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‘Oh, didn’t I tell you?’ she pondered.

‘No, not yet,’ I replied, and laughed a little faux-sardonically. ‘You keep avoiding. You keep procrastinating.’

‘It’s complicated,’ she said, trying to wriggle out of an explanation.

‘How so?’ I asked.

‘Because,’ she began. ‘Because where I live I straddle the border between New York and Connecticut, and I both host clients in my home office and offer my services to a law firm. Such a deal, right?’ In other words, it was complicated from a standpoint of “a lot to describe all at once,” as opposed to, “It’s complicated.”

‘Yeah, what a pissa,’ I agreed, doubling up on high school expressions. Ahead of contacting her, I searched for correspondence from my archives and the citation which sticks with me is: “You’re dealing with one smart chick, so watch it!” Her intent was to self-deprecate, but she always was “a smart chick.” She also threatened to slap or smack me a few times if I got out of line; those comments could be more light hearted and tongue in cheek.

‘And your regulars? Being more specific?’ I asked to clarify.

‘Later,’ she said.

‘OK,’ I relented. Let’s not press her, let’s not shake the tree.

She continued along a different track. ‘How interesting that you lived in the same county as me. I moved there around 2002. We just missed each other. I was in London a couple years earlier. Such similarities. How strange! After high school, I moved south for school, studying accounting and then moved West for a little while before returning East and as I say, straddling Connecticut and New York ever since. I’m using phone to text software so hopefully no typos. Hopefully not too many typos, there are always some. I didn’t like accounting, so I went back to school to study counselling, and did a masters in therapy. I preferred cooking facts to cooking the books. As for my social life, married, divorced, single, childless. Dated free spirits. Don’t tell me how that reads. I took too many risks when I was younger and this is how I turned out, how it turned out.’

‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Too many personality differences?’

‘Free spirits behave like free agents,’ she explained. ‘I couldn’t trust him. When I flew home to visit my family … when the cat’s away the mice will play. You know how it goes.’

‘Yeah, I do,’ I said. ‘But what about when the mice are away? Do the cats play or are they bored?’

‘Good one,’ she began, ‘but I wouldn’t know. He never went away. He wouldn’t give me the breathing space.’

“Aha,’ I said. ‘Too bad,’ and I sighed on her behalf.

It is plausible and logical that she’d be drawn to family-related counselling, having been a neutral sounding board in high school, for vulnerabilities, insecurities and relationship advice, as well as commiseration if/when things went wrong. If a boy had an infatuation with Girl A but it wasn’t reciprocated, because she wasn’t ready for the hassle of dating, Lisa might suggest Girl B on the basis of well-honed personal insights. These are accumulated skills for her, and invaluable no doubt, given that vulnerabilities et al are less willingly shared in the 21st century. And sometimes one has to confess as well as confide, get crap off their back and shoulders, without the recipient of those words being judgmental or obsequiously supportive.

Straddling the border. I pictured her in a house straddling the border between these two brotherly states, struggling with her environmentally friendly – “no direct emissions” – lawn mower during yard maintenance season, without an idealistic 16 year old of her own to assign this chore. Nah, there must be handymen in her town angling to cut grass for the cash in hand, though another secret I’ll let you in on. I would not recommend the landscape “artist” who butchered my lawn for years, while conveniently overlooking the sections that required a second effort, to gain that extra yard.

Lawn Maintenance 101: the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and don’t let the boundary wisteria distract you. If he could hew like he can hum and haw. Try to picture a landscape gardener humming and hawing about whether or not to be lazy for the first time in his life, and if I could reinvent myself as a Vonnegut character, it would be a wanna-be prophet who devises a rival religion, and it originated with me saying prayers of thanks each consecutive night I would be free of my brazen handymen. I’m so relieved to be released from them.

Some of her dice rolls attained grapevine status, most ducked the rumor mill. One was an accountant, he is still an accountant. He returned all the way back home after moving far away, further north, and now hangs out with the town drunks every night, like many former classmates. She was a free spirit too, so it’s no surprise she would be attracted to performers, those who make a living in the arts, as opposed to those who have a painter’s or a sculptor’s eye or a musician’s ear and hand-eye coordination.

