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Happy Lucky Birthday

Based on a True Story & a TV Movie of the Week

The conditions of a solitary bird are five:
The first, that it flies to the highest point;
the second, that it does not suffer for company,
     not even of its own kind;
the third, that it aims its beak to the skies;
the fourth, that it does not have a definite color;
the fifth, that it sings very softly.
     -- San Juan de la Cruz, Dichos de Luz y Amor

had told me about a reception for one of her art friends that was coming up and I suggested we make a date of it. I would get my suit cleaned and she would wear a dress. I was especially looking forward to seeing in a dress for the first time. I figured she could win the beautiful willowy maiden contest hands down.

The date was set and arrived quickly. In the past week and I had been together constantly, but we both sensed Friday would be something special. I left work early that day and spent at least half and hour playing with my hair.

Since I was going to wear my suit I didn't want to put it on until the last minute. My apartment still didn't have air conditioning and the weather was quite warm. Thus I was caught naked when I looked out my dressing room window to see standing on the street talking to a policemen. The policeman was obviously giving a ticket.

I thought about rushing right out to save her. I could dash out, completely naked, and yell at the policemen, "No, you fools! I said the woman that attacked me had blonde hair."

By the time I got dressed she had already received the ticket and was parking her car.

I walked up to her as she opened her car door. "Poor baby," I said, "what did those mean policemen do to you?" I noticed she had two six-packs of Loenbrau on the floor of the passenger's side and one was open. Wouldn't the police been interested in that if they had looked!

"Oh, they pulled me over for running a yellow light." 'Yellow' came out as 'yellah' when she said it.

I gathered her up in my arms.

"," cried out to a short dark man who was passing by us outside Gallery.

He turns and smiles, "!" He hugs her close, "how are you doing girl?" He kissed her repeatedly on each cheek, rather wetly, holding her head with his hairy hands. She looked like she was enjoying it.

"," she laughed, "what are you doing with yourself?" She untangled herself from his unctuous grasp.

, the name rang a bell, but I couldn't quite place it. He stood before me, a small, but wide man wearing black leather pants and a black double breasted cowboy shirt. Small round glasses were on his face, framed by a short cropped curly black beard and his receding oily hairline.

and he were apparently discussing the jewelry trade while I stood by unnoticed.

Or maybe not completely unnoticed. Every once in a while turned to me a gave me what he must have thought was his winning smile. To me it just looked like a feral alpha male display, probably fueled by a recently ingested lines of cocaine.

But I was definitely the beta male there as I tried to smile politely. I slowly rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet and silently sorted through my internal catalog of facial expressions. I was looking for the one labeled, "I'm with her, whoever the hell you are." I couldn't find it.

After an hour, or five minutes, which I'm not sure, waved her hand towards me in that "you are summoned by the queen" gesture. I took a small step forward.

"," she said, still not looking at me, "I want you to meet my..."

I really wanted her to say 'boyfriend' right then.

"...friend," she smiles, "Matthew."

You can't have everything.

I was stunned, "That was your boss?!" I was wiping my hand on a cocktail napkin after left. Cooties, you know.

"Yeah," she said, "he was my boss at ." Her eyes were sparkling and she had the most delightful mischievous expression on her face.

"I thought you didn't like him." It looked like they were old friends.

She made a face at 's back, "I don't"

left soon after, perched atop his Harley with his companion for the evening; a plastic pancaked middle-aged woman with bad red shoulder-length hair.

She giggled, "I can't wait to tell about this."

I resignedly handed over my cellphone. She took it and dialed . "," she said to the answering machine, "wait till you hear who I saw with..."

I stared at the minimalist art through the front door of the gallery. There was a great deal of nothing in there.

I was surrounded by women. They all knew each other. They were all smoking cigarettes. They were all sitting down on a bench in front of the art gallery. None of them were talking to me.

First, there was , she was a client of ours and a perky nice person. She was accompanied by , who lives under the delusion that she works for my business partner, . Bringing up the rear was 's sister who was visiting from out of town.

Since and had never met, I immediately introduced them to each other. They sat down and began to chat. In a record breaking two conversational exchanges they had discovered that they both knew her and him and had both been here and there.

and I had not met before, face to face. I had once spoken to her on the phone when she was doing some work with . She was overwhelmingly happy to meet me. We talked about my impending office move.

