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Sunday, February 26, 2006 A couple of days back: me in late-afternoon Montpelier, post-manly-gym-thing. Rewarding myself for being such a good, healthy, wholesome boy with a shot of good, healthy, wholesome caffeine. I order, I'm waiting while the cutie behind the counter coaxes some joyjuice out of the espresso machine. Someone says my name, I look around and see that Jeff -- a character I haven't run into in six or so years -- has appeared by my side. I first met Jeff many moons ago, when he was living with Elaine, an old university friend, and they were shacked up in a tough part of Roxbury, Mass., living in one floor of a triple-decker and taking the battery from their car in every night so the local two-legged wildlife wouldn't rip it out of the vehicle during the wee hours. He worked driving a cab, Elaine did something in an office, both pooling their money to buy land up here in Vermont and get the hell out of the city. Seemed like a good guy, Jeff -- friendly, interesting. 5'10" or 11", longish brown hair, narrowish face, eyes alive and a bit guarded -- bears a vague resemblance to Frank Zappa. I shifted my life out to the other coast sometime after that, settling in Seattle for one of the weirder periods I've experienced in this life of mine. Next time I saw Jeff, I'd gotten hitched and moved back east, he and Elaine had left Massachusetts behind, were living on ten acres off a dirt road in Hardwick, north of here. Residing in a small house they'd built, at that time without electricity. My sweetie and I drove up for their wedding (held on their land, attended by a motley blend of folks), winding our way along two-lanes from Vermont's southwest corner to its northeast corner on a motorcycle, our only set of wheels, something I'd picked up with cash from the sale of the house I'd bought and lived in, in Seattle. My more refined half and I visited once or twice more, in subsequent summers, each visit deepening the bug I'd picked up eight or nine years beforehand, the wanting to live up here. (On an August afternoon during one of those warm-season north country excursions, I saw my first dust devil. A small, sketchy tornado, six or seven feet high, raising a light cloud of leaves and dry earth, zig-zagging around a field across the dirt road from Jeff and Elaine's land, its movements appearing strangely -- not sure what the word I want here is... conscious? intentional? I can see why some native americans consider dust devils to be living beings.) I left my marriage three or so years after their wedding, spent a strange 16 or 17 months in L.A. When I fled back east, I wound up in Cambridge, Mass., made the occasional trip north to touch base with Elaine/Jeff and gratify my Vermont jones. They had two daughters, their marriage went through troubles, they split up. Elaine moved to a small town not far from Hardwick, got herself into a relationship with a woman -- a pairing that spanned a few increasingly turbulent years, finally bursting apart 2-1/2, 3 years ago. One of the last times I saw her, I had two Irish boys in tow, the lads here to help me close out my life in Cambridge. We spent an evening at Elaine's place, her two teenage daughters in attendance (along with the older one's Jamaican main squeeze). Excellent food, hours of conversation. The kids clearly enjoyed the exotic presence of two characters from a different part of the planet, I enjoyed facilitating the event and passing some time with an old friend and her brood. I saw her a couple of times during the following warm season, before heading back to Madrid. As my departure date approached, I called Elaine, left a message, got no response. Called again, left another message, same result: nothing. I made the transatlantic leap, the silence stretched on -- on and on and on until, months later, a Christmas card materialized, the note inside talking about how we'd been so bad about keeping in touch. I answered with a teasing note of the "What you mean 'we,' paleface?" variety. And something about that apparently hurt her feelings -- she sent a reply simply saying, "Okay," and refused to answer my follow-up communications. I never heard from her again. In her Christmas card, she'd mentioned that she'd gotten newly involved with a male (just to keep everyone off balance, she said) and referred to herself as 'neurotic as hell' as if it were a selling point. I wondered about that when she vanished, accepted that I might never know what was up. And remembered that sometimes when relationships reach the end of their shelf life, it means that the participants have evolved in different directions. Everything moves on in this existence of ours. Jeff joined me at a nearby table to catch up for a few minutes, we gave each other the short version of our current lives. I asked if he'd been in touch with Elaine, we talked about the ever-shifting state of their post-marriage relations. I mentioned her disappearance, it came as news to him. He said now that one of their daughters was off at college, Elaine was spending increasing time at home -- alone, isolated, unattached romantically (to anyone of either gender). Second-hand information -- not a reliable source of data, not a dependable way to get a picture of someone's state of being. Gossip, essentially. Gossip sucks. Calling her directly would be a better, kinder option, and however it went, it would likely, at the very least, be interesting. I filed that away as something to think about, mentally wished Elaine well, the conversation moved to other topics. Jeff and Elaine are both excellent cooks, Jeff's worked as a cook most of the years I've known him, was a fixture for much of that time in the kitchen at Montpelier's most popular Italian restaurant. A situation that could provide no further advancement once he'd reached the top of that little world's heap. And then someone offered him a job at the local food bank, a good job, one of the top positions there. He was ready for a change in situation and made the leap. It is, he commented, the first job he's ever had that includes benefits -- he shook his head at that, eyes showing a mix of amazement and sheepish pleasure. I hoovered down the last of my espresso, we got to our feet, saying good-bye. My hilltop fiefdom is off the road he travels every day, as I did up my jacket I said he should feel free to stop by any time he felt like it. He edged away from that, saying it would be more likely we'd run into each other in town, as we had this day. That's the Jeff I remember -- a personable guy, and friendly. But not too friendly. And then he was gone, leaving me in a room awash with late afternoon sunlight to gather my stuff, me thinking about the way life rolls on, its only constant being change. It's fascinating to encounter old friends, old acquaintances, and see where their journey's taken them. España, te echo de menos. rws 6:44 PM [+]
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