There was a moment where his neighbor walked up to him and I just sat on the phone listening to him engage that way, the way I missed badly. Presence flooded me, grateful to be there and hearing it. I listened and cried to the sound of his voice in the side-conversation. He had provoked it, asking his cracked out neighbor what he should say to apologize to his ex.
This same neighbor once approached me on Dom’s stoop, catching my glance outside of a party, probably because I had the strongest one. He pointed at me and said I’m Gonna Kidnap You. Then I looked to Dom and Dom said Woah— That’s My Girl. And so the neighbor moved his finger from me, to my friend next to me, and said I’m Gonna Kidnap You and Dom said That’s My Girl Too, and the neighbor tried a third girl, and this time just said Her? And Dom said Yep, Her Too. So then the neighbor gave up trying to kidnap any of us and left.
In response to Dom’s question, this time, the neighbor said to tell her she’s right. We caught him on a good day. I could hear Dom smiling. I could hear the look on his face and the pavement on the steps beneath him, the same way I could hear his car screeching before he got back home to his stoop. I was watching a live memory. I was being held hostage in a familiar man’s basement. I was taken, and I was relieved and I was shattered. His vocal inflection taught me over and over and over again. We were on the phone because I asked the angels to get me on the phone with him just one more time. I felt alive. Being on the phone with him was like watching a parade pass by.
We showed each other our lives again. I told him all the times I’d spoken to his friends in the past three months. He said I’d been talking to everyone but him and I asked whose fault that was. He said something like Oh, It’s My Fault? and I repeated back to him It Is Your Fault. I started crying again. Then it got really silent on the phone. And then he ended up having to go. I didn’t want him to hang up. It was the worst day of my life once he hung up. I thought how sometimes I really hate the angels. Sometimes, the angels really piss me off.