THE RIVER-KEEPERS, A MAN AND A WOMAN WHO CAUGHT ON FIRE

THE CHANCE 2

 THE  CHANCE

And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future 

become unimportant.  There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything

 under the sun has been written by one hand only.  It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a

 twin soul for every person in the world.

Paulo Coleco, The Alchemist

IT IS HER very unintentional move that sets off the attack—queen to knight's pawn. It is just a simple little desire to sit down and take a load off feet and mind, just a simple little need to choose from one of the few places left for lunch out in the spring air.

Why this fateful chair?

Because of the remaining choices, that which sits across the table from her promises to remain a wall of news. And she judges that to be A. O. K.

It is a sunny, warm midday noon.

Eventually the wall of paper drops down, his eyes still riding the print. And above this descending life of newsprint, she suddenly finds herself reading the character of his eyeglasses, gold wire, round. And then she scans his loosely ordered head of hair that seems balanced by a trim beard, all blossoming from a ribbed turquoise sweater. It seems to come together as an approachable softness rather than as domination. One more characteristic after another opens, and all of them seem to keep singing out toward her like a litany of approachability.

Suddenly, she is going round and round in some devil's triangle, going down the drain, being pulled under the waters.

The captain of the ship of her holds out. She starts using her head, and cannons smoke, and hot lead pelts the waters, but with no shot sinking the ship he's commanding.

He seems an implacable little admiral of silence, a M. A. N., but more a monkish sort of Holy Grailer. Perhaps his softness is only a façade, and not really much more than getting away with a sweater in this downtown bay of ties. And yet, his appearance alone seems to convey a sense of somehow clinging to an ember of something more than the fads of the street. There's a life raft quality to his style for which she seems to be reaching.

Is her first impression of a too-quick mistranslation, a love-shot into the blurring high noon light, too much to read into a dabble of gold wire and follicle and cloth? Is she missing the obvious Male hidden inside him, camouflaged and instinctually coiled and readied to strike and then abandon her? Has she become so desperate for the final chapter of her Cinderella childhood that she is turning into a near-sighted Mr. Magoo?

Still, even after this little en guarde on her emotions (and she has trained to be very good at this), he is remaining pungent, not sour but sugared and steamy—a real zinger!

All her life, such finely tuned readings have formed her winning ticket. Little gestures are honest because they secrete something heart-felt. They can be used to burn off the mask of words and fake smiles, and they have been her solid gold stock and trade to date in her life when it comes to making the final yes and no decision. For her, little gestures dependably swell to great leaps of faith that, to date, have bested all other measures in mapping the good way forward.

Somehow the small details have been crack shots, hitting her heart in the midst of a day, in the middle of a week, in the middle of the dissonance that is a café trying to become soft and alive in the cliché of brick and rust and glass that is a city's downtown.