Thirty and Two

  Chapter 1

  The clerk slapped the baggie of tavern ham on the top of the deli case. “Anything else?”

  “A pound of Swiss,” I said, pantomiming that confused, side to side review of the deli case, as though the cheese was lost somewhere among the salami and pickle loaf and I had to find it to score a few slices.

  I needed a vacation, a change in my life.

  I turned to look at the Jalapeño cheese and in an instant I saw her, a reflection in the glass of the case. Slim, a red-head, about five-five, wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a no-nonsense attitude. Pretty, like the girl next door, if the girl next door was a goddess.

  She was just another shopper, one of a hundred women in the supermarket but something clicked in my mind. I saw myself with this woman. I felt like she was a friend, only more, like I knew her forever.

  In the blink of an eye, I remembered a thousand days with her, the sun bouncing off her hair in the morning light. The two of us, walking hand in hand along an old country road.

  I was staring into her sparkling green eyes. She was suddenly crying or was it me and then, she was gone and a feeling of loss, so profound, overtook me. I felt I was the only person in the universe.

  I was alone.

  “Hey, you need anything else, mister?” The clerk stared at me, a practiced hand at being patiently impatient.

  I was back in front of the deli case. Distracted, I shook my head and waived “stop” with my left hand. “Aah, that’s it,” I mumbled.

  I grabbed the meat and cheese from the counter, turned and scanned the crowd. She was gone. Damn.

  I wandered the isles of the supermarket, confused and disoriented. I’ve dated a whole lot of women. Alright, I’ve dated several women but I’ve never met a woman that left me momentarily dazed. Confused? Hell yes. Dazed? No.

  As I thought about my reaction, I didn’t think I felt an immediate urge to find this woman and make passionate love to her, while penguins held grapes for us to nibble and nymphs fanned us with fresh palm leaves.

  Instead, I felt drawn to her, like I had found a part of me I didn’t know I had. Of course, the passionate love thing suddenly sounded inviting too. The penguins, I’m guessing they would have to be housebroken and the smell of rotten fish isn’t my favorite. But the grapes…

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m like most men. I see a pretty girl and my imagination takes over. I’m creative and my thoughts wander far and wide. If I were a religious person, my clergy of choice would have to do penance after hearing what I had to confess regarding these fantasies.

  Then again, in my experience, regardless of preference, be it boys, girls, men, women, antelopes, dogwood trees, holes in the walls of public restrooms, whatever, more often than not, the boys with the collars generally earn the horn dog designation without any encouragement from me.

  My fantasies probably wouldn’t even rate a “Hail Mary” from that crowd.

  But what really got to me were the images of the two of us, together, running through my head like a circular reference.

  I’ve never had visions. Fantasies by the thousands but never visions and certainly not of a relationship, of a whole life with a woman I never met? It was like my life had flashed before my eyes but it was not the life I’d lived.

  The question, “who was this woman?” burned across my brain.

  I paid for my groceries and headed out to the car with my bag of sandwich innards, a split second vision of the woman occupying my thoughts.

  The door slid open as I passed and suddenly, in the middle of a beautiful 70 degree day, I felt frozen inside. I stopped dead in my tracks. The door slid open again and she walked by.

  The Sun returned in an instant and I felt the warmth of the day.

  I stood there, mesmerized, my mind captured by this seemingly ordinary woman walking to her car, until a freight train, disguised as a huge woman, nearly plowed over me with her boxcar of junk food.

  I peeled myself from front of the derailed cart and searched the parking lot for the woman, hoping to see her again, driven by her siren song blasting in my head. I knew I had to see her again.