by Les Cohen
Episode 5:
And I Was So Looking Forward To That Smoothie
The crowd dispersed, little Danny and his parents having called it a day, but the three older teenagers from the runabout (Pink, Floyd and their hero, Gene) were slow to leave. “Quite the kitty,” Gene said sarcastically to his buddies. They had been only a few feet away and saw the whole thing, but helping Danny, maybe saving his life, never occurred to them. For them, they would have just been spoiling something that might have turned out really cool.
“Let’s get him,” Pink was the one with the big idea, “and take him home with us. See if he can hold his own with old man Eyring’s Sheppard.”
“Yeah,” Floyd chimed in, “…the one he never feeds.” And they laughed, sort of, not because it was funny, but because they were proud of the little plan they’d hatched, their version of sport, entertainment for a Sunday afternoon.
“The tall chick’s not so bad either,” Gene commented quietly, turning to see where I’d gone. (“Thanks, but no thanks,” I, college girl Elizabeth, thought out loud. It was one of those times when I was both flattered and creeped out at the same time.) Pink and Floyd smiled, but said nothing, acknowledging that I was his to play with.
A couple of minutes later, MR found us and took off with Bobby to check out a pair of used water skis they were thinking about buying together, while Eleanor and I continued in search of the perfect milkshake and some homemade jewelry we liked and could afford.
“Hey, I’m starving.” I’d finally cleared my head and remembered we hadn’t had any lunch.
“Me, too, but I don’t have it in me to deal with Mr. Zeller twice in the same day.”
I laughed back at my friend. “I say we get a couple of smoothies, and talk Bobby and MR into buying us dinner.”
“I didn’t know you cared so much about Ralph,” Eleanor wondered, pretending her confusion was serious.
“Myyy, my my,” I fanned myself with my hand as if I had a case of what the fine ladies of another time and place used to call “the vapors.” “Ah didn’t know,” I replied with a fake southern accent, “ah had no i-de-uh it was so obvious.” And then I followed up in my own voice, turning to make eye contact while we continued walking, “What is it about this guy,” talking about Bobby of course, “that I can’t get out of my head?” Just ahead, we could see the sign to “Everybody’s Favorite.”
“The way he eats hamburgers by the bag?” a reference to MR, when she knew it was Bobby I was talking about.
“You know, come to think about it,” I screwed up my face to make it look puzzled, “have we ever seen MR eat with utensils?”
“Hey, com’on…” Eleanor started to make a comment just as they walked up to the counter.
“I know, I know. Ralph’s a really good guy. I’ve got to stop kidding about… Wait a minute,” I interrupted myself, which is something I do way too often. “Are you and MR…?”
“Hi, Jane.” Eleanor pretended she hadn’t heard the question.
“Hey, Eleanor. Good to see you. What can I get for you?”
“I’d like a chocolate shake with Oreo pieces, please.”
“And ‘the usual’ for you, Elizabeth?” Jane never forgot a shake or smoothie. “Vanilla yogurt with fresh pineapple and a banana?”
“Yeah, thanks.” Some napkins and a couple of fat straws, and we were on our way to meet Bobby and MR.
(Rollo was sacked out in my backpack if you’re wondering why he wasn’t nudging me for something to eat.)
“That one. There. The one the lady’s holding up,” I said, pointing at the table in the opening up ahead. “Can’t have too many t-shirts.”
“Words to live by. You take a look. ...I need some earrings.” Eleanor’s voice trailed off as she walked away, across the aisle toward the jewelry table next to the “Wry Bread” deli counter. “Wry Bread,” according to the handwritten lettering below the big sign, home of “Esoterically Delicious Sandwiches Made to Order for Smart People with Good Taste, Not to Mention our Secret, Mind-Blowing Sauce.” Makes you want one, doesn’t it?
The t-shirt and jewelry tables were across from each other where the aisle split in two directions ahead of us. We were at the point where the three aisles came together to create a small clearing. There was the t-shirt stall, the jewelry table, the deli counter with angled glass shelves and a high counter, but also a few other tables and carts making it a busy intersection of people coming and going and stopping to shop.
Putting my vanilla, pineapple, banana smoothie down on the table, I remember smiling at the young married woman who sold her t-shirts at the market. I didn’t know her, but read the “Call me Lisa.” sleeveless shirt she was wearing. “Hi, Lisa. Do you have the blue one with the crab cake sandwich,” she pointed to one of the shirts on display, “in a small?”
