"Airships"  by Jen Conley

When I meet up with Aidan on a warm July night in 1992, I am wearing my jeans, brown vest, and oxblood steel-toed Doc Marten boots.  He is leaning against the dulled silver railing just outside of the Camden Town Tube station waiting for me.   He stands there, dressed in black jeans, a velvet purple shirt and black boots—the kind the bikers from my home in New Jersey wear.  I walk out of the Underground, squinting my eyes and smiling. The sun hasn't set yet and it's already almost eight o'clock.  I can't get used to this entire staying-light-until-almost-ten o'clock-thing here in England.  And, of course, I am completely relieved he is there.            

Aidan is going to be a rock star.  That's what he told me when we first met. I spoke to him for about fifteen minutes while we were waiting for the Night bus and then for another fifteen minutes on the bus.  He lives one Tube stop south of my stop in East Finchley, which is a real plus if we are going to work out.  The last three guys I met up with for a drink lived out of the way.  It puts a strain on the relationship if someone lives too far from your Tube stop.           

When he sees me, he grins and hugs me, taking me off guard.  This is our first drink together, having just met a few days ago through my roommate Melissa.  Aidan is Irish and I am used to dealing with reserved, British men—lots of tension and awkwardness. Aidan kisses me on the cheek, lets me know he has a plan, and leads the way.  I like this sort of take-charge thing.  He tells me we're going to the Lock Tavern, up the road, and do I know it? 

"Yes, yes," I say. 

It's the place where they burn candles in empty wine bottles and the proprietor sings last call:  GET OUT!  GO HOME!  

She always wears her hair up in a bun, and her dresses remind me of the Dakota plains—something Laura Ingalls would wear.             

When we arrive at the pub, it is empty and we find an excellent seat near the door.  Unless an American or an American company like Pizza Hut or Seven Eleven owns it, there is no air conditioner in the buildings of London.  I am the one who suggests we sit by the front door, Aidan nodding and shaking his cool long hair out.  "It will get hot in here later," I explain to him.  After he returns with two pints, Guinness for him and cider for me, I add further information.  "I don't like the heat," I tell him some more, lighting up a cigarette.  Aidan nods again.           

 Then he starts talking.  First he tells me I am his first American date.  Then he starts talking about his band and Ireland and Dublin and his Da (his father) and his older sisters and it goes on and on.  The rock star look takes me aback, though.  It's as if he should be saying "dude" and using a thick North Jersey accent, but he speaks in singsong Irish, reminding me of the great-grandparents I used to visit in Yonkers when I was little. 

"Use the spo-oon, love," they would say.  Aidan is a beautiful man, however, which he quite aware of. 

"My sister says I should shave off the beard, that my face is too nice to hide." He touches the sparse hair covering his cheekbones, lips, and chin.  Aidan's skin is light and spotless, like a new white sheet.  His eyes are blue, dark blue, and the long eyelashes are dark like his long, rock star hair.             

I don't bite the line.  I am going to distinguish myself as a girl who is not going to fall all over him.  As the pub fills with trendy drinkers, I notice females looking at him.  Some of them are obvious, holding their coy stares for long, dramatic moments which I try to ignore by taking deep gulps of my cider.  It's not long before I have to use the bathroom, but I am nervous about leaving Aidan alone.  I am afraid one of these females will slide into my seat and I will be cast off into the crowd.            

The toilets are in the back and, as it goes, I have to wait a few minutes before a stall opens.  By the time I emerge from the bathroom, I have been gone for almost ten minutes.  Aidan is still sitting in the booth, smoking a cigarette and looking stunning.  He is alone but I can see a couple of girls in short black skirts ready to join him.  I push my way through a pack of drinkers who are discussing the recent LA Riots and quickly get back to my seat.  "So tell me about New Jersey.  Have you gone to the Stone Pony? Like Bruce Springsteen?" he asks. “I love Bruce Springsteen.”           

