Jamie arrived for a day several weeks later. When I put her on the bus to Philadelphia to go home for her stuff, life was bright. I met her bus that weekend, but she wasn't on it. A terrible emptiness spread through me.
We wrote to each other for a year. She did, eventually, step down from that bus. Two weeks later I put her back on. It had all been a kind of sexual mirage, a passion that had nothing to do with who she was. Watch out when your throat goes dry and you begin to shake!
We each have a type—someone visually our lost other self, male or female. I've seen a few since, always blonde, earthy and radiant at the same time, a particular combination. But they don't affect me the same way. I shake my head and say, there's another one.
"What happened to Jamie?" W.cat and I were sitting on a bench that looked out toward the White Mountains.
"She married into a wealthy Boston family. She escaped Philadelphia.Thirty-five years ago. What did we know?"
"Not much," W.cat said. "Shall we go?"
As we were walking through the West End, she pointed to a poppy that had fallen over on the grass at the edge of a flower bed. We crossed the lawn, and she held up the blossom while I looked around for gardeners and German shepherds; W.cat is sometimes unable to resist flowers. The poppy had four unusually large petals, deep lavender, each bearing a dark, nearly black, irregular circle. It might have been a hall of flags or a gallery of abstract sunsets, regal and empty, waiting for its visitors. I suppose it is the fleetingness of life that makes us story tellers and flower thieves.