Tracey Levine Cosmic Bonds
I met Rachel when she’d already been married and divorced and was enrolled in a second Master’s degree program to study something new, to change her life. I was in a class with her and we met for coffee one afternoon, the first time I got to talk to her off-campus. I set up the meeting, convincing her, I thought, that we should try and solidify some paper ideas through conversation but I really just thought that she was pretty, more interesting than the others. And I was recently single then. I knew all about the architecture of her current life because she’d offered bits of it in class through discussion. A divorcee’, I could handle, even one with a touch more baggage. She agreed to coffee without hesitance. She was the woman that I waited to see every week maybe because there was more girl in her thirty-something face and mannerisms- the mismatched socks, the messy hair always with one rogue arc seeming to purposely mar whatever style she’d twisted it into, and then there was the sweater. She was wearing the sweater the day of our coffee shop meeting, or date. In retrospect, I don’t think it was our first date. We both drank our coffees black and she hadn’t brought any of her work. I had a notebook and some articles spread on the table when she came in, ten minutes late, gesturing that she’d get coffee first before she came over to me. When she came over she bent down, before I could stand up, to hug me, coffee steadied in her hand like we were professionals but very admiring of one another. Then she sat down across the