Faces

At O’Hare International airport, Leo stands alone next to walls and walls of glass, his hands in front of him, his eyes at his feet. He is not thinking about Kim, his girlfriend who he has not seen in a year, nor the questions that he would like to ask her while they are in his beige Ford (How was it? Were the people there different? Is business competitive in France?), or even her arrival time.

Leo is thinking about yesterday night, a night spent alone in front of a computer. It was not unlike most other nights that year: he came back to his tin can apartment from his office, made dinner (he was far too sophisticated for TV dinners or anything out of a paper container), and walked straight to the computer, watching pornography until he fell asleep. Here, his memory fades, as Leo never liked to remember the particulars of those previous nights behind closed doors and vertical blinds – those fuzzy scenes of skin pigment and movement. Originally, he could not even look at their faces. They were too animated or too expressive, his hand always covering a portion of his 15 inch screen from that horrible beacon of cheap delight, contrived intimacy or giddy small-talk. It was all too much. Too human. It’s fake, anyways, he’d say. It was safer this way.

Yet, every once in a while, he’d come across a face or an expression that would make him think of Kim. Immediately, he would stop watching, getting up from the computer and wandering aimlessly into the kitchen, telling himself he was thirsty and that he needed water or juice, his face flushed with some unknown heat. Yet, an hour later, he’d always come back to that face, his eyes peering at the screen from the darkness around him, again thinking of Kim. Sheepishly, he would look at those faces, contorted with unknowable amounts of pleasure and pain, one by one coming back to her. He hated to make that comparison. But surely, could he deny that the certain expression with slanted lips would always evoke the time when she wanted to go to the beach merely because he couldn’t swim? Or did not that jerky movement of the hips remind him of her shivery walk, and the fact that it was this unabashedly awkward grace that drew him to her to begin with? He remembers thinking that she wasn’t like the other business school students. She was sophisticated, yet simple. She’d flip straight to the sports section in The Times on Saturday mornings. She never gushed, but was straightforward to the point of risking being nondescript, even in her writing: it’s great, I love it here. Only enough information to let him know that she was alive and distantly happy.

Soon, Leo’s thoughts will think of which gate she will arrive at and inevitably, back to himself – his hands, his feet, his figure in the glass. Had those nights in front of the computer changed him? Would he look different to Kim? Leo’s hands will immediately rise to his face, feeling around for that trickle of hair that originated from under his nose down to the bulge of his chin. He had intentionally grown it out to anticipate Kim’s arrival. He will think of Kim and her new clothes, her new taste for Alsace or Cabernet Sauvignon and he will think he needs a similar change. After all, he had matured too. He had started to play the guitar she shipped over to him from Florence for his birthday. He had redecorated his apartment with colorful arrays of kitchenware and rugs. He had shopped at IKEA.

Soon, Leo will be thinking of engagement rings. Soon, they will be moving into a quaint house of floral colors in the middle of Naperville, Chicago because she insists on living a “slower pace of life.” Soon, they will be together in the middle of the night, bundled in the quiet heat of bedroom tradition, her arm and face on his chest, rising up and down to his slow breathing. Yet, Leo does not sleep. He will look at her – her mouth bent slightly upwards and open like a cat’s – counting the seconds between her breaths (Is she really sleeping?). He will look for a sign or signal. He will look for permission to sleep. He will look for that gesture of good faith that said it’s great, I love it here.