The Long Highway Pt. 21B

Nelson told me about how he used to go to a bar near campus and make out with women there. "The place looked more like a diner" than a bar, he said, described folding tables, windows all around a low ceilinged room, screened off windows that let in a lot of light and gave a view to green of pine needles; the locale was bucolic.

"It wasn't a dive but a place for clean-cut college students."Showing off, he said of one, "I kissed her for four minutes." Of another he said, "She didn't want to take me home but she wanted me inside her." What did he do, finger her at their table?

"I even made it with a teacher, sexy French teacher who found me an uncouth American, a vulgarian, and wanted as much of that as she could get. Ha ha." Nelson spoke of the bar recalled from his twenties as if he were seeing it now. "Reflections on a ruined youth," he said, laughing but proud of himself. You sensed he wouldn't have changed those experiences for anything. They made him who he is today, were how he found himself.

He described in more detail a woman with whom he kept company then, "Black hair black glasses." Chuckled affectionately at the memory. "Wasn't very good looking, though, her face I mean, but a nice person, nice body."

I showed Akemi a bunch of photographs I took before I knew her. I'd compiled those I had in a single folder I brought out- digital one, that is, maybe a thousand images strong. Yeah, it wasn't as if I first started using a camera when she and I met.

We were in my living room. It was mid-afternoon, the light strong, and Akemi asked. "How can you see them all?" She'd noticed there were a lot. Was she put off by the idea of going through so many? Bored by the prospect? I said, "I'll look quickly and show you the ones I think are interesting, I think you'd find interesting."

A friend of hers joined us. Because of the glare it was hard for more than one person to see the images on the handheld device.

As I was starting to page through them on my own, hurrying but trying not to bypass good shots, the doorbell rang. My father showed up unexpectedly. I barely had time to get the photos out of the way before he was upon us, having climbed the stairs less slowly than I expected.

He was in a good mood that made him seem almost youthful but owed to foolishness- let's say it plainly. He was excited about his new young wife who I sensed was after his money- when I was with them, spending lavishly was all she did, as if intent on consolidating her power over him, his wallet, by constantly exercising it- and making clear to the man that his hope of keeping a woman as young as she lay in his ability to spend on her.

My father announced he was going with her to Florida, where she had to be for some reason before going somewhere else. "I wanted to see you before we left, wasn't sure there'd be another chance," he said of his sudden appearance at my apartment on a weekday afternoon- true he'd retired but his behavior was out of character- when before had he felt the need to keep me informed on his comings and goings, travels? Never. And it wasn't his habit to just stop over. We weren't that close- close but not involved with each other's daily lives. We both liked our independence, privacy.

Was this showing off on his part, eagerness to preen about his youthful lifestyle? Again, not at all like him. Had his bride put him up to it? They'd only been married for months but already she seemed wary of me as a possible threat to my father's loot. Was she hoping to control his family too?

A costly trip. More expenses. My father didn't have that much money. Soon all the spending for his wife, spending with abandon, would catch up to him, I thought.

Akemi and her friend were welcoming, respectful to my father, whom they didn't know, assumed was an ordinary one, deserving of the usual deference. I felt embarrassed by him, by being his son.

Almost exuberant, as if high, he asked if I would like to come along on the trip to Florida. Reacting with outrage (which Akemi and friend must have seen and sensed trouble from), I said, "I've never been to Florida and don't want to go. No," I answered.

Florida wasn't even the kind of place my father liked. Or was it? How well did I really know him? Some people as they age reveal previously unseen sides of their personalities, perhaps brought to the fore by despair in my father's case.

He seemed almost to have lost his mind since meeting his European paramour (heading home for an extended visit after the Florida junket). I hoped I wasn't going up the same path with Akemi. She definitely didn't want my money. I knew she knew I had only a modest salary. She did need a Green Card (residency permission) etc. but really wasn't the cynical type. She had ideals. Ideals had brought her to this country.

to be continued