I'm on my way to have lunch with a friend of mine who is female and married. There's some confusion about where I'm meeting her - I thought I knew, and it was on this street that is supposedly TV Highway, but it's north by Lake Oswego. I'm looking for a big U-Haul sign, but it must be on the next street. I call her on the cell phone, and she directs me to the proper place.

When I get to the restaurant, a sprawling freestanding building like a midwestern Denny's, I realize that we're meeting her relatives, as though it's a party or something, a large family gathering. I don't know these people, and it seems kind of awkward to sit and try to talk to them, so I decide not to join for lunch.

We start walking around the side of the restaurant so I can talk to her for just a minute before I leave.

She interrupts the conversation to greet a cat that she usually finds there, calling "kitty kitty" and commenting to me that the cat doesn't appear to be there today, and that is strange. Then I see two black kittens, perhaps about five weeks old, perched about chest-high on some leftover building blocks (sandy-brown colored, like my new bathroom), apparently scavenging some discarded food. They appear ragged and wet, like strays, and they pay no attention to us. She sees them, but continues on walking and talking to me.

I suggest meeting later, perhaps after lunch, but then I realize that is silly, since she'll have already eaten, and that would be two lunches, so... let's just meet another day.

We part with a deep kiss, bending her backward like a dancing dip. Then her husband appears at a large window at the back of the restaurant, in full view of us, and he is furious and banging on the window.

She goes back around to the front to rejoin her party, and I go in a different entrance to talk to her husband. He's in a bar on the back of the restaurant.

I come up to him and say "If it's my position to give advice, and I understand if you don't think it is, but if you're not careful, you're going to lose that girl, and she's a good woman. That has nothing to do with me, just with you and her and your relationship."

He doesn't seem mad, but rather becomes contemplative and says, "You're right, I'm glad you pointed that out", thanking me.

An old acquaintance, named Bennie Banyard is sitting nearby on a couch, and he overhears, and remarks that it was like his first wife.

"Really," I say, "why did you two break up?"

"You know," he says, "I wasn't very attentive to her, and I was kind of a pain in the ass. You know, when I get drunk, which is most of the time, I'm a little too sarcastic and I use too much 'asceticism'."

I laugh in a yeah-that-can-happen way (not noticing the errant word choice, I knew what he meant), and sort of slap him on the back, knocking someone's jacket onto the floor from the back of the couch.