But I didn’t want to talk about it with her. I just wasn’t up for goin’ over it. Maybe another day. Maybe when I know for sure that talkin’ about Sarah won’t make me hurt. Won’t make me want to have her back. Won’t make me WORK to get her back. ‘Cause I don’t want to be with her any more. Not even casually. And I want to get outta town for a while, just on the off chance that Sarah might try and contact me right now. That’s a fuckin’ slim chance, but ya never know.
So I gotta pack.
And I don’t wanna.
Where’s Shi?
Shi is where I can usually find her, in the kitchen. Actually, she’s in the laundry room foldin’ things.
“Hey babe,” I say, and she looks at me like I’m outta my mind. “Sorry.” It’s not really an apology, just a reaction to that look. She’s gotta coupla variations of that look she uses on me. This one is the ‘amused’ version, where she thinks I’m bein’ plain silly.
“What do you need?” she asks me. That’s a kind of long list on most days. I need a lot of things, but the thing I need the most right now is someone to help me pack. If not just pack for me. Which I guess I could ask her to do, even if she doesn’t have a clue about what I need to take. If I had more time, I’d let her do it herself just to see what SHE thought I would need for six days away from home. Just for laughs. Although I get the feeling, often, that Shi knows EXACTLY what I need.
“Packing.”
“Sure, let me just finish this. I thought you might want some of this stuff.”
She’s right; I can see a shirt I know I want to take, and a pair of jeans. And my golf shirts are all ironed and on hangers behind her. I’ll be needin’ those, too.
“I’ll take these,” I tell her, scoopin’ up the hangers in my fingers.
“Thank you. I’ll be upstairs in a moment,” she tells me, and she continues to fold without missin’ a beat. I like that about her, about how she can concentrate on somethin’ until it’s done. It’s why I like to watch her in the kitchen. She gets into what she’s doin’, no matter how ordinary it might be. I can’t do that. I lose track a lot of the time. Get all unfocused about shit. I’m deadly in the studio. It can be so fuckin’ boring and it usually takes Brian or Howie to keep me on track.
My mind wanders. A lot.
I drag some luggage outta the closet. I have a lot of luggage. Too much for one person, that’s for sure. I take out a giant carry all and a garment bag out. I’m probably gonna need both. In all the years I’ve spent on the road, the idea of travelin’ light never caught on with me. I need my shit. I need clothes and new clothes and toys, like my CD players and my DVD player and all that kinda stuff. I need the CD’s and the DVD’s to go in them, too. And all that toiletry crap: shampoo, shavin’ shit, hairspray. Plus any other thing I can think of. Sometimes my own pillow, ‘cause it’s nice to have your own instead of those flat ass things they give you in hotels. Even in the best hotels, the pillows suck.
And I’m gonna need my clubs, too. Hell, at least I don’t have to carry all this shit around. Car will pick me up; someone will load it into the trunk. Get to the plane and someone’ll load it onto the plane. Picked up at the airport, everything in reverse right down to the maid in the suite who’ll unpack the bags.
Now if I can just make up my mind about what I’m takin’.
If’ I’m gonna golf, that’s six, seven changes of clothes. And I won’t wanna hang out in that gear all day, so I’ll need some nicer stuff to go out in at night. And maybe some stuff to hang out in during the day. Somethin’ to hang out in around the room, ‘cause I won’t be alone, and I won’t be out every minute. A coupla bathin’ trunks, ‘cause you never know. Underwear, and lots of it. Jackets. It gets cold at night in the desert. Shoes. Golf shoes, sneakers, dress shoes, boots.
I start draggin’ stuff outta the closet and spreadin’ it out over the bed.
“That’s an awful lot of clothes for six days.”
“Golf,” I say, pointing to one pile. “Night,” I tell her, pointing to another. “Days,” and I point to another pile.
“Are you really going to have time to wear all of this? I thought that golfing took a lot of time.”
“It does, and if we eat at the clubhouse, cool, then I don’t have to change, but if we eat at the hotel, they’re kinda strict ‘bout how we look. And then maybe one day, or two, I’ll blow off golf and just hang out in the casinos, and I can just wear jeans and shit.”
“Fine, but they have laundry service there, I’m sure, and you can just have some things cleaned and wear them more than once, can’t you?”
“That’s not my style, baby.” It just slips out.
“Well, charmer, instead of causing some poor bellhop a hernia, why don’t you modify your style for the moment.” She picks up the golf clothes, one piece at a time, and holds them up to me. All the dark stuff gets put to one side. She pairs up shirts and pants, neutrals with neutrals, until she has three hangers each holdin’ a pair of slacks and a polo shirt. “There. Every day, when you’re changing, just make sure your dirty stuff goes to the laundry. Then you can have it all fresh and clean for another day. I highly doubt that anyone will be noticing if you wear the same thing twice, as long as it’s clean. And this dark stuff, honey, you’ll fry out there in that heat.”
