Settling in a North Berkeley apartment her pension could barely afford, Miranda had few friends left from her years there. And like her, those few friends with whom she had been so close as a student were changed. Their lives had gone in different directions, their interests hardly recognizable to Miranda. Acquaintances they were, rather than friends, Miranda thought. She too could hardly be recognizable to them. The shy demeanor of her student days had vanished. She was bolder now, more willing to assert herself, take risks. Gone was the girlish physical appearance of her twenties. Her face, her entire body, exuded the commanding maturity of a woman in her early 60s who knows and accepts who she is. Had they passed Miranda by on the street, old friends would not have recognized her. This woman with a determined gait had no connection to their reticent, lovely friend. They had envied her long, shiny brown hair that, Miranda had told them, she’d ironed flat after every shampooing. The woman they passed now had short, wiry gray hair. At fifty-five, just over five years ago, Miranda had cut her long, mousy brown-turning-to-gray hair, releasing its natural curl. Eyebrows and eyelashes, so beautifully shaped on a young face had thinned and faded. Only her pug nose and dimpled cheek of her youth remained.
How strange, Miranda thought, as she walked into one of the several cafés in her neighborhood. There he was again. This 70ish-old man was a constant presence in the North Berkeley cafés. But Miranda and he never spoke to one another. She gave a brief smile and a nod as she passed his table carrying her latte to the one empty table. Her mood was sour; she’d asked the barista to skip the artistry on the milk foam. But ugh, there was the cat motif again. And she certainly didn’t wish to engage in any conversation with a do-nothing, hanger-on… Don’t go there, Miranda warned herself as she pushed back her invalidated, offensive, even vulgar character assessment. She stopped, turned around, and sat at his table. “I’m curious,” Miranda said to him, “or confused, and intrigued. Two or three times a week, I go to one or more of the cafés in this neighborhood and everywhere I go, you are there. It’s about time we introduced ourselves. I’m Mi…” Miranda’s throat contracted, a wave of nausea came over her, words she hadn’t summoned gushed out of her mouth. “Stop following me! Stop lurking in places I go, let me be!”
“Oh, uh…I…I’m not…” Miranda didn’t hear what he said next. She stood up and rushed out the door, leaving behind a finely drawn whiskered cat face melting into the too-wet foam of a coffee drink, its smile distorted into a downward pull.
