The First Story
She’d never heard of him before. He said that he was getting “kind of big” on the music scene, and and that she’d probably know his stuff if she heard it.
She nodded politely that she probably would, and smiled at him the way she smiled at waiters who brought her food. She hated to pretend.
He reminded her of a cat she used to have when she was little. She remembered it trying to curl up and sleep on her lap, and the feel of its arching backbone as she shoved it away. They would repeat this little game until the cat gave up. But once in a while she would give in, just to keep things interesting. Funny how she couldn’t remember its name.
She couldn’t remember his name either. He was still talking to her, his hands waving wildly as he spoke, painting pictures only he could see. He was so involved in his own words that she needn’t have wasted her encouraging nods and murmurs.
He looked as though he practiced this story in front of the mirror. How many people had he told it to, she wondered.
Justin? Was it Justin? Or Jerome? Something with a J. He was looking intently at her now. With a start she realised he had asked her a question.
She tried a ‘no,’ which must have been close enough; he looked confused for a second, but took a breath and continued. She felt herself drifting away again. It was exhausting to lie, or pretend she was something she wasn’t. Like ‘interested,’ for example.
“Rufus!” she blurted out suddenly. The cat had been called Rufus. She hadn’t had it for very long. It had died during a heat wave one summer when she was 11.
“What?” he asked, his hands frozen mid-wave.
She didn’t bother to explain. She had remembered the cat’s name, and she smiled to herself as she walked over to the bar for a third coffee.
Two weeks later, his song came on the radio, and she never even knew.
