Meeting Dominique

They had been sitting at opposite ends of the bar. When she left, Sam followed the woman outside and called to her from behind. The sun was going down on the far side of the mountains across the water.

"Excuse me," Sam said, "Would you be able to help me?"

The woman stopped and turned. They both looked strangely familiar to each other, and the woman said, "I don't know."

"What's your name?" Sam asked.

The woman laughed. "Is that all you need?" she said, and turned to go.

"No, no, God, no. I need much more than that, of course, but I figure it's a pretty good place to start."

She kept walking, but Sam followed behind her. With her back still to him she finally said, "Dominique. Dominique Jean."

"Well, Dominique, nice to meet you, my name's Sam. It seems I've been getting in trouble a fair amount lately for my behavior in public. I just act myself, and it's like people want to throw me in jail. Now, I've been watching children lately, and they seem to get away with murder. Can you help me figure out how to act like a freaky kid in public and get away with it, Dominique?"

Dominique stopped at a Don't-Walk sign, but did not turn.

"I really envy the little fuckers," Sam continued. "I mean, if I could get away with sitting on the floor in the waiting room at the dentist and playing WWII games with some lady's purse paraphernalia, well then, I think the aimless waiting wouldn't be so bad. If I could walk down the street explaining the world out loud to myself it wouldn't hurt so bad. My grandma always used to say, 'When you want to talk with someone really intelligent--'"

Dominique turned. "What wouldn't?"

"Wouldn't what?"

"Hurt."

"I guess that's another part of what I'm trying to figure out: what hurts so bad?"

Sam and Dominique slowly walked down by the piers together and watched the evening ferries ready for departure. They both wanted to pretend they did this kind of thing often. But the wind on the docks was just right, had them thinking twice about all the nights when they'd done nothing like this, when they'd spoken to no one, and walked over no bodies of water. Dominique and Sam walked for hours, back and forth, looking out over the Sound, reminding themselves to behave this way more often, to walk nowhere in particular, to speak freely with strangers.

In the end, they promised to act out their big-baby, hyper-freak-kid natures in public at all costs, and resolved to play doctor together the following week on the floor in the middle of the waiting room at the dentist.