I take a moment to settle.  "I thought you'd be gone," I admit to him, chuckling.  I am feeling a little loose from the pint and a half of cider I've finished.   "I thought I'd lose you to some of these women who keep drooling over you."           

Aidan grins, looking more beautiful.  "I came in with you, love, and I'll leave with you, love." His Irish accent glides across the table like an old leaf tumbling along the ground.            "Ah, a true gentleman," I say.             

"Actually," he leans forward.  "When you left, a couple of girls did sit down.  I had them leave."  He smiles again and I'm not sure what to say.            He asks me about New Jersey again and I tell him the same thing I tell everyone:  it's very hot this time of year and The Stone Pony is pretty small and everyone in the state has gone to high school with Bruce Springsteen.           

Aidan smirks.  “Yeah, and we’ve all had a pint with Bono in the pub.”            

I nod, smiling. “Exactly.”            I tell Aidan about my on-going work permit problem.  I tell him that I have been in London with some friends from college for seven months but my student work permit has just expired, which is why my secretarial job has ended.  I tell him I am starting a cash job next week, at a pub in the East End on Whitechapel High Street.  "You know, where Jack the Ripper did his murders."  Aidan nods but he doesn't seem to find this tidbit as exciting as I do.  "Have you done bar work before?" he asks.           

I tell him no.  "I've worked at a deli so it can't be too much different."  I nod, as if I know this to be true.  Then I explain that I have to take jobs off the books.  "I am replacing a girl who is going back to Spain."           

"But they can work legally in England," he says, slightly confused.           

Then we talk some more about Ireland, and how wonderful and beautiful it is with its rolling green hillsides and breathtaking views of the sea.           

We stay until closing, until the proprietor in a red, flowered dress appears from a side door and starts to sing.  Aidan and I finish our drinks and leave.  We take the Night bus back to his flat, which is above a newsagent, south of the Highgate Underground station.  He lives two flights up, in a tiny room.  The walls are mint green and paint flecks gather along the floors.  He doesn't have a bed but a mattress. There is an old brown paneled stereo on a shelf, tape cassettes piled in the corner, and a crate of albums near the door.  An electric guitar leans against the wall, along with some speakers and a guitar case. Next to his bed, a small lamp illuminates the photographs taped to his wall.  I look closely at the pictures, which are all taken in Ireland.  He points out his Da and his sister and then his girlfriend.  I shake my head in disgust and sigh.  "You didn't tell me you had a girlfriend," I snap.            "I don’t. I asked her to leave," he explains, rolling a cigarette.  "She has the same problem you do.  She can't work here legally because she is from Switzerland.  They aren't part of the E.C.  Anyhow, she used to live with me but her work permit ran out.   I mean, what was she going to do?  Wait around here for some man?"           

"She lived here?" I ask.           

Aidan nods.  "Yes.  She left in June."           

“It’s July,” I say.  Suddenly I feel intrusive and aggravated.   Why did all these guys have so many unresolved relationships?  "I don't get it," I muse, plopping down in front of his crate of albums.  I was still a little drunk and I felt like I could speak my mind.  "So she's your ex-girlfriend?"  I flip through his albums until I see Led Zeppelin I.  I take the worn album out of the crate and study the black and white photo of the Hindenburg disaster.  "What you should do is take the photos down of your ex-girlfriend.  It might make this breaking up process a little easier for you."             

Aidan stops the rolling of his cigarette and looks at me with beautiful blue eyes that seem to reflect the green of the walls.             

"You could have asked me for a cigarette," I add.  "Instead of going through all that work."           

He continues to look at me.  "Do you want to listen to that?"           

Led Zeppelin I is one of my favorite albums but I don't admit it to him.  "This is where I'm from," I tell him, pointing to the cover.           

