I felt like I was gonna puke.
We rode the bus on over from Jersey, on over the bridge, on into Manhattan.
I didn't have a watch, didn't wear one then, and don't wear one now.
But I knew the minutes were disappearing, one after another.
I think we stopped at both Port Authority amd Penn Station, though it could have been one or the other. I don't know.
It was a long time ago.
It was April 28, 1993.
We stopped at the PA, and maybe Penn Station; I could swear it was both, but twenty one years later, if you put me on the stand, I wouldn't put my life on it.
I felt like I was gonna puke, though, that much I'd swear on a stack of Bibles about.
She'd spent two weeks here, in the US, and over the course of those two weeks, we went from serious to serious as a heart attack. I knew, as we rode on out of the city and out toward Kennedy, that I would marry her someday.
I felt like I was gonna puke, because I knew I loved her more than anything I'd ever loved in my entire life, and I knew that I didn't know where, or when, of if, I'd ever see her again.
The bus rolled on toward Kennedy, and she wouldn't kiss me anymore. She looked sad and unwell.
We were both trying to figure a way out of this, but we couldn't come up with anything. Between the two of us we had about seventy-five US dollars. Neither of us had a job, and she was a citizen of a foreign country. We'd talked about it before, and figured that if we tried to pull any crazy shit, it might wind up biting us in the ass in the end.
So we sat there on the bus, rolling on out toward Kennedy.
&&&
Eventually we got there.
We dis attached ourselves from each other, her hand slipped out of mine, and we got off the bus, waited outside for the driver to open the cargo doors. He found her two bags and got them out, and we walked into the terminal.
We made small talk, tried to pretend it wasn't happening. I still remember the sun coming through the windows of the terminal. I still remember her, in gold jeans and a white and purple U-Albany sweatshirt, with my purple, white, and orange flannel over that.
I can't take this shirt home with me, she said.
Oh yes, you can, I said. I insist.
For whatever reason, I figured it more likely that we'd see each other again if she took the flannel.
Eventually she got called to board the flight.
We got up off our chairs and said good-bye.
She didn't want to cry in front of me; I didn't want to cry in front of her.
We went as stoic as we could, smiled at each other, talked about me going over there in August or September.
We hugged, kissed, and she walked on through.
As soon as I saw she'd made it beyond anywhere she could see me, I sat down in a chair, put my head into my hands, and wept like a baby.
I wandered through the airport, choking back the sobs, and eventually walked into a newsstand. Ordered a pack of Marlboro reds and a pack of matches. I hadn't smoked in awhile, but I knew I wanted some.
&&&
I got on a bus back into the city. It dropped me off at the Port Authority. I got off and walked around, went into a bodega and got myself a coupla big cans of Foster's. I walked around the PA, drinking the beers, smoking those Marlboro reds, and waiting a bus back to New Jersey.
My sister and her husband lived out there, Montclair, I think it was.
The citizens of the Port Authority hounded me for cigs, and I think I gave away a couple, two-three.
After awhile, I got on a bus, the right one, and headed on back to Montclair.
It took awhile to get through the traffic in the city, and then the traffic on the bridge, but I got there.
By the time I got off, darkness had fallen.
I had some idea of where I had to go.
I walked, westward, I think.
I walked along some quiet streets, and looked up into the sky: the moon sat up there, fat and full, or close to it.
I am not sure why, but the sight of that moon has stayed with me like few other things have; it is one of the strongest, most lasting memories of my entire life.
&&&
I am not sure why, but the memory, of that walk, of that April afternoon and evening twenty-one years ago, came back to me ferociously tonight.
Maybe it's because tonight carried the very first hint of spring we've seen up here in upstate New York this year; I genuinely like winter, and I have lived my entire life in upstate New York, but even I am utterly sick of this winter.
It's a whole different world now: that girl from the airport has come and gone, she's in the nether world now, just a memory. I fell as hard as I could for her, and we spent the better part of a decade and a half together, and then she died, and, eventually, I fell in love with someone else.
&&&
I swore, after she died on me, that I'd never sweat the small stuff again, and for a long time, I didn't, but then time went by, and life went on, as it does, and as she would have wanted it to.
And gradually, the hard-learned lessons sadly got forgotten.
The stresses of work, of not having enough money, once again, with the forgotten benefit of hindsight, took me over, or, at least they did in the last week or two.
Everything seemed like the end of the world.
Work went off the rails, and a series of unexpected and unplanned-for events left us all kinds of broke; at one point it seemed possible that the holy grail, the rent check, might bounce.
But I pulled it all off, I'll put my ability to rob Peter while paying Paul up against anybody in the continental US, seriously, and we're safe again, at least for now, though I do fear the day will come when the house of cards will finally collapse, and I'll meet a magic trick I can't pull off, but I'll worry about that some other time.
In the meantime, there's no moon out tonight: I looked for it long and hard.
I went out there an hour or two ago thinking, for some reason, that I would see the moon I saw in the spring of 1993.
But that moon's not out there; there's no moon at all.
Just the gray, cloudy sky, just the wind, blowing hard but hinting at something better; just the winter, finally giving up, finally giving in, finally letting the spring in, somewhere north of Albany.