Try to squeeze a puddle of mercury in your hand. What happens? It dissolves immediately into hundreds of sparkling silver balls that quickly escape through your tightly clenched fingers. One Gemini man whose wife thought she knew him very well wrote the following lines just before he left her, and she found them among his papers after the divorce:

“Into the dream you came
And across the soft carpet of my reverie you walked
With hobnail boots…”

You’ll often read or hear it said that Geminis must always have two loves at once. This Gemini duality, hinting at deception, is so frequently mentioned, it may cause unfounded anxiety. May I modify that description? A Gemini needs two loves. Not necessarily two women [or men]. That’s a riddle. If you truly understand him, you’ll know the answer to it.

We were sitting on the launch at Port Hilton, several days after the cab incident, sipping alarmingly over-sugared Café Americanos, and laughing. I was smoking.

It was twilight.

I looked behind us, toward the beach. Heard an Israel Kamakawiwo’ole song being played liltingly, wistfully, by a Hilton Hawaiian Village band. Started. Looked sideways. And stopped.

Smiled.

“Are you all right?” she asked, laughter in her voice.

I took a moment, collected myself, and turned toward her. “Yes,” I said. “I am. I just now realized that I haven’t been out on the water at night since…well, since Him.”

“You looked like you were Having A Moment,” she said. “Was it a good one?”

“Yes,” I said, a note of genuine surprise in my voice, turning to her with green eyes shining and smiling.

“I think,” I remarked, gazing at two men on the shore splashing each other with water from the blue-gray Pacific, “I think I’m over Him.”

“Good!” she exclaimed. “Shall we go? More coffee?”

“Yes,” I replied, taking her arm to help her up.

We walked along the launch, toward the beach.

My little ten-day exercise in vanquishing demons and laying the ghosts of relationships past to rest did not turn out exactly as I had imagined. By the end of those ten days, I had not succeeded in vanquishing or exorcising anything; I had merely gathered the demons and ghosts around me for a sort of ghoulish reunion. I began to think, by the end of those ten days, that I really did not have anything to exorcise; that, if I did end up exorcising any of those ghosts of relationships past, I would not be remaining true to my nature. The author and astrologer Linda Goodman once wrote of those born under the sign of The Crab, “Cancerians have such control of imagery, and their moods are so intense, they can make you feel them, too. Their imagination seizes joy and despair, horror and compassion, sorrow and ecstasy, and holds each emotion fast with a retentive memory. Like mirrors and cameras, they absorb images and reflect them faithfully. Every experience is engraved on the heart as a photograph is etched on a negative plate. They never forget any of the lessons life has taught them.” And none of that would really be possible if I did not have all of my demons and ghosts. So I did not vanquish them, nor exorcise them. I am just kind of allowing them to hang around. To remind me of how even the shortest of relationships can inspire you to love again. To remind me of how giving and compassionate a man can be, just when he is needed the most, in post-operation recovery from emergency surgery, throughout the long, blinded night. And to remind me of just how beautiful the beach and the ocean at night once used to be, when shared with a friend, even if the friend did, eventually, dissolve immediately into hundreds of sparkling silver balls that quickly escaped through my tightly clenched fingers.

And frankly, I certainly need to hold my relationship demons and ghosts close to me if only to remember which signs of the zodiac never to fall in love with again!

“Midnight stroll through Waikiki?” she inquired.

“Yes,” I said, taking her arm and smiling widely.

I looked back at the beach, now behind us. Saw two thin men playing in the water, one tall and dark, one short and fair. Saw the fair one glance back at me before clutching the dark one’s arm and dragging him into the water. Heard, again, the Kamakawiwo’ole song reverberating off of the water.

“Ready?” she inquired.

“Yes,” I replied.

And returned the flirtatious wave the blond man gave to me, before slouching, ghosts and all, into the depths of the Waikiki evening.