Lea's Meeting
by Unsane
Part I
"I had the weirdest break."
I looked up from my drawing, over the huge orange vase on the table between us. Lea was always having cataclysmic things happen to her. She knew I was listening.
"I met the greatest people-- so many connections! It feels like my family, you know, like a Real Family-- beyond blood, has finally appeared."
I hunched back down. "These are your computer friends?"
"Yeah, but we're the kind of friends who can tell each other the things that... that someone doesn't want to hear, but *needs* to."
Lea was being fervently ambiguous. Obviously her vacation was much more eventful than mine. I enjoyed watching her moods move with the hours of saccharine music she was listening to.
"I drove out there, not knowing what to expect. I was calling myself crazy for going to see these people that I'd never met. But I pulled up, and people just started pouring out of this house! Warm faces and bodies and emotions, and... they included me immediately. They came out to greet *me*!"
I nodded. Look like you understand, even if you don't, that was my motto.
"The first night, I felt a little uncomfortable. Everyone was so familiar yet new, and I kept hearing this gnawing voice somewhere off to the left a little, saying, 'You met this group on a computer! What do you *know* about these people besides them being as pathetic as you?'"
I stopped nodding because I agreed. It just seemed so... *desperate* to meet people through a computer. Lea was not a desperate woman.
She went on, "But, I started talking with a few people. There was a guy who seemed kinda nervous, like me, so we sat on the couch for a while, talking about how crazy it all was. We ended up getting dragged into this group and it... it was mystical-- very powerful."
'Mystical.' What a sickening word. It's impossible to take it seriously. It's almost as bad as 'synergies.' I decided Lea took a lot of drugs over break.
"I can hear you groaning at this," she said. I stopped looking constipated and attacked the drawing again. "It's impossible to explain with words." But she would try anyway, right? Of course...
"I made some mind-blowing friends. This one woman, Susan, opened her whole house for us. People she didn't even know, except our letters, some thoughts."
I asked, "So how can you feel so close to these people if you barely know them?"
"See... the *friend*ship can only really be made through contact. It took Susan to bring us all together. She's amazing. We invaded her house, her own *room*, and camped out for a week and a half. She was so smooth about everything-- calm, but crazy! Her poetry sends me reeling. There's a quiet force moving around in her, with her..."
I smiled. "Sounds like you're really into her."
"I'm into ALL of them! Every person there I have a special, silent or communicated link with. Ross and I, that's the first person I really talked to, we really hit it off. I knew him a little from talking to him online, but in the flesh, there is such an impact. Oh don't look like that, I'm serious," she said. I rolled my eyes, daring her to continue.
Lea got up and walked to the fridge. She fished around for milk and intermittently talked to things near the ceiling. "He's smart and funny and shy and *beautiful* and silly-- but articulate! He lives in the mountains where there are big trees and no sunsets. He's graceful in a young way," she sighed. "Oh, I don't know."
I stopped grimacing when she started spilling about this 'Ross' person. There was a look on her face, but not the half-cynical, half-sappy look I'd come to recognize when she talked about a woman or man that she was interested in. It was one of quiet empowerment and happiness. Lea looked *beautiful* when she talked about this guy. She had suddenly swept into a faerie tale and grabbed her prince, a magic wand and skim milk while she was at it.
Realizing that the ceiling wasn't talking back, she focused on me. "This sounds impossible, doesn't it?" There was a look of impending hope in her eyes.
I sucked down my stunted cynicism. "It certainly sounds... *romantic*. I mean, a man you just meet, basically by chance, you talk and mesh and blammo! Oh! What happened then!?" Curiousity had suddenlt grabbed me by the nads.
Lea smiled a small smile over the grotesque vase.
"Oh, *really*?" I prodded.
Giggling, she said, "Actually, all we did was kiss."
My condom was pricked. The sexual capers were always the best part of Lea's stories. Without any exploits I felt deflated. "Well, how the hell did that happen?"
"Well, it was crowded..."
"That's never stopped you before!" I retorted.
"And we were having so much fun talking."
I laughed over her, saying, "You can talk while you do other things."
"And we didn't need to."
That stopped me.
She was smiling blissfully over the nuclear vase.
"Didn't *need* to? Well, no one *needs* to, except a few priests I know, but most people *want* to," I said.
She suddenly flipped her chair around, straddling it like a greased boy in a 50's movie, and leaned towards me. "You know," she said, "I used to feel like I *had* to sleep with someone to really connect with them, or to make everyone involved feel comfortable, or to satiate my hormones... but this was *different*. This was young and ancient and pure and like a slumber party gone wrong," she paused, reaching for a memory. "Do you know what we did? Ross and I sat out in Susan's yard, picking through the rocks, looking for the pretty ones. In the south-west, there aren't lawns, just rocks and sand. We squatted out there while the cars drove by, looking for the sparkly ones, or ones with neat marbling in them, or ones shaped like spear heads."
