The man shifts in his chair, and after Gerald’s laughter at his own joke fades into silence, the man claps his hand on the woman’s knee like they’re hunting buddies, and finally says, to Gerald, “Okay, should we plan something?” “Right,” Gerald says, opening his thick binder, licking his index finger to turn the page. Once, this finger licking fell into your category called Sexy, but right now, it turns your stomach. Soon Gerald’s rattling off prelude and postlude possibilities, and the man is saying, “Yes, that’ll work just fine.” What neither of them notices yet is that the woman is crying, tears in a slow stream, staining her navy silk shirt with black streaks. You think of saying to her, let’s get out of here. This place is poison. Let’s go run naked in the woods and listen to all the Wagner we want and have martinis, dirty ones. But you don’t. Despite what Gerald Paul Andrews thinks, you can’t save someone else. What you are realizing, though, watching this woman’s tears and feeling the flow of them loosen you like a branch long stuck in a dry riverbed, what makes you stand now, without explanation, taking your purse and leaving the peach colored raincoat which you’ve never liked but Gerald said was really smart, what you know with certainty as you walk away from his nasal voice and snorty laugh, into the air with hints of tulips, hoping that the weeping woman will come to her own clarity, what carries you forward is the truth that becomes the recessional song you don’t need approval for: that you can only save yourself. So you do.
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