A girl I met when I was young

It was a cold late afternoon in early November. Outside, the light had nearly faded away.

I had been friends with this girl, K, for a long time - we were part of a large circle of friends who all worked in the same chain of delicatessen restaurants. Most of us were around the same age, because in this day and age - the Mulroney years - young Canadians did not get out of school, and then get into a job related to what they studied in school. They spent a few years in a restaurant, driving taxis, or shipping and receiving first. At any rate, I digress.

Our gang partied a lot. Going to Hull to dance until the early morning was nearly mandatory on Saturday nights. We would dance, complain about our bosses (unless they were with us), do silly things, and then go home. It was innocent - and the more sober among us always made sure everyone got home safe. This was not always easy, as getting a cab home from Hull was nearly impossible. You were competing with 10,000 other kids to hail one. Sometimes we’d go right over to Blue Line taxi’s headquarters and wait right outside the dispatcher’s office for a taxi to become available.

But most nights, we went for Shawarma after the bars closed, and then walked back to Ottawa over the bridge as the glow of the impending sunrise began to cast colour on the water. There had been one such morning when K and I had staggered back over the bridge, laughing and singing, and she broke her toe.

At work the next day, she was told by her boss she couldn’t wear sneakers - we were all required to wear black dress shoes. Because stuffing her toe into her dress shoes would have been excruciating, she made the boss feel stupid as she proceeded to take a black magic marker, and colour her shoes black.

At any rate, back to my night in November. A friend of both of ours, B, had been planning a birthday bash for me at the Talisman (a music venue in Ottawa, not Hull, for a change.) She called me up to tell me about who was going to be there.

“K’s coming,” She said. “She’s bringing a french guy I set her up with. He’s an interesting guy. I think he’s a scuba diver.”

“I am glad she’s coming,” I gulped. “It... wouldn’t seem right if she weren’t there.”

My heart sunk - K was the compassionate one in our group. She was the one who was always interested when you told your story. She was the one who was the most animated when talking to you. She paid attention to you, like you were the only person who mattered. And when she spoke to you about other people, she told their stories as if she was on their side, empathizing with their position.

I had grown to feel more than friendship for K. A year earlier, she had begun a relationship with our boss (he was not been our boss at the time.) She had broken off a long term engagement to be with this guy, and two months after doing so, he ditched her, rather cruelly.

She had put on a brave face for everyone; but unlike most of our friends, I knew that was all that it was. It was as if I could feel her heart - she was consumed by grief, and it was darkening a place inside her that I knew deserved to be sunny. So to cheer her up, I wrote her a song, and recorded it. And then in the silence of my own heart, I fell in love with her. But I kept that to myself. I was not going to take advantage of a heartbroken woman. She was my friend, liked to hang out with me, and I decided that was going to be enough for me.

So again, I take you back to the November night - the story I am purposely stalling.. She was at work, too. So I called K up at her store, and said to her, “Listen, can you come over here after you’re done closing? There is something I have to tell you.”

“Sure,”She said. Her voice told me she knew something was wrong, but she wasn’t pressing me on it. “I’m almost done, and I’ll be right over.”

When she came, she was wearing her dark coat, and had a black and grey striped scarf, and was wearing her red rimmed glasses. I remember every visual detail of it. I sat her down at one of the laminated wooden tables, and I told her.

“B told me that she set you up with some guy, for my birthday party. I don’t think I can go.”

“To your own birthday party?”

“I can’t go, because I don’t want you to go with this guy. I can’t see you there with him.”

And then I told her about everything I had come to feel, the secret I had harboured these months. I made myself as vulnerable as I ever have, and I told her everything that was important to me, and why I felt the way I did.

A week later, I kissed her, while we danced to Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” She had..

The melancholy I lived in since before I was a teenager was just gone. I was finally happy without reservation, as Elton sang, “Butterflies are free to fly, fly away, high away, bye bye.” I have never gotten over the fact that someone so beautiful, inside and out, could love me - me! Not a false me, a puffed out rooster designed to be attractive to women, but the actual me! It still astonishes me.

But then, that is not hard. I look into her eyes every day, and still see that girl who always takes the side of everyone she knows. What - you thought my story would end with that date from two decades ago?

Heck no. You think I let her get away? Not a chance!

I married her.