Aidan tells me he doesn't understand.            "This is the Hindenburg.  It was a German airship that crashed on the naval air base in 1937 in Lakehurst, New Jersey."  I pull out a cigarette and hand one to Aidan.  "Lakehurst is not pretty like Ireland and it's not cool like Freehold or Asbury Park, which is what Bruce Springsteen sings about.  And it's not across the river from New York City, like Hoboken, which is where Frank Sinatra is from.  It's actually just small and very uneventful."           

Aidan leans against his mint green walls, lighting my cigarette.            

I push back to the other wall and rest against it.  I light a cigarette, thinking of the scrub pine trees and the sandy ground that surround the town.  "It's run down and old, and all the hotels have neon signs of airships.  There's like eight bars and they all have their names written on airships and inside, they all have like airship things hanging on the walls.  Even the McDonald's has this giant mural of the Hindenburg that covers an entire wall.  So uncool."            

After the words are out of my mouth, I feel like a bitch.             

Aidan asks me if I have a boyfriend back in Lakehurst, New Jersey.  I tell him that I'm not like that.  "I didn't come to London with a man back home.   I came here alone, love, and, as it looks now, I leave here alone, love."           

Aidan smiles and asks me about the boyfriend I had back home.   I stare at him and shake my head.  I never really talk about him although my roommate Patty tells me that every so often I mention him. “I do?” I once said to her.           

Aidan draws on his cigarette. "Do you miss him?  Did he break your heart?"           

 "I wouldn’t say that," I say.             

"Is that why you came to London?"           

 "To get away from Jesse?  No, no.  It's not that dramatic at all."           

"What was he like?"  Aidan suddenly pulls himself up, slipping into another tiny room and returning with two cans of soda.  "Was he mean to you?"           

“What do you care?” I ask, stretching my legs.           

Aidan shrugs.  “I talk about myself a lot.  Sometimes it’s nice to give someone else a chance. So was he mean to you?”           

I take a drag of my cigarette and shake my head.  "No, no. I wish he were mean to me.  It would have been a lot easier if he were mean to me."            

We moved down to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey when I was in elementary school.  I didn't live in Lakehurst proper, but from my house I could see the top of the ancient gray hanger that loomed over the naval air base.  Our house was in a small neighborhood, a collection of one-story new homes with three bedrooms and one bathroom.  They were built for new, growing families who wanted to live somewhere quiet and peaceful.  Actually, because they were so far south from New York City, the price of these brand new homes was very affordable for a one-income family.  My parents, like a lot of parents in the neighborhood, were young, from busy North Jersey, and in need of a new house.  There wasn't a lot of money to spend so we ended up settling in this very rural place with its partial view of the Hindenburg disaster site.           

I was eleven when I first saw Jesse.  He lived with his younger brother around the block from me in a white, one-story house similar to my own.  They weren't from New Jersey but somewhere down south—Tennessee.   Jesse's younger brother was in the sixth grade with me but I never spoke to Jesse.   He was already in eighth grade. I didn't know much about them then except that they lived with their grandmother.            

By the time I was introduced to Jesse, his family had moved out of that white house and into a gray house in Lakehurst.   I was almost fifteen and he was going on eighteen.  I had spent the day with some friends, following trails through the woods, wandering quietly.  I ran into a couple of kids I went to school with and there was Jesse, standing in his jeans and a green hunting jacket.  The first thing I noticed about him was that his skin was the color of dulled copper.  He wore a Dallas Cowboys hat, covering the long, shaggy hair that hung over his dark eyes.  In the sunlight, his dark hair had a strange hue to it, like the color of wet tree bark.  Jesse spoke nothing to me for the entire time we hung around a sandy clearing, kicking the dirt and throwing rocks into the brush.  It wasn't until we went back to a friend's house in search of sodas and Doritos that he leaned toward me and asked for my phone number.  I was shocked.  Up until then I was in the background of the world of boys and phone calls.  I had only kissed one other boy.  "I'll walk you home tonight," he told me.             

