The Girl, Episode III

The sun was setting as she spoke with her friend at an umbrella-furnished table outside the cafe. They were talking about work, about recent travels, about what shared acquaintances were up to these days. Glancing up from her conversation and dinner, she saw what she thought was a familiar face moving along the sidewalk. She smiled softly and asked to be excused.

As she approached the little iron fence cordoning off the cafe's outdoor eating area, he noticed her and made his way to her through the evening's pedestrian traffic. He had the headphones on again, had a bass guitar slung across his back in a gig-bag, and was weighted to one side by a large, brown case of some sort. She beamed as she noticed that it was a second instrument.

"You never mentioned you were a musician," she scolded him as he removed the headset.

"Oh," he replied crisply. "I'm a musician."

"Very informative." They both laughed. "But I take it you're on your way to practice? You've got to live somewhere over that way."

"Nice to know you're slowly working out where I live - always figured that, if anything, I'd be the one hunting down a celebrity, not vice versa." She blushed. "But, yeah. I've got rehearsal with two very different sorts of bands across the river."

She pursed her lips and nodded respectfully. "I take it the guitar is a bass," she let him nod in agreement, "but I don't know what the horn is."

"The horn is called a euphonium." He waited for the standard response - a squint of confusion - and then: "It's like a baby tuba."

"And, let me guess, you'd sing the bass part in a choir?" The sarcasm flowed like sweet nectar.

"Hah! Actually, yes, but I can play and read music for any brass instrument you hand me."

"Even a trombone?"

"Yup," he smiled wryly, not knowing how to brag about being a nerd. "Even a trombone."

A few seconds of silence passed before she said, "Well, I don't want to make you late, and my friend's already going to ask me four thousand questions, so..."

He looked over her shoulder to the lone girl sitting at a table, pushing her salad around with her fork. He waved, giving a big grin. She smiled uncomfortably and waved back. The girl with the golden curls at the fence laughed.

"We should definitely stop meeting like this," he said. "But tell her I said hello, and apologize for stealing her conversation time."

"Oh, I will," she laughed again, still smiling her huge, straight-toothed grin. "But how will we stop meeting like this?"

"Well, if you want a phone call sometime, you could give me your number," he suggested shyly.

She rattled her number off and made sure he had it in his phone. "Call me tonight after practice. If you've got class tomorrow and are going to be getting coffee, maybe we can actually plan to sit for a few minutes."

"Okay, definitely," he said. "Sorry to run off, but they'll only accept 'harangued by a pretty girl' for tardiness of less than ten minutes."

She blushed harder, but said goodbye and watched him disappear back into the crowd, heading northeast. Returning to her table, she tried her best to ignore her friend's stare. The silence persisted even after she sat and had started to eat again.

"What?"

"You just talk to random passing guys now?"

"No, that was the guy from the bookstore."

"The giant bugs and politics guy?"

"Yeah, sure."

"You didn't know he played music, did you?"

"Nope," she tried to keep eating, to avoid the questions.

"You think he's intriguing, don't you?"

"Shut up."

Her friend smiled, and started eating her own salad again. When the blonde looked up at her again, the other girl was grinning smugly while chewing and trying not to laugh. She repeated herself: "Shut up."