“Just one today?” she said.
I hated it when they said, “Just one?” in that sympathetic tone. Sorry you’re a loser, sir. But I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “Actually, I’m meeting someone. Do you mind if I have a look?”
She gestured at the dining room, and I went in, looking around—but Kayla spotted me first. “Jim!”
I saw an attractive redhead in a booth. She’d been a brunette in the Wikipedia photo, but the ginger color suited her. As I approached, she rose. Normally, if I’d been greeting an old friend from that long ago, I’d have gone in for a hug or a peck on the cheek, but Kayla appeared… leery, perhaps, and so I simply sat down opposite her.
Her expression changed—via a conscious effort, it seemed—and I realized she was evaluating me in that way you do when you run into someone you haven’t seen for a long time: looking for gray hairs, receding hairlines, paunches, wrinkles. On the hair checklist, both boxes were empty for me, and being vegan kept me trim, but, damn it, I preferred to call them “laugh lines.” At least I wasn’t doing the same thing; I had no old memories to compare the present her to—and I liked what I saw just fine.
Still, because it seemed the appropriate thing, I said, “You haven’t changed a bit.”
She smiled, but, again, it was a little wan, a tad reserved. “Nor have you.” She already had a glass of white wine. “So,” she added, “what’s new?”
I liked to respond to that question with, “New York, New Jersey, New Delhi,” but I didn’t know this woman, damn it, I didn’t know her at all; I couldn’t be sure it would get a laugh. And yet at one time she had liked me, and so just being myself seemed the way to go. I trotted out the “New” list, and it did earn me a smile—and, at least for a second, the hesitancy was gone.
“Same sense of humor,” she said. “You remember Professor Jenkins? What was that joke you told that got you kicked out of class?”
I was rescued by a waitress in a tight black top, cleavage showing. “Something to drink, sir?”
“What have you got on tap?”
She rattled off a list. I chose a dark craft beer, then turned back to Kayla. Unfortunately, though, she asked her question again. “Do you remember? That joke? Something about an orangutan?”
Christ, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an orangutan joke in my entire life—well, except for The Simpsons singing “Help Me, Dr. Zaius” to the tune of “Rock Me Amadeus.”
“I don’t recall,” I said.
She shrugged a little. “Well, it was a long time ago. So, what’s up with you? Are you married?”
“I was, briefly. We divorced a couple of years ago. You?”
“Also divorced. I live with my daughter. She’s six.”
“What’s her name?”
“Ryan.”
I nodded. One of the many boy’s names that had become girl’s names in my lifetime. I’m waiting for one of my friends to name their daughter Buster or Dirk.
The waitress returned with my beer. I thanked her and took a sip. Kayla and I had had a fight—a big one that caused her to walk out of my life for two decades—but one that I didn’t remember at all. Maybe she’d been justifiably angry with me, or maybe she had wronged me horribly, but in a way that had never quite been so true before, it really was no skin off my nose. “Kayla,” I said, “about what happened, you know, all those years ago. I just want to say I’m sorry.”
She looked at me for a few moments, as if seeking something in my expression. Then she tilted her head slightly. “Thanks, Jim.”
I took a deep breath, then let it out. “Kayla, I need your help.”
“With what?”
“I, ah, I had an accident many years ago, about two months before we started dating. I don’t know if I ever told you…?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Well, I almost died. And apparently that did something to my memory. I—I’m sorry, I truly am, but until today, until you called, I had no memory of you.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Then why’d you want to see me again? You sounded so eager on the phone.”
“I am. I lost memories of six months—January to June 2001—and I want to get them back. I’m hoping you can fill in some of the gaps. Earlier today, I read some of our old emails, and—”
She looked aghast. “You kept those?”
“Printouts of a few, yeah.”
She took a sip of wine, then set the glass down carefully, as if afraid she might knock it over. “That explains why I haven’t heard from you in all the years since.”
“I’m sorry.”
A waitress glided by. Kayla tracked her movement, perhaps so she wouldn’t have to look at me. When the waitress had disappeared from view, Kayla dropped her gaze to the tablecloth. “I’ve googled you from time to time,” she said “You’ve done well.”
“Thanks.” Silence for a moment. “Okay,” I said, “one thing’s been bugging me. A lot of those emails ended with the number two-point-nine. What the heck does that mean?”
A spontaneous little smile—fond remembrance, perhaps? “You really have lost your memory, haven’t you?” She reached into her purse and took out a retractable ballpoint pen. She then pulled a paper napkin toward her. “You know how you make a love heart online? The emoticon?” She drew it: <3
“Yes?”
“It’s the less-than sign followed by the number three, see? And what’s less than three? Two-point-nine. So it’s a cute way of saying the same thing.”
“Ha! That’s really clever.”
She smiled again, and this time the warmth was unmistakable. “That’s exactly what you said all those years ago when I first used it.”
“So, forgive me, but… we were… we were in love?”
Her eyes tracked across the room again even though there wasn’t anyone to follow. “Oh, who knows? I thought we were, back then, but, well, we were just kids.”
I took another sip of my beer. “Yeah.”
The server came to take our orders—which was a case of opportune knockers, as it helped break the awkward moment. “What’ll it be?” she asked.
“Steak sandwich,” said Kayla. “Rare. With the Caesar, please.”
“And for you?”
“The vegan wrap,” I said.
“Very good,” she said, and sashayed away.
Kayla’s eyebrows arched up. “The vegan wrap? You used to love a good steak.”
She was right, but that had been before I’d read Peter Singer. The best-known modern utilitarian, Singer was the author of, among others, Animal Liberation, which had kick-started the whole animal-rights movement. Given humans can be perfectly healthy eating only plants, the minor increase in our happiness that we might get from the taste of chicken or beef in no way offsets the pain and suffering of animals raised or slaughtered in cruel conditions. “I’ve changed,” I said affably.
She narrowed her eyes, as if that were still somehow an open question. “You don’t mind that I’m having steak?”
“I’m from Calgary. If I couldn’t stand being around people eating beef, I’d never be able to go home again.”
“Ha.” She took another sip of her wine.
We chatted for the next half hour, during which our meals came, and, slowly but surely, she seemed to get comfortable with me, in part due, I liked to think, to my charm, and in part perhaps to a second glass of wine. She mentioned our dates from all those years ago that stood out in her mind, including a road trip one weekend down to Fargo; attending Keycon, Winnipeg’s annual science-fiction convention; seeing the Blue Bombers play; hanging out at Aqua Books and Pop Soda’s—both sadly now defunct—and going to a traditional Cree sweat-lodge ceremony. I’d hoped something would ring a bell, but I couldn’t remember any of them.