She is gone.  She left and is now gone.  There was no “good-bye” or a sweet, silent kiss.  She left in the night one night ago.  Her face is what I remember, the cool dark blue eyes and the slender nose that pointed to her loose, barely closed lips that always glistened.  Her hair was brown, dark brown, and it cascaded down her… neck.  I know now the danger that lurks at the crushing bottom of that brown waterfall.  Those treacherous waters that set a man burning are the cause of a certain man meeting a certain woman.  To be specific, I met a certain woman an indiscernible number of days ago on a bus. 

It was the middle of summer in Austin, Texas.  My truck had broken down and I was forced to ride the bus.  I always sat sideways in the seat and leaned my head on the window when I road the bus.  That was how I saw her.  I was staring out the window of the passing people when the bus stopped, and she stepped on.  She was pulling her hair back into a pony tail.  At this point I must make it known that to me there is something mystifying about the neck of a woman.  On the neck is a fleshy spot both sensitive and, for that reason, tantalizing.  This woman, who for the moment has attracted my interest, turned and briefly her eyes locked onto mine, and I imagined her walking down the bus toward me like those lusty models one sees on TV. 

She did walk down the bus toward me, to my amazement, and sat down by my side.  She smiled at me, and then turned, facing the opposite direction.  It was then that I noticed a large, muscular woman had followed her in and had sat on the other side of her from me.  I also noticed that the bus was absolutely full; not a single seat was open.  There was one small problem with her sitting as she was: it put her neck into my direct line of site, and what an amazing neck it was.  It had a creamy whiteness unfamiliar to an Austenite in midsummer.  At the top, where the skull meets the spinal cord, tiny wisps of hair had escaped the bondage of her elastic band.  My eyes followed one such stray strain of hair down as it hovered just barely above the surface of her delicate skin.  The tips of the stray hairs were stuck to the bottom of her neck, caught in the gentle perspiration that set the neck aglow like the iridescent haze of a waterfall’s mist. 

Abruptly a powerful arm broke my view of the neck.  I realized that the larger woman was resting her arm on the shoulders of the woman next to me, and was pointing to a picture in a small book; they were apartment searching.  Lesbians… I thought bitterly, and then a shot of brilliance pierced my skull: I should offer them my spare room for rent. 

            “Excuse me,” I said, sitting up.  The woman closest to me turned and leaned back so as to let the other woman get a look at me.  “Are you looking for a place to rent?”  The two women had obviously not been looking for long as the look of frustration and defeat was totally vacant in their eyes.  Instead was a sort of optimism and anxiousness.  The larger woman spoke in a deep voice, “Actually we are, but we don’t have much experience with this sort of thing.  It seems like every place we look at has outrageous fees for pets.”  The closer one nodded in agreement.  The way she seemed so comfortable with the butch’s arm on her unsettled me slightly, but this was not something entirely uncommon for me to see.

            “I own a house with a spare room, and I need someone to move in soon so I can eat after I pay the bills.  It’s a three bedroom with two bath, living, dining, a decent kitchen, and a fenced yard.”  I paused for a moment to let it all sink in and smiled. “No fees for pets.”  The two women looked at each other.  The smaller one showed an exaggerated smile, and the larger one shrugged her shoulders.  “When can we come take a look?” She said.  I replied, “Right now if you like.  I just got off work.”  They said that they would and we introduced ourselves.  The larger woman’s name was Joan.  She was a firefighter here in Austin and is moving out of her parents’ house for the first time.  She was twenty-six.  The other woman’s name was Kate.  She was also moving out of her parents’ home for the first time having obtained her Bachelors of Arts Degree in Public Relations at the University of Texas.  She was twenty-two, my age.

When we arrived at my house, having walked four blocks from the bus stop, the girls seemed genuinely impressed with its exterior.  And they liked the location; it was right off of Parmer Lane, just between IH-35 and HWY 183.  After showing off the mediocre back yard, I let them in.  As you walk in the front door, you find yourself standing in a hallway.  On the left is a doorway that opens up to a small kitchen.  On the right is a door leading to the master bedroom, my bedroom.  Straight ahead is the living room.  When we got to the living room, I took their drink orders: Joan wanted a beer and Kate wanted water.  I heard them whispering about the pros and cons involved with living with a man while I was in the kitchen.  I was only thinking of two things really: I wonder if they have loud sex and what will my friends say when I tell them that my new roommates are lesbians. 

            After a couple of hours of discussing the rent, the neighborhood, and the local shops, they had decided that they would indeed be moving in. 

Nothing of much interest happened for the few weeks after they moved in.  Nothing, that is, except for Joan out drinking me on a constant basis and Kate not being able to find a job, which was the worst thing that could have happened; it allowed for Kate and I to spend a great deal of time together.  You, the reader, will wonder why it is that spending time with a person is so horrible.  Let me explain:  I fell in love with her.

            At first I merely felt a lustful inclination toward her as she is one of the finest specimens of the female gender.  Over time I came to realize that she was not just some piece of meat for me to examine in the same manner as a chef examines beef held in the outstretched hands of a butcher.  My entire life had been one great blunder, I came to realize as I grew to know Kate.  She was beauty incarnate, the kind of person in which no trace of selfishness can be found.

            I came to love her through the way she treated people, animals, life.  She and I went out to lunch frequently, and, on several occasions, a beggar would ask for money.  She would always give him her lunch money if she didn’t have any spare change.  Once, I asked her why she fed a homeless alcoholic’s addiction.  The reply still astounds me, “If my sacrifice can for one moment ease the pain that haunts him and drives him to the bottle, then I would gladly give all that I have.”  She was always saying things like that.

            Betty, one of their twin black labs, once caught a rabbit in the backyard.  The rabbit’s right hind leg had been crushed in the jaws of the dog and it was lying on the ground bleeding from a wound on the rib cage when I found it, having been alarmed by the dogs’ whimpering.  Kate and I took it to the vet.  When the vet informed us that the rabbit would have to be put to sleep because of internal injuries, Kate began to sob, pleading with the vet that he try to do something.  When the vet refused, Kate buried her head in my chest, crying with a pained intensity as through her tears could absorb the agony of the tiny animal that struggled for breath on the other side of a door.  I put my arms around her, trying to soothe her wounded heart.  There was a profound effect that she had on me.  She had a kind of purity, a sense of life, that escaped me.  This moved me, to say the least, and forced me to examine my own life.  She silently stared out of the window the whole ride back, half leaning on me and the window.