We set our sunglasses and Snowball on the little kitchen table. At Jessica's insistence, I sat down at the table, and resumed adoring Snowball, while Jessica went into the kitchen. She refused any help "Your job is to keep Snowball occupied" she said while pulling things out of cabinets and the fridge. Another opened beer appeared in front of me as well. A different IPA "Try that one" she said. "From Hops and Grains. I think you will like it."
It was good as well. More citrusy than the 512. No label on the bottle at all and the fact that it is a bottle meant it is another one-off. H&G only does cans. "I like it very much." I told her.
"80 IBU. 7.5% as I recall" she said. I believe it. I like a more bitter beer to cut the sweetness of the malt. Which made me ask her "Ever have the Oskar Blues Hotbox IPA? IPA bittered with coffee?"
She stopped knocking around for a second and answered "Up at the Colorado brewery. Not the one here. I like it."
I need to go to the used beer department, but that seems to not be hydraulically possible.
On the little passthrough between the kitchenette and the table sat a picture frame. The picture is of Snowball, sitting on the bench of the aft deck where we just were. It was bright and they were near a shore someplace in the picture. "I see you have a picture of your baby".
Jessica glanced over, and even though she could only see the back of it, she smiled. "Yeah: my furr-child"
"I'd show you my two furr-kids, but I left the phone back in the car. Parking lot top of the hill."
"Too bad. I would like to see them." Jessica said sincerely.
We were quickly situated with an array of blue corn tortilla chips, dips that included her fresh Guacamole, cheese, crackers, and thinly sliced meats. Jessica sat down opposite me at the table, the array in easy reach for both of us. This arrangement let me look directly at her face sans sunglasses for an extended period of time. So interesting: full lips, high cheekbones, thick dark eyebrows, and all the other things that go along with exotic and old-world beauty. Not a carved Cameo kind of classic beauty. Not a delicate flower. Her smile is full, wide, easy, un-assumed, and revealed evenly spaced white teeth.
As she talked, all sorts of tiny expressions flitted across her face. Her appearance changed as she turned so that from one angle it seemed her nose is her most prominent feature. From another angle, it is her mouth or her eyes that stand out.
She talked about how she came to rescue Snowball from a truck stop. How a beautiful, well-behaved cat like Snowball got loose at a truck stop and there were not people frantically looking for her is beyond me. It was beyond Jessica as well. Jessica had looked and looked, and gone around all the parked trucks asking. No one claimed her, so she took her home. She realized I was nodding and studying her face after a while.
"Are you listening at all?" Jessica asked.
I tried to look hurt. "Jessica! Please! Every word. In summary: Snowball found at a truck stop. Many trucks, some of the men nice, other men pigs. Knees to the groin occasionally required and quickly administered, etc. One dude was particularly insistent that you enter his truck and fuck. He might have regained consciousness by now. I can give it to you verbatim if you like." I am pretty sure I could too. I am trying to memorize her.
One side of her mouth turned up in a wry grin and changed the way she looked yet again.
That she can handle herself with less than savory men is no real shock. The way she scampered up that ladder told me she is strong. Add in her height and weight. I would not give myself even odds in a tussle with her. I have never been in a fight in my life so I would be the underdog on that fight card. She could surely throw me to the canvas and pin me down. I would enjoy that.
I totally would enjoy that.
Her happiness that I had been listening was radiant on her face. "No need for a repeat. I heard it the first time when I told it. Really: Did it sound like I hit him that hard? I did, but I thought I was underselling that part."
I shrugged. "I translated it as there are some new sopranos in the trucking industry and one concussed dude that might need to re-take his driver's test to be sure his vision has cleared up."
She laughed easily. "I like your version better. I may lift that."
I pointed at the cat statue in the display alcove across the room "That's OK because I am totally stealing that lighting and alcove idea for how to display my copy of that statue."
She looked around at the alcove and then back at me "You have the Boston Museum Cat...?" half statement and half question.
"The Richard Recchia? Sure. Your display is way better than how I did it. I just have it on a prominent shelve. I am stealing that idea and you can't stop me."
She took a deep breath. "Fuck me! New category. 100 points. I love that statue."
I pointed at her furrchild. "Kinda looks like Snowball a bit. Yes: I love it too."
