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 6 ...I think I dreamed you into life...  I Knew I Loved You
   The next time I saw her was the next day, when she came down to swim. 
She was wearing a pink one-piece decorated with roses, a skinny kid with
all the beauty of youth, just on the verge of starting to fill out.  She
gave me a huge grin when she saw me and came over to where I was picking up
towels and tossing them in a laundry basket.
   "Hi, Jack!" she said, and I'd have sworn she fluttered her eyelashes at
me just the least little bit.
   "Hi, Rose," I said, and I was about to correct her on my name, when I
paused.  I don't know what made me hesitate; maybe it was because Jack was
the first name she had ever called me, which sort of meant she had named
me, and that pleased me for some obscure reason.  But whatever the reason,
I chose instead to comment on the huge beach towel she was carrying.  It
had a picture of mermaids in the ocean, breasts demurely covered by flowing
locks of hair, and I remarked that I liked her towel, then pointed out
where she could get a towel from a basket near the diving board if she ever
forgot to bring the mermaids with her.
   "Do you swim, Jack?" she asked, and I realized I had better correct her
sooner rather than later.  "My name's really Brent," I told her with a
smile, "when I said I was Jack of all trades, that was just an expression.
And yes, I do swim, but not as much as you'd think for someone who's around
a pool all the time.  And I'd kind of like it if you keep calling me Jack.
It'll always remind me of how we met." She blushed just a little, then
nodded.  "Okay, Jack it is," she said, and it has been ever since.
   Rose swam for a while, then got out and sat down at the table with me to
talk.  She told me about her parents' divorce, about moving from place to
place with her mom, and about how with each move, she hoped it was the last
one, that she could just settle into one place for a while and get to make
friends.  She spent a lot of time talking about how horribly lonely she
was. She rambled for a long while, and I just let her.  I could see how
easy on the eyes she was going to be when she got older, how sweet and
pretty she was just then.  Looking back on it now, I can see that it was
wrong to entertain such thoughts, but at the time, it was pleasant just to
sit there and imagine what she would look like when she got to be 16, 18,
20 years old.
   Rose started asking all about me.  Where did I stay, how did I like
being a handyman, did I have many friends?  I wound up telling her far more
than I intended.  Far, far more.  I shared with her that I didn't have any
friends either, so I knew all about loneliness, and how bad it felt to just
want to have someone to call friend, someone to be closer to than anybody
else on earth.  It felt so good, so very damned good, to get even a little
of it off my chest that it was like a narcotic, and I had to keep talking
to keep taking hits of that feeling.  I felt like I was floating, or maybe
drifting on some unseen tide, literally high with the sensation of being
able to share my heart.  I swear I don't know how we got so close, so fast,
it just happened, and I don't know how it could have happened any
differently.  I even wound up showing her my room behind the pool, which
she thought was fantastic.  To her, living behind a swimming pool seemed
like an adventure, like having a neat hiding place in plain sight.  
  
rj_chapter06