Chapter Three: The Wet Shoe Symphony

I didn’t know exactly what the problem was, but I had a good hunch. Sunday was her day off, and I had made a date to go see a movie. But she seemed cold on the telephone, cold and distant. Something was wrong.

She liked to walk – for the exercise – and instead of driving downtown to the movie theater, we decided to walk the nine blocks. We walked the streets of a Sunday-deserted downtown, the streets all but empty of any traffic. I chose a movie that was a celebration of the films of Laurel and Hardy, those classic comedians from the Depression-Era 1930s. The movie theatre was a good hefty walk downtown from Misty’s apartment. The sun weighed down on us, like a burden of heat and light. The warmth of the sun and the humidity made it all seem so tropical, more like Florida instead of Illinois.

We walked through the hot, hard, empty streets of a deserted downtown. The brutally hot July weather surrounded us. The hot, hard sidewalks that we walked kept reminding us that that all life was brutal, all hope was hopeless, all love was loveless.

"It’s a hot one today, Misty."

"Yes."

"I like hot weather. Do you?”"

"Yes."

The Palace Theater. A grand old building in the downtown world. It had once been a popular place. It had once been crowded, packed to capacity all the time, with eager theater patrons, with patrons eager to see the latest motion picture release from Hollywood, eager to be entertained and relieved, even momentarily, from the reality of their difficult lives. But now, in the late 1980s, it was dying, and dying a slow and pathetic death. But now, in the maniac age of VCRs, in the age of abundant and ubiquitous VCR cassettes that were to be found everywhere, it was struggling to stay alive, struggling to stay relevant in a forever-evolving technoworld. And it was losing the battle. In time, it would close its doors, it would become just one more unfortunate victim of a ruthless and ever-changing technology.

All during the afternoon, during our walk from her apartment and on downtown to the Palace Theater, Misty didn’t talk much, she didn’t say much. I wondered if she’d had another phone call from her nightmare family back in Chicago. Was it them? Or was it me? Was there something about me that was inadequate? Did she want to break up with me?

I can get shivering cold in an over-air-conditioned movie theater, so I had on my brand-new long-sleeved Western shirt, white, (with gold embroidery on the chest) with fake pearl snap buttons ($14.95 from Montgomery Ward), and my usual jeans and my rather expensive cowboy boots. Misty was in her usual white blouse and jeans and a pair of cheap white joggers from K-Mart.

As we sat there in the cold empty darkness of the theater, with the movie playing on the big screen in front of us, I reached for Misty’s left hand and tried to hold it. It worked for a few precious minutes, but then she pulled her hand away from me, as if preferring to sit by herself, as if preferring to sit by herself alone and unbothered. And so, while the rest of the people laughed goodnaturedly at the comic antics of these two old-time, simple, good-natured comedians, me and Misty Night sat there, sat there silent, cold, quiet, unresponsive. After nearly two hours of coldness both external and internal, after two hours of watching simple, kindhearted Laurel and Hardy film shorts from the 1930s, we got up silently and left, along with everyone else, everyone else destined to leave, to leave and to forget, to forget the illusion of a far-distant, a far-forgotten, a far-happier time in history. The show ended and the theater lights came up.

We walked out of the cool darkness of the dimly-lit movie theater and out into the hot Sunday afternoon of reality. But the sunlight that we had sweated under when we entered the theater hours ago the theater was gone. Instead, while we were inside, watching a movie in a setting of unreality, watching Laurel and Hardy blunder through life, blunder through the simplest things of life, and to comic effect – in the current reality, the gray clouds outside had gathered in the sky overhead, gathered into a dark mass, low and dark and menacing. I saw dark rain clouds nearby, and I grew anxious. We still had blocks to walk to get to Misty’s downtown apartment. I wondered if we would make it before the rain. I felt vulnerable without an umbrella or at least a jacket, and I had nothing to protect Misty.

I glanced at her surreptitiously as she walked along with me, her white K-Mart joggers falling lightly on the sidewalk.

"It looks like rain, Misty."

"A misty rain?"

"No, it looks like rain. A downpour rain."

"Yes, it does."

"I don’t know if we’ll make it back in time."

