Out of Style but In Luck

Out of Style but In Luck
 
   My walk takes me through a dimly lit hallway in a downtown business building of Natchez, Mississippi. From around the corner, a woman walks toward me. I immediately recognize her.
     I ask her “Do you remember me?”  
     She smiles wide and replies, “How could I forget those bell-bottoms pants and that plaid shirt? You were mighty sassy but we got you through it.”
     I smile back and reply, “Did you read my obit about me being enrolled in your typing class at the time of my death?”
     “Oh, now you’re playing head games. I thought you just dropped out of my class.”
     “No games milady. But I never thought I’d see you again. Look I keep a copy of the newspaper clipping concerning my funeral in my wallet. Here it is, take a look.”
     “Oh, my God,” she says. “We were both twenty back then. Now I’m forty.”
     “Yes, and I am once again twenty. Remember that love note I typed for you? I spoke of eloping to Nepal to get married by a Sherpa lama.”
     “Hey, I’m old enough to be your Mama. I’d be robbing the cradle to date you.”
     “You haven’t aged a year since I last saw you. Forty is the new thirty. So we’re only ten years apart by that reckoning. Besides, I’m an old soul, been around enough millennia to make your head spin.”
     She says, “Your obit here says you died in a commuter plane crash while flying out of the Natchez airport. After twenty years and rebirth, you still have a crush on me?”
     I reply, “You were quiet when my eyes followed you around the room. But the shy ones are my kind. What is your sign?”
     She replies, “Oh if you must know I’m a Virgo. I don’t put much stock in astrology.”
     “The Sherpa religion requires consulting an astrologer to approve a marriage but I trust the newspaper horoscopes on such things. Our Zodiac signs are definitely compatible. Scorpios, such as myself, and Virgos have intense karmic bonds, our love runs loyal and deep, and we shun crowds for our own private kind of romance. What are you doing tonight?”
     “How could I say no to such persistence? Flattery will get you everywhere. Now let’s do the dinner thing at the Eola Hotel. I can’t promise you more.”
     “I admire a woman who tests the waters.”
     “You just walk on the curbside of the sidewalk.”
     “I’d like to buy you supper. Is that ok with you?”  
     “Do I have to answer that?”
    What starts off as a casual dinner date takes a detour into unknown perils. Bridges washed out must be rebuilt with sturdier pilings to support a love which given half a chance could support the weight of our mutual need.