“Ben was not a great talker, which was inevitably his downfall, with me anyway.” The reporter seemed heartened by this information and re-took up her pen. “After sitting in pleasant silence, he asked me if I liked him,” the authoress continued. “I told him he was too intelligent to not have noticed that I did. He smiled at me… a real smile; one he did not show often. He said he wanted to be in the military for a couple years, to get some things out of his system. I understood this,somehow… I think I always knew he’d never be mine, yet I hope back then that he would. I offered to write to him, but he said the other guys would rib him about that and likely steal the letters anyway. He kissed me on the cheek and embraced me for a long time. He asked me to wait for him. I said I would.”
A slow, rising feeling of sadness washed over Candace as she sat,listening. She felt a bit foolish for having assumed the woman before her had led some perfect life. The sage calm she exuded stemmed from real experiences and quelled dreams, despoiled hopes… like anyone else.Not a juicy tale, but a common one all the same.
“I guess he never came back,” she said, half-hoping she was wrong. The authoress gazed off in the distance, nodding a little.
“Four years passed; my friends all dated extensively, but I did not once go out anywhere, not even in a group. I wasn’t anti-social; I just wasn’t interested in ‘making out’, especially with someone you didn’t care a fig for. It seemed illogical and I was content to wait for Ben.”
“So,how did you end with James?” cadence asked, wondering if James and Ben were really the same guy. That would be an interesting angle; visions of ‘witness protection’ or ‘special forces identity change’ came to mind.
“I was introduced to him at one of my parent’s anniversary parties; they’d invite business associates as well as friends to their soirees. Everyone had a good time at those gatherings, full of music and food, with just the right amount of dancing. I played ‘If I fell in Love With You’ for them on the piano; they danced a lovely, slow waltz to it. It was their favorite song.” The writer let out a sentimental sigh.“After that my father brought James over for me to meet.”
“That’s a good way to meet a guy,” Candace mused, aloud. “So, did he sweep you off your feet? Was it love at first sight?”
The woman in the hat shook her head.
“No.He was just another man in a suit to me. An annoying man in a suit… he kept talking to me, following me around the hall. He listened to my conversations with my parent’s friends. Finally, he asked me to dinner;I refused. Then, he did something no one else had done…”
“What?” Candace asked; she leaned forward a little, her eyebrows elevated.
“He asked me ‘why’,” the authoress told her.
“Ok… that's an odd question, alright. What did you say?”
“By then I had figured out that men respond well to straight-forward answers; I told him that my heart was taken and any time or money he’d spend on me would prove fruitless.”
There was a pause.
“Well, what did he say?” Candace asked, impatient to know the rest.
“Nothing, actually.”
“Nothing?!”
“My dear you sound a bit like an echo…” the writer said, smiling. Candace straightened her posture a bit and cleared her throat waiting for the lady to continue. “He stood and thought about that for a moment then moved on to another person to talk. I figured that like all the others,he’d been successfully warned off by my candid answer.”
“But…” Candace suggested, hopefully. The writer smiled.
“But,as I found out later, he began questioning my parents about me, whom I was seeing… all kinds of things; he asked them for my friends’ phone numbers; he began peppering them with questions about me, but especially about Ben. A few weeks later, he sought me out at the library.”
“Studying?”
“No… re-reading Jane Eyre. I was bored.”
“Ah… well, did he say anything?”
“Not at first. It took me some time to notice his presence. He kept completely silent, pretending to read an old copy of Forbes nearby.After awhile I saw him; by then my friends had informed me of the annoying man who kept interrogating them about my likes and dislikes.They clearly had neglected to tell him how much I dislike interfering strangers.”
The reporter laughed.
“Yeah, that’s on everyone’s hate-list,” she said, smiling. The authoress nodded, her smile well recovered.
“I gave the man my best ‘go away’ glare and settled back into the book. A few seconds later, he sat next to me on the reading couch.”
Fascinated,Candace made half-legible notes, keeping her eyes fixed on the writer’s face.
