranger and fell instantly sad, ancient sad. What do you call it? Profound loss? and you have never met? never will? 

He turned to follow her up the stairs. Stopping at his office door to check his watch, fumble his moustache, watch them file into the room. She hung back slightly, the last inside, her eyes drifting again to his, just to be sure, to be sure. 

No, never, not ever. She was sure of it, so was he. They kept eyes to eyes until the attorney asked if she was feeling all right. “Could I get you some water?” “No, thank you.” Pulling her eyes away from not her type she went inside leaving the door wide.

            He followed their business with something like interest. Leaning back in his chair to put his feet on the desk he watched. She leaned forward laid her hand on the table and watched as two worlds revolved into an easy, familiar balance.

            He twiddled no particular thing at all until he thought to light the pipe. Good for at least five-minutes of ritual. He was new to pipe smoking, but not for long. He would think of her always when he smoked, on the golf course between drives, after making like to his wife, puttering in his orchids when he was older. His last thought would be of long black hair and unashamed eyes when she took his hand into eternity. He wondered why he knew her. Why he knew her so completely.

She thought of him when she went into labor, would have called out his name had she known it. Thought of him when she was baking cookies, planting carrots, folding laundry. She thought of him years later when she buried that child, would have cried out his name had she known it. Would cleave unto him had she known it.

“Missus? Missus? Are you all right? Can I get you something? Is it the baby?” She should pay attention, but she couldn’t, the room felt airless and uncomfortably tight.

“Pregnant women, friggin’ weird,” the attorney thought. “It’s the hormones,” the attorney thought. But he was wrong. Not hormones, the light and dark, good and evil, yin and yang, man and woman of it.

When she left the room he followed her as far as the bank of glass at the top of the stairs. He watched her walk down and look up as she swung slowly around the newel. He counted her steps through the building until she came into view in the parking lot. She stared long at him before crawling inside the car. He watched them pull away, watched her fingertips press the car window as his own pressed the glass. They watched until there was nothing left to see.