“Sure. Just a second, but you may need a medium. I’ll get it for you,” she said, turning to step behind the huge t-shirt hanging on a wire that defined the back of her stall.
Bobby, who had passed on the water skis, and MR, working through his second bag of Little Tavern mini-burgers, were on their way, but not quite in view, having stopped to argue about Ralph’s insisting on onions which Bobby was trying to scrape off the one burger he was eating.
“Here.” Lisa handed Elizabeth the medium.
Holding the shirt in front of her to check the size, Elizabeth confirmed what the smile on Lisa’s face already told her. “It’s perfect.”
“Sure is.” It was a voice I didn’t recognize coming from Gene, leader of the three runabout boys standing behind me, uncomfortably close – close enough to smell the beer on his breath. (The stalls weren’t supposed to sell beer to minors, of course, but there was no carding and an older teenager could either fake it or get someone to buy beer for him. Sometimes kids would even steal a beer when someone put it down for a minute and wasn’t paying attention. I’d had a couple of beers, but hadn’t decided yet if I liked the way they tasted, except that I thought the draft kind was better, probably because of the foam. I like foam, the way it explodes when you pour coke or root beer on cold vanilla ice cream to make a float.) “Why don’t you try it on?” he suggested. His two friends, Pink and Floyd, were only a few feet away.
As was my way whenever I felt threatened, which wasn’t often, I turned my head slowly to look my problem directly in his eyes. I turned my head, but kept my back to him, the front of my body still facing Jane and the t-shirt table. The slow turn was instinctive, my natural way of buying the extra few seconds I needed to stay calm and plan my next move. Extending my left hand forward – I’m right handed. – I picked up my smoothie that I’d set on the table, just in case I needed something to throw at him. Throwing anything at anybody is serious business, a last resort, but a smoothie in the face – You can tell I’d thought about this before. – wouldn’t hurt him. What it would do is get his hands off me and give me the chance I might need to get away. That said, I decided to keep it simple, make eye contact and then ignore him, buy the shirt and get out of there – with Eleanor, who was busy shopping across the aisle and seemed, when I glanced over at her, to be having her own problem.
Turning back, I noticed the serious look on Lisa’s face, aimed at the boy behind me as if to warn him away, but then she relaxed and asked me, “So what do you think?” pretending to ignore the boy.
“It’s great. I’ll take it.” I loved the shirt, but the usual enthusiasm in my voice whenever I bought something was missing.
“Actually, I think I like this one better,” Gene interrupted, not talking about the one I was buying, but the one I was wearing, rubbing the material along the hem of my right short sleeve, on the back of my right arm, between his left thumb and first two fingers.
Instinctively, I recoiled, jerking my arm forward, turning and bumping into the edge of Lisa’s table. The move made me seem nervous which wasn’t what I wanted to do. Any sign of weakness, of fear, would just encour
age him. “Bullies feed off that kind of stuff,” a girl I’d had gym with told me once. It was the kind of advice that stayed with you.
“So where’s your cat?”
And just then I realized that Rollo must have hopped out. (Rollo was very keen on preparedness. It would be one thing to launch himself from my shoulder, but curled up inside a canvas backpack, he’d be vulnerable.) “He’s around,” I told him, not having the slightest idea where Rollo was. Slowly, once again, I turned to face him and said, slowly and with remarkable calm, if I do say so myself, “Keep your hands off me.” I was tall for fifteen and almost at eye level with Gene, who I’m guessing was sixteen or seventeen. When he first came up to the table, he was playing with a key chain in his left hand, twirling it around one of his fingers the way some boys do when they first get their licenses.
He stopped smiling, but didn’t move, choosing instead to reach for my t-shirt a second time.
“I really don’t think you want to do that,” I warned him, never taking my eyes off his. Making threats like this is risky business, I know, but what did I have to lose? I had to stay focused, and it beat letting him know I was scared.
“Or what?” he responded, taking a purposely long, unsettling look at my chest which was, at the time, a bit more developed than most for a girl my age – but then something distracted him. “What was.. ?” It was something moving fast behind the cloth that covered Lisa’s table.
Eleanor, thinking she’d ask my advice, had borrowed two pair of earrings from the vendor and turned to walk back to the t-shirt stand, but then stopped suddenly the moment she saw Gene standing next to me, fondling the sleeve of my shirt.
“Hey,” Floyd called out to Eleanor from only a few feet away, walking up with Pink, both of them carrying chocolate dipped soft-serve cones, trying hard to be cool. “You’re that other girl’s friend?” Floyd asked, having seen the two of us walking around together.