In the small space of the dining area, her scents were in high fidelity. I have always had a good sense of smell. I have been unpleasantly locked into rooms with women wearing too much perfume, and this is nothing like that. This is light tendrils of scent reaching into my brain and tickling it like a classic Looney Toon cartoon. Cinnamon, lake water, and a kind of earthy musk. Jessica. No one has ever affected me like this. Not even close. I have never been literally dizzy just because of how a woman smelled to me.
My pain was becoming a bigger problem. I did not want it to distract me from even a moment of the evening, but that is becoming ever more difficult.
Jessica leaned forward, put her elbows on the table, looking at me closely. Amusement danced in her dark gaze. "OK: I have been talking. Your turn. You said you came to the Hollow to get your head together. Woman?"
I tried not to splutter. "Christ on a pogo stick ... yes. Am I that easy to read?"
The amusement spread from the eyes to her entire face. For all that, she was not making fun of me. "No.. You are just a nice man with hundreds of points this evening, and it seemed like the kind of thing that would make you blue."
"Uhh... I thought I have a hundred and five or so... no. One oh four. I gave myself one when you weren't looking."
"That's OK. I'm rounding up. Not important. Some guys would not give a shit if they got blown off. They would just move on to the next woman. Relationships these days... whatever. Tell me about her."
The last thing I wanted to talk about with this woman is another woman. The one I just broke up with no less. "Really: Why in the hell would you want to hear about that sad story? Not at all impressive. Not nearly as good as my Negra Modelo one."
She shrugged. "I have a bet with myself about how it went."
I threw out a short sigh. "Short version: Vera and I were together seven years, on and off. I finally realized that it was never going to go anywhere good, and told her I did not want to see her anymore."
"Yeah... I win." She looked ever so slightly smug. Remind me not to bet on baseball games with her. She is clearly the kind that smirks when she wins.
She made a gesture with her fingers like she is pulling me in. "You are not getting off that easy. All of it. Details. Here: I'll fix this."
She got up, went in the kitchen, got out a carafe, some ice, and after some clinking and some pouring noises, came back in with two very large margaritas over ice, with more ready in the carafe. I tasted it.
"OK: Awesome. Fresh Lime. Patron... and lots of it in there I am thinking."
"My secret lip un-sealer recipe. Drink up, and spill the beans. How do seven years, on and off, end?"
I drank as instructed. "With a whimper, not a bang."
"No goodbye sex? That seems unlike you." She asked. It seemed a serious question if I listened to the tone of her voice, but there lurked just a twinkle in her eyes that let me know she is jerking my chain.
"Uh, no. Not what I meant. It ended poorly. She once called me, and this is a quote, 'her forever man'. Stuff like that. The guy she wanted to be with once she was ready to settle down. Whenever the flying fuck that is supposed to have been. It didn't matter. It was not going to work."
The twinkle faded. She seemed genuinely curious "Why not?"
I sighed again. "Ok. Fine. The thing is, when we met, I thought Vera was as sexy as they come. I thought..." 'Before I met you' I mentally added. "Fun person who was interested in me. Street smart. The chemistry seemed good. Very good. Same together in bed, or at least I thought so. In retrospect, I may have been too straight an arrow for her. No oddly shaped toys. No Sybian in the closet. No BDSM. Don't get me wrong. I'll experiment around, but for example, if it is going to be Bondage, I would have to tie her up, because I didn't trust her the other way. Bad sign. Right? I did let her shave me once though, so I am not a complete one-way ass in the trust department."
Jessica pointed at my face with a questioning look. I shook no, looked down under the table. "Pubic hair"
"Ahh..." Jessica said. "Well... that's pretty trusting actually."
This is the part I really did not want Jessica hearing about... but what the hell. I just spent seven years learning you can't live a lie. "Over the course of the seven years, when we drifted apart, we saw other people. Never really official we were apart. Just now and again we'd come back together, screw like crazy for a few weeks or months, and then things would get mixed up. Busy. Out of town trips or software releases or something, and we'd drift back apart. I met a few of the guys she dated other than me... and I did not get it. I did not see how she could be with someone like them and someone like me."
Jessica studied me intently. "What do you mean? What were they like?"