"I don’t think we will." And she said that in a way that struck me, like she didn’t really care if we made it or not. Something else was on her mind. She didn’t care. Total indifference. Would it rain? Would it snow? Would it hail? She didn’t really give a damn. But I was quick to find a solution.

"Well, there’s that orange awning over the South Side Hardware Store entrance. We can stand under there until the rain clears. Don’t worry."

"I’m not worried. Are you?"

"Me? No. I’m not worried."

"What’s a little rain?”"

"Yes. What’s a little rain."

I had a fear we were going to get caught in a downpour, and I was right. But it didn't happen all at once, it didn't happen suddenly, a sudden emptying of the heavens. At first there were tiny rain drops coming down soft and gentle, and they felt warm on my face and hands. Walking along, we made it to the rusty old awning of the South Side Hardware Store and stood there for shelter from the rain. We looked up at the dark lowering clouds in the sky. But the rain had already caught her attention.

Curious, she held out her hand over the edge of the awning and felt the rain.

"It’s a warm rain," she said softly, unemotionally, matter-of-factly, like she’s a weather person on TV. It wasn’t the usual Illinois rain, cold and hard and biting. It was warm, a tropical warm. A tropical island rain, more suited perhaps to Tahiti in the South Pacific than to Peoria, Illinois..

She grabbed me by the right hand, but her hand slipped in the rain, and she caught only the first two fingers of my right hand. She walked out from the shelter of the rusty orange awning and into the onslaught of rain. I followed along obediently. Her pace quickened as she sensed the warmth of the rain.

Nearby, just off the sidewalk, there was an open space between two old deserted brick warehouses. She turned and walked back there. I followed her, just a little confused at what she was doing. Then she turned again behind one of the warehouses. But just then, it began to rain in all seriousness, with huge drops splattering loudly, menacingly, on the hard concrete pavement.

In the secluded back of the building, in back where there was nothing but the weathered, old, gray, back-end of run-down useless buildings and several dented beaten-up dumpsters scattered around and piles of old, rusty, twisted, unidentifiable metal, and an absurd, old, small, brick alleyway, an alleyway that looked like it had been there since the McKinley Administration when horses with buggies trotted busily through the streets.

She stood there, and in an instant, in a blink of time, she unbuttoned and slipped off her blouse, and threw it down carelessly on the wet concrete. I just stood there, watching her, in awe of her. Braless. There was just no way, no way at all, that Misty Night, Misty Night, the gorgeous, luscious, beautiful, brown-eyed, brown-haired Misty Night, would ever care to wear a bra on a hot summer day, in public or in private. No way. She just didn't care, she just really didn't care.

"You are braless, you know."

"I know, Steve," she said, as if she needed to be told.

I stood there, looking around surreptitiously, admiring her courage, but looking for any possible witnesses to the scene, wondering how much money I would have to pay to get her out of jail on an indecent exposure rap – not to mention a few interesting lines in "The Courts" column of the local newspaper.

She looked up at the sky, she looked up at the gray, dark, ominous and stormy clouds were sweeping by, low in the sky overhead, she looked up as if she were talking directly to God, as if God was up there, somehow, somewhere, quietly and serenely amidst the storm, sending this warm and kind and gentle rain down to Earth just for her and her alone, as if God was just somehow giving Misty a gift of a warm and kind and sensual rain, so she could strip down to her bare skin and enjoy it.

The warm rain came down gently and kindly and lovingly and covered her, covered her hair, her face, her breasts, her waist. Her pale white skin glistened in the rain. She loved it, every second of it, every moment of it. Her face, her eyes, her body, all glowed, glowed so brightly, glowed so warmly, all were so alive, so very vibrant, so very loving and kind and gentle, all so alive, so very alive with pleasure, with pleasure and joy, with a simple animal pleasure, the pleasure of being alive in the world.

"Oh, God! Oh, God! It feels good! It feels so good! It feels so sensual! So sensual!"

She turned and raised her arms to the sky, raised her hands to the sky, stretching them high, stretching them as high as she could, as if her hands could touch the sky, as if her hands could take in something, something that was being offered freely and lovingly and generously, as if she were taking in the warm, sensual rain into her soul, as if the warm, sensual rain was cleansing her, cleansing her body, cleansing her soul, renewing her, reviving her, bringing her back to life, bringing her back to life again, again, after a long, cold, numbing, grueling death, a slow death, the dreadful cost of living in a world of cold, heartless, merciless, brutal hate and fear and rejection.

