I was eating a subway sandwich with this girl named Josie. She’s hot. I mean she really is the prettiest girl I’ve known so far in 25 years. She’s thin, like me, that type who keeps her weight off by eating when her stomach growls. The bench is a little wet from the rain this morning, and then again the free cookie she scored from the sandwich artist makes up for it somehow. All she did was ask and she got her way. I was glad it stopped raining.
So I met her at this party as I was talking to everyone. She just sort of chirped in out of nowhere. I talk a lot. I don’t know if that matters in life, talking, but I’d say she likes it when I talk. Sometimes we sit, so far it’s been all we do, and I talk for hours about what seems nonsense to me. You know, like what type of cheese is the best cheese on a nacho dish, or sometimes I ask her rhetorical questions so I can talk about myself. I know there’s this strange chemistry between us, if you believe in that stuff. I wonder how long that will last.
Oh Anthony, don’t you see what you’re doing? You can’t just let the time go by. You’re here with this beautiful woman, you say it yourself, and you’re busy trying to figure out why she could ever like the things you say for no reason.
“I like the bread they got with the cheese baked into it. Sorry, I’m talking about cheese again. But I really like cheese, I don’t know why I have such an affinity for the stuff. Remember those broccoli commercials?”
“Never underestimate the power of cheese,” she answers chewing and pointing inside with her sandwich.
“I can’t believe he heard us talking about the cookies from all the way out here.”
“You have that sort of voice that people listen to.”
Yeah, I know. It’s like a bark more than a voice.”
I like her voice. She chews in this funny hungry hippo way, which is sortof cheeky. I like that too.
“So what’s your plan for the weekend? Anything worth noting with me?”
He can see himself sitting there on that bench, the cars passing in colors to watch, their momentary entertainment. Horns honking, he doesn’t notice them, nor the birds chirping the way they do after the rainstorm gives up hope.
“I’m glad it quit raining.”
“Just can’t rain forever. I’m thirsty. Can I have a sip?”
He hands her the large drink. Large despite free refills. Eyes bigger than his stomach always lead to poor digestion.
“I ate too fast.”
“Well then don’t eat so fast.” She is almost done with the bite she was chewing, so she wraps the remainder of sandwich into the waxpaper sheath, stuffs it in the plastic bag, and stuffs that into her simple sandwich sized purse. “I’m taking this for dinner.”
“Want to go out to eat sometime?”
“Well, not tonight, but sometime, sure. When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“How about lunch?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, see you at one.”
And then they part, with a kiss, that one kiss she and he share as routine. He likes the formality of a goodbye kiss, and then again what is it about that certain kiss, the one that says this is the same kiss as yesterday and the same as tomorrow, if tomorrow is sure to come. And then again, is it that certain kiss which makes tomorrow come, or the kiss of death, he wonders, the one which means things will never change, that his life is a cycle of over and over again? You know he wonders these things. He wonders why he talks so much about cheese. He wonders about the way he looks on a wet park bench with a beautiful woman, as if the beautiful woman wasn’t enough to him. He wonders and his eyes will fall out from all that wondering. Only so many thoughts a mind can visualize at once.
And this is how they meet, eye to eye. They are two different people for sure. You can hear it in their voices. You see how different they sound? Just two very average people, right? Sitting on a bench outside a fast food sandwich place trying not too hard to please anyone, yet something happens which sounds good to both of them.
And they are in love already; you can see the whistles and bells. How long will it last? Have we time to cover each mundane incident in the life of one born again living? Of course not. Let’s move on to something a little more incidental.