“Hon, did ya hear me?”
“Huh,” I jerk my attention to the waitress standing beside the table with her pen and pad in hand.
“A drink?” she asks patiently like I’m a child. She’s in her mid-fifties I would guess and would be prettier with less gaudy makeup caked on.
“Oh, yes, of course,” I shake my head willing myself to snap out of my fog. “What do you have?” I ask.
“Well, let’s see, we have Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, root beer, sweet tea, coffee, lemonade and water. And if ya ask me, which ya didn’t I know, but if you wanna eat well tonight, I’d go with the catfish basket. Those suckers are huge today!” She bugs her eyes at me and I notice them for the first time since she approached the table. One blue, one brown. A little whoosh of air rushes out of me as my eyes find the nametag pinned to her uniform.
“One blue one brown eye,” I marvel.
“Only all my life,” she smiles.
Kit.
“Kitty?” I mumble mostly to myself, my brain tripping over itself in disbelief.
To Rusty with a whole lot of love from your favorite blue and brown-eyed girl. -Kitty
My mind reels back to the message that had been left in the notes section of the iPod Sy and I found all those years ago. We made up countless theories about the little note.
“We met before?” Her eyes crinkle further at the edges, her mismatched irises searching my face for recognition.
“Is there any chance that you gave an iPod Classic to someone named Rusty about…” I stop to formulate a quick estimate of how many years have likely passed since “Kitty” gifted an iPod—our iPod—the iPod to “Rusty”—the same iPod that somehow wound up on the roadside where me and Sy found it. “Had to be about nineteen or twenty years ago. Ring any bells?”
Kit’s eyes go unnaturally wide as her face blanches. “My God in heaven how on earth do you know about that?” she whisper yells while sliding into the booth seat opposite me.
“Oh, Kit, it seems our paths have crossed before,” I laugh weakly into my folded arms on the tabletop, the sound coming out muffled and altogether pathetic. I go on explaining the lurid details to Kitty pausing when she has to escape to actually work for a moment which given the how slow the place is right now, isn’t often.
“So you see? That’s the iPod we shared, the one that started our little song game, the music we listened to, the memories we made. All with Sy and me and your iPod.” I twirl the straw in my watered down lemonade sending the last slivers of ice chips around to scrape the insides of the cup.
“Rusty’s iPod,” she corrects with a scornful tone making her hiss slightly.
“How did it end up on the side of the road?”
“I threw it out the cab window of his pickup,” she says proudly, thrusting her chin outward.
“Sounds like your story may top mine,” I deadpan. I lift one brow prompting her to spill the proverbial beans. She heaves a dramatic sigh and shrugs.
“Well, let’s just say we weren’t openly dating on account of him… well, he was still married, okay?” she rushes out, spilling her confession in a hurry with her painted fluorescent pink fingernails flying up into the air.
“Oh boy.”
“We didn’t mean for it to happen. It just kind of did. Anyway I had gone into Red’s Garage for a busted radiator on my old Buick and we just hit it off.”
“Holy shit. Rusty is Red?” Distantly, my subconscious self-cringes at the redundancy of that revelation.
“Yep. Everyone knows him as Red on account of that auburn mop of his but his family calls him Rusty.”
“Super original,” I muse sarcastically.
“Anyway, I bought one of those iPods thinkin’ he’d love it, ya know. Everyone was goin’ nuts over them,” she says rolling her eyes. “I gave it to him one night when we were sneaking out together. I was real proud of the time and effort I put into that gift,” she pouts.
“And,” I lead.
“And he just about bit my head off over it. Said his wife would find him having an iPod odd since he didn’t even own a computer or nothin’. Then he accused me of trying to get us caught so his wife would give him the boot which was asinine. I think he was just gettin’ bored with using me.” She visibly deflates.
“Wow, Kit. I still have the iPod. Turns out we both threw it at one point over a dumb man so it’s busted but I’ll bring it back to you if you want it.”
“Nah. What the hell do I want a broken hunk of junk for? Better yet, why are you holdin’ on to it?” she quips pointing one finger at me. “That’s the better question if ya ask me.”
“I don’t know why I have it.” I shrug and look down as I give myself a moment to mull that one over. We sit in companionable silence for a stretch.
“I have my momma’s piano in my garage. It’s no more valuable than firewood now. It got destroyed at momma’s house in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina but I hawked three diamond rings and a strand of pearls to afford the movers who carefully took it out of her house, loaded it into a truck, strapped it down securely, drove it here and moved it into my garage where it collects dust,” she smiles but her eyes mist over. “My momma had Alzheimer’s and hadn’t played that piano in a long time since she’d been moved to a nursing home once she couldn’t be left alone any more. She passed on three months before Katrina,” her voice thickens and she swallows hard. “She obviously can’t play the thing any more and she hadn’t been able to for quite a while before she passed away but she still plays in here,” she says touching her index finger to her temple and the palm of her other hand to her chest over her heart. “Sometimes even broken junk holds onto its value in the eye of the person who it belongs to, who made memories with it.”
“True. I’m glad you got your momma’s piano,” I say resolutely. “If I were brave, I’d do what you did and toss the damn iPod out the window. Let it go.”
“Sometimes it’s braver to hold on when letting go seems to be the better thing to do,” she muses, studying me in that way wiser women study younger, dumber women.
“Doesn’t feel brave to hold on,” I mutter. “Feels mostly like shit.”
“Funny thing about courage is a lot of the time it just feels like fear. What I had with Rusty was foolish and not worth the trouble.” She waves her hand dismissively. “Sounds like—and more importantly—it looks like what you had with Sylas was, and maybe still is, worth the trouble.” She raises her brows at me. “You understand?”
“I do,” I whisper hoarsely, my chin wrinkling up as fat, embarrassing tears steamroll down my cheeks and all my resolve to keep my emotions in check.
“Think on it and decide if that gadget still plays music for you, in your heart. May mean something.” She quirks up one overly arched brow and slides from the booth. I thank Kit for her time and advice, pay the seven dollar and eighty-three cent bill and leave her all the cash in my wallet. I didn’t count but I hope a pile of one hundred-dollar bills and several twenties may help her buy new pearls.