courting capulet jonathan bitz Scientists estimate that in 1 to 3 billion years from now, the Andromeda galaxy, our closest neighbor and the largest galaxy in our local cluster, will collide with our Milky Way galaxy. If our sun doesn't go supernova, or the multitude of other possibilities doesn't occur in which our beloved planet Earth isn't inexorably altered or ultimately destroyed - this encounter with Andromeda will be not only Earth's and its inhabitant's end, but it will also be the end of our solar system and current galaxy. I'm older now. Hair is graying. And up until a couple of weeks ago it had been a long time since I had seen any form of profundity. Days, months, years maybe. And, at this age, when days and weeks pass by like they don't even know me - I've found that it's on me to create my moments of importance. The kind of moments that keep you hanging-on for years to come. Now I know, I haven't always been the catalyst to set the cogs in motion - to create the moments I've so desired. Most of the time, I'm just as negligent as the next guy. But I have been looking. Around corners, in the closets, in my pockets, under my couch. What I have been looking for, exactly, I haven't always been sure. And then, one day, I found it. I'm brave enough to even say: let this document stand as a testament to that fact. That I have created and maintained moments. Beautiful moments, at that. It had been three weeks of courting. And I know that three weeks is not a long time to court someone - I had courted women for as a long as two years in the past. It was just that this time it had come down so unusually, and with so much ardor that the three weeks seemed like two years. Each day waved as it passed by. Like it knew I. Like they were affording me one of those chances at bliss again. "Let's stop here," my wife said in her puerile way, one weekend day. "I know, I know, I'll only be a minute. I love this place…" Her words tugged at my sleeves and soon enough my shirt was a noose. "Alright…" I drawled, smiling and thinking of the first time we met. In trance, I moved into the shop behind my gorgeous, pint-sized wife; bumping into people as they came and went. A trophy wife is what they would call her at the country club: black hair, blue eyes, perfect, soft skin, she dressed well - conservatively, but well. She had a backside to die for. Staring at nothing, but nevertheless staring straight ahead, the blur of our first meeting criss-crossed behind my eyes. Meandering bands of horizontal light bled into my vision. I was blind. "Whaddya think of this?" My wife asked, holding up a cotton blouse, of some color or other. There might have even been a pattern on it. "…great…" Sloppily falling behind my wife, who pushed through the shop with reckless desertion, I tried to keep up. But several U-turns and a hard left later and I wasn't following her, let alone anything, anymore. I was merely staggering back and forth, around clothes racks and tables. Stumbling into some displays. Two lovers laughed as they watched me. They called me drunk. If moving through crowds wasn't one of my virtues, hearing voices in a room was. I've always had a particular knack for words. I can, literally, smell them. Like garlic and onions on the breath. And I heard those two lovers call me drunk. Feminine scents kicked up around me. I looked back at the last object I bumped: the perfume counter. It smelled like wavy grass fields. Blue. And forever. Whistling in the plume of fume, I was intoxicated. The scents pushed me all the way back to the first time I met her. The first time that the bliss washed over me. And like a sinner, I let the water nearly drown me. We met in a hidden corner of the metropolis, in an upscale bistro, simple in its décor: just clean, broken curls and lines and dots. Like sentences the tables and chairs were: Broken black curls and lines, and dots. It was a room nearly without walls in which horizontal swatches of color, created by the metallic reflections of cars passing were the only measure of depth. "What do you think of this?" Standing with one foot in the bistro, and one in that shop, I felt… words… pointed in my direction. I peeled around to find, quite obviously, and correctly: my wife's inimitable voice. Sounds like wood smoke. Tin roofs. Rain. And everything without pain. I grinned dumbly and straight through her blackened stream of hair. It was the best I could do to mask the fact that I was, at once, present and absent. Because while I was standing there, in that shop, I was also off, in that room of broken curls and lines where we first met. The scents and words of it, all around me - even in the room I was physically inhabiting. I remembered how I bumped into her and fumbled around for an introduction and then, miraculously, some words slipped out. I couldn't remember what those words were. But I came-to when I heard one simple utterance from her: Kori - her name. And knowing that I am not very good at small talk, it mustn't have been a very eloquent encounter. But, to my surprise, in that room of broken curls and lines, that time that we first met, she made the comment of how it hadn't rained for a couple of days. I remembered how it had been days, possibly even weeks, since