B. Alexander Howerton by The Wyrding Stone Page A

as he turned slowly around in a manner he hoped
appeared casual, examining the neighborhood.  Julia lived on the right side of
the upper floor of a large, ornately designed red brick house in the Heritage
Hill district.  All the houses in this neighborhood reflected the opulence of a
bygone era, and most of them had now been divided up into apartments.  A sharp
buzzing brought him whipping around, and he realized Julia had remotely opened
the door for him.  He pushed the heavy oaken door open and stepped into an
elegantly appointed foyer.
    “Up here.”
    He glanced up to see Julia waving at him over an ornately
carved railing.
    “Hi.  How are you?” he asked in a voice that he hoped
sounded casual.  He had forgotten how beautiful she was, and was almost
rendered speechless.
    “Just fine.  Come on up.”
    He walked as casually as possible up the stairs and entered
her apartment through the door she held open.  “Nice place,” he said, looking
appreciatively around at the minimalist modern furnishings, which somehow
seemed to fit into the older style of the architecture.
    “Make yourself comfortable.  I’ve got to do a couple more
things.”
    Alan held up the brown bag with its tightly-wound top.  “I
brought some wine.”
    “Great,” she said, rushing off to the bathroom and fumbling
with her earring.  “You can find glasses in the kitchen.”
    Alan went through a small alcove lined on both sides with
overloaded bookshelves into the kitchen, and proceeded to search the cupboards
for wine glasses.  He heard Julia snort sarcastically in the bathroom.  “Of
course the glasses are in the kitchen.  Where else would they be?  There in the
cupboard to the left of the sink.”
    “Found ‘em,” Alan called.  “Now I need a corkscrew.  Don’t
tell me.  Let me guess.  In the drawer on the right of the dishwasher.”
    “Have you been here before?”  Julia chuckled.
    Julia finished getting ready, and they each drank a glass of
wine, sitting on her living room couch, trying to come up with appropriate
small talk, and dreading the awkward silences.  They devolved into watching her
white long-haired cat Snowflake wash herself on the chair across the room.
    Finally Julia quickly swallowed the last little bit of wine
in her glass and said, “Shall we?”
    Alan hopped up rather quickly.  “Sure.  If we get there soon
enough, we can probably get in before it gets too crowded, and we have to wait
forever for dinner.”
    “OK,  I’ll get my coat.”
    Alan parked on the street by the Monroe Mall amphitheater,
and they strolled across it to the BOB, an old, renovated warehouse which was
now a four-story bar and restaurant in the heart of downtown.  Alan remarked
that he loved to come down in the summertime to the Blues on the Mall series on
Wednesday nights.  “You ever come down for that?”
    “No, but I’ve always wanted to.  Maybe we can go together
next summer.”
    Alan felt a little zing as he realized she had implied she
would still like to be doing things with him by that time.
    They chose to have dinner at Bobbarino’s, the Italian
restaurant on the second floor.  They were seated at a cozy, softly-lit booth
amongst the large wooden restained pillars and beams of the old furniture
warehouse.  The exposed ductwork and rafters were painted in warm, inviting
colors.  “I love what they’ve done to this place,” Alan remarked casually.  “I
love that big circular hole in the middle of the whole place.  You can lean on
the railing and look all the way up and down to the different floors.”
    “Yeah,” Julia replied, “and it’s a good thing they put a net
there, to keep the drunks from bombarding the people below with beer mugs.”
They chuckled.
    They ordered dinner and drinks and looked around as casually
as possible at the other diners.  Finally they could not avoid paying attention
to each other, and both racked their brains for a topic of conversation.
    “So,” Alan