OMENS
Or, This Was A Terrible Idea, Part 4.
[FOUR DAYS REMAIN]
That familiar swirl of the cosmic hurricane opened up. My younger selves crawled out of the space-dust time machine. Like Uatu the Watcher they come to glare on days of great importance. Never interfere. Observe only. But why that day? Lying with Ava, looking into her eyes. Looking for words that weren’t mine.
I met her at a swimming pool. Her “I have twenty-four years” from across the lane told me that it was time. That maybe the universe was listening. That my training was over. No more practicing my great grandfather’s tongue through a screen, but with a real person, learning things you can only learn while looking at the freckles of eyeballs.
She taught me words I couldn’t elsewhere learn. — Mas despacio, — No pares, — Acabo de tener, — Todavia crees que soy virgen? She gave me a book called La Tregua about an old man waiting to retire, still mourning the death of his wife, dejected from his children, falling in love with a women Ava’s age. Why do I feel so connected to him? I have nothing in common with him. Nothing at all. Te lo juro.
Making love is different from haciendo el amor , and I don’t know how it is but it is somehow. I worry that I’m just like every boy in the land of dreams. Trying to find apotheosis in woman. Making love to the language, not the body that contains the mind. That if I want to be rich, then my rich can never really be rich unless it brings me a money-man’s woman. That if I want to be happy, then my happy can never really be happy unless it brings me a Zen-man’s woman. And that if I want to say que hablo espanol, pues no puedo decirla antes que beso los labios que susuran “Si”.
For two months we devolved together in that car, driving here and there. Trying to understand each other. Her father was wild-eyed and I didn’t even know him. Left his good job in El Salvador. And why? “El Sueno Americano” is all she can answer. Standing beside my time traveling selves in the hole left by the cosmic storm is the Silver Surfer and mi bisabuelo, Miguel. His dark Indio eyes look at me with curiosity. Have I let him down? Does he know who this white boy is? Does he care?
The six-year old’s head is on fire. Moths fly by and meet their doom. The teenager sucks all heat from around him into ice. The silver surfer sees me lying there and misses his Shala-Ba. My Great grandfather stands there in that white knight shirt he wore when he took his family border hopping.
Ava has a cold but I kiss her and stroke her hair. Her big brown eyes are bigger from behind the glasses. Queiro ternrte por ultima vez, I tell her. No, no siento bien, she tells me. This is the last time I’ll see her and I feel like shit and I wonder why. Maybe because I keep running and running and running.
“You have to decide what coward means.” I hear a whisper from behind me, and I turn. All four of them are standing there at the edge of the galactic monsoon on the edge of my bed. Me at six, my head on fire. Me eight years later and made of ice. A brown man from the 1800s. The silver herald of Galactus.
And I can’t tell which one said it.
