Paula's Story

(promises are meant to be broken)

I'm here at the Hyatt hotel in San Francisco looking out the window which oversees one corner of Union Square resting across from the Levi's store. The streets are intimately decorated with European raven black street lamps and a consistency of lifeless trees whose branches spatter about as if dying behind an invisible flame of night.

This is the second hotel lobby scenario I've been hiding out at, casually reading my book, including the Borders store. I've mapped out every hotel room I can serve as a nocturnal habitat within a certain perimeter. I've started at the Borders bookstore, moving to The Westin, then to the Hyatt; which where I am now. I'll then grab a sandwich at the newly 24 hour subway, walk over to the Palace Hotel or The other Westin. The first Westin, is probably named something else, which doesn't matter, it's there, it's mapped.

I thought about stealing, sin, and being an incubator of guilt and more and more guilt. I thought about God and his empty replies to my ever persistent hope. I thought about work, Pase, Ani, Ava, Anoli didn't scrap into my mind until I understood that I was making a list of thoughts and that I should include her if I was doing so. I sat there, my ass rested on the back edge of the couch, leaned onto the metal railing looking out the window. Fountain, trees, lamps. Levi's.

* * * * *

Paula. Paula G.

We were standing outside the Hyatt of Embarcadero, on a bridge connecting us to the second floor. We stood amongst Ivory trees stripped of their leaves but lined with Christmas lights, my back leaning on the large cement construction that acted like a vase that held a tree. After talking about seasonal weddings, the sitcom Friends and how weird the Joey-Rachel thing was, I asked her if could kiss her.

"I don't know, I don't want to kiss you and have it not lead to anything," she said. "I thought you just wanted to be friends," she said referring to what I said earlier when we sneaked into a theatre and quickly left when there was nothing to further experience, I had told her, jokingly, disqualifyingly, that we should always be friends.

"Well, I want to kiss you," I replied to her, "I just don't want us to never be friends." I said, I looked in my heads to further clarify what I wanted. "I want to kiss you, but if something happens to us, and we can't be friends, I'd rather not."

"Oh," she said.
I pulled her forward opening my arms to embrace her, but she lifted her chin up to my face, and before she can realize I was hugging her, she retrieved it back. "Did you want to kiss me," I asked.
"I was going to let you decide..."
I held her with one arm, and pulled her chin up with the other. I took her lips forward as I leaned my head slightly to place mine on hers.

She pulled away slowly and huddled under my chest. A silver calm sank into us under the trees, the lights, the ever deepening night sky. "Do you understand what I was trying to say," I asked the back of her head.

"...... not exactly."

I looked at her, at her round face, skinny lips, and large unexcusably sunny winter sky blue eyes, and clarified myself.
"Oh," she replied with earnest understanding, "So, no matter what, you always want to be friends?"
"Yes!"


The day I met Paula I fervently enjoyed her company. Her ethics and compassion for writing drew me into her along with her unique face, large endearing crystal eyes, and dark deep amber colored hair. But, for some odd reason, despite the day we had first met, we didn't consume an exciting growing spark that we, or I, hoped we would find in each other. The day outside the Hyatt of Embarcadero, that day, was the first and last day, I laid lips on her. I saw her other times before Winter break, but we never kissed, we argued and almost broke each other, but never kissed. We never found that intimacy again. We could never find the same intimacy we had under the Christmas lit ivory branches, nestled on a couch under the high ceilings of the Hyatt, not even the same intimacy we shared as we squeezed into my passeger seat, her body placed right on top of mine before the moment of that day diminished and I would have to walk her back to her dorm room. We never found it. We were slowly turning to the anticipating divorce couple where she hid hugs and I hid reason.

During Winter Break, I didn't want to understand what was happening, and how our hope in each other was slowly dying, as if they were candles left at some abandoned cathedral. I wanted to believe she was coming back, and as our voices became more and more stagnant over the phone, and our silences decided to become more oppressing, I knew the dying flames of our intimacy had to come to an end.

It was 4 days before Christmas, when I took Megan's lips, neck, breast, pulled handfulls of her long blonde hair hair that afternoon, and placed my face deep into her white thighs. It was 10 days after Paula came back from winter break, that I found out she was probably doing the same thing. She now had a newly tied boyfriend.

Despite our unique and somewhat parallel collaboration, we've both faltered to keep our promise to stay friends. It's as much my fault as it could be hers. But, we could spend awhile pointing fingers, again. I'm in the wondering of what should I do next.