Remembrance by tim wood

"Mary? Mary? Mary, is that you?"
"Yes. I was afraid you might not recognize me."
"How not! How not; I always knew you instantly at five-hundred yards just by how you are. But, but, how are you here? How did you get here? How did you know I was here? Did my wife call you? How could she? I never told her about you, so many years before her time."
"But you kept pictures. A wife will overlook one picture, but more and she would ask, and you would tell her."
"Maybe I did, you're right. You look wonderful; time has been kind to.... But the time! It's late, what time is it?"
"Ten o'clock."
"But that's when visiting hours are over!"
"It's all right. The nurse said we could have a few minutes."
"I'm glad for that. Time has,... I see the girl I knew, even fifty years ago. Fifty is right, isn't it?"
"Yes. Fifty-five, I think."
"Fifty-five. Life kind also?"
"Yes. I married and divorced a long time ago. A year or two, a mistake. Then not long after that I married again, and that one has stuck. I have a good husband."
"I'm glad for that too. I knew I wasn't for you, that I'd be unable to keep you. There is something about a woman that a man can never quite take hold of. Mmm - too much - I wonder if I can tell you something?"
"Yes. What?"
"I kept you anyway. A flower, if you will, pressed in a book that just happened to be me, myself. It got dry and a little brittle, I admit it - it can't be helped - but with that and something else you gave me, I have never since all these long years ever been alone. I have often wanted to write and tell you that, but could never do it. How would I say it? For you, I suppose, in a way, your harpoon you never got back, but it found its target and I have felt it whenever unwise enough to think of it, and even now I feel it."
"I am truly sorry if I hurt you."
"No! It wasn't you. It was a gift; you were a gift. And in no other way obtainable. For me it preserved a perfection. Even as time passed and I knew it for what it was, a memory of something I could never have had, and the best kind, that reality would have I'm afraid worn away. Though I have also often wished it could have been even that way - consumed and even the bones of it chewed. But then you wouldn't be here now, would you!?"
"Yes, I think so. You said I gave you something else. What was that?"
"Ah, that for memory. Can we do memories?"
"Yes, of course."
"A bicycle ride into the surrounding countryside, a warm November day. Do you remember?"
"Not yet."
"An A&W root beer stand for a lunch of sorts?"
"Now I remember."
"Ha! And a quiet spot under some trees, no nearby brook, though. I'm lying on my back looking at the sky, at the clouds as the wind pushed them across the trees, even rustling some of the leaves, turning them silvery-side up. We must have been talking. And then you..."
"And then I leaned over and kissed you. I remember."
"And you leaned over and kissed me. You eclipsed the whole sky, the sunlight filtered, sparkling through your auburn hair - but your perfume! - your perfume mixed with you. I was suddenly under a waterfall of sensation. You looked at me. I don't know what you did, but never before or since a kiss like that. A forever in a moment of a taste - feeling - of something I never tasted or felt again. Do you remember that when we would kiss I would sometimes inhale your whole breath when you breathed?"
"Yes, I remember that. And some other things. Kissing an entire afternoon away by a tree in the nearby cemetery until the evening became too cool. And in chapel when you tried to put your hand in my pants."
"Yes, those too. I remember, and well. The chapel just the wrong time and place - but there never was a right time or place. And the cemetery, each kiss an unexplored continent. Up to me, we'd be there still. But that first kiss - was it our first? The ground underneath and the entire universe above at that moment tented - a silken canopy - by you. May I tell one more thing?
"Yes."
"Over the years I had times when for whole seconds I was again in that moment. I had soaked up, absorbed, the whole experience of you, your perfume and the smell of you, and I was there in it immersed again. With no warning. Like a downburst of sensation, out of nowhere, and unretrievable. For years I chased every woman that looked like you, and it was never you."
"I'm sorry. I remember that kiss. Shall we try it again? Would you like that?"
"Be still my heart. Yes, I would like that. Could it be?"
-------
"Doctor! Quick!"
"Ok, let me look. I think that's it. What time is it?"
"Ten o'clock."
"All right. Please note time of death ten o'clock. It doesn't look like he had a hard time of it. Ten o'clock - almost as if he'd had visitors and left with them.