Franzi

Although Laura and I had digitally sent each other a seemingly final goodbye, I withheld for a long time the strong feeling that I should give her a birthday present to wrap things up with more grace. I also really felt like Laura would like what "The Prophet" has to say, so I Amazon'd the book, enclosed in it the cover of a chocolate cover that she gave me while I was in a wheelchair, pasted on its back a cookie fortune that said: "Look around, happiness is trying to catch you", wrapped it up with two thick sheets of paper I ripped from my current notebook and 4 thumbtacks, and wrote "Welcome to your 29th year! Hope it's a fun one!" with dry erase markers on the front. The monthly Baha'i Unity meeting happened to fall only one day after her birthday, so there I went, present in hand, intending to see her, gather some yet unknown vibe from her, offer/give her her present, and depending on the vibe, stay or leave for the whole meeting.

I sat at the porch for 10-15 minutes first, making up my mind to either enter or leave. I guessed Laura might not have arrived yet, so I hung out on the stairs waiting for her, next to a grey cat who just happened to be there too. Its light gray fur and greenish eyes, and even its graceful movements reminded me of Laura, and I stared at him for a while, hoping to see Laura come in. But no one came, so I went in, and began saying hi to everybody. Laura was already in the dining room, and she smiled pretty genuinely when she saw me.

Laura: "I didn't know you were coming!", she said happily.

Antonio: "Yeah, well, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision.

Laura: I imagined so.

She was talking to a nice-looking girl, so I let them resume their conversation, and I went around talking to people. When the presentation started (a movie about Baha'is in Iran), I sat at a chair on the far side of the dining room, as I had a direct line of view to the screen. As it turned out, the nice-looking girl didn't have a good spot to see the movie from, so I offered to give her my spot. Astrid suggested she move her chair right next to mine. She did just that, so we ended up sitting together on the far side of the dining room, watching the movie together, throwing in some conversation once in a while.

Her name was Franziska, she was from Germany, and she was visiting Pittsburgh for just about a week - she was leaving on Tuesday. With more free time in my hand, I offered to take her around Pittsburgh during the few days she was still in town. I told her there was an art show going on that night, 8PM-0045, and she was actually interested in going. Happily surprised, I figured out how to get there and how to get her back to her godparents' place in Carnegie.

Laura happened to walk back into the kitchen while the movie was running, and I took the chance to give her her present. She seemed to like it, with her slightly-confused/happy laugh: "heehee, what is this?". "It's your birthday present!". She then told me she was glad that I'd come, since she wanted to get in touch with me again, despite her last email. I was happy to hear that, and we agreed to meet again once she was out in the "clear", as she called it, since she's busy with stuff from school, such as end-of-semester chores and planning a trip to Costa Rica.

After the meeting was over, Laura still seemed busy talking to people, so I said goodbye to her, we quickly re-agreed to meet again when she was more "in the clear", and I left with Franzi and her godparents to the art show.

30 lost-and-found minutes later, we arrived at the art show venue (Dance Alloy), only to see that it was already closing (it was only an hour long, not five). Aimless now, we proceeded to walk along Negley Ave, and I thought of taking her to Shadow Lounge as an alternative night destination. We walked for a while, casually conversing about this and that, about Pittsburgh, about herself, about myself. When we reached Shadow Lounge, funny thing, it was closed! On Saturday night! As it turned out, it had just closed its doors to the public on March 30th, only a week earlier. Ah, luck.

So we kept on walking, this time on Centre Ave, and I had no idea where to take her. Still, our conversation was pleasant. We reached a bus stop, and I thought we could take the 82 back home. But Whole Foods was right across the street, and I proposed we go in and find something to eat and drink. She was thirsty, so we went in. I got a carrot juice, she got a coffee and some kind of vanilla juice. We sat down, kept on talking, and stayed in the store until we were kicked out at 10PM.

We then took the 82 down to Neville (mistakingly instead of Craig), kept on walking, Franzi fell twice, and I showed her my favorite cherry tree at Henry and Neville. It was dark, but she still liked the tiny pink blossoms. I then showed her the whole expanse of Craig St, then back to my apartment. She seemed to be feeling tired (there was yawning), so I thought I'd take her back. Ah, then we couldn't find the zipcar on Craig St, so I told her to wait for me at the apartment, and that I'd just scoot and get the closest car around. That was on campus, so I grabbed the first one I could and drove back to the apartment. I forgot to turn my headlights on, and sure enough, a police patrol stopped me and asked for my license and registration. Fortunately I only got a warning. I then went back to the apartment, told the incident to Franzi, and we laughed about how utterly failing our night had been.

I dropped her off, and we agreed to meet on Monday. Sunday I did little... some Yoga, breakfast with Montse at Ritters, maybe some work on the Audio Stories, piano practice... not much else I remember. Monday, however, after a morning yoga session, I met with Franzi in downtown at Liberty Ave, and we spent the whole day touring around.

First we went to the Monongahela Incline, went up all the way, took pictures of the landscape and her, talked about photography, walked through the Mt Washington neighborhood, talked about Ghanean, German, and Guatemalan education systems. We went back down, and walked to Chipotle to have lunch. I insisted she try the Chipotle burrito, and she did. It was a bit too spicy for her (as she got both the mild and the hot sauce on it), but we had fun eating it out on Market Square. We talked about what the PPG building looked like, her future plans, exotic fruit, and burritos. I then planned to take her to Highland Park, to check out the reservoir over there. But then the bus never came, and we only had 2 hours before she wanted to take her bus back home. When I learned from Google Maps that it took 1 hour to get to the reservoir, we canceled on that plan, and we hung out at North Park, where the Zen-style fountain rocks are, next to the river. We sat down there, talked for a bit, and I told her I liked her. Like, I liked her liked her.

She was surprised. "Oh, um, what a surprise". I was happy to say it, though. Out of the system, able to have any conversation and opinion without reservation. Ah, the freedom. I said what's polite and expected later on: "I'm not looking to get anywhere by saying this, I hope we remain friends, I think we get along really well". Which was all true, but still, it seems boring to use as a post-tell-a-girl-you-like-her smoothing protocol. Maybe I'll come up with something better than verbatim honesty.

A bit later, we were walking back on the bridge to downtown, we got some coffee at Bruegger's Bagels, again at Market Square, and then we walked to her bus stop, right before it came along. We got to the stop, and I still had questions in my mind. "You don't like me that way, but what do you think about me? Two nights ago in the car, when I dropped you off, did you feel that awkward moment when I could've kissed you? Were you expecting me to kiss you? Dreading it?" I had all these questions. But the 31 bus showed up too much on time, so we barely said goodbye, I wished her luck on the rest of her US trip, and she left.

And then I realized that, despite my curiosity on the several remaining questions, I was happy knowing that I'd told her I liked her. It was done, it was true, and now I held no hidden desires. And then I realized that most of the other questions only served to my self-esteem and ego, so I deemed them unnecessary, and suddenly I just felt great about how my two days with Franzi had transcurred.