DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
7:00 PM SUNDAY
** CONTACT MADE – SERIES SEVEN/A-TYPE **
When the door opened, John’s breath caught in his throat.
He remembered once at a Mexican restaurant he’d gotten a bit overzealous with the chips and salsa, swallowing a large piece of tortilla that went down sideways. It had jammed in his throat, partially blocking his trachea and making it hard to breathe. Annie whacked him on the back a few times, then tried the Heimlich. Neither worked. He wasn’t in any real danger of asphyxiation, because he could breathe around the chip, but the pain was excruciating, and breathing definitely was a chore. They’d gone to one of the two doctors who practiced in Loston, making an emergency house call, but the chip had popped back up as they pulled into his driveway.
John hadn’t been eating chips - hadn’t been near Mexican food since Annie died – but he had similar respiratory problems when he saw Fran as he had that night in Los Toros.
He dropped the bouquet he was holding, a small mass of tousled mountain flowers that seemed all the more beautiful for their chaotic arrangement. He knelt to gather them up again, and could not take his eyes off her, though it meant he had to crane his neck upward to see her.
She wore a white shirt and blue jeans, simple clothing that nonetheless draped her like it was tailored. She was slim, but not overly so. She had the look, not of a bulimic heroin addict, which John saw so many of the girls in his classes struggling to achieve, but rather the appearance of a truly healthy person. One who glows from without with physical well-being and from within with spiritual peace.
Annie had always looked like that.
The only ornamentation she had was a gold bracelet that hung loosely from her wrist. It was completely unnecessary, in John’s opinion, for no mere gold could match the glow of her eyes.
"Are you trying to hypnotize me?" she asked after a moment, and John’s face went red as he realized how openly he had been staring.
"No," he said. "No, I...uh...." His brain completed the perfect moment by deciding now would be a good time to step out to lunch.
"It’s John, right?"
Again, John’s jaw pumped up and down for a moment before anything resembling speech emerged. "Yeah."
She smiled, a laughing, playful grin that invited instead of mocking. "Come on in."
She twisted sideways, but didn’t move out of the doorframe, effectively forcing John to get close to her as he entered. He sensed that it wasn’t a calculated move, designed to either seduce him or put him off, but was rather the action of a generous person whose personal space is completely inclusive of everyone around.
He noted an economy in her movements, too, a like a professional dancer, someone so in tune with her body that personal awareness became instinct. Her feet were placed just so, her body lithe and slightly leaning in the direction she would move, each placement perfect and yet totally unrehearsed.
Again, though she looked nothing like her, John was struck by Fran’s resemblance to his Annie.
He moved past her, trying not to look too awkward as he passed close by her and then entered her house. Boxes sat everywhere in the small living room, most of them open but unpacked. The place was furnished, though, filled with comfortable chairs and soft lighting.
And books. They were unpacked, lining the walls, some on partially constructed shelves, some just lined up on the floor like silent guardians of literacy. John could not recall ever seeing so many volumes in one room before, unless it was in a library. He loved to read, himself, but his own accumulation of literature was dwarfed by Fran's collection.
Fran noticed his gaze. "Sorry about the mess. I actually got here two days ago, but I haven’t done much. Just slept." She swept her hair back, a nervous move that conveyed her embarrassment at this fact. "Not really like me."
She seemed mortified by the apparent laziness such a fact conveyed, John noted. Good woman, he thought. She's a hard worker, and wants it to show.
Then he thought, That's the kind of woman I'd like to marry.
The thought bounced around in his cortex for a long second before he realized its significance. Whoa, cowboy, he thought. Let's get through the date before planning the wedding.
Fran changed the subject, saying, "If you can wait just a second, I’ve got to go change."
"You look fine to me." The words blurted out of him before he had time to think about their appropriateness. He blushed. This wasn’t like him.
Fran smiled, looking sincerely grateful. "Thanks. But I would like to look a bit better for my favorite cousin’s favorite friend who’s taking time out of a busy schedule to be my new favorite tour guide."
John didn’t know what to say to that, really, his brain having decided not only to go to lunch but also to stop for a movie and perhaps spend the night in a nice hotel somewhere. Fran saved him from revealing his sudden lack of brain function, though, by motioning to the flowers.
"Did you pick those yourself?"
"Yeah," said John. He was down to monosyllabic responses, he noted. Articulation and anything resembling a vocabulary were apparently at the movies with his brain. "They’re for you."
"Thank you, Johnny." John jumped a bit at that, or rather, not so much jumped, actually, as minutely twitched. A twinge. She noticed. "Are you all right?"
He refrained from saying the first word to pop into his head, which was "Yeah," nodding instead. "I just...someone else used to call me that."
"Sorry. I’ll call you John."
"No, it’s okay. You can call me Johnny."
He smiled at her. She smiled back, then took the flowers and put them in a vase that had been on the floor, stuffed with bunches of newspapers. Then she disappeared down the hall, stepping into one of the rooms.
John wondered if she was in her bedroom.
He wondered if he’d ever see it.
Hold on, tiger, he thought. Slow and easy.
Even as he gave himself that directive, however, he knew he was assigning himself an impossible task.
Fran stepped back out less than two minutes later. She had changed, keeping the jeans and the gold bracelet but adding a nicer pair of shoes and putting on a red blouse that heightened the natural blush of her cheeks. She was beautiful. John’s breath caught in his throat again.
"Ready to go?" she asked.
He nodded, trying to remember how to make words come out of his mouth. "Nice bracelet," he said, which definitely ranked high among All-Time Dumbest Non-Sequiturs.
Her reaction was unexpected. For a moment, the glow in her eyes darkened as she fingered the gold links of the jewelry. "Thanks," she said. "It was a gift from my husband. I...I always wear it."
John was silent for a moment, unsure how to react. The specters of two dead lovers seemed to hang between them during a long period of silence. Then he pushed forward, clearing his throat and saying, "Anything you want to see first?"
Fran nodded and brightened almost immediately. "Take me to where you picked the flowers."