a tale told by the haunted, full of sound and doppelgangers, signifying something

Two weeks ago. As my cell phone and I head eastward, downtown around City Hall, setting a course to purposely meet paths with the friend on the line, we see the first one. We come face to face just as he is about to open a door and head inside. He nods at me, I nod back, and as the door closes behind him, I erupt in a string of expletives my mother wouldn't appreciate, accusing the universe and all holy names for haunting me with visions of you. It takes Friend on the Phone a millisecond give or take a nano to figure out to whom I am referring.

Last week. My iPod and I weave our way in and out of the tourists and meanderers on 34th Street, and we run into the second. He is weaving in and out as well. Our paths slip past each other's, and with an accidental nudge, I look up, he looks down, and we smile with apology. His eyes are honest, and not unlike the color of the Tuscan sky at the summer solstice. I do not want to speak for fear that he will answer, and he will sound like you as well.

Then, this week. The dance floor. The line of his shoulders, the plumb line of his spine, his arms crossed and his weight balanced evenly in that posture you use when you are listening intently--only he can't be hearing me, so near we are the speakers. He is only watching, watching me with eyes I recognize each time the colored lights dance across his face. A resemblance so striking, the next morning I awake with a fitful paranoia that the semi-darkness had tricked my senses, and I have walked away from you yet again.