We met when I was 20, she was 23. She carried herself with fantastic confidence, something I could not resist. She was born in the deep south, Mississippi, but she was raised all over the country, being what is affectionately known as a military brat.
She did retain a bit of a southern accent though, which charmed me like nothing I had ever known before. She would get upset with me for some bone-headed error in judgement I'd make (as I often did and do), and I almost actually enjoyed just listening to the drawl in her voice as she vented her anger - made it hard to argue back, actually.
Her initials were AKA, and that was how I took to referring to her - it just sounded cool.
We went out dancing every single week, usually twice a week. She loved to dance, and more importantly, she loved to dance with me, and to the music I enjoyed dancing to. There was an energy to her, a sensual energy that eclipsed any I had ever encountered before.
However, the passion between us was a little too incendiary. Possessiveness wormed it's way in, bringing along suspicion and paranoia. We ended the relationship after one particularly ugly dispute, and though we were able to remain on friendly terms, we were never able to reconcile.
I moved on and so did she. Years passed, and with the passage of time coupled with distance and the onset of new relationships, we fell out of communication with one another. My peripatetic life took me far from that time and place.
Then late one June evening in Anchorage, 8 years and nearly 4,000 miles from when we last saw one another, inexplicably, we chanced upon each other.
There was an alternative music bar in Anchorage known as the Underground, and it was a place I went often, even though I did not drink at the time. The appeal was the large dance floor and a DJ that would play music I could dance to, plus the sand volleyball pit in the back, just off the outside patio. It was while I was playing a game of volleyball with a group of friends that we ran into each other.
Or rather, she spotted me as I was getting ready to serve, and called out my name. It was as odd a thing as I've ever had happen to me. I had the volleyball in my hands and a woman's voice shouted out my name. I turned to the patio and there she was, sitting at a table alone.
Stunned is not an adequate word to describe my reaction. I walked over to the table and looked at her and said her name, questioningly. She looked up at me and asked what the hell was I doing in Anchorage, Alaska, and I repeated the question back to her.
Then I sat down, and we started talking. For twenty minutes or so we talked. She told me what the hell she was doing in Anchorage - she had moved to Anchorage a few months back, following a soldier who was stationed at Richardson. That relationship had ended, but she was in another (and in fact was at the bar on a date with the guy, who had gone to the bar to get her a drink, and when he returned graciously allowed us to sit and catch up while he went off and danced). I told her what the hell I was doing in Anchorage, and we both marveled at the weirdness of running into each other there.
Soon, the opening chords to a song that was a favorite of both of ours spilled out of the doorway that led inside the bar - we looked at each other and just got up and headed to the dance floor. We danced to that song, and then another, before sitting back down. She then told me she had to get back to her (rather patient) date, and we exchanged phone numbers.
She left the bar and I returned to my (very curious) group of friends and explained what had just happened. Everyone agreed it was quite an amazing happenstance.
Getting home that night, I pulled out the slip of paper with her phone number on it and stared at it for a long while. The woman I was then living with was working a late shift and wasn't due home for awhile, and I pondered the implications of having that number in my possession. I considered telling her the events of the evening when she got home, but then I thought better of it. I decided right then that it was better to let sleeping dogs lie and I tore up the slip of paper and disposed of it.
I must assume that AKA had the very same reaction, as I never heard from or saw her again.
Years passed. I left Anchorage to explore more of the world, until finally settling down in Colorado. This past Monday night I received an email from an old friend that had AKA's name as the title.
I opened the email and all it contained was her obituary - from 2001. She had been killed in a car crash 3 days before her 41st birthday. My friend explained in the email that he had stumbled upon it years ago, and had found it in a file as he was cleaning up an old computer he was getting rid of.
A wave of disbelief and sadness washed over me as I read the obituary. There were details about her life that I knew, and a few I didn't - she had left Alaska not long after we had run into each other, and had married twice (divorced once). She was survived by her husband.
Sadness is a curious thing. I felt sad Monday night because a woman I once knew intimately passed away some years ago, but it was an odd sadness. I didn't feel a sense of loss for myself, I felt a sense of loss for those who were part of her life when she died. I felt grief for her husband, and I hoped she didn't suffer in the accident that took her life.
AKA was a terrific woman, a terrific person. I will always remember her with a smile.
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