When it became late enough, Jesse did walk me to the corner of my street.  Underneath the streetlight, he pulled me close and kissed me like I'd seen all of the kids in my high school kiss.  When he let go, he said he would call, and the next night he did.           

I fell madly in love with him.  I almost failed Spanish because he had lunch that period and sometimes he would pass by my classroom and wave.  I spent half the period waiting for him, the second half completely disappointed if he didn't walk by or utterly disoriented if he did. I wrote his name all over my papers and on the outside of my spiral notebooks.  I sat for hours on the phone with him, so much that my parents got me my own line. I spent my entire weekends with him, holding my breath until he stopped what he was doing to lean over and kiss me.  Sometimes, when he would reach for me, I would rush for him so fiercely that he had to push me back to keep me sober.  Then he'd bury his face in my hair. "I love you," he'd say and I could feel him taking in my scent.           

Jesse could spend the entire day outside, walking through the woods, pointing out animals that I had never paid attention to.  He would show me a hawk circling above the trees, or an agitated blue jay flickering from branch to branch.  He could get a squirrel to scurry down from a scrub pine and slowly approach for the piece of bread he held out in his hand.  Sometimes he'd have me stop and stand still, waiting as the wind moved the pine needles. Suddenly a doe would appear, delicately stepping through the trees and brown brush.  Jesse liked to fish, and there were many days that we walked deep into the Pine Barrens in search of a lake or a pond.  In the first year of our relationship, I'd trail along, always lifting my head up to see if I could still catch sight of the monstrous, gray hanger that stood overlooking the miles and miles of gaunt, dry pine trees.           

Jesse had not lived as easily as I did.  His mother died when he was thirteen and his father had been long gone.  Jesse and his brother moved in with his grandmother in Tennessee.  Because there was more decent work up north, she moved with her husband and the boys to New Jersey.  Her three daughters eventually followed her, and soon the family settled temporarily in my neighborhood and then finally in the gray house in Lakehurst.  His grandmother spoke in what people called a southern mountain accent and she had the same dark hair as Jesse, always partially piled on her head, reminding me of Loretta Lynn.  Jesse adored his grandmother and he often spent many evenings canceling our plans to help her clean banks.  When he did have a free night, I'd get a ride from my parents over to his house and Jesse and I would sit in the damp chill of his basement bedroom listening to a Philadelphia radio station play lots of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.  We would lie back on his bed, listening to the slow, heavy music settle in his small room, staring at the paneled walls decorated with rock posters, small six point deer racks and one photograph of his mother.             

Jesse wasn't much for typical dates and such.  Usually, I’d hang out with him at his house or one of his friend’s houses.  He’d steal moments with me, pushing me into empty rooms, running his mouth along my neck and moving his hands underneath my bra.  When we could, we’d hide behind locked doors or underneath blankets, spending long, lingering periods slowly edging our clothes off, moving so close I had to remind myself to stop him because I didn’t want to get pregnant.  And because he loved me, he would reluctantly agree, but not without some pleading.  “Heather, please…” When there was no where to be alone, he’d take me to the lake where we could sit on the dock and watch the reflection of the moon float on the ripples of the water.  Sometimes he'd pull out a flask of peach schnapps and offer me a sip but I wasn't much into drinking then.  Usually, I just wanted to sit with him and sneak looks at his dark face and wait for him to kiss me.             

For Christmas, I saved all my babysitting money and bought him a red flannel comforter from Bamberger's.  When he opened the gift, I realized I'd gone too far.  Jesse was used to getting socks and t-shirts for Christmas.  He coughed a couple of times, nodded his head, eyes cast down, while he ran his hand along the red tartan flannel.  "This will keep you warm in your room," I told him.  Jesse nodded his head again and again.  "Yes, this is a good one."           

