New Kid in Town

If were smart, in any way, I wouldn’t touch Google.com again. After I saw them so cozy, I went home and hopped onto the damned site. I visited every link that had anything to do with them. As time went on, more and more news was made. More and more articles popped up. I felt worse and worse.

Pictures abounded. In most of them, they were kissing. Here, they were holding hands, cruising downtown Seattle. Kissing. One depicted them at a game. She was sitting right near the first base line, leaning over the short wall. She planted a kiss on his cheek. He wore a large grin.

My favorite is photo from a gala they attended for the Seattle Symphony. Someone had “surprised” them with a camera near the coat check (honestly, they should be used to this shit by now), as the caption under the picture said. He wore a black tux, she a narrow-skirted black gown. They were both wearing Mariners’ caps. He even wore his signature wrap-around reflective shades. But, as the next picture I found trumpeted, “Ichiro always takes off his shades to kiss his girlfriend.” It was true. In the picture, he had his shades in hand at his side as they locked lips.

The Japanese media followed them everywhere, charted their every movement. If you thought that Ichiro was big here, he’s a living legend, a god, in Japan. And, naturally, Finn was anointed goddess.

It hurt to read the articles in which she said how much she loved him. But it was evident. Any idiot could see it, in her eyes, in the way she touched him, the way she spoke of him. She truly loved the dope.

He knew he was the luckiest dope alive. I wonder if he knew that I was not only the stupidest dope alive for letting Finn go, but also the loneliest dope alive as well. I imagine that he doesn’t know of anything in this world except his love for Finn and baseball. And really, what else does a man need?

Whenever I go to Seattle now, I always walk down Pine Street, past Sam’s. She still works those double shifts, even now, after her millionaire-savior-god boyfriend bought her that shiny new Beamer after what yet another Japanese tabloid says, “a prolonged hissy-fit, in which Finley did not want to accept the extravagant gift.” She still lives in that same hole at the corner of East Pine and 12th. That’s Finn for ya.

Stubborn. She’s always been. I wonder if she’ll be like this if she married the nut. “My husband is a global gargantuan superstar, but we live in a studio apartment on the seventh floor of a high-rise in downtown Seattle. The Beamer actually fits into our allotted parking space.” Riiiiiiiight.
It mists in Seattle, so different from the sticky heat in Arlington. I kind of miss it. After a few smothering weeks in the South, it’s refreshing to come up to Seattle, kind of like stepping into a cold shower after running around in the summer heat all day. Then I walk past Sam’s, like the masochistic bastard I’ve become, and slow up as I pass the large glass plate storefront, with the painted coffee cup on the window. The cup wears a wide smile, unlike my gray face which matches the clouds above my head. I see her serving people their coffee, and I want to go in and talk to her again, rub salt on the wound, stick sewing needles up my peehole, or some other act of senseless self-inflicted, unnecessary pain. When did it get this hard?

ent his wife to music school to develop her talent. It was her dream. Now why didn’t she listen to me when I told her to go? I guess if I had said it in Japanese, she would have.

So now we’ve got an international superstar husband, a classically trained French hornist wife, and the most celebrated child since Jesus. The world was Finn’s. I wonder if she’d ever thought she get it all.