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A Strange Thing
2011-08-03 - 11:29 a.m.

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I noticed right before I got home that Ka left her wallet in my car. It was on the passenger seat, the one she reclines to near-lying down whenever she's in my car. I called her and she said she didn't need it, that she'd swing by my work the next day to grab it.

She didn't do that, and she called me right before I got off. She apologized a lot for not picking the wallet up, like I'd be mad, then asked if I'd drive to the gallery and drop it off there, also as if I'd be mad. I wasn't, and I drove to Old Town.

When I pulled up to the gallery I thought I saw her back to the window while she was painting. I circled around the landing parking lot and parked across from the gallery, put on my flashers and dug through my bag to find the wallet. I got out of my car and waited for one oncoming SUV to pass, then crossed and walked into the front door of the gallery.

I looked to where I thought I saw her from outside, but she wasn't there. I scanned the room: paintings lining the walls floor to ceiling, six or seven kids either painting or drawing at their easels. There was an older man moving around the back of the store, the owner I guessed. No one noticed me when I walked in.

This search took maybe two seconds before my human brain deduced that since Ka wasn't around the parts of the room that I had already looked at, she could only be in the one part I hadn't scanned.

In the center of the room she was lying on her right side on a raised platform. She was in her underwear, stretched out with her right hand supporting her head.

I'd been to the beach with her before, so it wasn't like I'd never seen those parts of her body. It might have been her black bra and underwear that made me feel like a boy again, like I wasn't supposed to see her like that. The studio light dramatized the moment a bit. She looked sexy, which I feel might not have been the right way to look at her. Although art can be sexy, I don't think the children she was modeling for were supposed to think of her like that.

I wished then that I had known her like that, the sexy way. I may have had the chance, I may have literally slept in the same bed as her three years ago, but I didn't know her like that. My friends all had, which was a little bit weird to think about sometimes, but knowing she'd been with them helped to eradicate that image of her from my mind.

I may have stared for half a second too long, and that was long enough to project all of those thoughts to her and anyone else who may have observed our interaction.

Hi, she said, the same way she would have if I'd met her on the corner to give her back her stupid lime green polka-dot wallet.

Hi, I said and I smiled (iamalittleboyiamalittleboy), and she might have realized then that I was stammering, doing my best to maintain eye contact and not drift down to her body. I made a face that said I recognized the situation and that I was comfortable, waved the wallet and put it on the shelf to the left of the door--I hadn't taken another step into the room after seeing her--making sure to look at where I was putting it because it gave me a reason not to look at her.

I get off at nine, she said. Will you be around?

Again I struggle to look her in the eye. Normally I would look at the ceiling to calculate my plans, to decide yes, I will wait fifteen minutes, or no, I'm going home. I said emmm...I...hrmmmm while looking at her, and at that point she understood that I was looking at her laid out naked on a raised platform under lights that accented her pale, thin/curvy paradox of a body and made her blonde hair shine. She laughed and said I'll call you. I smiled, and said okay, turned and walked out the door, and I knew that anyone who had just watched us could probably derive everything there was to know about our relationship.

I didn't wait around, I went home, and when she called me we decided we'd see each other later in the week. It made me think of a nude I drew before I met her, when I was still a little boy.

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