Butterfly

Back in Starbucks, but this time in Greenport, because there’s no power or water out at my house still. Starbucks out here is different from in the city: everyone’s clean-cut, in shorts and Topsiders, but because they use boats—not because they’re hip (they’re not). The employees don’t have any music playing, so it’s just conversations you overhear. The clientele is doing as much blah-blah-blahing as I am. (I haven’t been staying at my house, and every time I have a conversation with the person or people taking me in—mainly LB—I feel like I must sound like a record played backwards and in slow motion: hhaallb, hhhaaallllb, hhhalbbb. I need my power back so I can go home and protect the world.)

One nice thing was watching a teenaged boy with his dad at another table. The boy had fabulous curly hair (his dad had gone bald), and gorgeous, full features, like a young Mick Jagger, but an angel, rather than someone with sympathy for the devil. He looked so angelic and soft, in fact, that I thought he’d have the voice of a little girl when he spoke. But he didn’t: his voice had already dropped. When I heard him speak, he went, suddenly, in my heart, from being an angel to a man. What a thrill: like watching a butterfly fall from a cocoon, his wings unfurling as he plummeted.

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