Cold Mist

II. Jenny

I must admit that every twilight, every change of hue in the horizon, brought back an unbidden deluge of memories full of those years that bordered on the melancholy. I have always wondered why I could not let go of the stupidity of that era and held on more and more to its sweet madness instead. Was it because those were the times when Jenny and I were still together, loving each other down?

I know that our association did not survive long, yet even so, I was never really the same again after her. I loved her, you see? Too much perhaps, which is why it didn't last. But as hackneyed as it may sound to you, she will always be the best part of what memory I have left of those years. Or at least the part of it that in ingrained in my memory.

I remember the one afternoon which might have started it all. We were in their verandah, as we usually were to be found when it was late in the afternoon, when without warning – not even a preliminary of any sort – she said that, "you know, I prefer tulips over roses. It's my favorite flower now because it doesn't reveal too much of itself."

I was too shocked to respond at first but I had to knot my eyebrows on this, I mean 'what did it have to do with us?' We weren't even discussing anything remotely floricultural, if you know what I mean. I snorted before I could stop myself, "and what my dear, pray tell me, does that have to do with us?" I asked at last. I ought to have shut up I know, but god, tulips? That killed me.

"It has a lot to do with us," she said quite solemnly, "ah, you can't possibly understand," she sighed. Clearly, I was a lost cause. "but I'm going to be like my Professor in Psychology who prefers a tulip type of personality. I want to have a little mystery around me. I can't be too revealing all the time... this is all your fault, you know..." she added with a glance full of meaning. "Every chance you get, you..." and Jenny went on and on with her litany on the 'language of flowers' that dulled my wits to stupidity. I mean, were we going to do anything at all aside from discussing flowers and their role in moral values?

I just had to shut her up.

"Is that really so?" I said as though I had finally figured it out. She looked at me with a preschool teacher's patience emanating from her face. "here's an idea, what if..." I added and kissed her right on the mouth, on the neck and on the... all in quick succession making it hard for her to fend me off. "So, what do you say?" I grinned, watching her catch her breath.

She looked at me coyly. "Hmmm, for the moment, I'm a complete sunflower." She started walking away but turned slightly at the door and gestured. "Come inside, there's a particular flower I want you to cultivate..."

We could do a lot of this, and other things besides that only came alive in other people's wet fantasies, believe me. Her parents had already separated their ways. And while her father had not manifested himself in any form within the past few days that I have known her. Her mother was overseas on a cruise getting acquainted with the old geezer she had eloped with and perhaps trying to discover how green the grass were in foreign land. It's really none of my business but money does have the capacity to make one forget even one's own family.

And for this reason we were left to tend to our own gardens.