The Books that Never made it

Finding the green eyes and the pink floppy hat

I’d tracked her for a year, and now, I lied in wait.

Hiding behind my big square tinted black sunglasses and baseball cap, I looked like I was working undercover for the FBI. I held my coffee cup up to my mouth, but made no motion to drink it as I watched the grocery street mart across the road that was blocked up for the people and their stands. There were so many people, it was a jubilee of faces and voices, the movement almost was too much, all the people all the faces, but I was in control of my senses.

I just needed to see one face.

        In the year I’d tracked her I’d scored birth certificates, home address, mailing address, Facebook, Twitter, work, phone number, cell phone number, street address, name, last name, anything and everything to get my hands on it and I did it all on my own.

The sun was shining bright. It was supposed to, it was the middle of the summer and it was July, days away from her birthday. It was dangerous what I was doing, snooping around the point of breaking the law—but I needed to. I needed answers to the burning questions that kept me rolling around in my bed all night. I could feel her in the back of my mind, her name climbing the sides of my head and squirming out through my ears like someone was whispering her name.

        Every Friday she came here, every Friday she would come by around 11 o’clock AM and stay for usually an hour before leaving. I knew this from her neighbor across that street of where she lived, Hella, a little old woman who would always be up watering her flowers watching her as she left the house and went into town, usually bringing her back a jar of honey. I’d remembered the look she’d given me when she asked, “Why?” I’d only said I was an old friend who wanted to catch up with her, but it was a lie. Even I knew it was much more.

        I yawned; still tired from the countless nights I’d skipped out on sleep, drowning myself in caffeine to stay awake to look up that one piece of information that would bring me closer to her, closer to answers, closer to her.

I took a regretful sip of my coffee, grimacing at the bitter taste that swelled in my mouth and the heat that’d soured to a dull warmth. I bit back the tang and focused my gaze back at the flock of people that flooded the streets.

Until something pink caught my eye.

        I kicked my legs down from the table where I had them propped and leaned forward, squinting my eyes behind my glasses. It was a woman, walking with a floppy sunhat that was perched on top of her head, so big; it blocked the sun from her shoulders. I quickly reached with shaky fingers into my pocket, fingering around for a crinkled piece of paper and unfolded, reading the scribbled words on the wrinkled piece of paper.

Pink floppy hat with white flower.

I glanced up at the woman who wandered down the sidewalk with a Kleenex white strapless stress that outlined her thin shapely figure. On top of the pig pink hat sat an unmistakeably white lily on the right, sticking out like a beacon.

        There was a twinge of certainty in the bottom on my stomach as I watched her. It was her, it had to be. From the graceful movement of her arms as they swung by her side, one hand clutching a brown bag that was thrown over her shoulder and the other one swaying freely, to the knee high heel-less boots she wore.