"I just can't wait until we move into the new offices," she gushed.

I froze the smiling expression on my face. Did she say 'we?'

And then she was off again speaking rapidly, "...and I called and he said this and then I said that!"

Who the hell is this woman?

Soon we were joined by three other nicotine deprived women. They all crowed together on the bench, puffing furiously away. It turned out that knew the husband of woman #3, who was the brother of woman #2, who had a friend who had some jewelry work done by . Actually, no one knew woman #1, and when this was discovered she was asked to leave.

When left to go to the bathroom I was left in charge of her purse. motioned to the spot where had been sitting and silently mouthed the words, "I REALLY LIKE HER!"

I mouthed back, "SO DO I!"

went to the bathroom, too. I was left garding her purse as well. When the ladies at the other end of the bench stopped talking and noticed me, I proudly proclaimed, "I watch the purses!" They went back to ignoring me.

After the art show and I went across the street to eat. It was only after we had sat down that I noticed how tipsy she was.

"I want the special Thai pasta," she loudly proclaimed to the waiter. 'Special' came out as 'spayzul' through her ante-bellum slur.

We were leaning across the table to be near each other. One hand intertwined with the other's.

"I love the special Thai pasta," she said with half closed eyes. She pronounced 'love' as 'luv'.

After the profundity of the art show, our conversation was trivial. Eventually I brought up the subject of our semi-transparent relationship. I wished she had called me her boyfriend. So I kept plucking at that thread, trying to define our togetherness. Things ended up unravelling.

"Well, as long as you haven't slept with your ex since we've met," flicked an ash into the ashtray, "I can deal with it."

She seemed surprised, "but I did. Shortly after you and I started dating."

My face was locked in an expression that I have no idea what it looked like, but it deeply disturbed .

Her voice trailed off into nothingness, "I thought you knew."

The words rang in my head, "I am a smuck."

Her hands were in her lap and she was looking down at them, "I swear I thought I had told you." She looked very small and far away like the view through a child's toy telescope when you look through it the wrong way.

She was trying to explain, "We didn't sleep together, we just fucked. It's not like it is between us, you're the only one I sleep with. You're the only one."

At that time I wasn't really interested in her unique and probably misguided hair splitting over the difference between sleeping and fucking. I did understand the point she was trying to make and I angrily made a note to examine the semantics I used in describing love and sex.

She began rocking back and forth, "Oh baby, oh baby, please don't give me that look." She tried to take my hand but I would have none of it, "We had just met and I told you I wasn't ready for a commitment." She began to cry, " oh baby, it's not like it is with you. He's all dead inside."

Her crying subdued and shamed me as I tried to tell her how I felt on a personal level.

I got up and moved to her side of the booth. I took her hands in mine, "I'm so fond of you and I have demonstrated again and again how much I care about you and I just can't stand the thought that I will be the other man in your life. I'm just not wired that way."

She tried to smile, "But you are the pri-mary man in my life." She said her husband's name, "he's going away."

I just wished he would go away soon, like three weeks ago.

" , I have got to straighten this out in my head. I can't ask you to change - I don't own you."

"What do you want, baby," her eyes pleaded, "tell me what you want."

I thought carefully. I was reminded of old tales of adventurers who were granted great wishes, only to be undone by their ill thought requests.

What did I want? My more practical self stepped in and made the decision.

"If you could manage," I said without grinding my teeth, much, "to just stop fucking your husband, that would do a great deal to ease my mind."

She sat there as plain as day and I could read the expression right on her face. She was thinking, "what a strange thing to ask!"

I shrugged, resigned. The two hundred twenty volt surprise discharge of this evening's revelation left me withered, extra crispy, and tired.

"Come," I said as I rose, "let's go home." I reached out my hand.

She took my hand and I had to ease her out of her seat; the wine had softened her bones.

As we left the restaurant she asked me, "are you going to sleep with me?" She was leaning on my arm.

I shook my head, "I don't know, ." Then I gave a bitter laugh, "I may fuck you , but I don't know if I should sleep with you."

Even though I had an expired driver's license, I decided it was wisest for me to drive.

handed me the keys, "oh goody, you get to drive my car!"

I drive rarely and all the cars I used to drive were artifacts. Getting into 's Ferrari F430 Spider was sliding in the cockpit of an airplane. And as with an airplane, there is a checklist you have to go through before you start driving.