When Jesse graduated high school, he didn't go to his graduation ceremony.  He just took the diploma out of the mailbox and shoved it into the wooden drawer in his room.  He went right to work with a guy who ran a roofing business out of his van.  They worked from six to six five days a week, and sometimes Jesse had to drive the van home because his partner was too drunk from all the beers he had consumed that day on the job.  At night, Jesse would take a shower and we would meet at his house.  Sometimes he'd have a pack of gum for me or one of those single roses you buy at the Seven Eleven, gifts he picked up for me in the morning.  He'd throw his arms around me and sometimes we would fall back on his red flannel comforter kissing until his brother or one of his aunts came downstairs to hang out.           

Then it started to happen.  My urgency for him began to fade.  At first it was because our interests were different.  I grew tired of walking in the woods or listening to the same music.  I suggested we do other things, like eat at a restaurant or go shopping at the mall.  He always followed me along, confusing the waitress by ordering two appetizers as his dinner and then fidgeting in the juniors' section of A& S while I tried on clothes.  When I reached the end of eleventh grade, I dragged him to my junior prom, forcing him to get sized for a tuxedo.  He looked awkward and self-conscious as he desperately tried to remain still as the man measured the length of his arms and legs with his tape.  "I'm not comfortable with a man that close to my privates," he joked later.  But his black suit did dress him up, and I winced when he arrived at my house, holding a proper corsage flower for me.  He looked handsome but at the same time, extremely odd in the black tuxedo, like a bird caught in a house.  I had only ever seen Jesse in jeans and flannel shirts.  His aunt took pictures and said she knew how hard this was for him. Then she smiled and said, "Anything for your girl, huh Jesse?"           

One day in November of my senior year, a woman came to our school and made a presentation about participating in the exchange student program.  It was possible, she told us, to spend a semester of college in a foreign country, and immediately, as if someone threw open a door, I could clearly and finally see what could happen to me—I could live in a foreign city, even something as cool as London.  It didn’t matter that I didn’t have terrific grades, or that my parents didn’t make a lot of money, or that I didn’t own a passport yet.  I could go.  “Usually,” the woman told me, “the price of a semester abroad is the same as a semester at your college.  The only difference in cost is airfare and spending money.  You can make that at a summer job.”  It was a stunning revelation that pleasantly shifted my balance and left me dizzy.  Within days of meeting that woman, I started to fall for the idea of living abroad and suddenly my tastes started to change.  I didn't want to listen to Led Zeppelin anymore.  I replaced my rock tapes and posters with bands like U2, The Smiths and The Cure.  I started to watch a lot of British movies and read up on London, and I wanted to sit at lunch with the kids who were in the honors classes and were going to college.  And then there was Jesse.  I knew I could never go off to college, let alone London, without breaking it off with him.  Sure, I could ride things out, stop calling him, ignore him, hope he would get the hint and go away—but that was gutless and unkind.  Yet the idea of telling him wrecked me up inside and drove me to tears which would escalate to uncontrollable sobbing.  It just seemed so unfair, my situation.  It was like a cruel trick.  Other girls had sensible excuses they could use to break off their relationships.  Their boyfriends cheated on them, or they forgot their birthdays, or their boyfriends hit them.  I had no reason.  Not one at all.  So I continued to see him, hoping my restlessness and growing wanderlust would die out as we lay back on his bed, the radio playing, Jesse kissing me.   But, always, when I was alone in my room or sitting in a corner table at the school library, I’d skim through brochures of out-of-state colleges with study abroad programs to London.           

Nobody knew what I was planning, though.  I pretended everything was okay and I that I wanted exactly what everyone expected for me after I graduated high school.  “You have your life all set up for you,” Jeff Trotsky said to me one night when he stopped by Jesse’s house.  “In no time, you and Jesse will have a house, a few kids, and maybe a camper.  I’m jealous.  I can’t figure out what I want in life.  I can’t even figure out what I want for breakfast most mornings.”           

