Close Encounters EXCERPT
Maya had just made tenure and was sitting in a “multi-professional building” way out in one of East Boulder’s new office park developments. She was studying the waiting area, which had been decorated to be carefully inoffensive, to remind no one of any possible bad memories. All the prints were abstracts in pastel colors; the artificial plants resembled no real botanical forms Maya had ever seen. She heard footsteps ascending the communal staircase (Maya had taken the elevator), then a man breathlessly burst into the waiting area. Strapped on his back was a soft, padded guitar case.
“Ye gods, it’s Maya!”
“Zack! We meet again.” She smiled, though for some reason she suddenly felt like crying.
“Hey, what are you doing here? Do you have time? Dude, let’s go get coffee!” She laughed: a nearly middle-aged man still using the word dude.
“No, I don’t have time—I really wish I did.” She was too embarrassed to tell him why; she was there to meet, for the first time, a therapist, hoping someone would be able to talk her through her post-second-divorce funk and allow her to work productively again. All her research ideas seemed to have dried up along with her marriage—and her ovaries. “How come we’re always running into each other when we’re too busy to catch up?”
“Dude, I know! It sucks! Hey, I’ve got a new band together; can you come tonight?”
Maya smiled wryly. “You know, I really wish I could. It figures. I have an obligatory faculty meeting tonight.”
“You’re still teaching? Same place and everything?! Man!”
“Yep, still there. And you?”
“Dude, I just got back from Santa Barbara. These guys and I, we were making massive amounts of money playing on the street, you know, over by the—” Maya had changed her mind—to hell with her appointment—and stood up, taking a step toward Zack, when Zack’s humorous monologue was interrupted.
“Maya Lavelle?” An intimidatingly tall woman in a peach blazer-and-skirt ensemble stood at one of the interior doors.
Maya hesitated. She looked at Zack, then back at the woman. And chickened out. “Sorry, Zack. Next time?” said Maya with real regret, picking up her purse. “I mean it.”
“Absolutely, Maya. See you then—whenever then is!” He wiggled his fingers cheerfully at her and opened the glass door that led to a small recording studio.