My suitcase sits next to me on the sidewalk and my daypack is slung over my back. After spending the night with my knees under my chin, wedged between the tall kid in the aisle seat and the fat lady in the window seat, my body is just beginning to un-crimp. My short brown hair is dirty and flattened to my skull. My eyes, which Evan once told me were exactly the color of Grade A maple syrup, are currently so bloodshot they look like the street map of Paris I picked up at the airport.
But in January, going to France was the farthest thing from my mind. In January I was incapable of long range planning. I was still trying to put one foot in front of the other. Pour the cereal in the bowl. Remember how to dress myself. Start the car. Preferably after opening the garage door. And anyway the date was the most important thing. Mornings are always the hardest. Just before you open your eyes. Seeing them carefully avoid mentioning the Watkins account in my presence.
We were just thinking of you today, Andy. We know how much you miss him, honey. We do, too. By leaving on the evening of May 2, it was almost as if the 3rd had passed me by in mid Atlantic. As if I could erase it from the calendar, and thereby erase it from my brain. Sort of an eerie coincidence. Oddly, I think Evan actually did. That was one of the things I loved most about himβthe sense that all was not exactly as it appeared, his wonderfully loopy take on the world.
He could predict things sometimes. Weird stuff. I met him at a party, but not exactly the way you might suppose. Actually, I tripped over him. It was August, and Southern California was in the throes of a wicked heat wave. He and I were having this rapidly escalating discussion of the situation in the kitchen and the caterer was trying get rid of us, and then Al came in and strongly suggested that we set aside our differences and get our butts out to the party.
Anyway, I stormed out, straight to the bar, and poured myself an eight-ounce tumbler of white wine. I continued out the French doors, across the patio, past the pool with its fake lava waterfall and rubber lily pads, across the perfectly manicured lawn. My destination was the white gingerbread Victorian gazebo on the far side.
