GAFF
"You're not like the other boys", a voice said from over my left shoulder.
That had to be the cheesiest pickup line ever, I thought as I turned my raised eyebrows to see who had spoken. When I saw her face, I had a single isolated word come to mind: wolf. Maybe it was her eyes that triggered the thought. She had these bright grey-blue irises outlined in darkest indigo, indigo almost the darkness of her pupils. Or maybe it was that she was just in from the snow and wearing a frosted trapper hat of thick fur the colour of a grey wolf's coat. Or maybe it was the shape of her flat-round nose and that she smelled just a little bit like a wet dog. It was probably all that, and the fact that there was something about her appearance and her boldness that made her seem a little feral.
She shook off her hat and her long coat as she sat down next to me. Her brown curls dropped around her neck and shoulders as though a hair and make-up crew and a team of lighting specialists had spent an afternoon engineering the fall so it would rest just so; that kind of perfect messy that, before now, I thought only happened in advertisements. She crossed her arms and threw them up on the bar. I could see that she was some kind of labourer; farmhand or tree planter seemed to make sense. Her hands were rough and strong with prominent veins. Some of her nails were cracked and all were worn short and had dirt under them. Half way up her forearm sat a tattoo, a simple line drawing that, from my vantage point was indecipherable.
I replied to her statement with a laugh and an enquiry. “What makes you think that?”
“What, are you kidding me?” she laughed right back.
A grin came to my face and I laughed again, but this time only through my nose in little sufficiently-audible puffs. And then, half asking and half telling, I offered “And you, you're not like the other girls.”
“That's right”, she nodded.
I grinned again and nodded along with her. I waited a moment and then, just to keep the randomness at a suitable level, I looked at her and asked “Do you have a dog?”
“Patsy”, she told me.
“As in Patsy Cline?” I questioned, already knowing the answer.
“That's right”, she nodded again. “She's crazy.”
“Crazy for feelin'?”
“So blue. Yeah.”
(In hindsight I should have asked if Patsy was a wolf; but, alas, I did not.)
“Well that's it” I said, cocking my head and then looking away.
“What's that?” she asked.
I turned back, facing straight ahead, and told her “I don't need to know any more.” Then, as though I'd thought about it for days, and in the most genuine tone, timbre, and timing imaginable, somehow, “I love you” just slipped out of me and into the world.
She laughed loudly. “Yeah, I knew that when I walked in here, boy. I just thought I'd come over and let you in on it.” She laughed again and shook her head, “Took you long enough.”
“Yeah, twenty-two seconds is a lifetime, isn't it?”
“A thousand lifetimes, to be truthful.” Again she laughed. “If you've ever used hallucinogens or had yourself a lucid dream you know that down in your bones, don't ya?”, her soft, easy laugh ringing out once again.
I wanted to look at her but couldn't. If I had I would have then asked “Who the hell are you?” I didn't say anything.
“Do you sail?” she asked.
“No, but I'd love to.” I replied. “I've been out on a few boats briefly, and love the quiet of a sail boat. I'd like to live on a boat, at least for a short time. There's just something about the sea: serene and ferocious; cushioning, cradling, and crushing; life and death. Ya know?”
“Yeah, absolutely. I build boats, actually,” she explained, “and movie sets. I live on a little floating home too, just up the river.”
“Of course you do.” I quipped back. “And you have a farm in Montana and a graduate degree in Neuroscience.”
“Oregon. Psychology.”
“Jesus Christ”, I blurted into the bar. There was a long pause as I looked down at my feet saying nothing.
“What do you do?” she asked, the words exiting her mouth quietly and one at a time.
“What? Do I do? Uh, well, to be honest, I mostly sit around thinking to myself” I said without thinking, adding, “but thinking is almost impossible so I often find myself writing, which is merely extremely difficult.” Remembering the notebook I was working in before she arrived, I reached for it, held it up, turning it in the air. “I don't wrote well, not coherently, not with an audience in mind, only scratches and doodles – and sometimes more doodles than scratches.”
“I bet you're a great writer.”
“No, not at all,” I assured her. “I enjoy it but I can't spell and I never learned how to use punctuation properly. That and I can't make sense of most other writing conventions.” I stopped myself and asked, “Tell me about your boats.”
“Well, for the film I'm working on I just built two steamships. The real boats I've built included sea kayaks, little dinghies, a fantail launch design from the early 1920s, and a hideous powerboat that I'd be embarrassed to admit I had any hand in.”
“Amazing. Where do you work out of, building your boats?”
“My house, actually. I call it a floating home, and it is, because it's on the water and I live in it, and it's not a boat, but it's more like a small aircraft hangar than a house.”
“Amazing.”
“Yeah, and my primary means of transportation is canoe.”
“Amazing, just amazing. About watercraft, I really know embarrassingly little. I've always wanted to park a galleon in a wheat field, though; due to a need I have, as an absurdist, for contrast and playful, cognitive conflict. So if you come upon a galleon that's no longer seaworthy you must let me know. Ideally something Spanish, 17th century, out of the spice trade. Three mast, lateen fore-and-aft rig, you know the deal. 2,000 ton or so, fully loaded, give or take the iron.”
“Right, a galleon, well, if you come upon a galleon that needs a little work you let me know. We'll fix it up and sail the seas, maybe hit Zanzibar and the Galapagos before you retire it to a dry Prairie someplace.”
“It's a deal”, I pledged. “Oh, I'm Chris, by the way” I admitted.
“You can call me Gaffrig”, she offered back, as she motioned to the bartender, who'd just appeared from a side entrance.
“Gaff-rig?” I asked.
“Gaffrig”, she said once again very seriously.
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