Eleanor didn’t respond, or move.
“I don’t suppose,” Pink couldn’t think of anything more clever to say, ”you two would like to share a… a pizza?” At least they were relatively harmless. It was a vibe, the harmless thing, I wasn’t getting from Gene.
“You’ve got to be kidding?” she thought to herself, not wanting to risk offending whoever these guys were. “It’s too hot for pizza,” Eleanor told him, avoiding eye contact, in her best, “we couldn’t be less interested” tone. “Thanks anyway,” she told him while refocusing her attention on me, thinking, more like hoping, Pink and Floyd would go away if she ignored them, not realizing the three of them, Gene included, were together.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” I decided to take the initiative, knowing for certain that he had. My voice was calm, not at all loud, but steady and firm, at least that was the idea. “Take your hand,” which was just an inch or so away from me, poised to grab my shirt again, “away from me, and do it now.” I thought about swatting Gene’s arm away, but didn’t want to touch, let alone hit him.
“Miss,” it was Lisa from behind the counter, “do you need me to call someone?” looking at the boy while she waited for me to answer.
And still Gene didn’t move, glancing briefly and smiling at his friends walking over toward them, from where Eleanor was standing. He may have wanted to back down, but not now, not with the other two boys watching. And then the two of them – Pink and Floyd – both looked to their right for a moment, without really knowing why.
Eleanor saw it too, but she knew what it was. ..And there, again, behind the next table. And now, out on the floor in the clearing where the three aisles came together, he slowed to a full stop.
The slanted glass front of the “Wry Bread” deli counter was to his left, Eleanor a bit to the right of that. Of the two brothers, Pink was closest to Eleanor, maybe three feet from her, with Floyd a couple or so feet further away into the aisle. Both of them were licking their ice cream cones, almost in unison, with way too much enthusiasm if you ask me. Gene, their leader was another five feet or so further, across the aisle. And then there was me, almost right up against the creep, pinned between him and the t-shirt table behind me, with no room for me to back up.
There we were, laid out in a shallow semi-circle maybe ten feet in front of him. (Just in case you’re not following this, the “him” I’m talking about, there in the clearing, was Rollo, as fearless and, pound for pound, as dangerous a being as there has ever been. If cats had “special forces” – you know, the soldiers with no necks who can eat dirt, hold their breath forever underwater and singlehandedly take out a company of bad guys without so much as breaking a sweat – Rollo would have been their leader.) Bobby and MR, still a good distance away down the aisle, were meandering their way in no particular hurry, unaware that anything was up.
Like a world-class pool player, the kind who brings his own cue stick to every match, the cat instinctively knew the angles he would play, each one setting up his next move. He wasn’t a shooter you’d want to bet against, but then the runabout boys didn’t know that, did they?
There in the middle of the clearing, the large gray, black and white cat stood his ground. Rollo lowered his rear end slightly, the muscles of his powerful rear legs tensing for action. His front legs were spread, one forward of the other, neck down, his shoulder blades rising above the plane of his back, his huge head angled upward slightly, staring from under protruding eyebrows right at, and only at the face of the boy in front of me. “Murrrrrrrr,” he growled softly, his cat voice surprisingly deep, not so much to scare anyone, but as my backup, even though he was certain I could handle myself. “You heard her,” he seemed to be saying. “Back off.”
“Well, hello kitty.” Gene recognized the cat he’d seen save Danny. “Come over here,” he summoned the animal, taking his hand away from Elizabeth to make a rubbing motion with his fingers while he made a chirping, sort of kissing noise with his mouth – and then lurching his head forward suddenly in a silly attempt to frighten the cat who never took his eyes off of him. “Hey!!” he shouted at Rollo, only to be surprised that nothing seemed to phase him.
All the while, people continued to walk through, in and about the intersection, an occasional “Excuse me” coming from the more polite pedestrians, but most of them oblivious to what was going on. One couple had a retriever on a leash who saw Rollo – a cat who didn’t even bother to look at the dog more than twice his size – and pulled the woman holding the leash to the side, giving Rollo the widest possible berth the aisle would allow, and then picking up his pace, almost trotting until he was clear of the area, his owner in toe behind him.
And then Rollo rolled his huge head to his right, then back to his left as if relaxing his neck. Instead of running, the way most cats would have, hiding behind this or under that, Rollo not only held his ground, he actually took a step forward, re-assuming that wolf-like stance, with one leg forward, neck down, eyes up under protruding eyebrows, dead on his opponent, once again making the surprisingly deep “Mmurrrrrr” sound that was his version of a growl.
