Michael Bunker - WICK

They sat and ate in a silence—more out of respect for the memory of the night before than for sorrow at their imminent departure. After the meal, they spoke. Clay talked of tending his garden in the spring. Veronica told him that she couldn’t wait that long and that she had to get some newer plants covered in her garden that day. At the end of the meal, Clay began to return to his room to pack for his trip, and Veronica stopped him by holding out the bag that she’d left with the night before.

“I hope you don’t mind. I said I didn’t snoop too much, but when your stuff was out on the bed yesterday I saw that your gear is entirely unsuited for the journey ahead of you, you foolish man.” She winked. “Even with the stuff I got for you, your supplies are insufficient for such a journey,” she hesitated, “…if… if things were to go bad, you see?”

Clay nodded his head. He didn’t want to interrupt, and he figured she was just concerned with his welfare.

“I would hazard a guess that your skillset probably is insufficient as well, Clay, and a stranger should be forgiven for thinking that you’ve embarked on your journey hastily, and ill-prepared…,” she smiled, trying to soften the blow, “…but with the things I’ve added to your pack, I’m hoping that you’ll get home alright.”

Clay nodded again, and returned her smile.

“I like the books you’ve chosen to carry with you, Hemingway in particular. He got at the notion that the earth is more powerful than we imagine. We’ve seen evidence of that recently. But because of that, you can’t go traipsing off into the woods with a single change of clothes and some energy bars and books and nothing else. Take these. I got you some bottles of water for your thirst and a Mylar blanket to keep you warm and a fishing kit to keep you fed. I keep a bunch of wool military blankets on hand for emergencies and cold nights, so I rolled one up for you and put it in your pack with your clothes. You never know what you will find out there, Clay. In case you find something dangerous, here is a knife that belonged to my husband. I put a flashlight in your bag too, and oh, and something else… it’s in the small blue box. Don’t open it until you get home. It won’t do you any good ‘til then, so I wrapped it to keep it dry.”

Clay looked down in the bag and suddenly felt a wave of emotion for this woman who had done so much for him. All he’d done was what should be expected from a man, but she’d really extended herself in hospitality and courtesy. Clay was moved.

“What’s this?” He reached into the bag.

“Oh that. Yes. Well, I have probably overstepped my boundaries. I saw on your bed the stack of poems. I shouldn’t have looked, but I did, and I’m not sorry. I have a friend who once owned the Huemanity Bookstore here in Harlem. One of the last great independent bookstores in the city. The kind of place that, were he around today, you might find Langston Hughes reading his poems to a group of young toughs. A beautiful place. Anyway, she closed the shop down because she realized people wanted to drink coffee more than they wanted to buy books. She’s now opening a café, but she’s still trying to find a way to have both. So, she bought an Espresso Book Machine , the first one in Harlem. It binds your books right on the spot. She’s planning to open in the spring and we were talking about the machine the other day, and then I saw your poems and… she hopes to have people come in and write their books over her coffee and then bind them and go back out into the street. I called her last night and asked her if she minded if I used it. This is the first book bound on it.”

Clay looked at the cover. The Poems of C.L. Richter . A tear formed in his eye.

“I hope you don’t mind. I read a few. I know…”

Clay choked back a tear. “No. I don’t mind,” He looked at her and realized that what she really meant to say was: I know. I’ve lost someone, too.

He put the book back in the bag and stood there for what seemed like the beginning of forever. He smiled and told her that if she ever got to Ithaca, she and Stephen had a home in his forest. She reached out and gave his hand a squeeze, and then they both turned away, him to his packing, her to her gardening.

The rest of that day was spent in a blur, as if in a dream. Clay bid Veronica and Stephen good-bye and made his way to the bus line that would carry him up to the George Washington Bridge. He walked across the expanse and, as he had planned, he threw his key in the river, watching its slow mournful arc until it disappeared behind the webbing of girders and concrete and fell through space to land with a splash that no one could hear.

Once he was in New Jersey, he walked for hours and hours along what passed for the back roads, 4 and then 17, past the slow-changing landscape that morphed from urban to suburban. He passed fields and farms and golf courses and shopping malls and industrial wastelands and streams.

At the end of the day he checked into a small hotel just outside of Suffern. He found his room and lay down on his bed and rested his weary feet. Just before he dropped off to sleep, he reached into his bag and pulled out the copy of his book that Veronica had made for him. Opening it to the first page, he noticed that she’d placed in it a folded slip of paper. He opened it up and read the following poem just prior to slipping away.

Cheryl was twenty-three when he first experienced her in the cafeteria at TC3. TC3 was what everyone called Tompkins Cortland Community College, and so Clay had learned to call it that too. He’d tried, for a while, to get his friends to call it The Cube, and he still liked that nickname, or maybe “TC-cubed” was a better one, but it hadn’t really caught on, so he went along with the flow.

Anyway, Cheryl was working part-time in the cafeteria as a cashier. After four years spent running around Europe with Bohemian girlfriends, staying in hostels and photographing everything in sight, Cheryl had only started college a year earlier at the ripe young age of twenty-two. She caught Clay’s attention one day near the beginning of the fall semester when she was on her first day of work and he was going through the line to pay for his lunch. He always had the same lunch, consisting of one roast beef sandwich (extra mustard), one bag of chips, and a single chocolate chip cookie. He was a creature of habit, but not of stone, and so that day, to mix things up, he’d decided to go through the pay line with the pretty young girl at the cashier counter.

Most love stories start in one of two ways. There is the “Hollywood” way wherein two polar opposites are forced to work together on a job, say, or a bank heist or an unavoidable outing with children. It can be anything really. It doesn’t have to involve a job or a bank or children. It could involve planning brunch for a friend’s wedding party, or setting out on a mission to Mars. The point is the two people involved initially hate one another. With a passion. Until somehow and one day the tension is too much (and too obvious) and they share an awkward kiss. After the kiss, sometimes accidentally achieved while both are specifically trying to avoid having anything to do with each other, they are forced to realize that they are mutually attracted. That’s when the music cues and a love story begins.