A ridicule of mockingbirds.  The perfect collective noun for these songbirds, active at night, sometimes annoyingly so.  Truly, that night they seemed to be laughing with derision in the yard outside of Rickie’s hillside cottage.    

It was twenty years ago, when we were in college, when we had just made love for the first time. 

I remember her luiminous red hair and even more her endearing earnestness. 

She brought me a glass of water.  And her latest poem.  Thus the ritual was established.  Sex, always followed by poetry.  And water.

Her little bungalow in the backyard of a house was filled with woven mats and wicker and couple of madras spreads, a reedy nest.  She burned incense in a shortbread cookie tin so she wouldn't start all that straw on fire.

She carried the glasses of water from the kitchenette, crossed to the box spring mattress on the floor in the corner and dropped off her shorts, underpants and t-shirt.  She stretched her lithe, pale body on the sky blue sheets, a sensuous cloud.  Afterwards she brought more water and then, from a desk made of a door laid across heavy cinderblocks, she pulled several sheets of college-ruled three-ring binder paper.

The poems were skinny, haiku-like, written in lower case letters with no punctuation and usually about some other guy she had slept with.  It didn’t occur to her that I might mind.  What mattered was Art.

he was woolly

european

i was sixteen

cigarette smoke

In college she studied Comparative Lit. for a year before she dropped out. 

an expert in jane

austen

i was flunking his class

faded jeans

drambuie

cried and credulous

b minus

She slept with Millhauser, the Comparative Lit professor.  It was rumored that she also hooked up with other professors, and a TA, and a dean. Later, she had an affair with a successful, well-known screenwriter.  He took her to his house by the beach when his wife and daughter and son were away, showed her his Oscar, told her about his prostate surgery.

he was fifty-eight

wood-lined study

green-plaid couch

moist kiss

on my fore-head

He told her he felt like a failure, this town eats you alive, he was lonely in his marriage, he couldn't talk to his kids, he hadn't written one damn word worth reading in ten years.

She felt close to Culture, to real Art.

he holds my hand

drives with the other

                                                           Jaguar

leather seats

jazz station

driving to nowhere

Rickie and I kept in touch.  It wasn't a regular thing.  A year or two, sometimes more, could pass.  We had a couple of beers on our first break from college.  We had wine after I graduated, saki after I got my teaching degree.  We had orange-hibiscus tea a few years ago and went to a bookstore together afterwards before we said goodbye.  I bought a mystery and book on pond-life for the kids.  She bought a card with a Matisse painting on it and a fabric-bound book of blank pages.

Sometimes I wondered if I ever became one of her poems.

wire glasses

blue workshirt

teaches art

eleventh grade

unsold paintings

nice guy

That isn't quite her style – it’s harder to pull off than it looks.

I saw Rickie again a couple of weeks ago, ran into her in an upscale mall, both of us doing the domestic errands in the way of people of the age that we had become.  I asked her if she wanted to get a cup of coffee but she said she didn't have time.

For a few minutes we stood by the balcony railing under the arching plexiglass dome, the shoppers’ footfalls echoing on the marble tiles, a whoosh of talk and doors and chimes, the rumble of the escalators, announcements and, somewhere, music. 

She told me she had married the guy whose family owns a profitable chain of discount electronic stores.  You've seen the two-page ads in the Wednesday and Sunday newspapers – when you still read newspapers –  four inch banner headlines. Unbelievable Prices!!!  Blowout Sale!!! 

he was nervous

house in the hills

vitamins

exercise machine

coyotes

moonlight

The pant-suit she wore and the necklace, bracelets, rings and ear rings all looked expensive.

When we were in college, I was the one, the artist, who was going to be famous.  Today I teach art, in high school.

Rickie’s an Art Commissioner now.  She and her husband have been stalwart financial supporters of the arts.  She is one of the select few with the power to control the money which goes to writers, sculptors, painters, film-makers. 

She decides.

Seth Freeman writes fiction, nonfiction, plays, film and television.  His award-winning short stories have been published in literary journals, seven in the last year.  There have been over three hundred productions and readings of his short plays around the world.  In television he created the series Lincoln Heights, and his work in TV has been recognized with Emmys, Golden Globes other awards.  Articles of his have appeared in diverse publications including The New York Times, Southern Theatre Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Stars and Stripes, YaleGlobal, etc.  In 2019 he received a Master’s degree in Public Health, and he dedicates time to initiatives in healthcare, education, the empowerment of women and human rights.  He is honored – and humbled – to his work appear in Quibble.