This week we have a houseguest, a young American we met a few months ago while traveling in a remote region of Western Australia called Monkey Mia, which, despite its name, is home to dolphins not monkeys. Also, Mia is pronounced Maya.
Anna, pronounced Anna, is an actress and a waitress and a searcher. Her visit is perfectly timed. She has a Millennial ease about her that makes me feel like America is going to be all right because her generation believes in compassion and fewer weapons and equal rights, and it’s all a matter of time. She brought us clay face masks and sparklers.
“When will we see you again?” my husband asked Anna last night before we went to sleep after sharing a bottle of Shiraz and talking about Bernie Sanders and Gilmore Girls. He was missing her while she was still here, one of Dave’s hallmarks. I knew how he felt.
In the spring of 1996, Dave and I stayed in the London home of a couple we had met at a house party in Boston, six months earlier. This couple spent the party cuddling on a couch radiating romance and mystery, and we spent the evening trying to be more like them. Galina was Ukrainian and her purple bra strap peeked out from her loose fitting sweater. Christophe was French and wore leather and smelled of cigarettes. They unsuctioned long enough to tell us that they had just completed a cross-country drive on motorcycle. Of course they rode motorcycles. These were not the kind of people who were going to waste time in the safety and banality of cars. I was transfixed, and when they offered their home as a layover on our way to Ireland later that year, I promised we would come. Few of us were internetting back then, so for months, I kept Galina’s phone number on a slip of paper in my underwear drawer.
Looking back now, they probably thought we were adorable. We were both twenty-two and newly in love. Dave had graduated from college and was very skinny then in his gray turtleneck sweater and jean jacket. I had dropped out of college and used my Legal Seafood waitressing money to buy my first pair of Doc Martens. We had only recently upgraded our multi-year friendship to what Australians would describe as full on. The trip to Ireland had been Dave’s idea. He had never traveled outside the U.S. and wanted to see his maternal family’s homeland. His mother would suddenly pass away soon after our return and of course we didn’t know that then, so that trip holds particular significance for both of us.
Galina and Christophe were in their mid-thirties and their art-filled Hampstead apartment had a red crushed velvet couch and a vintage record player. Galina allowed her husband to smoke inside but only next to an open window. With Christophe perched on the windowsill and his wife reclined on the sofa sipping an aperitif, we spoke of philosophy and travel. Dave and I occasionally exchanged looks conveying we are most certainly in the company of grown-ups.
We never saw Galina and Christophe again, but I thought of them last night as I said goodnight to our houseguest and crawled into bed. I thought about all the different kinds of relationships we have with all kinds of people, and how we’re all floating through space, occasionally bumping into each other. Some people are like satellites to us, and others are shooting stars.