Knight In Shining White Lotus

[Built at LotusCars.com.]

Forget Him…Not?

I forgot he was coming.

Despite our modus operandi of trading a barrage of direct messages via Twitter and instant messages via GMail Chat while I sip an Américano in Honolulu and he sips a latté while waiting at his gate at SFO, and despite the traditional final mobile conversation that lasts all the way up until I can hear the head flight attendant intone over the connection that it is now That Time, I forgot he was coming. I got distracted by downloading podcasts, by catching up on blog reading, by writing my own blog, by becoming immersed in a mini-photo shoot throughout Chinatown, by chatting with my BFF.

And suddenly, my mobile was ringing. Again.

“I’m here, Baby!” he exclaimed.

“What?!” I looked at my laptop’s clock. “Already?!”

It was true. He had already landed. But the flight is five to six hours, depending on the winds, and five to six hours is a long time in which to get lost, and to forget what lies at the end.

It’s a long way across half of this ocean.

But he was here.

“I want to spend a few hours with my parents over the mountain first,” he said, a jet engine firing in the background so that I knew he had dialed me first thing off the plane. “But I’ll pick you up around ten-ish?”

“A-a-all right,” I agreed, hoping he didn’t notice that I was mentally re-juggling all that I had to do to be ready before then.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said, a smile in his voice. “See you at ten.”

+ + +

Cinéma de l’Obscur

“I don’t know,” I said breathlessly into my Samsung to my friend Cordelia in Denver a few weeks before, as I dashed up Bishop Street and tried hard not to spill my java in my dashing. She had asked me how things were and how I was doing. I struggled for an appropriately Atherton Bartelby wordy response. “I’m good, and I’m happy, I just…I just want to be Someplace Else. Like, I want to be someplace isolated, where nobody knows me, and I can just do whatever, all by myself. I want to move to that coastal town north of San Francisco in ‘The Birds,’ and have coffee with Suzanne Pleshette and Tippi Hedren and then go back to my cottage and write all afternoon. I want to be curled up by the fire all alone in The Stanley in Estes Park in the middle of winter with tons of food and a typewriter like in ‘The Shining,’ but minus the creepy racist British men’s room attendant and the creepy twins and the creepy corpse lady in the bathtub of 237. I want to…I want to…”

The truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted: to be with someone, or to be all by myself, with nothing but my laptop and my books and my Internet and my BFFs only an instant message or a speed dial away. But Cordelia didn’t get my obscure film references or what they signified to me anyway, so I changed the subject in my trademarked offhanded fashion and pretended as if my emotional conundrum was no big deal.

+ + +

The Surprise

“Come downstairs,” his voice purred into my ear as I juggled cell phone, laptop, weekender bag, keys, and door while attempting to exit my apartment.

“I’m on my way,” I replied, with a smile in my voice, hoping it obscured my breathless rush.

I emerged from my building’s foyer into the sultry, moist late evening. The guest parking lot was nearly empty, save for the well-worn, early-model vehicles of the solitary graveyard staff, and a sleek white very late model sports car that looked vaguely familiar. He and his Black Ninja were nowhere in sight. I furrowed my brow, dropped my black duffel to my feet, posed as if being photographed, and lit a Marlboro Light.

I was exhaling sultrily when my mobile’s text message alert bleeped its customary default five tones.

“Hi,” the message read.

I smiled wryly and typed in return, “Um. Hi. Où est-toi?”

Twenty seconds passed before I read, again exhaling a plume of cigarette smoke, “Right here. Your Chariot awaits.”

I heard a car door open and two feet hit the pavement in the distance, the sounds muffled by the moisture in the thick air, and looked up to see him smiling impishly at me over the top of the driver’s side door of the white sports car, raven hair and eyes and tanned skin stark like midnight against the vibrant whiteness of his suit.

I gasped sharply, smiled, picked up my bag, and strutted over to the car. “What the…” I began, but he interrupted me.

“Well I was going to rent a white Ninja for The White Party,” he said, opening the passenger door and gesturing gallantly to the interior of the car with his arm. I entered the leather body glove of the seat and tilted my face upward as he bent down to kiss my lips. “But I decided to go a bit overboard because that’s…what…we…do…best,” he concluded huskily, nearly whispering the words into my mouth, the fingers of his left hand curling through the over-long blonde curls at the nape of my neck and pulling them ever so slightly.

Within minutes we were racing toward a dormant crater on Oahu’s south shore, its shadow welcoming us into the soft black folds of its night.

“Your surprise was originally just going to be dinner at Nobu tomorrow evening,” he yelled from The W suite’s bathroom thirty minutes later, his mouth full of toothpaste suds. “I made the reservation about a month ago.” He emerged from the bathroom to watch me fumble with the lacings on my white nearly-retro D&G vest. I laughed as I looked up into the mirror and saw a trail of foam dribbling down his chin. “The Lotus was really just an impulse surprise.”

“How, on Oahu, did you manage to find a Lotus for rent…” I began, but he again interrupted me with a finger held aloft and a greatly-affected accent. “Ah!” he breathed. “Ancient Chinese Secret!”

I laughed and smiled wryly back at him in the mirror. “More like ‘Contemporary Scorpio Secret’,” I amended, fastening my father’s white gold links to my French cuffs.

He winked at me. Disappeared once again into the bathroom.

+ + +

“Good-Bye Emo Hello French Riviera”…Redux

The valet was suitably impressed.