I was thinking, "It starts with seat belt, and then..." I waved my hands in the air.

gestured helpfully, "the lights are the knob on the left."

I gave her a badly executed I-knew-that expression and began turning knobs and flipping switches. While I was familiarizing myself with everything, talked.

"Are you going to make me sleep outside?" She had reclined the seat back a bit.

I continued to poke at the dashboard, punctuating my efforts with negative and affirmative humming.

"Don't you think that we are good together?"

"Mmmhmm."

"You know I don't really care about him anymore?"

"Mmmhmm."

"The sex between us doesn't mean anything."

"Mmmhmm."

"You don't want me?"

"HmmMmm."

"We just gotta have fun!"

"Mmmhmm." And we were out of the parking lot. I concentrated very hard on my driving. The Ferrari really wanted to rip up the road; I had the sensation that I had to pull the steering wheel back to restrain the car.

"Don't you just love driving my car?"

"HmmMmm."

She squirmed in her seat. She had tilted the seat farther back and wasn't wearing her seat belt. I was taken by the soft curves of her body underneath the pale gray dress. The dark stitching of flowers embroidered upon it stirred as if they were blown by a gentle breeze. Her legs looked alabaster against the black leather seat. Her hair was swept to the side, encircled her neck and hung across her chest.

I returned my attention to the road. I asked myself if I was insane.

I had to make a decision.

She began to mutter some playful love talk and was plucking at the bottom of her dress.

"Don't you like my legs?" She pulled her hemline up a few inches. "Don't you want to touch them?"

I negotiated traffic, ", I need to think about this."

She got that damned mischievous grin on her face and pulled the dress up to her smooth flat stomach. Black thong bikini briefs were underneath.

She arched her back and her hair unwound itself and spilled down her back. "Oh baby, you don't need to worry about him."

She crossed her arms and pulled the dress off.

I intended to tap the accelerator to keep a green Suburban from overtaking us on the right. There were six guys wearing baseball caps extolling farm products in it. My tap turned into a kick and the car leaped forward enough to rock her back in her seat. She was laughing as she fiddled with the front clasp of her black lace bra.

I wanted to say, ", what the hell are you doing?" But that was pretty stupid. It was obvious.

I wanted to say, ", why the hell are you doing that?" But the only answer is 'because it's .'

I could only groan, "..."

Our increased speed put us closer to yet another Suburban in the right lane. This one was copper colored, but carried similar looking people as the last one. My God, I had stumbled onto a convoy.

lay on her side, stretched across her seat, only wearing a thong.

She was devastatingly beautiful.

Between these two Suburbans surely someone saw her. I imagined gangs of young tobacco chewing farm hands, leaping off of speeding Suburbans onto the car. Mindlessly driven like sperm to an egg, they only desired to mate with the dusky . Drooling and pawing at the windows, they stick unnaturally to the car. If decides to open the window surely one will get in.

sat up in her seat and folded her legs underneath her. She held her shoulders back and straight as she cupped her breasts, looking down on them. I realized she had been talking the entire time.

"...don't you want to touch me?" She looked up a me, inviting.

I smiled as I shifted to fifth and tapped the accelerator. We left the Suburbans behind on a yellow light.

"I guess I don't have to make a decision right now." I thought.

Two days later gave me my birthday present: a necklace. On the necklace was a small pendant holding the lucky dime I found on my first date with her. Atop the dime was a small bull and a large single flower.

took it from my hands and showed it to me.

"See, he goes back and forth. So he can sniff," she demonstrated.

She held the bottom of the dime with the fingers of her left hand. Her right hand held the loop which held the pendant on the necklace. She pushed her hand to the left and right with small movements. The gold bull slid back and forth on a track behind him so he could smell the flower. It was the Story of Ferdinand, caught in miniature.

I took it from her and turned it over to look at the tiny track the bull traveled on. I was awed by both the beauty of the work and the cleverness of the engineering. On the back, curving around the holder of the dime were tiny capital letters: LUCKY HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

"Lucky happy birthday," she cheered.

"I was worried you were going to give me a Rolex," I exclaimed.

She playfully slapped me on the arm. "You wish!"

She took the necklace and unclasped it. I looked into those deep deep eyes of hers as she held it up to me.

"How much luck is a dime worth?" I thought to myself as she encircled her arms around my neck.

I had a feeling was going to need awful lot of dimes.