Katie

A short story based on an idea I had in a dream... written March 2008.

“Hi, darling!” Her eyes lit up like a police siren when she saw me.

“Hi, Katie,” was the reply as I hugged her. “How are you doing today?”

“Great, just great! I've had such a productive day – would you like to see my new painting?” She took me by the hand and lead me through to where her painting stood centre-stage on her desk, looking out over her bed. Within its canvas flew a brightly-coloured bird – like a parrot but slimmer and more graceful-looking – facing up and off to the right of the canvas. Either it was trying to escape from the vague, dark shapes at the bottom left corner, or it had exploded out of them, it was hard to tell.

“I like that a lot,” I smiled at her as she stood back; proud, but bashful. “The contrast between the two halves is really something.”

“Thanks! The idea came to me in a dream, so I can't really take all the credit,” Katie beamed at me. “Although it was still my mind that created the dream, so I will anyway!”

I laughed, knowing exactly what she meant. We always had that connection; her forever following my train of thought as if I were inside her head or she were inside mine – sometimes it was hard to tell where my thoughts ended and hers begun.

Our relationship hadn't started with some chance meeting where we laid eyes on each other and knew instantly that we were meant to be together, that sort of thing just doesn't happen in real life. In fact, I don't even remember when we first met, our circles of friends just seemed to cross over at some point and we became slowly aware of each other. Until one day I saw her in a bookshop and something changed; something subtle yet heavy with the power of its consequences, like a huge switch Frankenstein might have used to bring life to his monster, but flicked on by someone carelessly discarding a used bus ticket.

I'd like to say we bonded over the books we were looking at, but we didn't. I was looking for a science-fiction book, and she was more interested in the classics. Typical boy-girl situation I guess. Maybe if more girls read comic books and more men read Flaubert we'd meet in the middle somewhere, but things are the way things are. Embarrassingly, what drew us together was me singing to myself as I wound my way between the shelves.

We'd already acknowledged each other in that way periphery acquaintances do; with a raise of the eyebrows and a half-second-long flash of a smile, then as I passed her again I unwittingly let her know what I was listening to in my headphones by the contortion my mouth made when trying to sing along.

“Crazy little thing, crazy little thing” I muttered along to the Captain Beefheart song of the same name, forgetting I was wearing headphones and no one else could hear the music drowning out my words the way I could. It was then I noticed she was standing to my left and I saw her lips move. I took my headphones out.

“Sorry? I couldn't hear you...” I apologised.

“I was just saying I hope you're not referring to me,” she scowled at me.

“Uh, no, I was just...” I pointed at my headphones as if this would explain it, struggling for the words, realising I'd been singing out loud and trying my best not to go red.

“Probably the name that would drive me crazy all along, eh?” In that moment, paraphrasing the lyrics to the song, she let me in on her secret and turned the whole situation on its head. Suddenly I was aware she was toying with me, and she knew the song. Instantly, I felt a kinship with her that wasn't ever obvious before. Why hadn't I known before that she was a fan of Captain Beefheart?

“Why would you? You didn't ask!” I still remember that it was at the moment that Katie touched my arm and smiled the smile that I came to adore. “Girls can like good music too, you know,” she teased me, laughing, “it's just unusual!”

We then spent the next half hour walking around the bookshop, each of us trying to convince the other that our chosen literary genre was the most entertaining or impressive or something – I'm not sure exactly what we were trying to prove, but it ended with us each buying a book the other recommended and agreeing to see each other again to talk about them. I went home that afternoon with her number in my phone and so many possibilities stretched out before me in my mind.

I still think of how that one song brought us together.

Of course, I couldn't resist calling her long before I'd finished the book she made me buy. I think we only talked about our book choices for five minutes before moving on to whatever was on our minds. We began to see more of each other and ended up being boyfriend and girlfriend within a matter of weeks.

The months passed and things got more and more exciting. I don't think either of us had really connected with a member of the opposite sex on the same level before, to the point where even the most obscure childhood memories were a shared experience. The only thing that seemed to blight our time was her occasional pains and struggles. At first I thought she was really hurting physically, but as time passed I was no longer sure. She'd seem sore and push me away, but then she'd be fine again and all was forgotten.

The day she showed me her painting it reminded me again of Captain Beefheart, her style of painting was very similar to his; messy, thick brush strokes approximating the shapes with bright colours. It was that comparison that took me back to when we first connected in the bookshop, and again brought to mind the song Crazy Little Thing.

“Have you decided on what to name it?” I enquired of the painting.

“I don't know, I thought I'd call it 'Bird of Panama', but I don't know why. Have you ever been to Panama?”

“No, I'm not even sure exactly where it is to be honest. South America somewhere?”

“Central America, actually. It's that little strip of land in the middle connecting Costa Rica to Columbia.”

“I see,” I nodded. “What made you think of Panama?”

“It was just a part of the dream, it seemed obvious to me that it was in Panama, even though I've never been there. Would you like to go sometime? We could go next month, when you have time off work?”

But of course she won't be going to Panama, or anywhere else. And it's at this point that I have to remind her that she's wearing a hospital gown.