my last genuine grin. Dumb luck. I grinned. Without my clumsy shuffle, she and I would have never met. And if we had never met in that strange room, then she would have never been able to dance around my words as she had been doing for some time now. And if we would have never met, I could have never said that I met a ballerina. Without that room of broken curls and lines we would have never been in the same space otherwise. For sure, the weather is large. "Hey…" My wife waved her hand in front of my face. "I'm gonna go try these on, okay?" Framing several words in my mouth, but without anything verbal coming out, I grinned and gave a couple of nods. "Are you okay?" My wife put the back of her hand to my forehead. "Yeah, well, this won't take long, okay? I know you hate this place. We'll get something to eat after this. I think you need to eat." I framed a couple more words in my lips. But, again nothing in the shape of a word came out. But then I pulled back and framed one more word. And it seemed to slip out, just fine. "Kori," I said. My wife looked to me, as though I were asking for something. But I wasn't. And I cursed myself for that word. I thought about her feminine voice and how Kori's words never sounded real. They came, altogether, different: soft and with the confession that she was nervous. And I remembered how I replied with gentle remarks about how she made me nervous in a way that I hadn't been for a very long time. I tried to remember my particular articulation when I told her that I felt light in step and how my stomach churned and spun in funny directions when I thought of her. I remembered how I even confessed to my ineptitude and said that when I was talking with her, I didn't know what to say. I hadn't the words. I joked with her that I maybe would have introduce new words into the lexicon to appropriately convey all the wondrous sensations that I had, on account of her. These emotions and more, coursed through me, despite the fact that, since our first meeting, we only talked over the phone. These amazing emotions, despite the fact that I, after only knowing her over the phone, almost forgot what she looked like. I nearly forgot about her incredibly delicate body. Her chiseled nose. Her symmetrical cheeks and brows. All painted in the most alluring paints. As gorgeous as any magazine model I'd ever seen. Still, despite these striking features, when we talked over the phone I wasn't even speaking to something that had a face. And in the back of a store, one among many that I despised, my wife wasn't trying on one, but rather two, pairs of jeans - jeans that, even before she put them on, she knew she was going to buy. But I didn't care. No, I was lost in trance, thinking about the courtship and how Kori and I had to meet, over the phone, and only at certain times, on certain days - after she got off work, or after I took my early evening nap; with cabalistic overtones. I remembered how, at first, I wasn't sure why I had to meet her in such secret, and only over the phone. And I wondered why she always seemed to be looking over her shoulder. I could hear it, on the phone. In our hours-long marathons of talking. And sharing. On the second week of our courtship, I remembered how I asked her a couple of seemingly innocuous questions, and as a result, she told me about her children and the husband she was leaving. A husband she was leaving. I remembered how I began to look over my shoulder on the phone. Because I didn't ever want to hang-up. And when I picked up the receiver to call her, I would look around the room I was in for her husband. Still, I called. Still, I didn't want our courtship to end. I told her that I too, was married. I heard her smile through the phone. I remembered how I asked her about her children's names. Names were important, if not just interesting. Jackson, is what she told me, was the name of her toddler. I was impressed that name's aesthetic quality and didn't ask her what the other's name was. I remembered how I didn't want her to feel that I knew too much. At that point, the name, "Jackson" appeased my thirst. I remembered how it felt not to know, for those two weeks, where she lived or how she lived. But slowly, some of it came. I remembered how, one day, she mentioned that she took the children to a park near her house. She told me that Jackson flew his first kite that day. I remembered feeling jealous that I didn't get to see their joyous faces, at the newfound wonderment and accomplishment. The rite of passage of staring into the void of sky at the kite - that you got to fly. I remembered how I tried to conceptualize her neighborhood; and I remembered how I tried to picture the day that she and her husband bought the home that they had been living in. And I remembered how I wanted to sweep her away from it all. But couldn't. No, in courting this beautiful ballerina, I couldn't move at all. I couldn't push or pull too abrasively. But I thought about how I wanted to, desperately. How I wanted to sweep her and children up and spin them into a life that was as beautiful as they were. This despite the fact that I was only in my late adolescence. This despite the fact that I didn't even do my own laundry. I hadn't seen the