�The paying public, Krya, look at that line.�
�Fools, Gavin, all of them, indulgent fools. Can�t they see anything worthwhile? Or better yet, read!�
�Now, Krya, you have to lighten up and let the good people of the world have their fun. It is just mindless, simple, fun. You know some people need an escape from the world they live in. It is just too dang boring otherwise. Not everyone has a life like yours, skating round the world with an obscene amount of cash apparently at their disposal.�
�Come on Gavin!� Krya sighed, �Lets go to the club for a while and forget it.�
To just see my friend Krya you would think she was a tough girl, all fight and flirt, but there is much more. She is a wonder in army boots and green-dyed hair. You see, Krya keeps her life one big secret and I have learned to respect that and love her for it. I mean you can�t be someone�s friend for six years and not know which buttons not to push.
We met in a philosophy class in college when she mouthed off to the teacher, this girl in off the street knowing more about the Greeks than all the PhD�s in the place. Of course the teacher, Mr. Blackwell, hated her and �asked� her to leave the lecture hall. She didn�t. Every day she would come back to class. Man, we learned more that semester with her than we did the rest year with Mr. Blackwell�s monotone lectures and barked questions.
Eventually I asked her out, like half the class did, and unlike with the others she accepted me. I never figured that out, why accept my offer, a geek, and not one of the cool kids. Maybe it was because I WAS a geek, someone new to the world for her to mold in her image. Who know what goes through her head?
Krya�s a gas. It�s great to hang around with her. She knows all the hottest places in town and all the bouncers know her by name. If you ever tried to get into a club when you were young and not so hot yourself you might be able to understand why I truly thought I was in Heaven back then, with Krya, or at least getting rewarded for a past life or something�if I had the afterlife figured out I wouldn�t have majored in philosophy.
This arrangement lasted for a year or so, me hanging with her every night in clubs and bars, listening to all the best bands and new poets. Then she left. Just poof. Here one night gone the next morning. No note. No good-bye. I was floored. Seriously. I called the cops�just to have them laugh at me and tell me my �girlfriend� most likely just skipped out on me. But I knew she hadn�t, she was Krya, I mean mysterious, sure, but she�s my best friend.
I jumped up and hugged her, forgetting that all I had on was my red-hearted briefs. She of course laughed and pushed me away.
�Phew, Gavin, did you forget to bathe while I was gone?�
�Krya! Where were you? I called the police. Oh, man, I was thinking worst-case-scenario. Why didn�t you tell me you were leaving! I thought you were dead or kidnapped or something. Lying face down in a gutter!�
�Down boy. No need to get into all of that. I was just gone. Now I am back. Simple as pi.� I knew she meant pi, as in 3.14etc, not the pie that mom makes all hot and crusty straight from the oven. She talks like that, like she is Einstein and those who didn�t get it weren�t worth the bother of an explanation.
I gave up questioning her after a while of getting nowhere; she was good at dancing around and making you think she answered when giving you nothing. It took me days to figure that out, that she was dancing around the truth. When I confronted her about it she told me that if she answered me truthfully my head might explode, I didn�t believe her. I am not stupid, but I did give up asking. That is when I stopped asking her about her life at all, now that I think about it.
Throughout the next six years of our friendship she came and went with little to no explanation, but now there is always a note telling me not to worry, more of the joke to me than a serious thing. I knew not to worry about her after the first few times she left on a moments notice. As I said, I am not stupid.
The first time I saw Krya fight I was so shocked I almost wet myself. It was just a few weeks after we started hanging out. We were in an alley on the way to a club and this gang of hard customers came out at us from the shadows with knives, chains, and guns. I froze, being the geeky coward that I am, but Krya stood tall.
�What�s a lot like you doing in a place like this?� she asked.
�Cute, give us your money. Watches too.�
�Um�no. Don�t think so, kiddo.