--16--

On any given day anywhere she had ever lived, Virginia might open the door to a pair of nicely dressed young people carrying a Bible and kindly offering to explain it to her. For the most part, a simple No thanks had made them go away. Now, however she felt positively pursued, and it was hard to calm the nebulous fears floating in her mind. No, Virginia, there isn’t a world-wide Christian conspiracy that has access to your every step and sets up supposedly “casual encounters” in the form of innocent-looking young people who cross your path and accost you at a time and place you frequent. They don’t send written pleas as hand-written letters to addresses you are known to reside at. They haven’t offered a bounty for bringing you into the fold. She chided herself for allowing paranoia to take possession of her so easily. What did these mysterious harassers have to gain by devoting elbow grease and resources to pursuing her? Yet once the idea had occurred to her, it was surprisingly difficult to shake off.

She was meeting Steve on Thursday evening, date night. He was cooking for her. She had suggested bringing a salad or something to help, but he said it wasn’t necessary. So she stuck a little box of chocolates in her bag as her contribution. She apologized to Anax for leaving her with her other family. “Sorry, but you weren’t specifically invited. Maybe he forgot about you.” Then again, maybe he had designs on her, and Anax would have interfered with his plans.

Steve’s house was a short drive away, and she parked in his driveway, as he had suggested. Shelly greeted her at the door. “Anax says hi,” Virginia told her. Shelly’s whole rear end wagged.

“Would you like a drink?” asked Steve.

Not a trick question, she was fairly sure. Nevertheless, like the “Oh, are you free on Sunday mornings?” question, it masked a host of unspoken issues. Virginia didn’t think it was necessary they both feel exactly the same about alcohol, but she was interested to know what he preferred to drink and in particular, how much.

“What are you offering?” she asked.

“I make a mean Manhattan.”

“Great! That’s my favorite.” She watched him make it. “You use rye?” she asked.

“Absolutely! That’s the only way.”

“Really? I usually make it with bourbon.”

“Rye,” he said with a smile. “That’s the true Manhattan.”

“What do you think, Shelly?” Virginia asked the dog.

“She’s a closet drinker,” said Steve. “Water closet.” Shelly pushed her forepaws up and thrust her nose at Virginia’s knees. “She’s looking for a handout.”

“Oh, can I give her a treat?” Virginia dug in her pocket for a stray piece of dog candy. She glanced at Steve to be sure it was okay, then held out the treat. The dog sat reflexively, her neck extended eagerly as she waited for the treat to be hers. Virginia dropped it, and the mouth opened and closed with a snap. “So how’s Paris coming?” she asked. “It took quite a surprising turn there.”

Virginia and her husband had shared the occasional Manhattan on special days, like their anniversary. She and Matt had not even dated in college; she just knew who he was because they had a class together. When they crossed paths in grad school, it was a surprise to them both. In the meantime, Virginia had been going out with a guy she had met in a summer drama program. He was a set builder. He was the kind who started the day with a beer because it “relaxed” him, and he didn’t stop drinking until he fell into bed. He grew more combative as the night wore on. He was never physically violent, but he loved to argue, fancied he was good at it, and he was determined to win, even when the best he could come up with was, “You don’t agree with me because you’re ignorant.”

Virginia had been quite attached to Rick, and it was hard for her to admit it just wasn’t working out. To her surprise, when she brought the subject up, he readily admitted he had a drinking problem, and he agreed that her concern was a sign she cared about him. After some discussion, he suggested that he would keep track, and he would only consume five things in a day. A “thing” was understood to be a beer, a glass of wine, a cocktail, or a shot glass of hard liquor. In return, she agreed not to smoke any marijuana. At all. Because Rick didn’t like it.

Of course neither of them kept their part of the bargain. Virginia sneaked out to smoke behind the garage, and Rick stopped counting after the second beer. How long ago that seemed! She had smoked at pretty much every opportunity in those days, right up until it became legal. Then for some reason it had lost its appeal.

Steve waved a joint suggestively, and Virginia hesitated. “I don’t want to drive stoned,” she said.

“Well you won’t be stoned any more in a couple hours. Think we can find enough to talk about?”

“Okay,” she said, hoping he wasn’t one of those who thought that as soon as you accepted getting high together you were automatically agreeing to follow through with sex. Then again, maybe subconsciously she kind of hoped he was. Because this one-month rule was fading fast. She waved the joint away after two or three hits and walked over to the bookcase to see what he had. No surprises there. Hemingway, Steinbeck, Bukowski, Asimov, Heinlein. Was her own bookshelf equally revealing? Undoubtedly. The books from graduate school were on one side, the fat section of mysteries by women writers on the other. Amanda, the daughter of a librarian, arranged her books in a quirky version of the Dewey Decimal system. She had put her finger immediately on the Virginia Woolf book they were talking about.

Steve stepped out of the kitchen carrying some food to the table.

“Don’t you read anything written since the year 2000?” she asked.

“Well, sure. I just don’t buy books much anymore. I either get them from the library or on my computer.”

“What are you reading now?”

“Haruki Murakami. Great stuff. Sort of a mixture of real and unreal."

“Like yours.”

“Well yeah. I try to do that too. Only I would say, ‘Like life.’”

“How do you think it survives the translation?”

“You’re talking about life or the Japanese?”

“Take your pick.”

“I don’t know Japanese, or any language for that matter, well enough to be able to say how good the translation is. I can only say I like the book. And most of what people call fantasy seems perfectly realistic to me. I’ve never read anything calling itself fantasy that didn’t seem like a perfectly straightforward story dressed up in fancy language with a lot of colorful imagery. Take one example—a kid goes to a school where you go to learn magic? That’s what school is, there’s nothing fantastic about it. Or that one about the ring that makes you invisible? Try getting old, it works like a charm. Then there’s the prince who wakes up the princess from a lifelong sleep with a kiss—well, duh, nobody needs an explanation for that.”

“You’re right, of course. And if your life is anything like mine, it could very easily be portrayed as a mixture of the real and the almost-real, and not just on a figurative basis.”

“You mean, like, keys that walk off and hide themselves?”

“I’m thinking more in terms of hearing things that aren’t audible, seeing things as a distorted version of themselves, finding thoughts in your mind that don’t belong there—that kind of thing.”

“Can’t you give the thoughts an eviction notice, threaten to call the police if they don’t leave?”

“Not that kind of thoughts. I’m perfectly willing to entertain them, I just want to know how they got in there. Is the door wide open, or did they sneak around to the back and crawl in the window? If it’s an open door, does that mean it goes both ways, and my thoughts are slipping out on the sly and breaking into other people’s minds? I suppose I could go around asking. You, for example, have you caught my thoughts raiding the refrigerator at your place after hours? Have you been meaning to give them the boot?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. But I bet I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re saying to yourself, ‘The munchies kicked in a while ago, and it really isn’t kind of him to stand here talking while the food is sitting there on the table getting cold.’”