So Much for the Cat and Mouse

“No, you can’t even say that, you a Buddha – you’re so fucking cruel. All this time, we’re all crazy with fear. You stamp people out, you hate us so much.Why do you hate u s so much?” Then I gulped and hugged myself against the chill, he was standing there with his red face.

“Oh, thanks.” He made a fragile sneer. “That’s so helpful.”

“It’s not supposed to be helpful. Some things aren’t for you.”

“Right. Right. I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

“And you saw God?” I screamed, “Was that a lie, too?”

“No,” he said, and his whole face squinted against what I had said. I glared, self-righteous and myself disgusting. I was suddenly aware of the dusk coming, the darkening showing that time had run out. Our race was run, we’d wasted our three wishes, and we stood wrong and polluted and without means.

Ralph said: “That’s it, then.”

And walked away from me, so it seemed then, forever.

I watched him going, and hated him. His shape faltered in the changing shadows. I stood paralyzed and evil. As good as dead.

But at last a brief sweet spangle of love woke in me and I woke –

I chased after him. Hearing me coming, he began to run.

As he came out on the back lawn, he was pelting along like a boy, I had no chance of catching him. Me and my stubby legs, damn! But then he stopped short.

I thought he’d been stunned by my same love blow. This is the reconciliation, I knew. I love you! Don’t suffer! The rest is all shit! (I would say that: “The rest is all shit! Come to bed!”)

I walked the last few steps and caught his arm.

He shook me off with a grimace of distaste. He looked away and I saw what had really stopped him.

A little cluster of smokers was staring at us from the back door of the Land of the Lost. Secure at that distance, they brazenly gawped, leaning one to the other to comment on the spectacle. They made and unmade fireflies, sucking on their cigarettes. Then there were real fireflies in the shrubs, more yellowy.

I said, “I don’t care. Forgive me.”

Ralph said, deaf to me and all else, “I’ve fucked everything up.”

“No kidding,” I laughed. “But let’s please start over?”

He winced and hated me, clenching his shoulders. Then he threw it off: with a whole, liberated rage, he roared at the smokers:

“I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! I’M A FRAUD!”

They all shifted as if slapped.

Ralph was trembling and I daren’t touch his arm. I felt futile and tiny in the face of what would happen next.

Then, weakly through the seemingly clouded twilight, a ragged call came from the smokers:

“I don’t know anything!” they echoed. “I’m a fraud!” And again: “I don’t know anything! I’m a fraud!” They stood up straighter, anticipating praise.

Ralph and I grimaced at each other for a moment, like parents recalled from a quarrel by a demand from their children. Then he just walked away.

I let him go this time, having failed to understand the events. I crossed the lawn hoping that the smokers would give me a cigarette. We would discuss what this latest exercise meant, and smoke, and when I went up to my room, Ralph would be there, watching Wimbledon like normal on ESPN.