“Whoa,” Gene couldn’t check his reaction to such a bold countermove for a small furry animal. He pulled his neck and shoulders back in surprise, but still didn’t take Rollo seriously.
By now, all eyes were on Rollo, except mine which were already focused on Gene’s face when he turned back to confront me. There was no smile on Gene’s face now, and nothing, so I was told, but strength on mine – exactly the impression I was trying to make, by the way – as we looked directly at each other, way too close, barely a foot, well less than an arm’s length apart. Seeing not the slightest hint of intimidation, but only a threatening look he didn’t want to deal with now, Gene dropped his shoulders and pulled back slightly. For at least a moment, I had the upper hand.
“Having a problem with the little kitty?” Pink smirked from across the clearing, him and Floyd smiling between the licks of their chocolate dipped soft serve cones, taunting their friend.
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“Anything we can do to help?” Floyd asked sarcastically.
Rollo turned his head, very slowly, reconfirming the precise position of the three boys, and started backing up. He’d go in high onto the deli counter to avoid sliding down its glass front, take out the two boys near Eleanor, using them to gain altitude on his way to his primary target, the boy threatening me.
“Hey. Looks like you scared him, like he’s finally come to his senses,” Pink said, starting to laugh, but no one else did, so he stopped talking and went back to sucking the ice cream in his cone into a point.
Just then, Rollo stopped, rolling his neck to one side, back to the other and then centering it. Extending his left front leg forward, he slid his right front leg outward, pushing his paw against the ground once, and then a second time as if to make sure he had the traction he needed. Shoulders down, head up slightly, the muscles of his rear legs were tense. Rollo was good to go.
“Eleanor,” I called to her in a calm voice, “could you,” I wanted Eleanor out of the way, “come over here for a second?” And then, without taking my eyes off Gene, “Lisa, would you mind saving it, the shirt, for me? I’ll stop back later.”
“Sure.” Lisa was glad to help.
“Thanks.” I figured, if I just walked away, this incident would be over. And that’s what I started to do, turning to my left to walk across the aisle, thinking Eleanor and I would leave together. “We’ll be okay,” I told myself, but it was more the sound of wishful thinking than reality that I was hearing.
Just then, Gene grabbed my right arm, unwilling to give up that easily with his friends watching. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked me, more as a command than a question.
This time, there was nothing slow about my reaction. Pulling back, I ripped my arm out of his grip and threw my favorite smoothie in his face, which was hard to miss as close as we were standing together.
Gene jumped back, startled by the strength and quickness of my move, barely noticing that Lisa had rushed behind the backdrop of her stall.
“Hey!!” Gene shouted at me. I had caught him off guard, both his hands going to his face to wipe off the shake. Pink and Floyd just stood there, wanting to laugh at him, but afraid to do it, and otherwise useless without their leader telling them what to do.
That moment the boys were distracted? It was all our small hero needed. In a flash so quick it hardly attracted anyone’s attention, he was off and running – not away, not from, but at the problem, launching himself toward the angled front of the deli counter to his left, onto the corner of it closest to where he left the ground.
For Eleanor and me, it was one of those high adrenalin moments, not the kind when your chest is pounding. No. Beyond that, when your brain speeds up and everything starts happening in slow motion.
So powerful was his leap that he easily cleared the glass, his forearms and then his rear feet landing on the wooden counter where customers came to place their orders, his rear claws catching just as he re-tensed his muscles, his head and eyes already turning right, locked on to his first target. Banking off the deli counter, Rollo gained altitude, landing on and then jumping off Pink’s back before he could duck the rocket of fur flashing past him. He was the one standing nearest to Eleanor who spun around to follow Rollo’s trajectory. From there, from Pink’s shoulders, Rollo leaped three more feet on his way to Floyd’s face, the force of his kick off shoving Pink back and off balance.
“Whoa!” an older woman with shopping bags ducked while Rollo cruised over her head, and then turned back, still hunched over, to see what in the world it was. Never in any danger, she was short and Rollo cleared her by a good foot before he landed this time on the side of Floyd’s face and neck. Trying to get out of the way, Floyd had actually turned toward Rollo and the, when Rollo hit him, he lost his balance. Falling forward, Floyd hit the concrete hard with one knee and the palm of one of his hands, knocking over a rack of vintage comic books on his way down – taking Rollo down with him.
