There are moments when the memory comes back so quick its like a punch in the gut. Leaves you reeling and sucker-punched and feeling like you should be curled up in a ball on the floor, weeping. Comes on quick. All it takes is a phrase or a snatch of music and you're there and the door is closing and she's on the other side and you're never alone with her again.
I first met Tiffany in class. Tech practicum. Working in a shop on campus building sets and hanging lights. She was ripping plywood down to three foot sections, barefoot. She had freckles on top of her feet. We got coffee together and talked about how much we hated Tennessee Williams and where we grew up. Drove to home depot and picked up lumber together. She had an eye for the work. I followed plans and worked out cut lists. Tiffany just knew. Gifted that way, where she could just imagine a piece of staging and know what she needed to do to make it happen.
I was still a goddamn wreck. Lisa was a year gone and I was gunshy about this girl with her tattoos and piercings and her fearlessness and her goddamn eyes. We fell into it after a cast party.
Woke up next to her on the couch. Folks sleeping on the floor below us. Got up and made breakfast. Ate in a big group. Me and her acted like nothing had happened until I went out for a smoke and she came out to bum one from me, and it was the most natural thing in the world when she put her arm around me and I put mine around her.
Friends said she was trouble. First time she partied with us she poured a fifth of rum into a hot tub because she liked the scent. I laughed. I carried her to bed because she couldn't stand, and she told me to stay. So I did.
We stopped drinking coffee on campus. I took her to a shop a few blocks away. Drinking coffee and iced tea and playing scrabble and talking. Sitting in the sun and feeling like my life was going somewhere. Started drinking again, and fell into it hard.
I had someone by my side again. Tiffany was always ready for a drink. Too ready. Too easy for me to make a joke about having a beer and she'd be pressing one into my hand and cracking one open for herself and we'd be drunk and mumbling together. She got a job at Trader Joes and I was working for Elite on and off. Quit when I got work with Poor Players.
Shakespeare loved alcoholics. Alcoholics love Shakespeare. Pair of us would quote lines at one another, dirtier the better.
Look back at the man I was when I was with her and I ain't sure it was ever me. I was happy but detached. Work wasn't bad but it was just work. Spent more time than I like to admit hungover and on the couch.
Got stoned out of my mind and watched Blue Velvet for the first time in my life. Dreamt I came across a severed ear on the apartment complex lawn.
Woke up in a cold sweat. Tiffany didn't stir. She was smiling in her dreams.
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