Courting Pippa

What Just Happened?

What Just Happened?

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JOSHUA WAKES UP TO MUSIC—always. He doesn’t like the idea of waking up to the trilling sound of an alarm clock; in his mind, it’s so primitive. The song is John Denver’s “Perhaps Love.” He listens to it as though for the first time. He stares at the ceiling, stretches out on his bed, his arms above his head, his chest rising and falling.

The song is about love, comparing it to a resting place, a shelter from the storm. He hums along to part of the lyrics. ‘It exists to give you comfort. It is there to keep you warm, and in those times of trouble...’

The song is too depressing considering his loveless state. He forces himself to get up, pads quietly to the toilet to do the first business of the day, then heads for the kitchen to help himself to strong coffee. The song continues playing, confronting him about his single life. He is entranced by the poetic lyrics. The very last line of the song, ‘My memories of love will be of you’ makes him contemplate who that you might be.

‘Perhaps Love’ is just one of several hundred songs on his iPod. He has listened to it countless times before, but now it seems to bear new meaning. He exhales and shuts his eyes.

What the hell just happened?

Josh drags himself to the shower to scrub off the residue of his angst. Just last week his life was in perfect equilibrium, a delicate balance of work and play; care-and-fancy-free.

These past few days, however, he has become unhinged. After coffee with Pippa that fateful day, he is caught unaware. The mixed feelings and confused thoughts are intimidating.

Do I move forward? Do I pull back? Ah, déjà vu.

Not too long ago he had this conversation with a beautiful, vivacious blonde: ‘Yeah, I thought about it. I’m not ready for weekends away.’

He gets out of the shower still unsure about what he wants out of life. At any rate, he is determined to carry on pretending nothing has changed, but clearly, something has. He is slightly disappointed to find Basil at the dispatcher’s desk instead of Pippa.

‘Morning, Bas.’

‘Hey, Josh. Ready for a busy day?’

‘Always,’ he says with pretend cheerfulness.

He heads straight for the locker room, where Sam and James are having a go at each other. There’s no escape when they’re like this, he thinks. He hopes they won’t notice him, but that’s really hoping for too much.

He is just reaching for his sweatpants when James asks how he spent his day off. If he admits he spent part of it with Pippa, he won’t hear the end of it, so he gives them a safe answer. It was true anyway: ‘I took my washing to the laundromat.’

‘Whoa, how much washing did you have?’ teases James.

Josh smiles and just says, ‘If you need me, I’ll be at the workshop. Robot’s needing some TLC.’

James and Sam look at each other and communicate through telepathy. Something’s up. The two follow him down to the basement.

‘Spill,’ says James.

Joshua looks at the ceiling. It’s becoming his favourite object. The three of them stand around waiting for someone to open up.

Finally, Josh sits down on a stool in front of the bomb-sniffing robot’s scattered pieces, and cryptically says, ‘I don’t know what hit me.’

‘Ah, okay. We can help, we’re the experts,’ says Sam.

When Joshua, the quick-witted nerd, doesn’t come back with repartee they know it’s bad.

James picks up the conversation. ‘Let me guess. Pippa?’

‘How’d you know?’

‘Unit Two.’ Of course, no surprises there. Nothing is secret or sacred around the State Protection Group (SPG) HQ of the Rescue and Bomb Squad. They were on the way out of the building when members of Unit Two were arriving for their shift.

‘How do I know she’s the one?’ Asks the love-phobic cop, feeling like a dumbass. Is one stunted relationship enough to make him doubt his ability to try again?

‘You don’t, not a hundred percent anyway,’ says Sam as he plays with a nut and bolt.

Well, that helps.

Continuing, Sam says, ‘In the beginning, you only know you want to get to know her and to be with her; then you take it from there. Trust me; you might not even know for some time. But you won’t know ‘til you give it a go, mate.’

‘Just go with the feelings, man,’ James says sagely. ‘I think the problem is: when it’s not a formula or an equation, you don’t know what to do.’

He has heard it before. His best friend Timothy, now deceased, used to say that to him all the time.

‘You know what else is wrong? You overthink it!’

That’s new, he thinks.

James continues. ‘In life, some things don’t add up. It’s not always one plus one equals two. It doesn’t always work that way.’

Sam, also single, thumps his chest with dramatic flair. ‘A lot of it is a decision you make within yourself. There’s no writing on the wall for that, not even a directive from the Director.’

Josh looks at his friend and teammate who seems to change girlfriends as often as he changes underwear and thinks you can talk.

‘I haven’t found someone yet,’ says James, ‘but when I do, man, I’d be the first to let her know. Do you know what I mean?’

Sam and James eventually leave him to his own devices. He remains in the basement tinkering, momentarily forgetting the figurative spider spinning cobwebs in his over-analytical brain. In its place, a refrain plays in his mind in a constant, irritating, maddening loop. It’s about a life of love, full of conflict and full of change.

When he looks up from the bench covered with scattered pieces, he thinks he understands what Sam and James meant. He decides that Pippa is the one whose memories of love he wishes to possess.

At the end of his shift, Joshua pulls out his phone and dials a number.