"Lies, All Lies"

The Halpern County Botanical Garden was the last place I expected to find myself on a cold, blustery winter afternoon, but there I was, admiring the orchids, zinnias and austrolopitheceze afriansers or whatever the heck flowers they had growing here.

Natalie was with me, of course, or I wouldn't have been there. Natalie loves flowers and gardens. She's such a girl. She even wore a flower print sundress, I noticed, flowering out like an inverted tulip from under her off-white hand-knit wool sweater.

"Jason," she said. "Look at this one. Do you think we could grow one like this?"

"Sure," I said. "But you'd have to turn the heat up. It's hot in here."

"I hope it's not too hot," she said and grabbed my arm, hugging it close.

And it was. My arm, sweatered, under a wool trenchcoat I was too lazy t0 carry, now itched like I'd just rolled around in poisin ivy. I was just short of sweating, and felt a little ill, the way I'd felt in September, when I'd finally finished cleaning out my apartment, and packed away the padlock that locked the storage room that held the boxes of pictures, essays, stories and old letters I'd carried from home to two universities, three dorm rooms and five apartments before we'd moved in together. The last boxes wouldn't fit in the car, so I left them, thinking maybe I could come back later, and maybe, maybe I just wouldn't. And I didn't and now I can't help but wonder what it was that I was thinking, to leave those boxes behind, with the sci-fi story I'd written in 8th grade and the 50-page unfinished fantasy novel and the much-lauded sermon written and delivered for the senior class youth service and the letters and pictures from Jeannine and from Laura.

And my skin prickled because it was just hot in here, and Natalie's bright blue eyes looked at me playfully, but with an edge of what? Yearning? Hope? And I remembered the time we went ice skating just after the ball dropped on New Year's eve and she glided so smoothly over the moonlit surface of the lake and I pushed my legs back and forth, me swinging oafishly like a porch swing following her, shimmering like a luna moth, and how warm I felt, uncharacteristically free and unusually perfect I was in her presence and how I reached for her hand and my fingers just touched the tips of her red woolen gloves, not so much that she even noticed, and I stumbled on the ice, caught myself, and knew I would try again.

And in the garden, I squeezed her arm. "It's just fine," I lied.

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