"Ya she did."
"Well, are you going to see her again?"
"Na, I'm just not cut out to--" I stopped. I was going to say, 'knock her up.' But the game plan was to keep Ezra in the dark. So, instead, I said, "It's
just that I don't think she's right for me."
"Why not?"
"I don't know, I . . . she's just . . . I just get a sense she's looking for a transitional guy. I'm just not interested in playing that role."
"Come on, Fern's been divorced a year now. If she needed a transitional guy, she'd have done him months ago."
"Maybe, but I got to trust my gut. I'm in the market for a relationship--long term relationship. So I got to rely on every trouble-shooting alarm I got."
"Interesting," Ezra said, laying his professor eye on me.
"Hey," I said, "don't you go laying your professor eye on me. I'm no student of yours, you know."
"But, Anton, I read you like a book. Not because I see you as a student of mine; I read you because you're just like me. You say you want a long term relationship, but you involve yourself exclusively with twenty-somethings. Why? Because relationships with twenty-somethings inevitably fail. You say you want long term relationships to honor your higher creed, but you choose relationships doomed to fail. Why? Because what you really want are affairs, flings."
"Interesting," I said, laying a professor eye of my own on Ezra. "You say I want affairs, flings. Why? Well, I'll tell you why: Because you've failed to do your homework. If you had, you would know, I've never had a fling in my life. I've only had relationships--long term relationships. Now, if one or two didn't go all that long in the way of term, it wasn't by plan, certainly."
"God, you're good at that."
"What," I said, "professing?"
"No, snowing yourself. And that's OK. What's not OK is deceiving those twenty-somethings into believing what you want is a long term relationship when all you want is to use them."
"Use them? Hah. If anything, I serve as a catalyst for their growth."
"Growth? Anton, women in their twenties are flowers--flowers in their prime. What happens to flowers when you use them as stepping stones?"
Cry me a creed! Ezra's accusation had initiated a vivid flashback. I was at a graduation of an ex-girlfriend. We'd just broken up. I was Thirty-nine. She was twenty-eight. We'd been together the entire four years she'd been in college. At the reception her father--who I had only talked to once before--grabbed my arm, said, "Thieving rat bastard. I knew you weren't in it for the long haul. They ought to castrate predators like you." I had said, "What did I do?" He said, "You stole away the best years of my daughter's life. You're a parasite. I ought to squash you like the flower-sucking bug you are."
I hadn't really fathomed, at the time, what Marla's father was accusing me of. Well, it sure had sunk in as of today.
I leveled the drawstring in my sweatshirt hood. "Jeez, Ezra, flowers as stepping stones. That's one heavy perspective you just laid on me. And I'm going to give a good think on that, but right now I got to get over to Metals, check in on my tree guys."
I walked away, leaving brave Ezra to track mud up the steps of the Blue House.
But then I remembered something. "Hey, Ezra, that essay, Twice Removed From Body, can I read your copy, or should I go down to Owl's, buy my own?"
"It's not in book stores. It's independently published. No, I'll loan you my copy. I just keep forgetting."
Entering the orchard, I had to ask myself, "Could I be wrong--thinking I was in the business of cultivating flowers, when all along I'd been stepping on them?"
Descending into the orchard, I had to answer myself. "Highly unlikely. Look at the evidence: You're still friends with five of your six ex-girlfriends. Ya, Ezra, take all those ex's of mine; a guy doesn't remain friends with all his ex's if he had stepped on them. No, Ezra, you really need to do your--"
I stopped walking. Some ground I had just stepped on needed cursing out. I turned around. Though I kept burying the damned stone, the damned wildlife kept re-exposing it. Of course, it didn't help matters that I kept stepping on the damned stone every time I passed by.
Using the instep of my boot to plow some wet dirt back over the stone, I said with ceremony, "Mark my word; never shall I step upon you, or any other stepping stone ever again."
Exiting the orchard, I gave my eyeless 'Hi,' to Simone and Sabina entering.
Stopping by Apolena's picnic table to scrape the mud off my boot, I took to thinking of something else Ezra had once professed: That all males, by nature, are promiscuous. I, having been with just the six women, was not promiscuous, certainly. But that wasn't the question. The question was, could I, Anton Celadon, be promiscuous by nature? Sure, I got a new crush on a new girl every new semester, but did that make me promiscuous by nature?
I looked up from my boot, stared down the blue door to Metals. No, all that made me was male.
****
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