I had to admit, it was different. But Lea spoke like she was out to convince me of something.
"No, it's more than that, it's... old and new at the same time. We used to do that as kids, rummage for the good rocks, but we forgot about it somewhere. Somewhere in school and work and cars and running around and trying to make friends out of people that we don't really like that much anyway. We forgot about rocks."
I admitted to her that yes, I had forgotten about rocks. "But, there had to be more than making you remember days gone by to this guy-- hell to the whole group." Logic will prevail in this conversation, I'm a determined woman that way.
"Well, there was that night we all went skinny-dipping."
I shrieked. "You've been holding out on me!"
"Well, we all swam around and yelled a lot, that's about it. But in the car on the way back, there was a conversation going about age. Many of the people there were older than us, Ross and I. We sat in back and talked about how good it was that someone the same age was around. There were other people our chronological age there, but... *not*. Well, chronological age and Mental age are two different things."
"The whole group went skinny-dipping and Nothing happened at all?" I said incredulously.
"That's not the *point*. All of us could be together, naked, and give our inhibitions a rest. We have all gone through a lot of the same things. Somehow, we can identify with each person individually, and also as a community. The click with Ross was especially strong. This isn't just meeting people, it's creating something!" she paused, and carefully added, "You could be part of it too..."
Part II
Lea watched me while my brain wrapped around the ideas. This was more that just making friends. Making friends is what we did in grade school and now at bars. The people that she met over break were now her life; her family, her lovers, her mentors. Abruptly I felt like I didn't know her anymore. One day she was the manic pal off on a whim and a month later I knew that she wasn't *here* anymore. Lea was off with these new people in her mind, and deeper, in her soul. She didn't tell me this with her words. All of it came over the orange vase, through her compelling eyes. I was at a loss.
"You understand, don't you?" she asked.
I nodded. She reached over the table and took the drawing from my hands. It was a pencil sketch of her and I.
"It's beautiful."
"You can keep it," I said.
"But--"
"Really," I said, cutting her off. I stood up to go. Loneliness was wrapping itself around me.
"Thanks sweetie." She got up and hugged me, burying her face in my neck. "I knew you'd understand. If anyone here, away from It could, it was you," she said, squeezing tighter. "Thank you."
I squeezed back and somehow, impossibly, I missed her while we stood inside each other.
"Bye..." she said, untangling herself from me.
"Bye. See you later."
Lea 'mmm'd' to herself as the door to her apartment shut.
Two days later I stopped by her place. Alan, her roomate, answered the door without a word. He took me by the hand and led me to Lea's room. It was empty. Of everything. Everything except a mattress and the noxious vase, which sat in the middle of the floor. I turned to Alan."I don't know. This afternoon I walked in to see if she was home and all of her stuff was gone. Her car was gone too. She left a check for this month's rent and the keys, but no note, no nothing."
I walked over to the vase and picked it up. Lea had scratched my name into the enamel on its side.
"Do you have her mom's phone number?" I asked.
"It's on the fridge."
"Thanks."
I drove home feeling nothing. Rationally it wasn't a surprise. Lea was one of those strong crazy people who lived in the moment. Evidently she felt, for her, the best moment was somewhere else.At home I set the vase on the desk and got Lea's mother on the phone in South Dakota.
After explaining who I was, I asked her, "Have you talked to Lea in the last couple of days?"
"No, I haven't heard from her since she was home a week ago. What's wrong?"
I took a deep breath. "Well... she seems to have left town. Her car and things are gone from her apartment."
"Oh, no..."
I waited.
Finally she asked, "Did she tell anyone where she was going?"
"She didn't say. That's why I called you. I was hoping you had some phone numbers for places that she stayed on her trip. I think she might be headed out there."
Her voice was blank. "What trip?" she said.
"The trip west she took over break."
"What are you talking about? Lea didn't take any trip over break. She was here with me the whole month."
I stopped. Logic will prevail. I think. I hope.
Nope. Didn't work. Try again.
"Are you *sure*?" I asked.
"Of course I'm sure," she said impatiently.
"Ummmm... Lea told me she had driven out west to visit some friends."
Lea's mom finally snapped. "Well, she didn't. She stayed here!" she yelled.
I held myself from screaming back at her.
"Well, what did she *do* while she was there?" I asked.
"She kept to her room most of the time, sleeping and reading. She was very quiet." I could hear her breathing, harsh and worried.
We talked until I gave her my phone number and hung up. Then I laughed.
I laid in bed that night, still laughing. Thankfully, it dissolved into crying. Much later it fell into laughing again. The vase seemed to glow in the indolet of my room. I could almost make out my name on it.Whatever had 'really' happened, I knew Lea was probably making for the mountains at about eighty-five. Maybe there was a man named Ross waiting up for her. Even if there wasn't, I didn't think Lea would be disappointed. I was sure she would eventually land where that kind of love and community was. I wished I could be there with her. Maybe I'd find it, and her, someday. Someday soon.
God, I hoped so.