Another white night. White night, white day. What's the difference? They all run together after awhile.
It's three a.m. I sit at my desk, smoking Players and drinking tongue- numbing 100-proof Absolut with ginger ale. Staring at the corkboard above my desk, I realize that I have four of the five standard college student's bulletin-board photos on it: Friends, family, house, parties. The picture missing from my particular collage is the obligatory girlfriend snap. I've taken that one down. In its place there is a self-portrait of me, taken three years ago.
Almost everything in that photo was the same then as it is tonight: same desk, same second-hand lamp, same rat's nest of papers. The only difference is the person. The guy in the picture knows who he is; where he's going. His life is on track. It's hard to believe that there is any connection between myself and the person in that photograph. My life has become a succession of nights the white of moonlit snow on a high Cascade meadow. Cold, bleak and lonely, with no other living thing in sight. Step carefully, or you break through the surface into memories.
I live an endless series of days white as fresh sheets of bond paper feeding into a copier, each coming out the other side with the same white-on-white pattern, a perfect reproduction of emptiness.
I remember living through other nights like tonight.
Tonight is the night I see her for the first time. I am the Night Editor, on my way into the newsroom to deliver a bottle or two to the editorial staff, by way of acknowledgment of my titular membership in their circle.
She's wearing a white sweatshirt. Baby-blue sweatpants with a hole in the right knee. White Keds with holes in the toes. Exquisite blond hair falls down her back to just below her shoulder blades. She's laughing, talking. Her voice! Don't turn around! The sight of her face might shatter the image of perfect beauty. It might not.
The newsroom door slams behind me hiss-clunk. She has blue eyes. I knock twice on the chief editor's office door with the edge of a bottle bottom, and escape inside. I'm already running, and I haven't even met her.
I finish pasting-up the editorial I'm working on and wipe the sticky wax from my hands. I cross the room to stand beside her, to be inside her personal space, to feel what that does to me.
She is from L.A. I have lived here in the Willamette Valley for fifteen years. Her style is different from everything I'm used to: Superficially she seems to subscribe to the Pacific Northwest habits of openness and honesty even more than do I. But there is something else behind those blue-grey eyes, something I cannot figure out. I don't know how to react to her.
I help with the flat she's working on. I am left-handed; she is right- handed. I start trimming an ad to fit its space on the right side of the flat, while she works on a column-head on the left side. We reach for the hairline tape at the same time, and her right hand meets the blade of the X-acto knife in my left.
"Oh my God!" I say, "Are you all right? I'm so sorry!"
An instant of cold anger, then she laughs. "It's OK," she says, licking at the drop of blood. Our eyes meet, and I look away, apologizing again. She always seems to be wounded and I always apologize. Although this is the first and last time that I am ever to injure her, I always apologize.
I call her at home later that night. Ostensibly I'm still worried about her cut. Actually I have another motive. Suddenly I'm fifteen again, nervous as Hell with no words ready. I mask it by being formal: "Would you do me the honor of accompanying me to the dance next Saturday?"
The ice closes in around me for the ten seconds it takes her to reply. I'm prepared for rejection, ready to save face with a few dozen well- rehearsed words. She accepts. And throws me off-balance again. Somehow I make it through arrangements and good-byes with no idea of what I'm saying. The jitters do not leave me for the rest of the week.
On Saturday night we go to dinner at Michael's before the dance. I've already written fifty dollars in floating checks for this evening. There is something not quite right. Somehow she does not fit into the group at our table. It's nothing I can pin down, but it is real. I decide to ignore it for tonight.
We dance only two dances. I take her back to my room. We spend three hours on the couch, just talking. She tells me her life story. I can't believe it, we really don't know each other, but she is incredibly intimate. She claims she's had nine boyfriends in the last three years, that none of them had really cared about her, that this is the first time she's gone out with anyone in two months. She tells me other things: How her parents treat her like a child, but she has to put up with it because she's living at home; how she hates Oregon and misses L.A.
It is one a.m. Her parents require her to be in by one-thirty. Their house -- their rules. On the way back from taking her home, I don't hear the stereo, I don't feel the chill breeze from the open window cutting through my thin dress shirt or creeping up past the cuffs of my slacks: I am in love.
I say I need to talk to her for a minute. We go out in the hall. I had intended to take her into the lounge, but she stops just outside the composing room door. She leans against the wall and crosses her arms.
Something is wrong with this situation, but I am determined to go ahead. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I lean against the opposite wall. She will not return eye contact. So be it. I explain that this is very hard for me to say; I don't speak easily about my emotions, it's just the way I was raised. I tell her that I'm in love with her.
Straight out, just like that: "I love you." She looks worried. She looks upset. I've blown it... but why? I'm a sweet guy; she really likes me, but she's not ready for a new relationship yet; she wouldn't be any good for me anyway; let's just be friends. She gives me a hug, a kiss on the cheek. We're very adult about it. I can't force myself to go back into the composing room for some time. The smile is frozen solid on my face; I have to keep blinking or the tears will escape.
I stand here in the chill, Bon Jovi spilling from my open car door along with the light, as she tells me that she isn't ready for another relationship right now; that she wouldn't be any good for me. The only thing that lets me communicate is the knowledge that there is a pint of Gordon's gin and a bottle of tonic waiting for me at home. Again.
