Jacquelyn Gallo
Bright Expectations

Fireworks: something you feel, something you see—
a spectacular explosion that occurs once ignited,
a celebration that opens the clouds and scatters ecstatic beams throughout the sky,
an intense and immediate carnival of color and light.
Light that moves, falls, and dances against the dark tapestry
as it weaves its way across an empty space.
Felt by the hands and feet and heart.
Please, someone, give me fireworks!

I sat on a hot NYC bus reading Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn
(Edith Wharton and her sisters
were still trapped by the wretched art on their book covers.):
For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, I read.
A man with narrow eyes, a broad forehead, slender hands, and a bulbous nose
slunk onto the bus.
I felt an unpleasant uneasiness—
a desire to recoil.
Dedicated to Miller’s rejection of modernity, I turned back toward the book.
The man crept up behind me.
“That is a very…sexy…book you’re reading.”
I screamed. The heat of his whisper shook me.
I felt it in my hands and feet and heart.
“I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!” He threw his palms into the air in a calming gesture,
quickly withdrew, and shoved them deep into his pockets.

“I didn’t mean to startle you, but, I just think…
You are so sexy. You’re perfect for me.”
Heat pulsed through the windowpanes, but he sat there
with his hands still shoved awkwardly into his brown leisure suit pockets.
Little beads of sweat formed on his balding head and pock-marked face.
“That’s a nice wedding ring,” I said. My heart beat and beat.
He removed his hands and smiled. The sweaty pink flesh dangled from his delicate wrists like newborn gerbils in fetal position.
“Oh, you saw that?” he asked.

He talked like a television. I couldn’t turn him off.
He told me about his wife and his marriage,
about how she didn’t understand him and how they didn’t have sex anymore—
as if these were now my problems.
He told me about his studio just up the street
and suggested I come over and be with him there,
for a while, just a while.
We wouldn’t even have to do anything.
If he could just watch me—watch my body a while, just for a while,
in his little studio, naked.
Well, that would make his day.
That would make his heart race.
He’s yearned for it to race for so long.
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve dealt with men like you before.”
The bus had strayed from its normal route and
stopped 20 blocks from my apartment.
“But my place is right here,” he said. “We could go there right now,” he said.
“Don’t you want to live in the moment?”

“No,” I said.
And he asked to walk me home anyway. “Just for the company…please?”
I was not savvy and had not learned the right way to say no, which was just by saying, “no,” and meaning it—holding it there like a wall instead of a bridge.
I negotiated.
“Halfway. Only to Chinatown. Then you disappear.”
He agreed.
And we walked.
And we talked,
more about his wife. I didn’t look at his hands or face or eyes.
He asked me questions.
“Oh, I’m a writer, too,” he said.
Still so eager.
The sun began to set as we walked the 10 blocks,
our steps out of sync like strangers.

He told me about his job teaching literature and about his students—
how he loved and needed them more than they needed him.
His words grew large and colorful,
a desperate landscape brightened by hope.
Despite the unwanted advances,
the little man felt likable, charming even—
like Woody Allen before the rape.
We turned a corner toward the Manhattan Bridge
when he asked me to please reconsider.
He didn’t want to walk into that studio alone,
not again.
“Not on a day like today,” he said. “I don’t even have the sun anymore.”
Suddenly, a burst of light flashed
with a boom so loud it shook us.
I gasped from the shock.
I looked toward the water:
Streams of light arched across the sky, big and beautiful.
They fell gracefully against each other
before melting on top of the East River.

“Look!” He raised his left hand; the glob quivered against the magnificent sky.
“Look, I’m giving you fireworks!” he said. “Isn’t that enough?”

I paused for what seemed like an awful long time.
“No,” I said—and walked away from the bridge.