Chapter Twelve.

Several days had now passed without us seeing each other, that's Libby and me. The hunger built up within me and burns hot. I knew I had to go to see her. But how could I go without an invitation? Oh well! I knew just the right thing to do, I had a plan.

"I'll go and stake her out. Stake out the points where I knew that she frequents. Where she's most likely to be seen, where she's most likely to walk on by while I'm sitting there."

I sat in my car, just a block away from the diner. One stoplight away in a far direction from where she usually approaches. The park is just across the street from the diner. So, whether she chooses to have her meal there in the diner or over in the park. Either place will be right smack in front of my eyeballs. I wasn't there more than a minute before she showed up. Both venues were good, just as I had thought.

She came walking briskly and purposefully through the park. Walked across the street and headed straight into the diner. I moved the car up a bit closer. Just passing over the intersection and stopped. I then sat in the car with the motor running and watched through the rolled-up tinted window. She was at the back of a line of five or six other people. Her arms folded across her breasts. She was looking over her shoulders periodically as if she were expecting to see someone.

Bubbles: "Could it be that she's looking for you, Buddy?"

"Butt out, will you?" I rebuked him. She looked over her shoulder on this side, then that, and at one point, I'm sure I saw her looking at the table where I had sat when we were both inside there sometime before. And that was more than just a lingering glance. For some unknown reason, at that point, I felt a rush of warmth deep down in my belly. I pulled out of the space and went searching for a proper parking spot. Parked the car and fed enough money for an extra half hour into the parking meter, and then. Walked briskly back towards the diner. She saw me on the approach and turned full-faced towards me with her still folded arms across her chest as she waited. With a sneaky look and a thin smile plastered on her face.

"Hi, Libby."

"Hello, Mr. Woodhardt."

She greeted me with a homie, long-time-pal sort of a hug. Harbinger of things to come? Hmm

Bubbles: "Wow, what did you do for that one?"

Libby: "What's up with you, where, have, you, been?" Those words came dropping on the front of my shirt.

Me: "Around, been busy. How have you been doing yourself, are you okay?"

"Hmm-um," she nodded, and shook her head. "I was just a bit concerned about you when I did not see you in these last few days."

I was just about to say: why didn't you call me? But just then, I was to have recollected that we hadn't gotten that far as yet, not so far as to have exchanged numbers. With those people still there around us who'd just witnessed the warm, familiar-type embrace we'd just engaged in. I didn't want to spoil it and leave them all in puzzlement as to what was going on.

Libby: "I was just about to grab something to eat. Should I order for both of us? Pizza as usual, I suppose?"

"I'm good with that, you know me just a little too well." We laughed.

We sat down at the table, just like we did on the very first occasion there. The only difference this time is that she didn't have a pile of books in front of her. However, she seemed just as focused and purposeful as ever. Was she focused on the task of getting to know me? I mean, to really know me this time? I'd hoped so.

"So what have you been doing?" She asked me again.

"As I have said, I've been busy with work and studies. Work, more so than studies. Did I not tell you about the gig I had to go and do at the techno-center last evening? Thought I did."

"Yes, you did mention it, but I didn't know it would be taking you that long."

Bubbles: "That long? She misses you, dude."

"So what happened at the Techno center? Did you say that something occurred there that - ?"

"I don't want to talk about it," I interrupted her. I didn't think that we were at that place yet. I wasn't sure how she would view the whole thing. Would she think that I had something to do with it? In leading the woman on, like I was flirting with her or something? I didn't want her to see me like that. But then again. Would that view of me as seen through her eyes, like, of who I was? Or of how I would behave in such events, in her mind! Would that be a misrepresentation of the facts?

Perhaps my fame had gone on ahead of me and had featured prominently in the Madam's decision to hire me. In which case, I couldn't deny the accuracy of her assessment of the whole mess. But for once in my life, I didn't want this person, this woman with the heavenly glow and vivacious energy, to see me in that light. It had suddenly dawned on me that this one, for some strange reason, mattered to me a lot.

My mother used to say in the old days: only the vain and clueless man is led to believe that his whole life's purpose and vocation is to make his woman happy. "There's much more to life than that," she had said. Since meeting up with this woman, Libby Dahoust, I'm not sure anymore, man, I'm just not sure. But I'm willing to go out of my way to at least try to make this one woman happy. If not to piss my mother off. Then, maybe it's to get a chance at seeing where things lead from here. With Libby and me.

Not quite sure where Mom stands in this regard when it comes to Amy and other female folks. She would probably say the same thing, with just a bit of alteration of the gender parts of those sayings to make them fit. But as for Norm and me? She never fails to remind us of this, her version of what the truth in the facts of life is, or supposed to be.�

To be continued.�

WritingElk.