Tink and Ram 6

“Mornin’ Ram.”  Tink greet­ed him cheer­i­ly as she took her seat beside him.  “Looks like it’s going to be a glo­ri­ous day.”

“Hi, Tink.  You seem to be in a hap­py mood today,” he responded.

“Oh, on a beau­ti­ful morn­ing like this, it’s hard not to be happy.”

“So, what’s on your sched­ule for the day?” he inquired.

“The usu­al.  Getting some house­work done.  Do a bit of study­ing for some advanced nurs­ing cours­es that I’m tak­ing.  And I’ve got to repair a leaky bath­room faucet.  Hate plumb­ing.  Always seem to leave a leak some­where when I’m try­ing to repair one.” 

She gig­gled a bit.

“Wow!” said Ram.  “You are a lady of many talents.”

“Well, when you live alone, you have to learn a lot of dif­fer­ent skills.  But I’ve enjoyed it and learn­ing to be inde­pen­dent.  Sure beats pay­ing a plumber six­ty-five dol­lars to fix a three dol­lar problem.”

“Yeah.”

“Ram, there’s some­thing about me that I haven’t told you.  It’s noth­ing bad and there was no spe­cif­ic rea­son that I nev­er men­tioned it before, but our con­ver­sa­tions about your mil­i­tary his­to­ry kin­da demand that I tell you.”

Ram was qui­et, wait­ing for her to continue.

“I’m a vet­er­an, too.”

“Really?” he exclaimed.

“Yeah.  Navy.  Served as a corps­man which is what got me start­ed on my career in nurs­ing.  ‘Course, unlike you, I was nev­er under fire so while I think I can under­stand some of what you went through I know I can nev­er ful­ly relate to it.

“And your expla­na­tion about your ref­er­ences to your for­mer ene­mies clar­i­fied a lot of things, espe­cial­ly since, not being in com­bat myself, I nev­er devel­oped any kind of ani­mus toward poten­tial opponents.

“I’m not sure, even though I’m a fel­low vet­er­an, that ade­quate­ly explains why I didn’t com­plete­ly under­stand your ear­li­er comments.”

“It’s not a prob­lem,” replied Ram.

“Look,” he con­tin­ued, “you and I have devel­oped a cer­tain rela­tion­ship over the months – at least I feel that we have – that allows us to ques­tion one anoth­er with­out hav­ing to be con­cerned about hurt­ing feel­ings or ques­tion­ing one’s intent.  I expect that in the months to come we are each going to learn things about one anoth­er that will only strength­en our rap­port, our abil­i­ty to under­stand each oth­er, and to ques­tion each oth­er when appropriate.

“We’re both adults – me much more so than you just because of the added years I’ve accu­mu­lat­ed – and we should be able to speak freely.  If we can’t do it as friends who would be able to?

“And if you ever ask me a ques­tion that I can’t, or don’t want to, answer, I’ll tell you so.  I would expect the same from you.”

“I’ve already devel­oped those feel­ings, Ram,” she answered, “but I’m glad you stat­ed them the way you did.”

“Great,” he said, “because there’ve been a lot of ques­tions I’ve want­ed to ask you about your sex life.”

“What!?” 

Tink moved slight­ly away from him, sort of like two mag­nets with the same poles direct­ed together.

“I’m kid­ding,” he instant­ly respond­ed, grin­ning.  “But the com­ment, I think, showed some pret­ty clear para­me­ters in our relationship.”

“Ha,” she gig­gled.  “You had me going, that’s for sure.  But if we ever do get into that, you can be sure that I am going to be just as inquis­i­tive about your shady past as you are like­ly to be about mine.”

“Well, the dif­fer­ence is,” he not­ed, “is that mine is all in the past and yours is prob­a­bly going to be about the present and future, which are sub­jects decid­ed­ly more juicy than any­thing I could relate.”

“You real­ly are incor­ri­gi­ble, aren’t you?” she asked, only mar­gin­al­ly rhetorically.

“I cer­tain­ly hope so.  Anyone who hasn’t devel­oped incor­ri­gi­bil­i­ty by the time he’s reached my age hasn’t lived a very pro­duc­tive life.”

They were both laugh­ing now and obvi­ous­ly enjoy­ing the repar­tee, nev­er hav­ing gone down this path before.

“I am def­i­nite­ly going to have to keep my eye on you from now on,” she offered.

“And I will def­i­nite­ly keep both eyes on you, sweet­heart,” he said in a very bad impres­sion of Groucho Marx.

Several peo­ple walk­ing and jog­ging by turned to look at the two of them on the bench, each laugh­ing with great vig­or.  She play­ful­ly punched him on the shoulder.

He recoiled. 

“Watch it young lady.  You wouldn’t want to be charged with bat­tery of an old man, would you?”

“You mean assault?”

“Nope.  Assault is aggres­sion with­out phys­i­cal con­tact.  Battery is the act of actu­al­ly hit­ting, usu­al­ly pre­ced­ed by assault.”

“I nev­er real­ized that,” she said.

“See,” he said, “you hang out with old peo­ple and you learn stuff you nev­er even thought about.  We are packed with eso­teric – and most­ly use­less – knowl­edge.  How you going to learn this stuff if you just pal around with those in your own age group?  Without old farts like me, you younger ones would grow old and nev­er know anything.”

“Well, I guess I’m in for a long learn­ing ses­sion because I plan on keep­ing these meet­ings going as long as we can,” she mused.

“Me, too,” he said wist­ful­ly.  “Well, I’m going over for a cup of tea.  Care to join me?”

“No, dammit!  I still don’t like tea.  And I’ve still got chores to do, so I’ll see you next time.”

“Okay,” he said, both of them ris­ing to leave.

I don’t believe she real­ly doesn’t like tea, he chuck­led to him­self, head­ing to the café.