by The Purple Emperor » Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:33 am
In a fit of sudden inspiration, I'd dashed to the airport, arriving shortly before her flight left. I envisioned the cinematic charm of the grand gesture, her swept away in a tidal wave of love and romance. Unfortunately, she was cool to my passions, gazing at me with her eyes, blue and luminescent as the Aegean. She promised, after much pressing, to write me, and then boarded her plane without a touch or a kiss. And so again, I found myself watching her leave, her blonde hair a golden cloud about her neck. It had a tendency to poodle-sheepdog after being too long in the rain, but I still found it adorable beyond words, filling me with an indescribable tenderness. The sea was in her eyes, the sun in her hair, and oh God, oh God, to see her take flight, flying so far away she may as well have gone direct to the heaven she came from! I stood there at the gate, watching as the plane took off in that Southern California sky, and wept. I didn't care about the stares, the uncomfortable coughs. My light, my life, was gone, and nothing could illuminate my internal darkness.
Adorable, too, were our nicknames for each other. While we were Michael and Michelle, so close in spelling, down to the first four letters and a stray consonant and vowel matching, the pronunciations were naturally different. And so we called, wrote, and referred to one another by our phonetics. Mykell and Mihshell. It was insufferably sweet to our friends, who would invariably roll their eyes on hearing us. But it was something special, something that belonged to only us. And yet, I had the stomach-wrenching feeling that there would be no more of that. The intimate, affectionate Mykell and Mihshell would be replaced by the formal, indifferent Michael and Michelle. As long as she didn't call me Mike. I'm not a trucker from Ohio, after all.
Even in our careers, we were close, yet distinct. I was a sportswriter for a certain rival to the LA Times. They had us bested on political and world news, but we trounced them in sports. The owner of our paper was of the particular belief that it was sports that dominated the American landscape, and so he hired the best writers to cover one specific team, and one team only. I had charge of the Lakers, the purple and gold royalty - Kareem its king of kings.
As for Mihshell (I refused to surrender until forced to), she was a journalist of a different flavor, the magazine to my newspaper. In fact, she was going to New York to become a feature writer for Vogue. I was in the realm of men and sports, and she had dominion over the land of women and fashion. Even in that, we were a perfect complement. I could not, and never will, be with a woman who is also a newspaper writer. Then professional jealousy would develop if our successes were unequal. Look at Scott and Zelda - the former a titan of American literature, the latter with aspirations of her own, yet thwarted by her own mental instability and living in the shadows of her husband's triumphs. When I myself was younger, I dreamt of becoming a novelist, but soon found I lacked the imagination, the creative spirit, to wander well the otherworldly realms of fiction. More to the point, I hated the first bubblings of postmodernism sweeping the country in recent years. Call me a reactionary if you like, but I found the traditional forms the best.
When I staggered into work the next day, beset by an insomnia that would be my lone companion for weeks, I found myself cut to the heart at seeing my beloved Hermes typewriter. Normally I cherished the quirky whimsy of its seafoam color, but I found the hue too close to her eyes, and so I dug out a drab brown Smith-Corona from the bank of reserves the paper kept on hand. Its blandness soothed me, as when one settles for inoffensive foods upon being assaulted by the virulence of the flu. I spoke to no one, even when some of my coworkers asked what was wrong. Speech was impossible, and so I resolved to throw myself into my work.
I had just commenced writing up the team's season preview when I received a call from Ed Culling, the Lakers' assistant general manager. The actual GM was notorious for his hatred of the media, and relied on his underling to disseminate news to us of the Third Estate.
"Hey, Michael," came Ed's easy-going baritone. "Got some news for you. The boss isn't happy with what's around Kareem, so we've got a trade coming down. I'll get you the details later, but I wanted to give you a heads up, since I know you like to get an early start on the preview. Figured I'd save you some work."
I forced my voice to a normal tone. "Oh, really? Can you at least tell me who's going? I'll just cut whoever it is out of the preview."
"Nope." Laughter was in his voice. "Just hold off until this afternoon. Talk to you then."
The dial tone sounded in my ear for some time before I finally set the receiver down. Change in my life, change in my team. Change all around me.