‘I’m primarily interested in spirituality, and I’ve spent much of my life exploring different philosophies and spiritual expressionism. And if that doesn’t work, I have my Slow Down, Life’s Good mug in front of me on my desk, to settle me down when I have too much work or too much on my mind. It’s been a long strange trip so far, as Gerry said,’ she proceeded.

‘Jerry,’ I corrected.

‘Oh yeah,’ she acknowledged. ‘Spell check. Voice to text.’

‘Mr Spell-Check informs us that this was not indented, and there are worse things than Spell-Check not being able to differentiate between Jerry and Gerry, Grammarly for example, but that reminds me of a story,’ I declared. ‘Though it’s a long story, and you don’t have time.’

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I don’t. Let’s think of a placeholder, for you to tell it.’

‘OK,’ I said, and typed the word “tabled” on the Notes app of my phone. I don’t consider myself spiritual, although as you know the night I saw the red lights reflected in my back yard I underwent a spiritual conversion of sorts. Well, what did I expect? It’s nice to think we can all be spiritual, but what does that mean in practice, and anyone can be philosophical, sometimes or always, but at some point the rubber has to depart from the road. Life has to be, rather than simply exist. It’s no good being a stoic if someone is burning rubber in your direction. It is said that dogs are the true stoics. How often do they win when they pick fights with cars? When I can travel, I will fly and drive over, ring her doorbell, and ask the important questions. It will be the first things I ask, before she becomes melodramatic at our first meeting in decades.

Speaking of unexplained lights in yards, magazine articles and TV programs with slinky grey poltergeists that temporarily appear as cylinders of twirling smoke rising in a vestibule are compelling and addictive. Though ghosts are not supposed to photograph well.

‘Have you published anything?’ she asked. ‘I’d like to read your fiction. Writing is a great hobby. OK, back to the drawing board. I’m working both at home and for the law firm today. Crazy day.’

Salt mines, I said to myself.

‘Let’s stay in touch. I’ll wait until you write again,’ she said.

After she left the region, she fell off the map, my map anyway. She was far from our home town, and I was further away, in New York. Few ‘mates visited me there, much as they should have, and I should have visited in Boston more often, though I was humbled, or, rather, hobbled mentally, after two incidents, as I recollect.

First, “he didn’t sleep very good when he stayed overnight after we went to Punter’s Pub because he wasn’t used to the bed and he asked for strong coffee the next morning, except I gave him decaf and snuck a sleeping tablet in it.”

Wait, better. “We invited him over to watch Apocalypse Now on its first showing on HBO and I offered him a cocktail, except I spiked it with half a pint of rotgut and he passed out after half an hour.” Fell asleep or passed out? If it was Apocalypse Now it was definitely fell asleep, because you don’t need your drink spiked to fall asleep to this movie. And I didn’t have a hangover the next morning or have to urinate for half a day after I got back to the dorm. I’m glad the Whale, the get one over you practical joker who ennobled my cocktail, wasn’t at the apartment the next time I visited this zip code, for my sake, but I wish he was for someone else’s, sake.

Second, at the same verdant apartment, while sitting peaceably and innocently minding my own business, in walked Alan Henry, straight from anywhere but the pub given his condition. He began flailing violently at anyone in his way, including me, swinging wildly, punching in the head or face. I deflected enough of his shots, and got out of the way before someone calmed him down, or the drugs shifted from third into second gear. Nevertheless, his flailing was enough to force me to drop my bottle of beer out of self defence, and some of it spilled on the floor of the student-budget apartment.

I got out of there as soon as I could, with no plans to ever return. I found another group already ensconced at a bar and woke up the next morning with a pounding headache, both from the beer to compensate for the anger at the person who let an off his face Alan into his apartment, and from the slaps to the head I was not able to sidestep or deflect. I had no bruises and my face was not red, which is fortunate because I do bruise easily. I’m not sure which was worse: Alan Henry, the Whale or trying to sit through the entirety of Apocalypse Now with only half a pint of bottom shelf as a palliative, and not even in a Life’s Good beaker. It’s two and a half hours that plays like at least five.

And Why can’t people be normal? As in, Why do people think it’s figuratively OK to park in the middle of the road, and stay there, as if inconsiderate things can only happen to them, and not by them?