ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 109: Christy Comes to Town

Christy’s in town!

Christy, Joshua, and I decide to meet at an Asian restaurant for dinner.

I arrive first, put my tote bag down at a table for four, then see, through the front glass, Christy and Joshua. She’s walking ahead of him, her shoulders straight, her face determined. She looks headed for an appointment with the enemy.

They come in. Christy and I hug. She’s in a raspberry top and jeans, a spring-green scarf about her neck. I remember the scarf because I helped Joshua pick it out. He’s in a navy top and tweed cap. He doesn’t take off the cap.

“Thank you for making the Charles Street house so welcoming,” Christy says to me, once we’re seated. “We have everything we need. Card table and chairs, bedding and sheets and towels — ”

I interrupt her. “Rhonda brought all that over. She thought of everything.”

“That’s not exactly how it happened,” Joshua says. “I told Rhonda that Christy and I were going to stay in the place for a week to ten days, before Carrie and Jesse move in, and that I planned to buy bedding, a table and chairs, and other supplies for her visit. She asked if I’d let her bring over what she had for Carrie and Jesse. ‘Great!’ I told her. She saved me hundreds of dollars and the work and worry of making the house hospitable.”

“So you set all that in motion,” I say. “I didn’t realize that.”

“If you know what you want, you can get it,” Christy says.

Christy has long, straight, streaky blonde hair. She has dark eyebrows and what she calls green eyes — which look mud-colored to me. Her smile shows a lot of gum. Usually people are more attractive when they smile, but not Christy.

“You look good,” I tell her, and she does — when she’s not smiling. Except that when she doesn’t smile, she can sometimes have a hard look.

“I’ve cut out caffeine, and I’m more mellow,” she says. “Joshua seems calmer, too. Working on the house has been good for him. He’s not as stand-offish as he was. He talked to two neighborhood guys today, looked them in the eye, exchanged business cards with them. He wouldn’t have shaken their hands a few months ago.”

Christy must be referring to Joshua’s panic-attack time when dogs and even cars scared him, but he’s far beyond that now.