Photo: A.M. Moscoso

They looked like a nice middle aged couple, sitting there on the bench at the Bothell Lake Park as all sorts of life passed them by all of them being carried along music you couldn’t hear but that you could feel.

The man watched with a smile, the woman smiled with her mouth but not with her eyes as bike riders whirled by, people walking their dogs and babies and even a few cats on leashes strolled by all them with their faces tilted up slightly to the Sun.

” I’m really enjoying this, Juno.” he said ” we need to get out more, see more, experience more.”

” You’re kidding me right?” she asked. Her mask of a smile fell away and her eyes narrowed and now it exactly matched the the way her lips curled up over her lips. ” You drag me away from my nice morning at the River for this- this inner circle of suburban Hell? ”

She leaned forward and looked up and down the trail. She flicked at his ear with her well manicured nail and pointed. ” That is a cat on a leash.”

” I know.” He laughed.

She leaned against him, her hair blew over her shoulder her lips touched where his earlobe met his jaw.

” That is a cat on a leash!” she roared into his ear.

” Tell me you’ve seen that before.”

” I can’t” she hissed.

” What? What did you say? I can’t hear anything in that ear, try the other one.”

She raised her hand, spread her fingers apart and then lowered all but one in his face.

He leaned back and draped his arm over her shoulder. ” Do you know why I love you Juno? Of everyone I have ever met you make me laugh every single time. Go on. Tell me you’re not enjoying this.”

” There. Are. Cats. On. LEASHES!”

” Come on Juno. I wanted to get you away from home, from work for just a few hours. I worry about you sometimes.”

” You worry about me all of the time. And why should you? If I’m not working, I’m enjoying myself on my wonderful riverfront property, or I’m at work, or I’m playing my Violin and working in my garden.

“I love it when you play. You’re very good.”

“Then why are we here?”

” Because Juno, I want you to see more of the world, I want you to be a bigger part of it. I hate it when you isolate yourself. I want people to see you the way I do. The way I always have-”

Juno turned he face up to the sky. A real smile caressed her lips. The sunlight filled her eyes  and  they turned a bright golden brown. Her thick brown hair fell away from her face gently as a small cool breeze rolled past them and exposed the small horns on her forehead that glowed pearly white against the skin on her smooth dark forehead.

” No one ever will”  she said as she touched his face and stood up. ” And that is okay, you know that.”

” Sit back down Juno. Stay here with me for just a little while longer.”

Juno was looking down the trail at the backs of the Cat walkers. ” We have all eternity for that. So we will.   But for now there’s going to be Hell to pay.”

Undergrowth With Two Figures- Vincent Van Gogh