children. But, in knowing that they came from her, I deduced that they surely must be beautiful. I only heard them - their laughs, occasionally over the phone; in the background; vying for her attention. My cheeks grew red. I remembered how my stomach churned and spun in funny directions when she would say, "could you hold on for a minute?" Then she would rush away, only to rush harder back to me. I could nearly hear the wind. And she would always apologize about being away. But, as I stood propped up against a wall in that store, oblivious to the fact that my wife had been in the dressing rooms for nearly ten minutes, I thought about how, for the last week and half of our courtship - I hadn't been afforded the chance to see her. I remembered how difficult it had been to get her to even hint at seeing me again. She was afraid. And for good reason. She had plenty to protect, obviously: her children, her marriage - if she still wanted it, and her life as a whole, as she lead it at the time. I remembered how we both felt: how it was such a strange way for us to meet, every night over the phone; how unexpected it was for the both of us to feel the way we did, on account of our limited time together. But, how glorious all those unexpected, dormant emotions felt. She said that she felt it. I knew that I did. Nevertheless, we both knew that something had happened; and was happening. It was progressive. We both just didn't know, what that something was. Or what it should be. Or what it could be. Sure, we had ideas, or really- I did. And from what I had come to feel, I was sure that it wouldn't stop short of glory and virtue and sanctity. And as a customer or two jabbed into my slumping stature, there in that luminous store, I finally began to come-to. My vision cleared itself of the haze; I began to regain my balance; and I began to assess where exactly it was, that I was. And the store wasn't so despicable anymore. It was like the weather: growing, larger and larger all the time. But the scents from the perfume counter, coupled with all the cotton and women sweeping past me with their own bouquet of scents, pushed me into one last, hard sensation of her and our three weeks of courtship. I scanned the perimeter of the store. I even exhibited some solid locomotion as I began moving about; dodging people and looking into all the clothed corners. The old lady directly in front of me quickly moved to the side, to let me pass. I did pass, and as I made my way by her, she scanned me quizzically up and down; and with fear. Behind my back, the old lady approached the store's clerks, with a warning about the crazy young man stumbling around the store. "We know, ma'am… Think he's drunk, or something. We're not sure…" By now the full entourage of sounds was clearing, in step with my vision. I grinned and stopped. And thankfully so. For just a step in front of me, about five feet down, was a toddler, sitting on the ground, gnawing on a piece of paper. Luckily I had a habit of looking down at my feet before I propelled myself forward. Because, just as I was beginning to step forward, I looked down and saw the drunk midget, sitting there; staring back up at me. I knelt down and grimaced a grin at the toddler. It giggled and gnawed at the paper it had in its tiny hand. "Mmm, is that good?" I cocked my head, "I'd like some of that… where'd you get it?" I hadn't spoken with too many infants before, in my time, and I wondered how it was that I had said what I did. Seemed like it just slipped out, after years of experience in listening, to the side, of others talking to their drunk midgets. The chubby kid rocked back once and nearly tipped over. But, just as he was about to fall backwards, the toddler planted his hand out behind him- and caught himself. I smiled at the kid's dexterity, and pondered his fate as an athlete. I took my eyes off the kid's face and walked them down the his stubby frame, and appendages. I always thought that infant shoes were always humorous, because of their miniature life-like size. On the kid's shirt was a kite. I smiled and thought about the petty jealousy that I had that day, in our courtship, when Kori took her kids out to fly the kites. I wondered if the drunk midget had ever flown a kite. He was a little small to be flying kites. Out of the haze, I heard some scampering feet; approaching. Then one second later and I saw them: a petite pair standing there at the clothes rack that the toddler and I were under. "Aw, my gawd…" came the puerile feminine voice, "he's always scooting off without me…" A pause and, "if I'm not looking… I swear." She laughed. With those portentous words I grew certain of a couple things: one, the voice and feet were of the drunk midget's mother. And two, she saw the top of my head; and as a result made the comment about her agile son. I smiled at the kid, but didn't want to pick him up. No, I thought, that's the mother's job. And I hadn't even seen her face yet. And in that space of a couple blurry seconds, I thought about those three weeks of courting; all the times that Kori must have picked her kids up, and how many times she smiled as a result. I smiled as well. Then, slowly, from beneath the clothes rack, I began to stand-up. But I did so