Damned Lucky Cat! (7/25/08 Friday)

A few days from the pen and paper. I felt it was making me too expectant of "results," news to relate. I’ve had enough stress about this whole thing without straining further just to have something to write about. That said. ...

Wednesday night, on my way, home, I rose from the handlebars, placed my palms together and supplicated the stars, "Please let me have an hour on the desk with Julie!" and chuckled. But there it was on the schedule the next day, the last hour of the night. I spent most of that day from the point of the schedule discovery alternately plotting my conversation points for that hour and throwing the plans away with the admonishment, "Chill out. Don’t force anything." I finally compromised a couple hours before the "date" with one question I knew would get her talking. The hour before I went out there my stomach was a boiling knot. I felt like I hadn’t eaten all day. I got out there first to stake a claim to the second seat, from which I could both watch the incoming patrons and steal glances at Julie under that pretext.

When Julie came out I stifled a comment noting how long it had been since we’d been out there together, and let her settle in a few minutes. At a quiet point with no approaching patrons I said, "So, how is Nigel doing?" From under a knitted brow and squinted eyes, she echoed, but with heavy stress on her cat’s name, "How is Nigel doing?" with probably much the same puzzlement she elicited from me a few weeks earlier when she came out of left field with Joe’s magazine comment. I was slightly abashed at her reaction, having struggled with the appropriateness of the question, though deciding that it was little different than asking about one’s children, and that decision overrode my trepidation and kept my face from registering the former reaction.

It was the right question, though I had to follow it quickly with a more specific question when I could tell she didn’t know quite where to start with the first one. "Is he still terrorizing his housemate?" I’d remembered her telling me months ago about how Nigel occasionally badgered her mom’s cat. "Oh, yeah," she answered, and expounded on his character–a mischievous but loving "lap kitty"–and even attempted to recreate his "squeak." I listened, enraptured not with her words but with her being, marveling at the smoothness of her face, the smallness of her nose, the slimness of her lips, and the slender lengths of her fingers. Oh, I heard every word. I found out quite a bit about Julie’s cat, and just a little about Julie. It was a glorious hour.

But it was not my only shining moment that day. Julie’s shirt was predominantly red. I said to her, "I’ve noticed that you’ve worn hot colors all week." "Have I?" she replied, and stood in thought, trying to recall her attire of the previous three days. I helped her with one, having to describe the turned up cuffs. She finally had them straight and had to defer Tuesday, when she wore maroon–-"But close," she said. I said, "I thought you might have been in sympathy with the weather." "Oh, no," she said, "just whatever was available." Was she flattered by my noticing what she’d worn all week? I could at least tell she wasn’t creeped out. Will she think of me tomorrow when she dresses for work? Which way will she go? and should I let her know I notice? For once, the questions don’t burn with serious possibilities, but bubble with playful speculation.