The Old Man in Ypsilanti: Jones Hall

Sunday. The Old Man leaves the house and drives to Ypsilanti. Saturday would have been better. Saturday had been the plan. Get out. Go somewhere. Do something. Too much time spent indoors. It had been bright and sunny and warmer, but he just couldn't do it. So, Sunday. Make it holy. The day.

Desitnation: the campus of Eastern Michigan University. Undgrad (89'-92'), after a stint at community college, after dropping out of two other colleges. EMU was pretty much his last best chance. Or, so he decided. A romantic myth made by the foolish young version of The Old Man. He misses that kid.

An hour drive, it had been years since he'd been on campus. Parked his car next to Jones Hall, where he'd lived all three years. He'd liked it in that dusty, old dormitory. A little like prep-school. Felt good there, like home, in a way; sitting with his feet up on the clanky old raditor spewing too much dry heat, hence the partially open window that looked out onto the courtyard filling with snow. It piled up. And drifted. They played out in it, like children.

Closed now. Windows of the first two floos boarded up. He approaches slowly, after dropping coins into the parking meeter. Two-hour: limit. As if the old, abandoned building is a skitish stray that he doesn't want to frighten away. Hold out your hand, let her (Lydia Jones, the namesake) sniff your hand, catch you scent. Looks tired, if that's possible for a building made of brick and limestone and concrete. Easy, old girl. I'm a friend. From years back. You remember me, don't you?

He remembers the front steps and stoop as being grander somehow. Seems so small now. It's not as if he's grown since he was 21-23. It's not as if he's expanded, not much anyway. A paunch. But the thinning spot at the back of his head evens things out, right. He sat out here on warm nights and smoked cigarettes and searched the landscape and the sky for his future. Look. There it is. Right there! I can see it so cleary. Now....

Breifly, he thought he'd actually met his future there on that stoop. A woman. Beautiful. Generous. Kind. Terribly bright smile. ACD. But he was older, a transfer student. It wasn't that unethical. It wasn't at all, as far as he was concerned. What did he know? What did he care? She wasn't his future, in any case. Her future, as is her present, is Idaho. But not potatoes. A husky husband and dog. Picturesque mountains. He can only imagine himself visiting such a place. No, there time was in Ypsilanti. EMU. Jones Hall. Even after they demolish the building, the imprint of thier affair will live on, lingering like a ghost, or so his still-romantic heart persists in believing.

His last year there, The Old Man lived like a foolish young man. Reading his worn paperbacks and tapping out his Hemingway-imitation of stories until late, when the dorm was all but asleep. There was alwasys the soft plodding of bare or socked feet up and down the halls. Community bathroom. Community sex. Community of Scholars. Then: he sneaked from his single room, which she had something of say in him acquiring, to the backdoor of the ACD apartment, convientlhy left unlocked. Slipping into her private life. Insid her private bedroom. Private bed. Still half in her private sleep, between soft, flannel sheets, slipped free of emerald green silk, privates laid bare. Sliped his tongue inside. A dream. A young man's foolish dream. The Old Man can still taste it. Her.

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