THE FIREBIRD

a pastel by Bob Waltrip

Massion and I were sitting that evening in the bar on Third Street, the same bar where we had sat many evenings before. This was on Monday night, and the bar on Seventh Avenue was closed. There was a big crowd here. We had been lucky to get our booth in the corner.

"You're chasing after something that doesn't exist," Massion was saying. "It doesn't exist because it doesn't have any purpose. It doesn't have any end to justify the means. You're chasing after a rainbow and you'll never find it." It always disturbed me when Massion talked this way. Every once in awhile after we had talked of everything else, Massion would turn to this subject. Perhaps he was too much older than I in more than just years.

"Haven't we exhausted this subject before," I asked, sipping my beer and avoiding Massion's eyes. "Why do you talk about it?"

"Because I don't want to see you hurt yourself. I love you too much to let you go on like this-running frantically after some purposeless thing. "Sometimes I wonder."

"You know I love you."

"Then why do you want to get rid of me?"

"Because I . . . Damn it. I don't want to get rid of you. I don't know what I want."

"I suppose you think I'd be in seventh heaven if we broke up."

"You could forget me. We should break up now, before we get more involved."

"I'm already 'more involved.' You know that. You know that as well as anything."

Massion held his glass of beer with both hands and looked across at me over the brim.

"You don't love me. You just think you do."

"Oh God," I whispered. "Here we go again."

"You are incapable of loving me. I am incapable of loving you. We're both just play-acting. We're saying, 'this is what love would be like if we were capable of loving normally.'

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I looked at him for a moment, saying nothing. Massion took his eyes from mine.

"You should try to go on the wagon again," he said.

"No."

"You're still young. You could save yourself."

"No. I can't. I suppose you would advise me to marry-and end up like you." "You know I wouldn't tell you that."

"Then stop picking on me, Massion."

"I'm not picking on you. I'm just trying to make you see that this is no kind of life for someone young."

"I know it's no good. But it's the only kind of life I have. I'll never marry some bag of a woman and have a baby, then get sick of the whole damned mess and start sneaking out for stolen embraces in the back seat of some man's car-just so I could stand to live with myself."

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