A Walk in the Park
(The 46 U.S. presidents)
Melancholy. That was how Adam felt as he walked in Cleveland Park. He kept thinking of her. Devan Bure. Now that was a special name, appropriate for a special lady. Just over a month earlier, right here in Cleveland Park, she had told Adam she never wanted to see him again. As he had watched her turn onto Washington Street in her car, terrible thoughts overwhelmed him. He was mad. “Is one true love too much to ask for,” he felt like screaming. Hard in grief, his heart hurt more than he thought possible.
As he watched a young man pick flowers from a bush and berries from another bush for his lady, Adam thought of the poem he wrote about Devan. “Time I must bide not, I am on roeds to joy,” it began, the intentional misspelling being a reference to the caviar he often sent her. He used the name of her cat, “Thirsty,” le roi des chats, to write of his longing for her. He had closed with, “T’wil sonnets suffice,” in a nod to Burns and Shakespeare, two of her favorites.
It hurt to know she had a new man in her life. He resembled a younger Harrison Ford. Rumor had it he played the trumpet and had made a fortune in sugar. Fielding off the pierces of angst, Adam thought of Devan with “Harrison.”
Bitterly he cursed her as an escort and her new beau as her john. So nasty are the scorned, their lives an emotional brouhaha.
Yes, he was jealous. Her new love was rich. Having forgotten his wallet, Adam had only a Bic, lint, one dollar and little else in his pockets. He focused on the immediate comparison. It hurt. “After the love is gone,” he often hummed. Sad songs made him feel somewhat better. Who overcomes pain without music, he wondered.
He thought of college. He and Devan were Class of 2000 ‘Bama graduates. She, whose family had been in the South for centuries, raised on tales of Jefferson Davis, the Lost Cause, and the evils Lincoln did; he from Jackson, the grandson of immigrants. Adam saw events of another era as best left in the past. The passion of their arguments had turned to a true romance, or a “trumance” as Devan called it.
He thought of the religious things that mattered to him. The book of John. Songs that move one’s soul. He prayed that she would return and stay. Lore in religion is that God would fill more hearts with joy than with pain. Adam was still hoping.
Two weeks ago, friends at Roosevelt, McKinley and Roosevelt, the firm he worked for, had introduced him to Amanda Buchan, an Australian geologist. Their only date did not go well. She spoke at too great a length of an article she had read on a rock called greisen. How erroneous an idea, thought Adam, was this date. He tried acting cool (I’d get like Bogart, he admitted), but that attitude and his lack of interest in her stories brought the evening to an early end.
That date made him think that not even Interpol knew of a woman for him. Are a gander and the perfect goose for him ever to find each other, he asked metaphorically. He did not like his answer.
As he saw the Roman numerals on a clock, he focused on “IX.” On the ninth of the previous month, Devan had said goodbye. Was everything going to remind him of her? He thought of John Kennedy’s quote about life being unfair. So is love.