While Floyd tried to right himself, Rollo kept moving, doing his best to stay clear of the Floyd’s flailing arms while he (Rollo) calculated his next move. Unfortunately, Rollo lost altitude when Floyd bit the dust. The good news is that it was just then that a couple walked by engrossed in whatever they’d been talking about. The man, who was over six foot tall, hadn’t been paying attention and didn’t realize he was about to be part of the action.
Pushing off Floyd’s shoulder, Rollo decided to borrow the tall man’s chest. I’m mean, why not? No one improvises better than Rollo. Hitting the man’s chest dead center, Rollo counted on him being big enough to stay put, although he did reel back a bit. The man’s eyebrows rising, his eyes extra-wide open, he was more than a bit surprised by what he thought was a wild animal attacking him.
Without hurting the man, although he did tear the guy’s shirt, Rollo looked him in his eyes – but only for a fraction of a second when he banked off the man’s upper chest. Upside down, his back to the ground, Rollo rolled 180 degrees in mid-air on his way to Gene who was still busy wiping milkshake off his face. Even so, when he saw Rollo coming, Gene managed to swing his arm and catch Rollo hard on his right side and chest, slapping him down onto the pavement.
A smaller, less muscular cat would have been badly hurt, or worse. As it was, the blow hurled Rollo a good ten feet, tumbling to the pavement past where I was standing. His rear legs trying to regain control, his front claws finally took hold in the grouting between two of the concrete floor panels and, in a flash, he was on his way back when I held up the flat of my hand, signaling him to hold.
All the ruckus finally attracted Bobby’s and MR’s attention, now only 25 or 30 feet away, sharing their second bag of mini-burgers Ralph that was holding. Seeing there was a problem, they stopped stuffing their faces and picked up the pace, Bobby running ahead while Middle Ralph chewed faster to swallow the cheek-full he’d been working on. (Bad grammar, I know, ending with a preposition like that, but I’m in a hurry to get this out.) Excusing himself between people in front of him, Bobby stretched his neck to stay focused on Elizabeth in the now crowded aisle between the shops ahead of him. He could see Eleanor, but the aisle was slightly curved, and the t-shirt table was around the bend, still out of sight.
While Gene moved to help Floyd, who was bleeding slightly from his neck from when Rollo had landed, claws out, on his face, I seized the opening and walked quickly toward Eleanor, doing my best to seem composed, like I had this whole thing under control from the beginning.
“So, uh” Eleanor tried to lighten the moment, “how’s your afternoon going?” I could always count on Eleanor to be there for me.
Looking down at Eleanor, who was a good three inches shorter, even I was surprised by the nervous humor of her response. “I’m still dying for something to eat. How ‘bout you?” Eleanor asked. “..I’ll buy?” Those were the magic words.
“I’m in.”
Even with the help of his friends, Gene and Pink, Floyd fumbled his first attempt to get up, almost falling again, slipping on what was left of his ice cream cone while he wiped blood from the scratches on the side of his shoulder where Rollo’s powerful rear feet had taken hold. And now Gene could turn his attention to more pressing business, something relatively small, with fur.
Rollo was still there on the pavement, still not going anywhere, looking up at me, waiting to make sure I was safe. Now it was my turn to take care of him, and right now that meant stepping up in front of Gene who was on his way to deal with Rollo.
“Stay where you are,” I warned him.
“Or what?” Gene responded, stopping for a moment. “You think that cat’s going to save you?” he threatened, his eyes on the furry creature behind her.
“Mearrkkkk!! …Murrrrrrrr.”
“You know, that’s the second time you’ve asked me that question.”
“What?”
“The ‘Or what?’ question. And
you know, the first time you asked was one too many. As for the second time, just now.. Well, I’m beginning to think you really, really don’t get the point.” Turning to look over my shoulder, I bent my knees slightly. Extending my arm down, the top of my hand facing up, I called to the animal behind me. “Up, Rollo!” Onto my arm in an effortless jump, he glided quickly up to my shoulder and then perched there, his left paw around the back of my neck for balance, his head leaning forward in the direction of our enemy, Rollo’s eyes flickering gold in the on and off shade from a banner flapping just outside the canopy over the market. If Gene was going to deal with either one of us, he was going to have to deal with us both. Now, as to what precisely we were going to do now, other then standing there looking cool and as tall and menacing as we could, we hadn’t a clue.
