of my house. Then Khaled says, “I tell you what. You hire me and I drive you around and all we do, we listen to old songs. For many hours!”
I laugh. “Don’t tempt me.”
I bring my bags in, then collect the mail and start sorting through it. For one moment, I think about calling Khaled back. But I don’t. I hope it is not to my everlasting regret. I’m always telling everyone else to take advantage of spontaneous gifts that come along, often when you least expect them. In fact, that idea inspired one of my books, the one that emphasizes the worth of going out into the world and gathering up all the beautiful things that are given to you, if only you will ask.
I am just about to toss all the mail in the trash when what I think is a postcard falls out of a circular. But it’s not a postcard. Rather, it’s an old black-and-white photograph made to serve as a postcard, of what looks to be Tahiti: there in the background is the endless sea, the rise of low mountains, wisps of clouds. In the foreground, off to the side, is a black-haired native woman with an unsettlingly direct gaze. I have never seen the image, yet it is familiar to me.
On the back of the card, I see lines of black ink from a fountain pen, written in a clear, flowing hand that I recognize instantly. The message is brief, only three lines:
I still think of you.
How are you?
Tell me.
There is a return address, no name, but I don’t need one. From both the image and the handwriting, I know who sent this photo: Dennis Halsinger. He is an artist I once loved, who left Minnesota for Tahiti many years ago. His name is such a long story.
Well. Speaking of everlasting regret.
Once I was riding a bus, sitting behind two women who were maybe in their late fifties. They were engrossed in a conversation I couldn’t hear much of; they kept their voices low and decorous. But at one point, one of the women sighed and leaned her head against the bus window, and said, “Ah, you know. My one and only yous.”
Her friend laughed. “It’s my one and only you.”
The other woman said, “No it isn’t.”
I think it’s true for a lot of people, that we have a few shining relationships in our lives, with people we hold forever in our hearts. It also seems, though, that there’s usually one who mattered most. For me, that was Dennis Halsinger. He was the one apart, the one I loved best, and truest, and the one I felt most loved by. I loved him for the way he was and for who I was when I was with him. He lived honestly, consciously, in ways both macro and micro, and I admired this. Morning, noon, middle of the night: when you looked into his eyes, the sign was flipped to the Open side. I could tell him anything, and did. We fit together in much the same easy way that Penny and I did. It was rare enough for me to have that ease and joy and depth in a friendship with a woman; to have the same level of comfort with a man was something I had never experienced before, nor have I since. Even in my most successful relationships after Dennis, there was only so far I could go. Or would go, perhaps.
When Dennis and I were both still in our early twenties, he left, he went off on a voyage to South America, and later to Tahiti, to live. We’d planned on my joining him there. But in the end I lacked the courage to break away like that. It had all seemed so easy when I agreed to it, but then there was the matter of getting the money for the plane ticket, of deciding what to take and what not to. Would they have Herbal Essences shampoo there? Good movies and record stores? What if I got appendicitis? Would I in fact miss the country I spent so much time maligning? In the end, I decided to pass on the idea. For the moment! I told myself. I believed, in youth’s way, that such opportunities would always be there. Such men, too, I suppose.
Anyway, gradually, Dennis and I lost touch. And then we died, is how I now realize I thought of it. Or maybe it was just a part