Chapter 8

Virginia dressed more carefully for her meeting with Steve than she had for Dave. Not, she told herself, because it was Sunday, or even because she wanted to make a good impression. It was simply because she felt like it. It was still warm enough out to make a skirt a sensible choice. She had a lightweight jumper that looked great over a nice t-shirt, one with tight little sleeves and a real neckline. No one could accuse her of “dressing up,” and she would be comfortable, whether they decided to sit or walk around.

She arrived right on time and asked the server if anyone was expecting someone. It was a relief that her eyes weren’t acting up, and in fact it was reassuring that she didn’t pick out Steve until he was pointed out to her. She had been a little worried that the issues with Dave, which only appeared when she saw him, might end up resurfacing; the whole incident had been more than a little unsettling.

Steve looked to be quite tall, with a trim little beard and mostly gray hair. There was a twinkle in his eye as he invited her to sit down, and he started right out, “You’re wondering what Anax would think of me.”

“Hold it right there,” she said. “Are you reading my mind?” Because that was the exact thought she had just had.

“No,” he said. “You glanced at the floor, and I could just see you were expecting to see a familiar little face there. Plus that’s always my first thought when I meet somebody new: What would Shelly think? Her first impressions are pretty reliable. It makes me want to take her along, or even arrange a surprise chance meeting before that all-important first phone call.”

This sounded completely reasonable to Virginia. “Have you ever tried it?” she asked.

“What, and look like a loonie? Only a fellow dog owner—companion, I should say, nobody owns Shelly—would understand, and not every one of those.”

This was pretty unusual for a first date, but Virginia decided to keep it going.

“Is it all dogs, do you think? Or is it a special bond you have with Shelly?”

“Hard to say. I’m kind of new to dog o—, I mean companionship. Been moving around too much. But I definitely think people underestimate dogs, and other animals too. People mostly assume we're so superior to every other living thing it gives us the right to treat them like just that—things. I’ve learned stuff from Shelly.”

It was a new idea to Virginia, and a very appealing one. “Can you give an example?”

“Well, once in a while she gets ticked off about something. Maybe somebody yells at her, or she doesn’t get something she wants. So she might sulk for a bit. She goes and lies down on her bed for a minute. If you didn’t know her well you could miss it. But she never holds a grudge. That’s one of the reasons they’re our best friends. It’s not because they’re too stupid to know when to get mad, it’s because they’re smart enough to know when to stop.”

“Are they smarter than other animals, like cats, for example?”

“I’ve never lived with a cat. But from what I hear, they’re not as into people as dogs are. More self-sufficient. Smart in a different way. As far as that goes, squirrels are smart. Have you ever seen what lengths they’ll go to to rob a bird feeder?”

“No, I’m not that into birds.”

“Here, let me show you a picture.” He pulled out his phone and paged through until he found the picture he wanted. Sure enough, the squirrel had braced its legs against a post and was stretched to its limit, grabbing onto the bottom edge of the seed container. “That’s a guaranteed squirrel-proof model.”

“You should get your money back.”

They both laughed. Not that her remark was so terribly clever; it just showed that they were both relaxed and ready to be amused. She was starting to feel this was the kind of person she could be friends with, whether or not it ever went any further. She decided to dip a little deeper. Movies and hiking were for dorks. “Do you like to take pictures?”

“No, I’m a writer.”

“In other words, that’s the art you practice?”

“That’s right. You said you’re a photographer? I’d like to see what you do.”

That was the right thing to say! “I’ve got a bunch out in the car. I’ll go get them.”

She brought in the notebook filled with plastic pages, each page an eight by ten enlargement of one of her best nature pictures. Together she and Steve pushed their cups, sugars and other table litter aside so they could both look at the open book at the same time. She had arranged the pictures in a seasonal progression, starting with winter and ending with a couple of fall scenes. Only a few were set in Colorado from earlier trips.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“That’s Itasca State Park, in northern Minnesota. The headwaters of the Mississippi. You can walk across it there.”

Steve studied the picture. “Amazing, when you think where it ends up. It’s like it has a whole life, no, it is a whole life, seen from the outside, not from the point of view of the person living it. But you have to know what it is to see that in the picture.”

“Are you suggesting it’s alive? that the whole long river is the same as a single person?”

 “A single person at different parts of their life. You and I can’t really see from more than one point of view. It’s like reading a book. You only see the part that’s in front of you, a little at a time, until you finish it. How would it feel to be a book? The river, on the other hand, moves forward on its own. That’s pretty close to what I do. For all I know, it could be as conscious as I am. I have no idea what a river perceives from its multiple viewpoints.”

How would it feel to be a book or a river? She had wondered from time to time how it would feel to be a dog, but this was way farther from reality. Yet, when she thought about it, it was well within the possibilities of the human imagination. There was that poem by A. A. Milne where he spoke from the point of view of a teddy bear. And if she put her mind to it, she was sure she could find a lot more examples. So why not?

He turned the page. “Is this in Minnesota too?”

“Yes, it’s a typical snow scene.”

 “The color of the sky is amazing. Very ‘Now it’s time to go to sleep-ish.’ Making us wonder, Will we ever wake up again? At least it’s a peaceful end.” He turned the page again. “Ah! The world awakens.”

Steve made appreciative sounds and complimentary remarks about each picture. They spent a good 10 or 15 minutes observing and commenting on the changing of the seasons. By the time they finished, Virginia had definitely decided she wanted to meet him again. She had learned that he wrote fiction and was working on a novel, and she had asked him to send her a sample to read before their next date.

“It’s kind of science fiction-y,” he warned.

“That’s okay. I’ve been reading science fiction since way back. I like it.”

Then they continued to break with tradition when he said, “How about lunch tomorrow?” instead of suggesting a movie or a hike. As she drove home she was going over in her mind exactly what words to use when Amanda and the kids asked how her date had been. No gushing. It would inevitably jinx the relationship to describe it in glowing terms or make Steve look somehow more perfect than he could realistically appear after an hour and a half of idle chitchat. But it was okay to say that she liked him. She would be enthusiastic, but restrained. She would avoid embroidering on the things that had pleased her, merely mention them and allow the others to draw their own conclusions. Above all, she would read whatever Steve sent closely. She hoped he would send it soon.