Excerpt From "Lunch at NoBonay"

Have You Ever Been In Love?

Lunch_at_nobonay

"Have you ever been in love?” she asked taking him by surprise.

He swallowed his tuna and placed his chopsticks on the mat.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said. “My parents, my brother, my sisters and I were on Long Island visiting grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles and cousins on my Dad’s side of the family. It was a beautiful summer afternoon. I was somewhere between five and nine years old. My Aunt Denise, very pretty, maybe seventeen at the time was holding my hand leading me through the bleachers. We were at a park to watch my dad and his brothers and their friends play softball.”

Johnnie Oh paused. His eyes drifted up and to the left as he recalled his dad streaking around the bases after drilling a line drive through the gap beyond the reach of a diving Uncle Lester who was covering first. Or was it a fast grounder past the shortstop, Uncle Charles?

Johnnie Oh wasn’t sure, but he remembered watching Dad run.

“My Dad was quite an athlete. I was known to be a little clumsy sometimes.”

“You?” Julie interrupted, more than a little surprised, “Clumsy?”

“Well, I had a tendency to trip now and then.  I tended to drag my feet. ‘Pick up your feet, boy!’ my Dad would say.”

She looked at him, smiling as he smiled.

“Eventually,” he continued, “I stumbled, literally, upon a box of Vanilla Wafers. The sound of the crispy little things crumbling under the weight of my little PF Flyers caught the attention of the owner who happened to be this really cute little girl.”

He swallowed his tuna and placed his chopsticks on the mat.

“She began to cry and I said I was sorry. She was with a big sister or an aunt who was friends with my Aunt Denise. Her name was Roxanne. I remember picking a flower from my grandmothers garden and giving it to her either later that day or maybe the next day.  At the time I really thought I was in love.”

He swallowed his tuna and placed his chopsticks on the mat.

“It was all over of course by the time we got back to the city. To this day I have no idea who this girl is, where she's at or what she's doing. I didn’t realize it at the time but the adults, especially the women, got a real kick out of the whole thing.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet!” Julie said.

She reached across the table and placed her hand over his and with a very serious expression she asked, “But have you ever been in love with a woman?”

Before Johnnie Oh could answer, he was interrupted by the Red Headed Beauty from the elevator.

“Excuse me,” said the Red Headed Beauty.  “Are you Johnnie Oh?”

Johnnie Oh and Julie looked up. From Johnnie Oh’s perspective this was a welcome interruption on two levels.  First, it relinquished him from having to answer Julie’s question; second, the red head was stunning! Who would have thought he’d actually run into her ever again?

Julie however was clearly pissed! Her eyes cut daggers into the comely flesh of the infringer.

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