And again, Shi’s right. Black and red are way wrong for this time of year out there. It’s wrong for most times of year in Nevada. But I like the way I look in black and red and dark blue.
Shi must know that, too, because she picks out those colors for my ‘dress’ clothes.
I kinda start to understand that she really likes doin’ this. It’s not just ‘cause I’m askin’ her to help, she likes matchin’ things up and making the color combinations. She likes to hold things up to my chest and squint at me while she’s makin’ up her mind. I don’t think that she even knows that she’s not askin’ me what I want, she’s just takin’ charge and puttin’ together things she thinks I should wear.
I think I’m gonna let her play with the house.
I dunno why, I guess because I really don’t give a shit about how it looks now, and I don’t really want to spend the time to do anything myself and she really seems to want to do it. And because she kinda seems to know what she’s doin’. Then again, she always seems to know what she’s doin’.
I wonder what she would be like on the road. She seems like she would be made for it. Then I remember that she doesn’t like to move. But the road isn’t movin’, it’s just travelin’. She might like travelin’. I know that if I was on the road again, I’d want a ‘Shi’ with me handlin’ shit. Hell, she’s makin’ sure that my socks match my outfits, of COURSE you want someone like this on the road with you makin’ sure that everything goes just the way you want it to.
“How’s that?” she asks.
“Great.” It is. I have a bunch of stuff to take, but it’s a whole lot less than what I was plannin’ on and I’m gonna look good no matter what I’m wearin’.
“You just need a plan. A little coordination,” she says, as she’s walkin’ in and outta the closet with handfuls of underwear and belts and crap. “Even in a pinch you could mix and match some of the golf things with some of the other things.” She’s talkin’ to me, but it’s like she’s talkin’ to herself, too.
I wanna tell her that she’s good at what she’s doin’. She is. She’s organized and she’s a planner. But I’ve sorta picked up on somethin’ about Shi, and it’s that she doesn’t like to be complimented a lot. At least not by me. Some. But not a lot. And I get the idea that she wouldn’t like it right now, ‘cause that way that she’s talkin’ out loud, like she’s talking to me but she’s NOT talkin’ to me, it’s like she’s convincing herself that she’s okay at what she’s doin’. And it’s not me tellin’ her that I think she’s good at shit that matters, it’s what SHE thinks she’s good at.
And that’s about as deep a thought as I ever get. ‘Cause I know that how she’s thinkin’ is a ‘right’ way of thinkin’. It doesn’t matter that I think she’s wonderful at what she does for me. I mean, yeah, sure it does or she wouldn’t have the job. And I’m sure it matters to her if I think she’s doin’ her job well. All that usual shit. But it only matters to her about the little bits and pieces of the job she does. The ‘how’ she does it. I don’t think she thinks that I watch her, or that I’m kinda interested in the ‘how’ part.
In fact, I gotta admit, I’m only just gettin’ interested in the ‘how’ part myself. I think that night I watched her makin’ shit for the party, it turned me on to that part of her.
And watchin’ her now, I understand that there’s a lot more to her than she lets on about. There’s a lot more to her than she really wants me to know about, period. Like the key ring. I wouldn’t have bet that she would buy me a gift, or that she’s even thinkin’ about me when she’s out doin’ things. I mean, sure, she’s supposed to think about me, that’s part of her job. But the key ring… That was takin’ it farther. At least it is to me.
“Would you like me to pack this for you now, or would you rather I did this in the morning, so everything isn’t wrinkled?”
“Hunh?” My mind was far away from what we’re supposed to be doin’.
“Pack now, or in the morning?”
“In the morning, if that’s okay.”
“It’s fine,” she says, and she begins to move clothes from the bed back to the closet, keeping everything separate and orderly. I try and help, but the best thing I can do is stay out of her way, unless she asks me to do somethin’ specific, like stand there and hold things before she hangs them up.
“Are you hungry? Would you like supper now?” she asks.
My stomach rumbles in response. I didn’t even know I was hungry.
“I guess so,” I say, laughin’ a little bit.
“I’d guess so, too,” she tells me, and she smiles. “How about some homemade pizza tonight?”
“You’re shitting me?”
“I shit you not,” she says. “I was going to make it for Tish this weekend, and she came home from school with alternate plans, so I have everything to make it, and no one to eat it.”
I’m tryin’ not to laugh at the ‘shit you not’ remark, ‘cause Shi sounds like Yoda when she talks like that. And even just hearin’ the word ‘shit’ come outta her mouth blows me away, it sounds so friggin’ silly. The thought of pizza sounds good to me.
“You gonna have some, too?” I ask.
“Sure.” She gives one last tug on the sleeve of somethin’ and turns to face me, her arms folded across her chest. “I’ll go get the oven heated up. It’ll be a little bit, can you wait?”
“Absolutely,” I say. No problem. In fact, I think I’m gonna go to the kitchen and watch her make it, just to… just to watch.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