"Well, Hard to explain. Nothing like me. One guy was really uber-macho and had a reputation for treating a woman badly. Hitting them. Verbal abuse. Real potential rapist type. One guy was an out and out druggie. Heroin. That kind of thing. None of them were like me. Most were 'bad boys'. The kind that drives used Camaro's that need mufflers, but thinks the hole in the exhaust sounds cool somehow. It's really weird when I think about it now. Other than Vera I have never attracted women that are into bad boys. Not THAT kind of bad boy. Want to have sex on the beach? I'm your guy. Want to go to a dog fight? Nope. Not me. Vera just could not make up her mind what kind of man she wanted. I guess she never had to choose. She had both."
Jessica looked thoughtful. "So... you treated your Vera well, and as far as you know these other guys didn't so much, and she drifted back and forth between types over seven years time?"
"Not really sure in retrospect she was ever 'my Vera', but yeah. That's about it, except for the thing that finally made me wake up and smell the coffee."
"She goes off to men who treat her poorly and that is not enough?" It was not an indictment of me, but of Vera.
"No. What can I say? When it comes to women I am a very dumb man. The sex was good, and I kept thinking that would be enough. Young. Stupid. I thought everything else would work out because we were good together in bed. I thought sexual chemistry meant there is ... more. Something deeper. That she would change. Her someday forever man. All that."
I could not help the sigh. "Now... I think I bored her. I think she thought of abuse as love." I was not happy to be pouring out this embarrassment. I took a deep drink. She refilled the glass from the carafe, plying me with more confessional lubricant.
"Go on." She urged.
"This is going to be as cliche as it comes. She maybe thought she should like a nice guy, but in the end, I think she really wanted a guy that treated her badly, because for some reason she thought of being angry as caring or something. I never got angry with her. Never fought. I was raised by loving parents, and they taught me to believe that people should be able to get along and work things out like adults. Not that there are no disagreements, but that fighting is not how you fix things. Fighting just adds resentments to the problem. I guess I missed out on a lot of makeup sex over the years, but I think I am OK with that."
Jessica looked at her margarita glass, rolling the stem between her fingertips. "That all works if everyone in the relationship is an adult I guess. What is the thing that did you two in?"
I smiled ruefully. Maybe slightly drunkenly as well. There is a lot of tequila in these drinks. It fit the next part of the story well. "We were spending a long weekend together. We had gotten very, very squiffed, and we're talking about this that and the other. She mentioned that she hated her car. She always talked about that. I understood: it is a piece of junk. She is probably the fourth owner, and I am guessing the first three never even changed the oil. It smoked and stumbled and she bought illegal, counterfeit inspection stickers for it because there is no way it would pass a real inspection."
I waved a hand dismissively. "She was never good at keeping cars alive. She thought they should run. No effort required to keep them up. She did not understand the second law of thermodynamics. I would tell her they have to be maintained. She just said fuck that: all her cars are just junk and she just needed to get a good one. None of that attitude was new. What was new is how she was going to deal with it this time."
A quizzical eyebrow went up. "Hand Grenade?"
I grinned. "Not too far off. She knew some guys from her job. She works as a secretary in one of the warehouses up on the North side. What she said is that she could pay these guys, and they would take her car."
Jessica was puzzled. "Leaving her with no car? That makes no sense."
Her confusion made me feel better. "My thoughts exactly. I said as much, and she said like I was being stupid or something, 'No: They take it away and make sure it stays gone, and then I can file on it as a stolen car and get a new one'."
I waited. Jessica drummed her fingers on her chin. "Amazing. So. Vera thought that ... what... because it is just an insurance company, no one would be getting hurt?"
I tapped my nose and was happy I could find it in one try. Buzzed, but not bombed yet. "Right in one."
Jessica considered the problem a bit further, appearing to be going over the whole situation in her mind. "I will be the first to admit that I have very little use for the insurance industry. They would screw me in a second if they thought they could. Still..."
I agreed with the reservation in Jessica's tone. " Yeah. Exactly. Anyway, that is how I ended up at the Hollow. I realized Vera and I are from different moral zip codes. We were never going to work... but I missed the idea of us, at least the physical us. It finally became obvious that there is never going to be a mental us. It is odd. There is a way I am glad it is over. Glad I found out. That I am not going to waste any more time on a relationship that has no chance of working. I was feeling sorry for myself. Sad, and lonely, naked and small, and well... This naked goddess came along and she pulled me out of the deep blue funk."
I mentally flashed on her standing there saying 'Hello'. I smiled reflexively.
Jessica smiled back.