“You’re not up for breakfast,” Jesse laughed. “Too hung over.”           

I leaned back on the couch and took a deep breath.             

Then my heart started to break.  I started to choke up when I drove home from Jesse's house, and one night I had to pull over to control the blubbering tears rolling up my body.  How could I be such a bitch?  How could I again let myself sink my head into his chest and run my hands along his arms?  How could I ask him to wait for ten years, while I went skipping into the world, when all he wanted was to get a house with a few pine trees on his front lawn?  How could I leave when he had been true and faithful?  How could I leave when he waited for me and I still didn’t give myself to him?  How could I give him up now?  How could I walk away from life already set up for me?  Why did I want such an unknown, rough road for myself?           

The final night came in winter.  My application to a North Carolina college with a study abroad program to London was due at the end of the week.  I borrowed my mom's car and drove over to his house.  Jesse must have known what was coming.  For the past couple of weeks I had been distant, detached, pretending to be too busy to see him, making up excuses why I hadn’t called.  I found Jesse down in his room, fiddling with the dial on his stereo.  He was jumpy, trying to talk about the new tape he had borrowed from his aunt.  I listened until I couldn't anymore, and then I asked him to turn off the radio.             

He sat down on the red flannel comforter that stretched neatly over his bed.  I started to cry, forcing phrases out of my mouth like "it's not you, it's me." and "I want to be on my own." and "there's no one else." I tried grabbing Jesse's hand but he gently pulled it back.  I looked at his face, hidden in the shadow of his dark hair, and saw him looking down with forced indifference, like he was trying not to care.  He didn't break down.  He didn't get up and scream or throw something or beg me not to go.  I told him how sorry I was, and then I got up and left.             

When I drove home, I passed the naval base.  I could see the red lights that outlined the dark shadow of the old hanger.  They didn't keep airships in there anymore but I wondered if they kept airplanes because it was so very big.  It was a strange thing to think about, but my head started to swarm with visions of the Hindenburg crashing and bursting into flames.             

For the next month, every evening, I sat in the backyard and cried.  When I saw Jesse's brother in school, I barely said a word to him.  At the store, when I ran into one of Jesse's aunts, I pretended I didn't know them.  I was accepted to the school in North Carolina and in the last week of August, I left.  The next year I went to London for my study abroad program, and when I graduated college, I went back home and worked for nine months at a deli to raise money to move to London with visions of staying as long as I could.            At a party in the woods, where they piled branches into a fire and drank liquor, Jesse met another girl.  They immediately started up, and by the time I moved to London for good, he was married, with his first child already born, and a new house not far from Lakehurst at all.            

Aidan turns off the record player and puts out his cigarette.  "I'm knackered," he says, crawling onto his mattress, pulling off his boots.  "You can sleep here."  I lay down next to him, staring at the green walls under the dim light.  Aidan turns and faces me.  He kisses me and runs his hands over my waist and unsnaps my jeans.  I kiss him back and help him pull off his shirt.  His torso is white and smooth.  Aidan is easygoing and gentle, but somewhat somber.  The sex doesn’t last long and it over within fifteen minutes.  I suppose we are disappointed that this will not be a great love. Afterwards, sleep comes, and exhausted, I embrace it.           

The next morning, the sun and the echo of slamming doors in the building wake me.  It is a bright, happy morning and the white curtains gently lift and fall in the breeze of the opened window.   I listen to the footfalls on the sidewalk and hear clips of conversation.  Aidan wakes minutes later, rubbing his head.  He starts to talk, telling me he has somewhere to go, his voice raspy and booming in the quiet morning.  I tell him not to worry, because I have to leave.  "My friends and I are going to the Camden Market," I lie.  Aidan jumps up with relief.  He tells me he will make me a cup of tea.             

Later, after my boots are laced up and I am sitting on the floor sipping tea, Aidan begins to talk again.  "You remind me of my girlfriend," he admits, pondering for a moment.  “You dress the same but it’s more than that.  I think you have her way of seeing things.”           

