Red River Valley

(Inspired by the song, Red River Valley, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXldBhzVjvc )
The air of the coffee house was choked with the song came out of the speakers hid above the ceiling. There seem to be something nauseating and gloomy in the air too. I don’t know how they can play such a depressing song in this rainy atmosphere. Indeed, the song was a plagiarized version of a song, Listen to the Radio by Don William. You would know how it is awful if you were sitting in this coffee house. The original sound is a very great one but when you plagiarize and turn it into another language and put some sort of musical effects, it turns into a crap. It simply lacks the authenticity. But as far as I know, most of the people like that plagiarized version. But I don't know if they have listened to Don Williams'. Maybe they prefer this song as a translation of the Listen to the Radio. But the lyrics in the plagiarized version are very different from that of Listen to the Radio. The chorus is something like "I want to come to you if I have wings". As if there's no other mode of transportation. A classic lie of male as he tries to lure his female partner, I would say. I mean, you can come whether you have wings or not, right? There’s no need to exaggerate.

What's more, the taste of coffee is awful. When we were about to order, the waitress said the coffee machine was broken. We did not think much and order some 'creamy coffee' as it is said so in the menu cards. Then we find that it is actually an instant coffee with condense milk. Anyway, we are here to talk and I don't care the coffee. She also doesn't care the coffee, she says.

"When is that?" I ask her.

"I booked an air ticket for tomorrow. I still need to get things done. I haven’t packed yet and I am a bit excited."

"Yeah, I know what it feels. You are not the only one. "

“Yeah, I just feel upset to check everything and make sure they are ready.”

While waiting for the order, she reaches my hand and grasps my hand. I think she has small fingers compared to her body or her face. When she grasps my hand, I somehow feel funny to look at our hands because her small-sized fingers make my own gigantic.

I am looking at the back covers of the books I have just bought from the bookshop. Two novels and a book of Big Bang theory.  She is not talking or looking at me. She is staring at the children through the glass wall of the coffee house. Children are running and chasing each other while their parents are shopping at the supermarket.

“I want to run,” she says, leaning her head on my shoulder.

“Hmm…. It’s fun, eh? It will be more fun if they run away. From their parents. Or from something or someone.”

She give me a nod. The song being played in the coffee shop is something about having wings and the children are running. Although I neither like the children or the song, there are a lot of factors that encourage one to run away.

I feel her breath on my sleeve, I feel sleepy, order arrives, a woman comes and passes us and locates herself in a chair, another song follows after the current song finishes, people walk along outside of the coffee shop, she looks at me, I look at her, we smile and we reach to each other hands. She buries her head more into my shoulders and I put my hand on her shoulder and fondle her hair.

She has that sort of nostalgic smell that makes me look back to the past. I want to think about who I am and what I have been through as I am inhaling her smell, her sweetness. I just want to close my eyes while I am thinking about everything and everyone in the past. It takes a couple of minutes before I open my eyes. I see her watching me. I don't know when she has switched her eyes from the children to me and how long she has been watching me. I want to kiss her. A kiss will make me feel less sleepy. But PDA is highly restricted here even when you are sitting at a corner of a stupid coffee house with your girlfriend.

“Your hair is soft and you are beautiful. There’s a connection between them, I am sure.”
She turns up her head to me with a smile. A woman who came in earlier is looking at us as if we are criminals. I don’t want to make anything to draw more attention from that woman. She seems very old-fashioned and we cannot know if she comes to us and lecture how to behave well as a couple.
I drop the coffee cup back to saucer and say,

“Sometimes you don't need to run away. You just disappear. Do you know some people just vanish into thin air?”

“No, I don’t know. How come?”

 “There are some kinds of people who just disappeared.  To nowhere.  They are born to disappear.  This kind of people. I know one poet in Mandalay who took a walk before the dinner, maybe he might have kissed his wife before he left for a walk, and he never came back to his wife and his family. His wife is always waiting.”

"Oh, that's just sad. What has happened to him?"

"I don't know. Just think of it. You are here. And I am here too. But we won't be here tomorrow. We left for somewhere. But in the poet's case, he left for nowhere. All the time normal people like us are somewhere but we can occupy just one single spot in the universe. You sit in that chair – just one spot. And I occupy one spot. Only one. And then you will disappear and go to one another spot. So will I. But some people reach the place of nowhere and they are considered missing. Never coming back."

