I see her across the other side of the grocery section in my local HEB - our local HEB because I knew she also shopped here. I knew it could only be a matter of months before our paths crossed once more, and that it would be awkward; although at the same time, having been struck from my list of acquaintances, she's someone I never expected to see again, and so somehow - just for a second - I don't recognise her.
My wife signed on to a social networking site called Meet Me, or something of the sort. She was spying on her friend's husband, acting in the capacity of both concerned friend and private detective. She described the site as a car crash of angry, unloveable losers and as such found it unwittingly entertaining. This is how she met Kelli - who likewise passed time on the site chortling at misspelt tattoos proudly displayed or people posing with their guns or fighting dogs - and it turned out that Kelli lived in our neighbourhood.
As they became friends, Kelli explained that she too was in a relationship with a person from across the other side of the Atlantic. Whilst Bess and myself were now married, Kelli remained regrettably separate from her partner, the bass player of some death metal band over in Sweden. Occasionally she'd phone or text, needing a sympathetic ear or a virtual shoulder to cry on because she hadn't heard from her hunky Swede in over a year.
'What do you think is wrong?' she asked my wife. 'Do you think it could be over between the two of us?'
The most recent email she'd received from the guy hinted at his seeing someone else. 'What do you think he meant?' Kelli wailed.
Kelli worked as a merchandising manager for some company which routinely sent her out on tour across the country with bands such as Aerosmith. On one such occasion she needed someone to go in and feed Buster, her cat, for a couple of weeks, and Bess obliged. There was also an occasion during which Kelli somehow ended up in jail at the other end of the country, and Bess once again stepped in to feed poor Buster.
I'd just finished painting a book cover, the one for The Brakespeare Voyage by Simon Bucher-Jones and Jonathan Dennis, so far as I recall. The cover had taken me a long time but I was pleased with the result, as were the authors and publisher. My wife posted a photograph of it on facebook. Kelli responded with a meme, an image of Mike Myers' Austin Powers character grinning inanely whilst holding up an inept looking sketch, something of comically poor execution.
Did somebody say something about a drawing? ran the caption.
The joke is that the comedy Brit is showing us his drawing, but he doesn't realise that it's shit. Ha ha.
This struck me as fucking rude coming from someone I'd never met and who had presumably deduced my character to be an assemblage of hilarious clichés about drinking tea and playing jolly old cricket with Prince Charles. It particularly bothered me because I've always viewed the Austin Powers movies as fucking shite.
Fuck you, Kelli, I thought to myself.
It sinks in. I've seen her here in HEB before. Last time she was stood in the queue at the place where people cash cheques or arrange insurance or whatever that thing is. She was dressed like a 1950s teenager, cut-off denims revealing cellulite, and with way too many polka dots for a woman in her fifties - a look which serves only to accentuate how many years have passed since she was a teenager. This is all down to a hitherto unsuspected fascination with the Stray Cats - a rockabilly revival band amounting to what the Cramps would have sounded like had they been formed by Michael J. Fox.
Kelli's next drama was when the former drummer of Slipknot kidnapped her cat. She moved to a different apartment, was somehow tracked down by this famous ex-boyfriend, and so he kidnapped Buster as part of some poorly defined act of revenge for something or other which wasn't quite clear. Bess and I began to wonder about Kelli. She was unreliable, regularly agreeing to meet but then failing to show, and her accounts of herself began to seem increasingly far-fetched. Also, there were the selfies on facebook, a new one every fucking day and always with some weird filter which smooths out the wrinkles, transforming the subject into a sparkly-eyed anime character. We had met her in real life, so we knew what she actually looked like - an aging Siouxsie Sioux with the biggest nose you've ever seen, about an inch of foundation, and the sort of chin only Basil Wolverton could truly capture - all of which at least explained the angle from which she took her daily facebook selfies, head on so as to disguise the enormity of that hooter, looking up into the lens with the big brown eyes of a Japanese child.
We met her in real life at a bar on Broadway in the company of her friend, Greg, a surly Vietnam veteran who ignored us for the entire hour that we were there. Maybe we were cramping his style.
She broke up with the uncommunicative death metal bass player from Sweden, and announced there was someone else in her life. The only problem was that this one lived in England. He came to America and we met him. He seemed okay, but I couldn't help but wonder if he knew what he was getting into with Kelli.
Kelli had seemingly given up on Meet Me, her energies being devoted to cyberstalking Greg's new girlfriend. She couldn't help but wonder if Greg knew what he was getting into with this woman.
They had never met in person, but she was moving to San Antonio to buy a house, and the two of them were going to get married. They already knew they were made for each other due to a mutual love of buttplugs. Kelli found this hilarious and took delight in sharing what information she could glean with my wife.
Then one day, Bess found herself blocked from all of Kelli's social media accounts. I asked the latest transatlantic boyfriend whether he had any idea what could have happened. Kelli told him that Bess had sent her a message which seemed abrupt and rude, gloating over Greg and his buttplug-based relationship whilst failing to enquire after Kelli's wellbeing, like Kelli was just a source of cheap laughs. My wife was puzzled and went through all the crap stored on her smartphone, eventually finding the conversation which had given such offence. It bore no relation to what Kelli described because neither Bess nor myself had particularly taken to Greg and had found it difficult to care about what he chose to stick up his ass and with whom.
Inevitably we began to wonder, because the pattern had become difficult to miss. Was her cat really kidnapped by the drummer of Slipknot? If someone took any of my cats I'd move heaven and earth to get them back. Maybe she simply moved to an apartment with a no pets policy, we figured; and never mind the drummer from Slipknot, had the Swedish death metal bassist even existed? Even if he had, did six months of transatlantic silence not suggest that the relationship was probably done? Maybe there hadn't even been a buttplug woman moving to San Antonio to buy a house. Maybe that was Kelli as well. Who fucking knows?
Now I remember that we are no longer on such great terms, and that this meeting is therefore awkward; but it's too late. She's seen me. I've seen her. She's seen that I've seen her and vice versa. My arm flies up to wave just as I would greet any other person. By the time my arm is at full elevation I've realised that Kelli is not to be greeted. I lower my arm and quickly look the other way, realising that the gesture probably resembled a Nazi salute; and as I head for the section where they keep the beer I realise I am quietly satisfied with this thought.
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