searching

We were looking underneath the couch for something I can no longer recall, maybe it was money or a hairbrush, maybe a book on herbal remedies, the remote control, a bottle of pills, a telephone number on a restaurant napkin, maybe the key to a giant safe that held all of her favorite colors and words and family members and a never-ending cache of Thai spring rolls with hot mustard dipping sauce, maybe it was the Vice President whose name no one remembers that disappeared on Arbor Day (which falls on a day in a month I can not remember), or a balsa wood model airplane, a ceramic beetle with a secret cavity for hiding valuables, maybe that little chunk of the moon that fell on my grandfather’s head when he was stationed in Korea, or maybe it could have even been her silver spoon; the point is, as it turned out, we were searching mightily, but in vain.

So with a wafting, decorous sigh, she dropped her end of the couch and said We’ll never find the goddamned thing here underneath this couch which is a place were we always look for lost damned things but never seem to have any luck, so blast it all, I think I’ll play some music. Then she went and fetched her beautiful golden harpsichord, and she played a spontaneous toccata that lasted for two days and produced such vibrant and angelic and resonant melodies that at the end of the second day the harpsichord dissolved into a heap of fine golden ash, and she stumbled over to me weeping tears of insolent pride, and we made quiet, sweaty love on the floor by the couch for another two days until she fell asleep in my arms, the lost thing now completely forgotten (only to be remembered some distant Tuesday morning when lost things regain their importance in the lives of their possessors and become inevitably necessary, and normal, intelligent people begin searching in bathroom drawers, freezer compartments, underneath couches and other unlikely places for such said lost things).

And myself, I held this beautiful girl, whose name I can not remember, with her beautiful, resonant melodies, and her pile of fine golden ash, and I thought out loud to God or anyone who might be listening, how long will it be before one of us walks out into the freedom of midnight, heading for some town or person North or maybe Northwest of here; and I thought to myself how long will the memory of this beautiful and fine and vibrant four days last?