He loved her eyes the most.
She had tea-shaded eyes, twinkling as if she were on the verge of asking a clever, slightly insouciant question. He loved them more than her long straw-colored hair, her cherry-tainted lips, or the long subtle curves of her figure. Her eyes were a question, a challenge, a puzzle.
Jessica? Carlie? Maybelle?
There hadn’t been so many. He never liked to play the field: better one steady girl than a stream of conquests. But somehow the name kept floating away, like a note he couldn’t quite hit anymore. Fifty years later it seemed important to remember.
He walked her through the park. She bumped his shoulder and ducked her head, teasing him about his freckles. Her quiet laugh rolled over the dense grass like a fresh breeze. He never saw grass like that anywhere else, each blade an individual condensation of green.
At the concert, her shoulder next to his and the same grass flattened under their backs, he showed her Orion’s belt. She knew the Big Dipper, and so did he, and the other stars wheeled nameless around Polaris as they waited for the next band. He stole a glance at her dim-lit profile. She looked soft and smooth as a cloud.
They walked down the street holding hands, stopping to look at old kitchen tools in the antique shop window and posters for European films at the theater. He let go her hand to feel her small pliant waist in his tingling palm. She leaned into him. The sun brightened. The birds sang sweeter.
It was Ellie. Yes. Ellie. Or Karen. His mind was a lock, and her name was the key, and the more he fumbled with the jangling ring the more keys there were. He didn’t have much time anymore.
The name was so close he could taste it, like hot buttered popcorn in a theater or the damp charged air before a storm. She loved popcorn. She wore a white sweater that seemed to glow in the theater, and she smelled like sweet vanilla and gardenia. He could see his fingers reach so tentatively to pluck a stray kernel from the front of her sweater. He could feel the heat of the red rush to his cheeks as his fingertips just brushed the top of her breast.
And later that night the sweet moment of anticipation as he closed his eyes and leaned toward her sweet glossed lips. That first kiss made sweeter for waiting, the innocent fumbling, their bodies finally close.
Catherine? No, Karen. Karen. It was Karen, and her father owned the drugstore. Or was it Amber? Such a long time to carry something so small, and dropping it now felt like a betrayal.
