she would pass him on her way to the corner grocery or the mailbox or walking her dog.
Or maybe she transferred from that bus to yet another and she was still miles away from him.
It didn't matter. He felt so much closer to her than he did when he was home. He felt so much warmer walking on a street she may have walked. Sometimes when he reached the camera shop again, he found he did not have the will to climb into his car and drive the lonely distance to his rented room. Instead he would turn and retrace his steps to the end of the line and back again.
Trissa
In his new blue suit and maroon-striped tie, Bob Kirk whirled Edie onto the dance floor, aware of every admiring female glance turned his way. He was a looker and he knew it and it made Trissa ill to see how her mother basked in his glow. She regretted allowing herself to be recruited as coat check girl for this event. But she had thought the cloakroom would be out of the way and quiet enough to let her read. There was a test on Silas Marner on Monday and she was only on chapter four.
Instead, she found her outpost to be in a direct line with the dance floor and the ringside table where her parents polished their public veneer for all their friends and fellow parishioners. Bob Kirk had been the chairperson this year and had steered his committee to what appeared to be a rousing success, despite a raging thunderstorm. The bar was booming, the band was lively, the decorations were perfect, and they probably would make just enough profit to top last year's which would look good in the Sunday bulletin next week.
That Bob Kirk is a whiz of an organizer, people would say. He sure knows how to put on a good show, they would comment, with more truth than any suspected. You must be real proud of your old man, someone was bound to tell Trissa. Yes, real proud, she would lie with a smile that was as good a show as any he could put on.
There was a time when it hadn't been a lie, but that was so long ago now that Trissa was surprised she remembered it. Once upon a time, she had felt lucky to have such a handsome daddy, so tall and dark and warm voiced. She used to love placing her little white-gloved hand in his for their Sunday march up the aisle to their favorite pew. She would try to match his shiny shoes stride for stride and grin smugly back at Lonny who escorted their mother.
She would have the aisle seat again. She would have the pleasure of snuggling between the carved oak of the pew on one side and her Daddy's strong arm on the other. Lonny would be stuck on the end between their mother and a stranger. The little bells at the offering had a hollow, sweet sound in her special little niche, and her Daddy would slip his arm around her and glide her off the smooth wooden seat to her knees beside him, her nose just clearing the back of the bench in front of them. After church, they would go home and while her mother cooked a big Sunday dinner, she and her Daddy would pull out his old portable record player, spin his favorite 45's and dance in the living room. She only remembered happiness with her father's touch back then. It was so long ago.
Trissa was five when things changed. Her cousin Rita came to stay with them that summer. Rita was fourteen, old enough for Trissa to be awed by and young enough for Lonny, at twelve, to have his first crush on. She remembered being intensely jealous of Rita and feeling guilty for it because "Poor Rita, her mother is filled with cancer, just filled with it", and whatever that meant, Trissa knew from her mother's hushed voice, it was very, very bad. Rita's father, who was Edie Kirk's black sheep brother, had long since departed the scene. "Off to Australia. Opportunities are limitless there, you know. He'll send for Rita when we can get in touch with him."
Rita wore lots of makeup, shiny blouses that bulged at the buttons, and pencil slim skirts. Her hair was a mass of black curls and her mouth was always moving, whether chewing Doublemint Gum or chattering endlessly about