TWO WOMEN WALKING

 

 

Albert N. Katz

 

           It was a clear dark night. Just as I liked it.  Moonlight shone on the thin layer of snow. One doesn’t meet people at 3 a.m. but there she was. Tall, red hair peeking though her knit cap. Walking her dog, just as I was doing. Her look of fear relaxed when she saw that I too was a woman, and though strangers, she agreed to my invitation that we walk together. Melanie, the name she gave me, walked “Woolfie”, the name she gave her dog  “at that ungodly hour because her workday started early, and she liked the tranquility of the land before the sun rose.”

           I too walked when the sun was down, and the moon was high. I too liked the dark, moonlit nights and all the surprises I run into. Like Melanie..

            Recalling her look when first she has seen me, I asked Melanie if I had been a man not a woman, would she had preferred meeting a bear than that man.

            Alice answered quickly. “I’d pick the bear! They won’t bother you if you leave them alone. But a man....”

           “Even an older man. Feeble looking. Walking a miniature poodle or some such.”

          “It would make no difference! A man is a man.”

          “And a woman is, well, just better, isn’t that true?”

            She gave me a long, penetrating look, and murmured. “So true.” And then she smiled widely, showing perfect white teeth and sparkling blue-eyes. “If I met a man when I was all alone on one of these walks, and he ignored my request that we walk in different directions, well, I have a knife and know how to use it.” Then reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a knife. It was long, and sharp.

I was surprised. And told her I had no weapon, and she shook her head in amazement. “Perhaps you best get one,” was all she said.

          “Perhaps.” I replied, and then asked, “What if the man was gorgeous and asked you out for a cup of coffee, sometime.”

          She looked to the moon, rolling my question in her head, I thought, as if trying to determine something about me and repeated, “I like the company of women more.”

          “As do I”, I responded. “But having the odd male friend, can be nice too.”

           Melanie just shrugged. By the time we had completed the loop of our walk and reached the spot where we had left our cars, she suggested we meet and walk our dogs again the next day at the same time, if it was convenient to me.

            It suited me quite well.

            Though surprised, I was delighted when she gave me a quick kiss on my cheek. “It is so hard to find people you like. Really like,” she said.

          I found the old tingle awakened and gave her a quick kiss on the mouth. Her eyes. Oh, those eyes. How they looked at me.

          She arrived promptly at the arranged time before the sun rose. and we walked in the quiet darkness along the path we had taken the day before. Once we had reached the halfway point in the loop back to the cars, I turned to Melanie and asked her a variant of the question I had asked 24 hours previously: “At this precise minute, would you prefer to come face to face with that gorgeous man with whom you’ve struck up a friendship, or a woman, walking her Shih Tzu….”

          She smiled at me coyly and answered quickly in a shy voice. “A woman.”

          But I was not finished with my reveal and continued. “What if this was a special woman?”

          She looked pleased. Very pleased. And answered more assuredly. “A woman. It is so difficult to find a special woman!”

          “So true”, I replied. “Especially one unaffected by knives or any such toys.” 

          For the first time since I met her, she looked confused, her blue eyes then turning grey with fear.

           That is when I smiled, revealing my sharp incisor teeth.

 

THE END

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     After 43 years working as a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology, Albert N. Katz (he/him), retired from academia and started a literary career. His neo-noir, crime, or mystery stories have appeared (or slated to appear) in magazines such as: Black Cat Weekly, Close to the Bone, Illustrated Worlds Magazine, KRL, Mystery Tribune, Punk Noir, Starlite Pulp Review, and Yellow Mama. Other stories have appeared in various mystery- or crime-themed anthologies.  

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     Bernice Holtzman’s paintings and collages have appeared in shows at various venues in Manhattan, including the Back Fence in Greenwich Village, the Producer’s Club, the Black Door Gallery on W. 26th St., and one other place she can’t remember, but it was in a basement, and she was well received. She is the Assistant Art Director for Yellow Mama.