The story below is a work of fiction.
We went somewhere. It was a sort of fraternal hall with shopping. Perfectly healthy folks demeaning themselves with masks, hunching over their carts pathetically because standing up straight like a biped with proper lumbar curvatures was too much to ask. Heaven help them if they start smoking get diabetes get cancer get gout. They’d look even worse but they’d have an excuse. The damage already done. That was the only thing outside our bubble I noticed while we were there; she was too distracting. Walking sideways talking right up at me because if my attention strayed away from her for the briefest moment I’d have to explain myself. But not in the self-justifying, self-defensive way. My distraction would become her distraction and she’d need to know what in the world diverted my line of sight and hearing from whatever she was talking about. What semi-permeable reality membrane did I pass through where I was the only high-functioning adult in an area of fully-grown humans. Everyone a hunchback drone buying trinkets on credit or on the lookout for scraps of toilet paper, or her. Her, who couldn’t let up enough in her stream of consciousness play-by-play to not seem like a toddler off her meds. Not a unfavorable situation, though. She didn’t speak nonsense and she was never in a bad mood. And cute. That would be enough.
We left and walked a beaten path up a short hill to a foresty park. A gate. We contemplated our options, should we go in. I could conceive only two ways this could end, running through her mind. One of them I ruled out absolutely. Thankfully the other option was made a certainty the way she smiled, twisted herself to throw on full display the adductor longus of her left leg, press it near my knee, encourage me to go with her. She was wearing shorts. It was like an old Time-LIFE magazine ad where a the woman plied her date to try out the new root beer stand. It was by far the least morally hazardous choice for me but I still felt I’d be the one responsible for the consequences.