"Oh, God! It feels so warm! It feels so warm. It feels like a warm shower. It's like a great big huge warm shower! It's so sensual. A shower from Heaven! It's so sensual! So sensual! I want to be naked in the rain! I want to feel the rain on my body!"

I saw her hands hesitate on the belt buckle of her jeans, but then she stopped. Misty Night, that passionate animal of a woman, turned her hot brown eyes toward me. Those eyes. Oh, God, those eyes. How she could look at me. All she had to do was look at me with those eyes and that was it, game over, she wins. I was her total slave. That was the power she had over me. And that’s exactly what she did to me now.

She wanted me to enjoy the rain, just as she was enjoying it. She walked over to me. Smiling, but not saying a word, she unbuttoned my shirt, popping open the fake pearl snap buttons, top button first, and then on down, slowly, carefully, sensually, her delicate feminine fingers working the buttons of my shirt. She plopped my sopping wet white cowboy shirt (with the gold embroidery on the chest) down on the dirty concrete pavement.

Both of us were ridiculously soaking wet, totally wet in the rain. My hair had matted down flat around my eyes, making me look like someone who had just fallen into the Illinois River, like someone who had just been fished out of the Illinois River by the Peoria Fire Department. Rainwater was slowly accumulating inside my rather expensive cowboy boots, making me somewhat uncomfortable.

She looked like she’d just stepped out of the shower, wearing only a pair of tight light-blue faded Levis and some soggy white K-Mart joggers that squished when she took a step. Her hair had surrendered to the rain, and it lay flattened around her head, like she was wearing a veil over her head, like a long, somber, brown veil, which only served to draw attention to her brown eyes.

But I just stood there. I just let her go. I just let her have her way. I just stood there, just watching her, just watching her eyes, looking for a possible sign of how she felt, and I just smiled at her. I didn’t move. I didn’t say a word. I just let her do whatever she wanted to do. Whatever she wanted from me, she could have. Whatever she needed from me, she could have. Freely and generously and lovingly given. I lived in a world of no rules, no laws, no judgments, no expectations. Whatever her broken heart wanted, whatever her broken heart needed, whatever I could give her, whatever I could do to help her, she could have. Freely and generously and lovingly given.

I looked at her, and I could almost see the little girl that was still inside her, the little girl, the sweet, loving, affect ionate little girl that she still was. Underneath all her emotional scars, underneath all the years of hurt and pain, underneath all the multiple, brutal traumas, underneath all the loneliness and pain and rejection, she was still just a little girl, just a little girl who wanted – who needed – to love and to trust and to be loved.

And then Misty Night, the midnight dancer, Misty Night moved slowly, moved slowly, sensuously, her half-naked body moved up close toward me, intimately close, almost touching me with her breasts, looking at me closely in the eyes, locking our eyes, her brown eyes locking into my brown eyes. She was a little hesitant at first, but then slowly, carefully, sensuously, she ran her delicate fingers over my skin, over the muscles of my chest, running her sensitive fingers ever so lightly, touching the muscles of my shoulders and my arms. Her fingers touched my abdomen and she paused, curious, infinitely curious, to watch as my stomach muscles tighten to the power of her gentle touch. It was sort of like, like I’m a man and she’s a woman and aren’t our differences wonderful, aren’t our differences fascinating. And then again, a second time, this time a little firmer, a little more confidently, she ran her hands over my shoulders and arms and chest.

Her voice went low, low and soft and sweet and sensual, as it usually did when she had deep feelings of warmth and kindness and love and affection. I could hardly hear the soft music of her voice above the loud, chaotic, splattering noise of the warm raindrops smacking the hot hard concrete of an empty, deserted, downtown city.

"Stevie, you are braless, too."

