God's Gym (23 page)

Maybe what seems real is merely a possibility, never more, never more than one possibility among innumerable others. To imagine one life, we let go of others. Bury them like burying the dead. Until coincidence recalls them.

This morning when I took a break from writing I picked up
Tracing,
a book of poems that's been sitting around months unopened, and carried it into the bathroom to glance at while I sat on the toilet. I could say this book this morning a coincidence, or say I'm compelled to crack the book this particular morning because it's a gift from a nice person, because it's fragile-looking, probably self-printed, a gray paper cover thin as each of its twenty or so stapled-together pages, read it because writers are hunters, because the author of the poems, Ryoko Sekiguchi, coincidentally, is Japanese like Murakami. The first words of the first poem are
The unexpected meeting in the singular suddenly becomes numerous.

When John phoned to say he'd be in the city the following week and maybe we could hang out, I almost laughed out loud. Only reason I didn't because too much to explain before John could appreciate the joke that wasn't really fanny in the first place, more like bizarre, more like crazy, like poor Molly and her talking license plates. About three years since we'd hooked up, but with all the Wyoming stuff in the air, why not, why wouldn't my best friend from that time and place arrive on my doorstep. Why not one further fanhouse-mirror twist—in addition to seeing me, John intended to catch up with other old friends, mutual friends from Wyoming in town for the same conference he's attending. Did I want to join the whole crew for dinner. He didn't say for old time's sake or say just like in the good ole days but what else would he be thinking, the coincidence of everybody in the same city, same day, the possibility of getting together again, nostalgia, reprieve, the bunch of us performing the neat trick of going back to a place that no longer exists or never existed. Who can resist. The innocent smiles, the hugs and chatter and toasts. My, my. I wanted to laugh out loud and cry and confess everything to my old pal. Explain why meeting would do no good. Why meetings scripted and unscripted, especially the latter, and it's always partly the latter, are as dangerous as they are sad and unforgiving, as they are fan and fanny. I couldn't wait to see him. Yeah. Sure. I'll join him and kick back with the others. None of the dead need apply. Yes. Sounds great. After all, unbeknown to myself, I'd been preparing, hadn't I. Warming up. Practicing quick cuts from figure to ground, ground to figure. Like the design printed on my African gourd. Fish flying or birds swimming, or some new winged, amphibious hybrid, at home in water, earth, fire, wind, at home on the range.

How long will my old buddy wait in the hotel lobby, grinning as if he's enjoying the joke I haven't told him, appearing as pleased with himself as any aging magician who cups in
his hands a live, wiggly baby rabbit plucked from an empty top hat, then claps to prove to the audience nothing in his hands after all.

I think I catch him catch a glimpse of me out of the corner of his eye. Swear I see the flicker of his glance light me up a minisecond and his long mouth begin a smile of recognition. I must be mistaken, because when his head turns and he gazes directly at the space I occupy, his glance, then his fixed stare, pass straight through me as if I'm not a few yards away, as if he's daydreaming or remembering a meeting elsewhere with someone else on some other occasion, or as if he's been tricked by some coincidental movement and turns to find no one there.