Walt and Ram, chapter 16

It was a bright, clear day, late in the morn­ing and the tem­per­a­ture had already climbed to the low­er 70s.  The only clouds hang­ing about were some cumu­lonim­bus off to the north­west, which por­tend­ed con­tin­u­ing good weath­er for the remain­der of the day.

Ram had arrived sev­er­al min­utes ear­li­er at the park bench usu­al­ly occu­pied by him and Walt and he was won­der­ing where Walt might be, as the two of them always arrived with­in a very few min­utes of each other.

Ram was let­ting the morn­ing sun warm him as he watched a small group of young boys oper­at­ing remote-con­trolled boats on the small lake that was part of the park.

He was so engrossed in watch­ing the young­sters that he failed to real­ize a young lady was approach­ing until she was with­in a few feet of him.

“Are you Ram?” she inquired. 

She was in her late 20s, dark hair that extend­ed down below her shoul­ders that was combed straight down, part­ed in the mid­dle.  She was wear­ing a loose-fit­ting col­ored shirt with sleeves rolled up to just above her elbows, and dark brown shorts which revealed well-formed tanned legs sup­port­ing her five-foot-ten-inch height.  Her feet were clad in sneak­ers with flu­o­res­cent green accents, and she moved with an easy grace and confidence.

“Yes,” final­ly stam­mered Ram, per­haps too shocked to respond any further.

“I was asked to give this to you,” she said, hand­ing him a #6 ³⁄₄ enve­lope with his name hand print­ed on the front.

As he opened it, she took a seat beside him.  Ram removed the fold­ed paper, opened it and read: 

Ram, I didn’t know how to get in touch with you as Walt had nev­er referred to you as any­thing but Ram, although I knew he met you near­ly every day at the same park bench.

I want­ed to let you know that Walt passed away in his sleep last night.  Some of his last words were to be sure to let you know so you wouldn’t be left won­der­ing why he wasn’t there to meet you.  I’m sor­ry you had to find out this way.  His funer­al arrange­ments will be in the local paper tomor­row or the day after. 

Gloria Brendel.

Ram con­tin­ued to hold the paper, let­ting his hand drop to his lap, as he mut­tered “Crap.”

Perhaps it was not the most appro­pri­ate response to news that his friend had died.  It was a com­bi­na­tion remark illus­trat­ing his reac­tion to the sud­den­ness of Walt’s death, the man­ner in which he had been informed and the real­iza­tion that he no longer had some­one to meet with and kick around ran­dom ideas.

He real­ized the young lady was still sit­ting beside him, but he had been too stunned to even turn to look at her.

“Is there any­thing I can do, Ram?” she asked after a lengthy silence.

“Huh?  Oh, no.  Who are you?” he asked, gen­tly, quietly.

“Marjorie. Marjorie Korsman.  I live next door to the Brendels.  Gloria asked me to deliv­er that to you since she doesn’t get around too well any­more.  I’m real­ly sor­ry about Walt.  He was a nice man.  I guess he was a close friend, huh?”

“Yeah, close,” mur­mured Ram. “We meet … used to meet here just about every morn­ing.  Guess I won’t have much rea­son to come here now,” he added, star­ing down at the bad news missive.

He looked back over to her. 

“Marjorie, huh?  Don’t hear many Marjories anymore.”

“Yeah, well, that’s my giv­en name.  Everybody calls me ‘Tink’ though.”

“Tink?  Why Tink?” 

His grief was momen­tar­i­ly mis­placed by his curiosity.

“Nickname from mid­dle school,” she replied.  “I sprout­ed up quick­ly and some­one referred to me as ‘Tinker Belle’, just because it was so incon­gru­ous.  Me being pret­ty big for my age and Tinker Belle being so small.  So the name stuck, but every­body just even­tu­al­ly short­ened it to Tink.  I actu­al­ly like it bet­ter than Marjorie.”

“Well, Tink, I think it suits you.”

The con­ver­sa­tion stalled for a brief peri­od, nei­ther know­ing what to say until, “Ram.  May I call you Ram?”

“Sure.  Everybody does.”

“Ram, I used to have long talks with Walt, too.  He often spoke of you and of many of the off­beat sub­jects you two dis­cussed dur­ing your morn­ing vis­its.  It was obvi­ous that those vis­its were the high­lights of his day.”

“Yeah, I guess ‘off­beat’ is a good way to describe them,” Ram chuck­led briefly, the humor of it light­en­ing the moment.

“Well, I was wondering.” 

She paused. 

“I was won­der­ing if it might be alright for me to take Walt’s place, maybe even for just a lit­tle while.” 

She went on, quick­ly, “Oh, I don’t mean that I could ever replace him, but I would real­ly like to meet with you and talk about the two of you and maybe even get into some of those ‘off­beat’ subjects.”

“Walt and I met just about every day.  Don’t you work?  Wouldn’t it be hard for you to be here every day?”

“Not at all.  I’m a night shift nurse. Shift ends at mid­night.  I get home and into bed ear­ly enough that late morn­ing meet­ings wouldn’t be a prob­lem at all.”

“There’s a big dif­fer­ence in our ages, Tink.  I doubt that we’d have much in com­mon,” said Ram, doubtfully.

“Maybe more than you know, Ram.   I nev­er had any prob­lem talk­ing with Walt.  I real­ly enjoyed those talks.  I think he did too.” 

She paused. 

“How ‘bout it?”

Ram soft­ened, his doubts some­what alle­vi­at­ed.  After all, why not try it? If it didn’t work out, they could just call it quits.  And hav­ing a dai­ly con­ver­sa­tion with a beau­ti­ful young lady couldn’t be all bad, could it?

“I guess we could give it a try,” he said.  “Let’s wait until after the funer­al.  Give me a few days to get over this.”

“Sounds good,” she smiled. 

They just sat qui­et­ly togeth­er for a while, before departing.