It would be difficult not to be, by that car, by us emerging from it, all “Good-Bye Emo Hello French Riviera” in blazes of white, coordinated down to the stark whiteness of cigarette packages, lighters, and spectacle frames for the evening.

We hadn’t even made it to the first bar before being accosted by one of the many hostesses. “You guys look fantastic!” she gushed, each of her hands squeezing one of our biceps as she air-kissed both of us at once. “It’s so funny!” she exclaimed, mock-contemplatively, to me. “I always see you at these things with one or another blonde woman. But not The White Parties. You’re always with this handsome Chinese guy at The White Parties. You two’ve been to every one, right?”

Tension exploded for a millisecond between my body and his, hot like electricity, sparks white like the evening. We traded unspoken histories of joy and pain in a single glance at each other before looking back at the hostess and smilingly saying in clipped unison, “All but one.”

He ordered our drinks at the first bar: two Shirley Temples, with three cherries. He met the bartender’s raised eyebrow with his own elegantly arched one as if to ask, silently, “Did I stutter?”

We engaged in the requisite once-around walk-through while finishing our drinks, trading snarky banter regarding other’s wardrobe choices for the evening and mostly successfully dodging all camera flashes. Eventually we melted into the dance floor, silk and linen and cashmere and raven hair and blonde tresses nearly immediately darkened with sweat in a sea of the absence of all color. Hours passed like minutes, until I opened my eyes and focused, to find that he had danced us over to a bank of windows, fingers touching my chin to turn my head gently so that I could stare as if mesmerized down at the midnight lights of the capital of The Gathering Place many floors below us. We were still moving, but barely, gently swaying and undulating to the music that was now so loud it was but a faint hum in my ears and vibration in my viscera, as I intertwined one leg with his, clutched his jacket, his tie, his shirt, pulled his chest into mine, pushed my hips into his, mouth open and yearning but never fully diving into the eventual kiss.

“Take me home,” I whispered into his mouth.

“Yesssss,” he whispered back.

It was all I could do to maintain composure until the elevator doors closed behind us at The W ten minutes later.

Hours later, teetering precariously on the brink of sleep in the island pre-dawn, I felt his forefinger gently drawing circles into the moist flesh of the small of my back.

“I…” I breathed.

“Yes?” he breathed as well, lowering his lips to my ear and kissing it.

“Sweet dreams, mon cher,” I sighed.

He sighed, as well. Resignedly. “Sweet dreams,” he replied, arms enveloping me.

+ + +

Jet Set Weekends And Frequent Flier Miles

The Sabbath passed in a blur of food and pixels and newsprint and unspoken communication: three room service carts and two laptops and five national and international newspapers strewn carelessly across the bed and suite, required food or print edition wordlessly requested of and silently delivered by the other. I shared with him my conversation with Cordelia of a few days previous, carefully veiling any reference to him, or to my thoughts of being / not being with someone.

“Careful there, Baby,” he laughed. “We don’t want you turning into little old Annie The Number One Fan, all psychotic in a Rocky Mountain hideaway wearing tired old cardigans that you’ve knitted yourself.”

I laughed along with him, because I didn’t have to explain myself to him. He got me; obscure Hitchcock and Kubrick references and all.

“What were you going to say to me this morning?” he asked, eyes grinning mischievously at me over plates of sushi and Washu Beef at dinner later that evening.

“I…” I hesitated. “I was going to say how glad I am that I never have to see you off.”

“See me off?”

“At HNL. It…it makes me feel as if you’re just over the mountain instead of an ocean away.”

“That’s not what you were going to say to me this morning,” he said, a bit sadly. “And…it’s only half of an ocean.”

“Right.” I tried to smile. “Half of an ocean.”

We shared a cigarette as we said farewell, again, in the parking lot of my building, passing it between us as he almost absentmindedly clutched the lapels of his white Prada jacket that I had confiscated and worn over a dark green Diesel t-shirt to dinner. Pulled me to him.

He tasted of raspberries. Again. And green tea. Again. And tobacco. And paper. And ink. Again. And my sweat. And lust. And my saliva. Again. And love.

“I…” I breathed.

“Yes?” he sighed.

“I’m glad you came. Thank you.”

“Thank you.” He sounded nearly defeated.

“So what’s next?” my BFF AV inquired archly, much later that evening. “What does the future hold?”

“What does the future hold?” I repeated dumbly, thinking. “Besides long jet set weekends and frequent flier miles?” I added a “LULz” for good measure, although I was far from “LULz”-ing.

“Well, Darling,” she said, “you and I are all about the jet set weekends and the frequent flier miles!”

I “LULz”-ed. Genuinely, this time.

“For The Memoirs, n’est-ce pas?” I laughed.

“For The Memoirs, mon cher,” she agreed, laughing along with me.

+ + +

Far Too Wide For Me

“I’m home safe,” he whispered into my ear, very early in the morning.

“Good,” I murmured, stifling a yawn. It was nearly dawn again. “Flight?”

“It was all right,” he yawned. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither.”

“Because you weren’t there.”

“I…”

“Going to try, though.”

“All right. Sweet dreams.”

Seconds passed before my text message notification bleeped.

“I…” the message read.

And then another.

“Sweet dreams, Atherton.”

I smiled wanly as I slid my Samsung closed, put my Gateway to sleep, and thought, again, to myself, “It’s a long way across half of this ocean.”

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