“Everything okay here?” Thank goodness. It was the usually soft voice of the young police officer who had walked up behind the three boys, stepping between Bobby and MR on his way to help us. “…Lisa?” he said to the woman who sold the t-shirts. “You set off the silent alarm?”
“Yes. Good to see you,” she offered a relieved smile to accompany her words. He was one of the policemen who worked the downtown on weekends, and they’d talked before when he made his rounds in the morning, just before the fair opened for business. They’d talked then about the silent alarms strategically placed behind the stalls in the market, just in case.
“No problem, Officer,” Gene piped in contritely. “Just a misunderstanding.” Suddenly he was nice. “We were just leaving.” Pink and Floyd were quiet, looking down, this way and that, anywhere except at the policeman. Floyd was still holding a napkin on his neck to stop the bleeding that was obvious, but not at all serious. Their cones, on the ground where they fell during the scuffle, were already being cleaned up by one of the city employees.
“I’ll tell you what,” the officer suggested, as if they had any choice, “why don’t the four of us…” This time he was looking at Pink and Floyd, his demeanor and proximity demanding they make eye contact and pay attention. “…grab a table across the street and talk for a few minutes,” which they did.
As Lisa would tell me later, he got Gene’s and Floyd’s drivers’ licenses and walked them back to their runabout with a stern (no boat pun intended) warning about any future visits they might make to his city. Just in case, he’d follow up with the local police where they lived and, hopefully, that would be that. “They’re bullies, especially the one that grabbed you, and not very good one’s at that,” the officer reassured me when I saw him later. “I don’t think they’ll be a problem.” And, to this day, I still don’t know their real names.
A few minutes later, I was walking with Bobby, Rollo trotting along side of us, sniffing this and that, and MR with Eleanor a few feet back. We’d stepped out from under the covered area of the open market, with fresh designer smoothies – pineapple banana being my favorite, as you know. It was still a beautiful afternoon. Why not enjoy it by walking past the flowering azaleas that lined the harbor bulkhead? It was a moment and time we would remember, fortunately undisturbed by the unseen glare of the three boys, staring back at the five of us from their runabout, slow motoring out of the harbor and out of sight, for now.
“You know,” Bobby told me, “I’m beginning to think I can’t leave you alone without your getting into trouble. Maybe..”
“Maybe you shouldn’t leave me alone,” I finished his thought, just in case that wasn’t what he was going to say.
No question about it, we were flirting, Bobby walking in the direction we were going, with me in front of him – I’d practiced walking backwards for just such a moment. – turning to face him until I got worried about walking off the bulkhead into the water. Pausing for a moment, he bent down to pull the perfect red flower from one of the bushes, took a step forward and reached up to slide it into the hair above my ear. (There was a little stabbing pain on the side of my head, but I ignored it rather than spoil the mood.)
My first instinct was to put him off, even though I didn’t mean to. I was nervous, but in a good way, not like when that creep was grabbing my shirt. Raising my right hand, as if I wanted him to keep his distance, I touched his chest, and then let it stay there. “I’m not pretty enough. It’s not like me to wear a flower in my hair.”
“Are you kidding?” Bobby smiled back. “You’d be doing the flower a favor.” It wouldn’t have worked if it had been rehearsed, but it wasn’t, and it did.
It was a great line and a wonderful gesture I couldn’t resist. I looked him in the eyes, finally remembered to blink, and turned away to continue our walk, his hand reaching out to touch, but just short of holding mine.
“Excuse me.”
No response.
“Excuse me.” It was MR, followed by Eleanor, trotting to catch up. “Guys? Com’on. Are we doing the field trip tomorrow or what?”
Bobby and I stopped and looked at each other, and Eleanor caught up, just a little out of breath. “Will someone puh-leeze tell me where we’re going?”
To be continued…
“Ahhh.” That was me, sighing. “I miss those days. Don’t you, Rollo? That night was the first time Bobby kissed me, the first time I kissed him,” I said, smiling at how I could remember every detail of the moment, at how I could still feel that kiss four years later. “Wow, that was great. You were there too, Rollo. Do you remember? ..Rollo?” Pushing back and spinning around twice in my chair – a move I’d been practicing for the desk chair football we play in the hallways – I stopped to look at my bed at the only cat I know that sleeps spread out, stomach down, arms and legs going in different directions, face down in my pillow – and snores.
“Mrrrr. ..Mrrrr. ..Mrrr. ..Mr-r-rrrrr. ..Mrrr.”
“Hm. Just as well. I’ve got to study.”
* * *