I take a gulp of my tea, wanting to light a cigarette but my box is empty.             

"You shouldn't worry about your man back home," he continues.  "He got what he was after."I frown and take a last look at the snapshots taped to the wall.  I try to see if I look like his girlfriend, but I don’t notice the resemblance.  She has dark hair and her smile is much wider than mine.            When my tea is finished, I stand up to leave.  Aidan walks me to door, kissing me on the cheek like he did the night before.  "It was a good laugh, huh?" he says, closing the door behind me.             

On my walk home, I stop and buy cigarettes and a soda.  My head is soggy, heavy with the weight of memory. The sun is further up in the sky, and I begin to sweat in my jeans as I trudge up the sidewalk.  I think of Jesse and how when we trekked through the woods, sometimes he'd turn and grab my hand to ease my way.             

When I reach my flat, my friends are there, sitting on the blue couches, smoking cigarettes and drinking small mugs of coffee.  They are laughing loudly.  I shake my head and shrug when they ask about Aidan.  "I remind him of his girlfriend," I smile, taking a swig of my diet soda.             

Patty growls and shakes her head.  Melissa frowns with disbelief.  "But I don't understand it. I thought he liked you."           

I sit at the table near the window and light a cigarette.  “So did I,” I say. Disappointment drifts through the smoky room.  I think of Aidan’s snapshots taped to his wall and find it strange that he would choose me, someone who reminded him of his old girlfriend.   Actually, the more I think about it, the more it disturbs me.  I decide that even if Aidan wants to see me again, I don’t want to see him. It’s too unsettling to be a replacement for another girl.             

Yet, unearthing all those memories of Jesse is even more unsettling.  I had forgotten how sad it had made me, how upsetting it had all been.  I had forgotten how close I came to having my life all set up—how close I came to having a good and faithful husband, a sturdy house, some kids—things I know I will want in the future but at the moment, I just really don’t want at all. I lean back in my chair and smoke my cigarette, staring out the bay window, looking at the other row houses and the beautiful, bright day.            

I see Aidan one more time.  It's about a month later and I am with my friends at the Electric Ballroom, dancing upstairs in the red room where the American DJ plays a lot of Nirvana and Aerosmith.  Aidan taps me on the shoulder and grins.  "How are you?" he yells over the music, kissing me on the cheek.           

I tell him that I am fine.  He is wearing the same velvet purple shirt and biker boots I saw him in the last time.  He motions me to follow him into the hallway, where I can hear him better.             

"Come meet my girlfriend," he says once we are in the quieter corridor.  He points to the bar that overlooks the dance floor on the first level.  "She's back from Switzerland," he explains.  I look to the bar and see a girl sitting on a stool, sipping a pint, and staring at us.  Her hair is long, like mine, and she is wearing jeans and the same boots that I am wearing.  I find all this weird and creepy.  "I asked her to come back. I told her about you."  Aidan is grinning, and I see she is not.            

“You see,” he explains, “meeting you helped me.”           

I look at him and his beautiful face.  “So let me get this straight—you meet me, I remind you of your ex, this makes you miss her, and you ask her to come back?”           

Aidan frowns.  My abruptness must put him off because he doesn’t say anything.           

Suddenly I feel mean and force a smile.  “Don’t piss her off now by spending too much time talking with another girl.  I’ll see you.”           

“It won’t take but a minute,” he says.           

I shake my head and tell him no.  "Not a good idea," I explain, because it’s just too weird.   "I'll see you around." I wave to his girlfriend, open the door, and head back into the red room to stand by my friends.  Led Zeppelin's  "Ramble On" is playing but no one is dancing.  "You can't dance to Led Zeppelin," I shout to Patty.  She agrees and hands me a pint.  "I wouldn't know," she hollers back, smiling.  "I never listened to much Zeppelin like you."