February's Sun and the Pixie

Los Angeles, CA
February, 2009

She was 28-years-old, and tiny, as a pixie is tiny, with a lithe, athletic figure. Her hair was cut short, and always had a free-wheeling, wind-blown look. Her pretty face had the high, prominent cheekbones of her Polish lineage, and was clear-complexioned, with a hint of laugh lines around her almost-opaque hazel eyes. She had a quirky smile; it was slightly crooked, but not outrageously so. And she always looked as fresh-as-a-daisy in the morning, and, while I can not say I had a Great Love for her, I can say that she thoroughly fascinated me.

My last day spent with the Pixie had me playing host, as she had driven over to my apartment the night before to spend the day with me. She lived with her family (father, 19-year-old sister, and a pre-teen daughter) in a beach town that was quite some many miles away, and as she was the "Mother Hen" to that brood, i.e. she cooked the meals, organized family time, etc., it was getting more and more difficult for her to find the time to spend with her new boyfriend.

(A little about how we met: it was through a mutual friend, a skinhead gal-pal, who had invited me to hang out with her people, including the Pixie, for some drinks and danger. And while the drinks were very much of the "cheap beer" variety, and the danger minimal, the end result of that visit was spectacular: the Pixie expressed interest in yours truly to our mutual friend. Numbers were exchanged, and Nature, sweet, fickle Nature, did the rest.)

We awoke to a surprisingly sunny February day, and as I opened the curtains to let the sunshine in, I marveled at how magnificent she looked in the morning. Sweet-smelling, bright-eyed, and damned sexy. I was ravenous. We smiled and laughed as we rolled around my queen-sized bed...

I refused her offer to make the morning coffee — I was the host, after all — and made us a pot. We then sipped and began scheming the day's events — should we go for a hike? See a movie? Explore a new restaurant? Because her time with me was short, we wanted to squeeze every single thing we possibly could from the day. I knew that her family were not pleased about her being away for the night — she also handled grocery shopping and laundry and everything else — and it was a veritable scene of chaos at her house at that very moment. The cajoling she had to do to convince her pouty sister to watch her daughter was an exercise both in diplomacy and tyranny.

Her cellphone buzzed; her father sent her a text asking her where one of his ties were. I looked away, giving her privacy as she responded. She didn't say a word about it afterward, but I saw a flash of something dancing behind her eyes, a mocking, malevolent creature named Worry, and then just as suddenly, it disappeared. I shrugged it off. The coffee was too good.

We showered together - it was our first time doing so — and while we were dressing, she realized that she'd forgotten to bring an extra pair of shoes: the outfit she wanted to wear for our night out (we decided to have a night out in LA, and let adventure find us) wouldn't work with the scruffy tennis shoes she wore on the drive over.

"Don't worry," I soothingly told her. "There's a discount shoe warehouse not seven minutes walking distance from here."

She squealed.

Magic words: I always forget the power of the combination of the words "shoe" and "warehouse." I laughed, and offered to walk with her, if she'd like. She beamed. I made her happy.

We walked to the aforementioned ginormous shoe boutique, and, ignoring the wrath of boyfriends and husbands who chose to mill about the entrance of the warehouse on their cellphones doing time-killing cellphone things, I offered to help her find the shoes she wanted. I would walk down one aisle, her on another, and after finding something that matched her specifications (red in color, and that's basically the extent of it), would shout out, holding the prize in the air. She'd hold them in her hands for a microsecond, and tell me to keep searching. This went on for a little while, until we finally found the perfect shoes for the upcoming perfect evening.

And then: disaster. After a quick breakfast, she received a call from her villainous sister, who told her she wasn't going to be able to pick up the Pixie's daughter from school because she had "stuff to do." Which meant that our day was to be cut obscenely short. I was devastated, but kept a positive face on. She became distraught...and again that thing flashed behind her eyes. My heart fell. I knew that Worry was going to wreak havoc upon her, and someday make her feel that she had to choose between family and me.

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We never saw each other again after that day, and ended things two weeks later. Our time together was brief, and long ago, and yet I have the most vivid recollections of her; for you see, February's sun won't ever let me forget.