Finding Isadora(15)

Feeling the need for fresh air, exercise, and easy company, I then rang my oldest and best friend. “Want to walk the seawall with Pogo and me?”

“I’m still in bed,” Janice grumbled.

“Alone?” I asked cautiously. She’d been dateless for the last few months, but had been developing a serious prospect.

“Unfortunately.”

“Then get up. A walk will do you good.”

Her response was a loud groan, then the phone clicked off. Laughing, I donned black leggings, a long coral-colored jersey, and walking shoes as Pogo danced around my legs in a frenzy of anticipation.

Stepping out the front door, I sucked in a long breath of spring air. The sky was cloudless, the sun weak but already cutting through the morning chill. The air was rich with the spicy scent of flowering cherry trees and the boulevards were covered with the pink snow of their blossoms. By the time Pogo and I had walked the few blocks to Jan’s apartment, my headache was gone. I buzzed and she answered, “Izzie? You’re really here?”

“Get your butt downstairs.”

“Yeah, yeah.” But she appeared almost immediately, tiny compared to me, clad in skin-tight jeans, a long-sleeved indigo tee, and turquoise Skechers. Either she was trying out a new hairstyle or she hadn’t combed her shoulder-length black hair since she got out of bed.

She bent to stroke Pogo, then straightened. “Coffee. Give me coffee.”

The rest of the West End had the same idea. The outside tables at the coffee shops were filled with folks sipping, chatting, reading the paper, and people-watching. Pogo and I paused to greet a Schnauzer named Poppin and his human, Martina. Janice waved a languid hand at a couple of teenaged girls.

“I don’t get any privacy,” she grumbled, “living and working in the same community.” She taught sciences at King George, the local secondary school. “Don’t know why they’re giggling, though.”

“Uh, your hairstyle’s a little unconventional.”

She raised a quick hand to her head. “Oops, forgot to brush it. Got a comb on you?”

“Nope, just cash and poop-and-scoop bags.”

She finger-combed her hair as we stood in line for coffee. We ordered take-out lattés—mine decaf and hers with an extra shot of espresso—then headed down to English Bay.

The swathes of lawn were bright spring green and the beach had been manicured, with huge, smooth-skinned logs placed at even intervals. People sprawled on the sand, perched on logs, and hogged the benches along the side of the seawall walk. The air smelled of seaweed, sunscreen, and coffee.

Janice tugged my arm and pointed toward a bench. “Those people look like they’re leaving.”

Pogo yanked at his leash, pulling me in the other direction. “Stop it, you two. Pogo, take it easy, we’re coming. Jan, what part of ‘walk the seawall’ didn’t you understand?”

She gave a gigantic yawn, slugged back some coffee, and shook herself. “Yeah, yeah. Tell me again why we’re friends?”

“Because we were both freaks in grade one. You with your weird Chinese clothes and me with my funny hippie clothes.” She’d come in the cutest pink cheongsam style top, and I’d worn a tie-dyed tee with a peace symbol. Neither set of parents believed in shopping at Gap Kids.

I wrapped an arm around her in a quick hug. She hugged back, saying, “Okay, weird clothes and freaky parents are a good reason.”

Between lawn and beach, the seawall path was a colorful stream of people. We turned right, in the direction of Sunset Beach, and merged into the flow. “Bad night?” I asked.

“You know Jeremy, the teacher I’ve been having coffee with?”

“Sure.” Jeremy was her prospect. She’d spent a good part of the school year lusting after the guy—a new English teacher at King George—but all that had come of it was regular coffee dates after school. “Did you finally ask him out?”

“You know a sweet old-fashioned Chinese girl like me would never do that.”

Janice was indisputably Chinese-Canadian, on occasion sweet, and yes, she was a little conventional. It was another thing we had in common. In my case, it was rebellion against my parents, but Jan’s values were in line with her parents’. A part of her old-fashionedness was her reluctance to ask a man out. A reluctance that I, to my mother’s women’s lib chagrin, shared.

“So what happened?” I said. “Did he ask you out?”

“I thought he did.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Couldn’t you tell?”

“He caught up to me when I was leaving on Friday, and asked if I’d seen Romeo and Juliet. The play. It’s on at the Stanley.”

“Going to Romeo and Juliet? Of course that’s a date.”

She gave a pitiful moan.

“Wasn’t it a date?”

“Is it your idea of a date, Izzie, when you go for a drink after the play and your male companion spends the whole time enthusing about the actor who played Romeo?”

“Enthusing?”

“Over the first drink, he was saying how handsome this actor was. How sexy. Which he was, by the way, but all the same.”

“That sounds more like you and me talking.” I certainly couldn’t imagine those words coming out of Richard’s—or any straight guy’s—lips.