I had no warning. I mean, OK, I guess that I had no warning that I listened to, at the time. Friends told me it wouldn't work. My sister told me it wouldn't work. Hell, she told me it wasn't going to work. But I didn't listen. Maybe if she was sitting on a pile of rocks out in the ship channel. Or in the median of the interstate. Something large and symbolic. It might have gotten my attention. Maybe not.
She was trouble from the git-go. Sitting there not so innocently in white tshirt and over sized cargo pants. Bright rust colored hair and skin the color of strawberry ice cream (creamy white with those little speckles of red freckles). She was sitting cross legged reading a French literary magazine in the coffee shop I was stuck in during that first summer after high school. I didn't know anyone who had even bought one of those-even though there are tons of French Canadians roaming around our town. I though it was either an attention seeking device or a sign of a rare intellect.
Sad for me, it turned out to be both.
She was smarter than I, which was OK, but also wilder than I expected (which seemed great in the beginning and painful later on). She taught me some French, a great deal of philosophy and some gymnastics I would rather not go into. She also lied like a thief and had the patience of squirrel on a power line. All in all, a package I couldn't handle. Just like everyone said.
I never heard her sing. There was supposed to be singing, right?