cautiously, because I was still coming out of my stupor and my muscles were weak; fresh with the thought of mine and Kori's mysterious courtship. Nevertheless, I continued working my way upwards, in an attempt at some normalcy. From the knees, I came: up and up some more. And nearly in one fluid motion - to simply greet the drunken midget's mother - my back twitched, and in one painful jolt, I ripped myself into my upright ape posture. As I did, however, I clenched my eyes shut - the pain was sharp. Like growing pains. Before I could open my eyes again and greet the toddler's mother, I heard her gentle voice speak, "okay Jackson, let's get up now…" A surge of blood reeled my eyes open. I was dizzy. I focused in on the figure before me. With my stomach churning and bubbling I framed a couple of words in my lips, then verbally formed a word, "Kori?" She immediately lifted her eyes up from the toddler, to me. She froze with recognition. "What are you doing here?" Is what she asked. And sure enough, to my complete, hazy surprise, it was in fact, Kori. My voice over the phone. And alas, I had her words. In person. Her voice looked like: cattails. Porcelain. Green. Water. "What am I doing here?" I paused, "Looking at you," I drawled, "it's been awhile…" I looked her torso up and down. To see if I had remembered it correctly. And I lost myself in her blonde hair. I thought to myself that I had never dated a blonde. Like my wife, all the women in my life were brunettes. Then I came-to. Fear shot straight through me, all the way down to my feet. Simply put: because my wife of eleven years was somewhere there, in the store around me. A coating of liquid covered my eyes and filled the pockets in the corners. "Is your wife here?" Kori whispered, to clarify. 'Exactly,' I thought. We both looked over our shoulders. I framed a couple of words in my lips, but before I could spit anything out, a familiar voice came at my back: my wife's, "Hon…" I spun around. Innocent. Behind my back, Kori scooped up the infant. "Awww…" My wife cooed. "A baby!" I leaned into my wife's stare. Innocent. A moment or two of infatuation later and, "hon'?" she said with her eyes fixed on the drunk midget, "I'm gonna get these…" She held up an article of clothing, or two. Our gathering had four pairs of eyes: my wife of eleven years; Kori, the woman I had been courting for the last three weeks; and Kori's son Jackson, whom I had never met up until this point - all those pairs of eyes and mine - were all looking inward to our relative center. And before I could conceptualize it all, I had to accept - very quickly - that there it was, right before me - the components of my current state of affairs: my wife of eleven years, burning like a dwarf star in comparison to the ferocity at which the other woman standing right next to her was ablaze and coursing through me. A woman, albeit, that I had only known for three weeks. But a woman, in Kori, that I had experienced some of the most amazing days I had ever known, with. And standing there, in that spatial delirium, it came over me: 'I'm 35 years old. When will I ever get this again? I like tripping over my shoes to get work, at the thought of her…' Nervously, I dug a credit card out of my pocket and handed it to my wife without breaking our community bond. And without giving my wife the mildest of clues - I looked equally at Kori and at Jackson. Kori, with Jackson in her arms, lifted her eyes up to me. Then, to my wife, who was tugging on my elbow - ignorant of my beautiful last couple of weeks. My wife, if asked, would surely say that I never had beautiful days. My cheeks blushed. Gravid. Red. Innocent. "He's cute…" my wife cooed looking at me, and gesturing at Jackson, who was crawling up Kori's shoulder like a puppy. I broke the eye-lock with Kori and staggered a glance over at my wife, to nod dumbly. Into her black hair I lost my gaze. "You all right?" She asked. "We need to get you some food…" she slurred her words off, looking over at Kori this time. My wife waved her soft little hand, then shuttled off. It was here that desperation set in. It had been three long weeks that I had waited for this chance - to see Kori again. It felt like the only thing I had ever wanted. And finally - if nothing else, I finally had a chance to put her face together again: the blonde hair as a frame, her Mona Lisa lips, chiseled cheeks and tempting eyes. But my wife was there. And while she unlocked herself from my elbow - she was still there. At my back. Looking in my direction, probably. Looking at Jackson. Still, I needed to move. Chances are fleeting in their giving's. When the time comes, one has that minute space to move, or not to move. And in my space, there, in the store - I lost my chance. I said nothing. For over Kori's blonde shoulder a blurry figure moved towards us all. The approaching figure, loud and with bravado, hollered, "Jackson, whaddya doin'?" Looking at who I was now certain was her husband, I quickly spoke, "he is a beautiful child." I gingerly bit my bottom lip, and without focusing on Kori again - I spun away, feeling her eyes at the nape of my neck. And so it was, that my fourth week of secretly courting Kori behind my wife's back began. We never reached the fifth week.