Walk on Water by Josephine Garner Page A

was a pretty fine performance. The cosmopolitans (I had had more than one) must have helped. All the AIDS brochures talked about sex for drugs, but they ignored alcohol, as if that drug only led to domestic violence and vehicular homicides. People took risks for an assortment of reasons: for drugs, and money, for hope, and appearances, for text messages. There was no such thing as safe sex because there was no such thing as safe living. We were too tied together, constantly colliding and crashing into each other.
    Once I had the privacy of a locked bathroom stall I checked my cell phone. There were no messages and no missed calls. No Luke. Suddenly the phone started vibrating in the palm of my hand I nearly dropped it into the toilet. I didn’t recognize the number so I didn’t answer the call. Seconds later there was a message indicator light. I listened to it.
    “Hi this is Brian,” the message said. “Just checking. I’m looking forward to your TSA technique.”
    I deleted the message and slipped my cell back into my purse. Well at least, I supposed, I had a prize too.

    .
    TEN
    A fter a vigorous Saturday night, and scarcely five hours of sleep, Sunday was a very long day. I didn’t even get home from Mommy’s until close to eight o’clock. After feeding the cats and cleaning their litter box, I took a shower and put on my PJs. Brian had called again and I really owed him a call-back. So I brewed myself a mug of decaffeinated green tea with lemon, retrieved my cell phone from its charger, and settled in for that all important getting-to-know-you-getting-to-know-all-about-you conversation.
    Being a marketing executive, Brian was really very adept at selling himself, plus he did have a lot to offer. Like too many of us, according to Reverend Milton and Mrs. Sterling, Brian was also divorced, but it had happened a long time ago he assured me, and their only child, a girl, was an honors student at the University of Texas.
    “That’s my alma mater,” I shared with him.
    “You’re a Longhorn?” Brian asked elatedly.
    I laughed.
    “I guess I’m entitled to that,” I replied, thinking that it was just barely.
    All of that school pride stuff had been Luke’s thing. Occasionally I had gone along as a spectator, not so much for the sport of it but as a future sociologist observing the cult-like dynamics. And to be with him.
    “Maybe we can take in a game sometimes,” enthused Brian. “Austin’s just a short hop from Love Field, and my daughter’s constantly after me to come down. She’s a cheerleader.”
    Oh God, I was thinking, no way was I going for that. Tailgate parties with too much beer and roasting meat, and freezing miserably in hard stadium seats, all to watch behemoths crack each other up on Astroturf while very pretty girls threw their legs up in the air, and bands played brassy tributes to metaphors of war.
    “Sure,” I said. “That’d be great.”
    It was dishonest, but Brian would figure out soon enough that I was probably not his type, and in the meantime going out with him occasionally would please Mommy and throw Corrine off the scent. Naturally Brian would get something out of the bargain too, good company for sure, and maybe even something more. I wasn’t exactly immune to his charms. I just wasn’t particularly interested in them. But sometimes you simply had to settle for what was in front of you.
    While Brian was in the middle of explaining the virtues of German automotive engineering (he drove a BMW) over American car manufacturing, I took the cell phone away from my ear to check the power bars. They were running out. My own battery was running low too.
    “I’m not too much into luxury cars myself,” I said. “They’re a little out of my price range.”
    “Oh but you have to treat a good car like an investment,” Brian instructed. “You buy it to last. Not to mention how much safer they are to drive.”
    I wondered what Luke had been driving the day of the accident. Was