“Never?”

“Yes, never.”

She squints on me. She squints when she needs to think for a long time or when she likes something.

The only thing I enjoy doing when she is squinting is looking for the hidden smiles on her face until she speaks,

“What kind of people are missing?”

“I don’t know. There are people who went shopping for Christmas and never come back. And some people were sleeping at their home and they disappeared with the rise of the sun. We will probably go missing after coming out of this coffee house. Our parents will report the police but they will never find us."

"Where do we go?"

"There might be an abyss at the end of meadow. It is a place for all the missing people. Perhaps, we will meet with Vaginia Woolf , Ambrose Bierce and Abbie Hoffman.”

"There might be some chances only one of us will disappear soon. How would you feel when I disappear in such a way?" I ask her. She tilts her head to me as she is thinking for the answer. She has the sort of body heat that can connect to other people. Warmth and heat from her are radiated to my body.

It takes her a couple of seconds to respond. I stare around the coffee house waiting for her reply. The woman who has been looking to us with suspicious eyes finally gets down to reading alone. Maybe she has found the book more interesting than watching a young couple. I sneak a look at the cover of the book she is reading. I have never heard of the writer or the name of the book.

 “I will cry for sure. I don't like the feeling of being left. It's like listening to a song with the highest volume the speakers can bare and it ends up abruptly. There is a silence without a hint. Without any foreshadow. There are silence in your ears and nothing more. You will hear the song from within but that's not real. ”

"You are lovely," I say. Then the next moment I find my lips pressing against hers. There is a cough from the woman after we are kissing for five seconds. Neither of us wants to stop but we sit back and try to hide the awkwardness. I take a quick glance at the woman who is monitoring on us as if she is a guardian of no-kiss-on-earth.

“Perhaps, we can assure ourselves we haven’t disappeared until now because that woman’s eyes are always on us."

She takes a glance over the woman. She agrees with me and giggles silently. And then she gives me a kind of look that I can’t explain whether she is going to smile or cry.

"Yes, you are right. She's like that."

She makes the face of the woman, and I laugh at it.

“I want to kiss you more,” I tell her.

“Let’s go outside of this creepy place,” she gets up squeezing my fingers.

As we leave the coffee house, there are some gray clouds in the sky. There are not many people and cars on the road. It is cool to walk through the breeze.

“Let’s pretend we are missing people,” she continues, “no one sees us, right?”

“Yeah, no one really sees us. Hey can you see me?” I shout to the people walking on the opposite sidewalk. None of them can hear us or bother to respond my faint shout.

“Look, no one is aware of us. Which means they can’t see us, now,” I tell her, laughing.

“We will go somewhere and kiss,” she says to me. “Behind that tree,” she points at the big tree.

My hands are around her neck, my lips almost touch to hers and we stay in this position for five minutes. And then we sit together on the ground and I hum,

“Joan was quizzical; studied pataphysical
Science in the home.
Late nights all alone with a test tube.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.”

She smiles at the song and sings,

“Maxwell Edison, majoring in medicine,
Calls her on the phone.
"Can I take you out to the pictures,
Joa, oa, oa, oan?"

“Hey, am I singing it in the right way?” she tilts her head from side to side as she is singing. She makes her lips in O-shape as she is singing. I cannot forget her smell, I think to myself.

“Yeah, you are. It’s a great song. It’s funny,” I tell her.

“And it’s sad,” she adds.

“Funny and sad it is.” I conclude.

She rummages in her bag and take out her iPod. She gives me a bud of ear phone and plugs one into her ear. There are birds making funny noises on the tree. But we are abducted from this world as we are listening to the song until the sense of eternity has clashed with the beeping of the reality.

I get up early and sit on my head. I cannot see the sunlight in my room. Maybe it’s too early for the sun to rise. My house is located under the path air planes fly. It roars for five seconds when an air plane is flying above my head. I wonder if she is in that air plane. Maybe I should run to the top of the hill and wave to her. I should shout to her how much I love her. Or I should shout to her how often I love her.

But if I get out of my room, some people will find that I am not ‘missing’. When you are not missing, you have to do something. You should go to school or you should work and be a part of GDP. I just want to sit and read some books. And I will read those books again when I have finished. With the music on the speakers.