She has made it a habit to visit me every night. I wonder why. I know that she has found another boyfriend; she visits him before she stops by my place. I am not used to this. Relationships are not supposed to work this way. Maybe things are different in L.A. We use the same words, but they seem to mean different things to each of us.
I take her home with me for the weekend to visit my parents. For myself and my family this is significant. To her it's just a vacation. I write her a letter. In it I ask her what I mean to her: If she has a boyfriend, why is she leaning on me for emotional support? She becomes upset. On the phone she says that if I really love her I will stay out of her life. I'm shaking so badly that I can barely hold the receiver.
I agree to leave her alone. I wish her a happy future and go have a beer. Several. She doesn't speak to me for six weeks. I am over her, so I tell myself. But she still has some things I've lent her, and it is only fair that I get them back. I resolve to call her and request their return. Tonight, or perhaps tomorrow night.
She calls me before I have a chance to make up my mind. We talk. Once again, she has been wounded and I do my best to heal her.
I quit my job. I am unemployed for two months, living on credit and skipping every meal I don't eat with her in order to save my money. I don't know where I stand. I resolve to ask her. Tonight, or perhaps tomorrow night.
I tell her that I don't feel like taking a walk. She becomes angry. I am not fulfilling my accepted role in our relationship: I am not doing what she tells me to.
"Give me another fifteen cents," she says, "so I'll have enough for a phone call. I'll walk by myself!"
It is ten p.m. I tell her that it is stupid for her to walk on campus alone at night. She insists that she'll be all right, that she'll only be gone for half an hour. I ask her to do me a favor, if she insists on walking alone. I tell her to take what I call my penknife -- an ebony- handled lockback with a four-inch stainless blade. Enraged, she finally agrees, takes the knife and leaves. I promise myself that if she is not back by eleven, I will go find her.
At ten 'til eleven the phone rings: She is in tears. "Come pick me up, I'm at the pay phone by the quad," she says. This has happened before, the tearful plea for me to pick her up from somewhere. By the end of the three-minute drive I'm white-hot angry. As I lock the car door I tell myself that this is it. I'm going to tell her off, once-for-all. Tonight, or perhaps tomorrow night.
She is sitting on the grass in the circle of the phone booth's dim fluorescent glow. She is crying. I sit beside her and watch her for a moment. All beauty leaves her face when she cries; her little-girl features become twisted, ugly. My anger is gone. Three foreign students pass by, talking loudly in German.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"There was a man hiding in the trees--" she sobs twice. "He attacked me -- t-tore my dress," she continues, her voice thick with tears. Her flowered sundress is ripped. She holds the torn seam closed with her right elbow as she rubs at the scratches on her left wrist. She is only wearing one white sandal.
"Where's your other shoe?" I ask.
"I don't know. He g-grabbed me and I ran-- " I hold her tight for awhile, telling her that it's OK; it's over; I'm here; it's going to be all right now. It's going to be all right now.
Tonight she is with an old boyfriend. She had trouble making hotel reservations, and expected me to use my credit card to make them for her. For her and him. I carefully failed to understand what she was hinting at.
Pink Floyd is playing on the stereo: "One Slip" from the Momentary Lapse of Reason album. How can I have done this to myself?
In my hand is a Ruger Mark II semi-automatic pistol. I contemplate the dull highlights on the blue-black barrel and receiver. I feel the solid weight of the thing, the checkered grips cold and sharp against my palm. I pull back the slide and let it snap home. I place the muzzle tight against my right temple and work the safety with a click. I pull the trigger.
Snap. It's empty. I realize now that I have to get out.
I tell her that I can't deal with the stress of this situation anymore, that I'm losing my mind. I tell her that I've been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and drinking at least a six-pack of beer every night for the last three months. She asks me please not to drink because of her, and I tell her not to flatter herself; I drink because of me. I tell her that she was right, all those months ago, that she isn't any good for me. I tell her that I still love her, but I am no longer in love with her.
Do I want her to disappear, she asks. I tell her that I don't know: I'll have to think about it.
Think about it! I can never stop thinking. No matter how much I abuse my body, no matter how much I drink, no matter how many bottles I smash against the wall or hurl out the window to shatter in the street, I can't stop thinking. I tell her this.
I've been thinking only of her, worrying about her problems, protecting her, to the exclusion of all else, and I don't know why. She has come to expect this, require this of me. She has given me nothing in return. I tell her this too.
I tell her that I'm not her brother; not her father. I've been her white knight for over a year: this is a position which I can no longer maintain.
I realize now that she's the one who's really been running, all along. Running from love, running from commitment, running from me. Running from herself. My friends have told me that someday she will realize what she had, what she lost. Her friends have told me the same. But I have realized that by the time someday comes, it won't matter to me.
She looks at me and solemnly promises to return my things in two days: She's busy tomorrow with her new boyfriend, a kid three years younger than her. I feel sorry for him, and hope that he is a faster learner than I was.
I take the photo of myself off the corkboard and run my fingers along its edges. The guy in the photo had everything he really needed, he just didn't know it. By this evening I'll have some of it back. I still don't know where I'm going, but at least I now have a sense of forward motion again. It will just take some time to correct my twelve- month detour, time for me to see my true destination.
White nights seem endless: Endlessly blank, endlessly identical, endlessly pointless. But eventually the light must be turned out. Finally, they end. For me this one is over. For her it has yet to end, but it will... tonight, or perhaps tomorrow night.