I smiled gently at that one. I slowly and gently put my right arm around the soft sensitive skin of her back and I pulled her up, pulled her up tight, tight, very tight, very physically tight against me, unafraid to share my emotion, unafraid to allow her feel my masculine body through her own feminine body. I could feel her soft breasts pressing on the muscles of my chest. She looked at me and we locked eyes. I could see her emotion in her eyes, I could see, sadly, her recurring, vicious, inconsolable pain at her own past traumas, I could see, sadly, her own past traumatic life. I could also see her hope and her faith and her inherent ability to love. I could see what she was thinking – I could see exactly what this attractive, emotional, passionate woman was thinking – "Don’t hurt me."

We didn’t talk. We didn’t need to. We held each other. We held each other tightly in the warm rain.

Our first, our very first ever, our very first uncertain, unconfident kiss, a kiss in the heavy rain, a kiss in the heavy downpour, an embrace and a kiss in a useless downtown, a kiss during an inconsequential, thoroughly forgettable Sunday afternoon in a dull, boring city, our first kiss was short and brief and tentative. It was weak and fearful and stupid.

But then, our second kiss, our second kiss, delivered just a few brief moments later from the first, delivered passionately, lovingly, was much warmer, kinder, much softer, much longer, more passionate - deeply, lovingly, longingly, passionate.

I felt her soft lips, I felt her passionate love, and I didn’t want to leave her lips . I didn’t want to leave her soft feminine lips, I didn’t want to leave her lips, I didn’t want to leave them, forever and ever and ever.

I was so completely spellbound by her beauty, so completely enthralled by her love, all I could do was to just look at her and smile. I was totally under her control. She controlled me. Me, the big strong macho guy. I was hers completely. She smiled back, and we became two lonely people, two topless, half-naked people just smiling at each other in a heavy downpour of a warm summer rain, smiling at each other in a state of mutual attraction. It seemed like we had locked eyes with each other forever. Forever. Forever.

And then, just as quickly as it had started, the heavy rain halted, stopped, faded away, turned to a damp drizzle, and then vanished completely into a meaningless nothingness, leaving behind a humid, heavy, empty silence in the air, silence, except for the rainwater drizzling off the eaves and the rainwater gurgling down the gutters of nearby buildings. Misty looked around, looked at me.

"Well, that was short," she said, looking up, coldly, manner-of-factly, at the gray skies, looking slightly disappointed.

I didn’t want to let go of her, I didn’t want to let go of that wonderful feminine body, I didn’t want to let go, now and forever and ever and ever – but she pulled away, and I had to let her go.

She put her white blouse back on, after twisting it, twisting it to wring the water out of it, to wring the dirty asphalt pavement water out of it -- but being a wet white blouse, when it was on her, it didn’t really hide all that much of the woman underneath. I picked up my slightly bedraggled cowboy shirt from the wet asphalt pavement. I thought about putting it on, but I wasn’t eager to put on a wet shirt. Silently, but somewhat surprisingly, we resumed our nine-block walk back to her apartment, back to her warm and quiet and peaceful – though poor and old and squalid – home, the water in my rather expensive cowboy boots making a sucking sound as I walked along, and her cheap white K-Mart joggers making a squishing sound as she walked along. We were a wet shoe symphony.

But then, as we were walking back, going back home, walking back amidst the gray empty streets and the gray empty buildings and the gray empty heartless, pointless city, I had a hunch, I had a warm and kind hunch. I had a rare male moment, and I acted upon it. I gently, very gently, reached over and took her soft, right hand, her gentle hand into my left. To my surprise, to my complete surprise, she didn’t look annoyed, she didn’t reject me, she didn’t even seem to mind at all. To my surprise, she grasped my left hand tightly. A surge of love swept through me.

Misty. Misty. Dear Love. Misty. She glanced briefly over at me with her soft brown eyes and then smiled, smiled, smiled in that kind, gentle, simple, affectionate smile of hers, that smile of hers – that could only ever be hers alone, of all the millions of women in the world – that smile of hers and hers alone, and then she looked back down, down at the rough, coarse, cold, concrete sidewalk.

"Maybe you should put your shirt on. We’ll both be drawing enough attention to ourselves as it is."

Over to the west – to the far distant western sky of a hot, humid, late Sunday summer afternoon – the heavy, dark, steel-gray storm clouds were slowly yielding to a bright, light, indigo evening.