Don't Think by Richard Burgin

Author:Richard Burgin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2016-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

It was years later, more than he wanted to count, and he was back on Broad Street on the edge of South Philly, where he’d met Nicole. His father was dead now; his mother had slipped into dementia and no longer knew who he was.

He’d gone from business to business, mostly in sales, and now was back in Philadelphia to finalize a deal for the home company. He’d made out all right, though he was still single and often wished he wasn’t. He’d gone to a bar to relax after his meeting when he started thinking about Nicole and ended up taking a cab to South Philly. In recent years, he’d begun to enjoy the feeling of being in places that hadn’t changed that much over time, although such places were getting harder and harder to find. The block where he was now standing seemed to be just such a place. It made it easy to remember Nicole and to see clearly again the clothes she wore that first day, especially her purple T-shirt, which was a color purple he’d never seen before or since. How young he was then, with so much life in front of him. And Nicole was unspeakably young, almost a child. He wished he could have made her see how young she really was when he knew her and how much possibility she therefore had. People slip in and out of your life like ghosts, he thought. After she stayed overnight with him years ago, he only saw her once or twice again. Then, like a ghost, she vanished. He tried her number, but no one ever picked up and soon her phone (apparently like her) was out of service. He went looking for her a few times, asked a couple of other hookers if they knew where she was, but they claimed not to know her or just not to know. He had even thought of asking some of the johns that hung around the neighborhood but he couldn’t remember any of their names. He could have searched harder, asked more girls, offered a reward, perhaps, but realized at best he only knew her first name.

Now, he was back on her corner on the gray street, half expecting her to shine in front of him again with her great brown eyes and purple shirt. Mixed, she said she was. He could remember it all, he thought, except he never found out her son’s real name. Then he realized he’d never really asked beyond that first time, though she’d described Hope so tenderly he’d sometimes fantasized that he might become the boy’s father.

He crossed the street, looking through a clump of skinny sycamores by the sidewalk and wondering if Nicole’s son was still alive and, if so, what kind of man he had become. Mixed up, probably, but he was still a little mixed up, too. It was like the world made people get that way, like it was part of its cosmic plan. Anyway,

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