“I’ve seen you across the street before,”
Becky said. “Every other time, I slipped out the back so it wouldn’t
come to this.”
We were seated at a new Panera Bread on the other side
of the Interstate. Women dressed in tennis clothes flitted about like hummingbirds
after honeysuckle.
“That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a
well-balanced person, much less a psychotherapist, would do,” I told
her.
She was widowed with a grown daughter in California. She
wore just enough makeup, and her fingernails were manicured and polished
a pale pink.
“Marriage counselors aren’t any saner than their
patients. We just know how to manage our insanity better.”
In the time since we’d last talked, she’d been
to California twice and become a grandmother. She’d redecorated her
house and vacationed at the beach earlier in the summer. She was looking
for new office space away from the uptown construction.
Our buzzer went off, and I returned to the counter to
collect her salad and my sandwich. When I sat down, she asked how I was
doing.
“I’ve started a business, handyman and landscaping.
I’ve got a crew.” There it was, that word again, a generous description
of Harley and Pablo. “Business is good. I bought a mobile home. It’s
all I can afford for now, but I aim to own a house again someday.”
“Have you seen Aven?”
“I see her now and then.”
“How are your boys?”
“They’re fine. Wilson’s in Iraq.”
She winced. “That’s tough”
“He’s a heart breaker and life taker.”
“Just like his dad.”
“You know better than that.”
My sandwich was a fancy California chicken something-or-other.
I removed the slice of green stuff. It might have been avocado. I finally
asked what I really wanted to know. “Are you seeing anyone?”
“No. Are you?”
“No.”
Becky gave me her concerned-therapist look. “This
probably won’t work out, Jimmy. That’s not to say I don’t
like you. It’s just that…”
“We move in different circles? You’re better
educated, a professional woman, and I’m just a handyman?”
“I don’t care about that.”
“I didn’t think you did, otherwise I wouldn’t
be here. Besides, I’ve been to college. Two years. They didn’t
ask me to leave. I left because I wanted to.”
“You told me that when I was meeting with you and
Aven.”
“See, that’s just it. I’ve got all the
basics out of the way with you. I don’t have to start from scratch.”
“Have you been with another woman since you and Aven
divorced?”
“Women are thick as flies on me,” I lied. “I
can’t decide which one to go for first.”
She smiled, setting off fireworks in those blue eyes.
“Look, maybe we could just be friends.”
“Oh no, not friends. I got so many friends I don’t
know what to do with them. Lord knows, I don’t need any more friends.”
“You don’t take no for an answer very easily,
do you?”
“You already knew that about me. Look, I’m not
asking you to marry me. I’m just saying we could go out now and then.
You know, a movie, a concert.”
“Isn’t that being friends?”
“Yeah, but let’s not call it that. Maybe it’ll
blossom into something bigger and better.”
“And maybe it won’t.”
“Why are you so risk adverse? Come on, tell me what
you like to do. Just don’t say it’s NASCAR, because I hate NASCAR.”
“Risk adverse?”
“You think I don’t know words like that?”
She dabbed at her mouth with a napkin, folded it, and
placed it on the table. “Okay. I’ll tell you what. You pick me
up at my place 6:30 Saturday morning. Come with a full tank of gas and
a pocket full of cash.”
I gave up on that chicken sandwich. “We’re not
going fishing, are we?”
She wrote out her home address and phone number on a napkin
and slid it across the table. “Honey, we’re not going fishing.
That’s what friends are for.”