just like us

Eventually, in our meanderings, we ended up near Laws Hall, where we'd lived during the past school year and where I'd be moving back in just a few weeks, assuming things went well at the Dean's office. We'd decided at that point to stop in and see if the other Dean was in, maybe he'd keep us entertained.

Dean wasn't in, and his windows were dark. Out with a lover, perhaps? Still madly hallucinating, I noticed something on the ground outside the window and reached down to pick it up. It was a playing card from Circus Circus, face down in the dirt. Before I reached to turn it over, there was a rush of feeling -- a portent, perhaps a sign. I nearly left it lying there, so strong was my urge to turn it over and see which card it was; so symbolic had it become already. I shrugged it off as a side effect of the LSD still coursing through my system and turned the card.

Two of hearts. But not just any two of hearts. One with a hole punched in the middle. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the rational part of me knew that this was a casino deck, they had punched through the whole thing before they'd let the deck leave the premises, that somewhere there were 51 other cards with identical holes punched in the middle. But those other 51 weren't lying out under Dean's window right where we would find them. Only the two of hearts was.

A sudden rush of symbolism nearly flattened me. This card represented us. There it was, right on the card stock: two hearts. One for me, and one for him. and directly between them, a hole. An insurmountable abyss that neither of us could cross to get to the other. I bit my tongue to keep my mouth shut. He'd never understand the scenario of us that peppered my fantasy, and there was no way he'd feel the same. I squeezed my eyes shut tight against the flow of tears I felt coming -- the ones that were nearly always present anymore -- and he took my hand and said "What's that?"

I bit my lip and handed him the card.

"Oh, look. It's us," he said, simply and matter-of-factly. "It's just like us."

A two of hearts with a hole in between. Just like us.

Posted by laura at February 12, 2002 03:58 PM