You know how I have looked at you day-after-day for weeks now, how my eyes must take their tour around your face from your eyes to your mouth and chin and back to your eyes and then up and around the line of your forehead.

You know how much I have admired just that hint of silver starting there, and how disappointed I was when it went away. But that’s all right, I understand. And you did wait a while, just for me.

You know my eyes still make that journey, willingly.

*     *     *

I have been waking up at 3 a.m. since early in December, and yes, you are the reason, although I haven’t told you so. But I will.

I don’t know what turns my dreams your way in these early morning hours, nor why my first thoughts on waking are of you, but I do not question it. I know only that it happens, and that I accept it. Gladly.

I hope that I am not the cause of your sleepless evenings, but if in fact I am, then surely it is good for your heart, and for mine.

On the other hand, I trust that your soul will not suffer because of me.

She is the woman that has always attracted me – all dark hair and dark, sparkling eyes and a smile that is open and honest.

We started innocently enough. She was new here, while the vagabond in me had been coming and going for the past five years. She wanted to know some of the better places to eat, where to find the best coffee (there was no Starbucks for her here), where to find this or that.

So I told her.

Sometimes we would go together, and I would show her. My passion for smoothies, and hers for coffee often sent us in search of the odd, the out of the way, the unusual.

Naturally, we would talk. Or, rather, she would talk and I would listen. She was the quintessential California girl, born and raised: popular in high school, with good grades and plenty of friends.

And one more thing – she knew where to find the most scrumptious junk food in the entire state, a matter sometimes near and dear to my heart too since I was often on the road.

Eventually I returned home, mildly infatuated – to say the least – with this marvelous woman that I had let invade my life.

I knew I was in trouble by the time December rolled around. I came back down for a week, ostensibly for a celebration of sorts. By the end of the week I was completely smitten, but on my way home yet again.

When her Christmas card arrived in the mail, I knew she was too.

*     *     *

Sometimes we flirt – outrageously – a glance, knowing looks, gestures, gentle touches with fingers and warm hands.When she walks into the room I search her face for that instant of recognition, that split second of acknowledgement that always comes, that has come for days now.When she leaves the room, I can’t wait until she returns.

She’ll be talking with others, deep in discussion, distracted, yet when I look over at her I see her brief glance, her smile, and then her attention returns to pick up the thread of the conversation.

In my heart I know that this woman is capable of sending me back to desolate African deserts one more time, but I don’t care.

I am happy.

* * *

She brings me flowers, and I pull her close and we hug. Later, she watches me as I brush the hair from her forehead with gentle fingertips. I am tempted to ask what she sees.Long ago, I learned not to ask.

They’re friendly.

They smile a lot.

They like Canadian boys.

They like to greet you with a smile and a hug.

They like to air kiss — a California kiss, I call it — when they hug you. Of course, it’s mostly all meaningless. After all, this is California.

They have spunk though. They’ll ride their own motorcycle — no bitch seat for them! When the riding day is done, they’ll look like a million dollars after only a few minutes of fussing, dusty face and all.

They take bike trips with men who have wives or girlfriends of their own, and then tell all about the two beds in the hotel room and how each slept alone.

Their current boyfriend isn’t really a boyfriend, but merely a friend, mechanic, insurance salesman, whatever.

They’ll tell you how much they want to go on a ride, and then, unbidden, you’ll end up with a phone number. When you call to cancel, they have no idea who you are.

The best part of that is the next day at breakfast, with friends. When she shows up, she’ll insist it was all a mistake and offer her cell-phone number. When you refuse, no amount of explaining will convince her that, since she didn’t know you the last time you called, the new number would be of no use.

Even California girls squirm.

They’re so fickle, and so obvious.

It’s plain that some haven’t had a broken heart in recent memory, and certain too that some have mishandled each one that’s been offered.

That’s why I like a California girl almost as much as I like a Georgia peach.

*     *     *

With sincere apologies to the fabulous California girls that I know and like.

The early afternoon was hotter than blazes and I was tired and drained. I saw the roadhouse sign from the highway, but I was traveling too fast to make the cutoff so I grabbed handfuls of clutch and brake, downshifted, and burned a u-turn in the opposite direction.

The place looked new. Obviously not the typical biker hangout with dirty windows, or no windows at all. I parked by the door and went in. Biker posters, juke box, video surveillance, slot machines. Air conditioning. My eyes took their own sweet time to adjust to the lack of light. Ah yes, there was the bar, over there against the back wall.

I idled up to the bar through a maze of empty tables and chairs and asked for a beer and a burger, then found a seat at a table in a dark corner.

The waitress who brought the burger had a bib-apron on, so I wasn’t immediately able to tell, but when she turned to walk away after I paid her, I knew right away she was special: she had long, shapely legs that ran all the way up into a pair of tight cutoffs.

I did have good intentions. Really, I did. I had planned on only a couple of beers to wash down the burger, and then I would be back on the road, headed home. And no, no more than two.

I sat for a couple of hours — after all, it was air-conditioned heaven in there — kibbitzing with the waitress, buying her an occasional drink which she tipped back, and generally getting shitfaced. Hell, how could I resist, since the waitress was buying me drinks too?

When her shift was over she came and sat down across from me. I had stopped just past noon, looking for respite from the heat, and now it was four in the afternoon. I wasn’t riding anywhere soon! Besides, I had just spent over three weeks in the saddle, and I was on my last leg home.

Conversation wasn’t all that memorable, but I do recall her telling me that she was spending her tips on me. I’m not sure if I was supposed to be grateful for that or not, since she was spending my tip money. But of course, being the gentleman that I am, I’m sure I thanked her profusely.

I ran out of money around 11 p.m., just about the time the conversation got real interesting, I’m sure. Since there was no way I was going to a cash machine in my condition, I found myself unceremoniously dumped for a table of guys three-over.

I slept on the patio table that night.

In the morning I found out that my waitress had driven herself home. Now, I don’t know about you, but driving and drinking is a disaster waiting to happen for anyone in her condition: she had matched me drink-for-drink all evening.

Oh yes, the bib apron. Well, it had covered up one word written boldly across her chest: Bitch.

I wanted to go. I really did. It had been exactly half of my lifetime, and I hadn’t seen any of them for at least that long. So I rode past the cemetery where friends rest, past the factory where I worked for one restless summer, and along the riverbank and into the past.

The warm-up parties were in full swing in the hotel in which I’d registered. I could hear them all as I checked in and found my room: women and men, voices too loud, trying to have too much fun.

She had seen too much sun. Wrinkled. Sun-damaged skin. Still pretty. But immensely aged. I used to chase after her when I was drunk. That was back in my drinking days, of course, when I lived here. Now she was just – different. A lifetime different.

And if I hadn’t been introduced to her, I’d not have known who she was.

I’m sure she wouldn’t have known me either.

During Friday night’s warm-up for out-of-towners I watched a friend greet a former girlfriend – both married to others now: the way each looked at the other for far too long; the hug that lasted too long. And all this in front of his wife. Had I not been temporarily dumbfounded I’d surely have made a feeble joke, tried to draw the wife away from the embarrassment of the moment. But I couldn’t.

So much for the evening’s warm-up for out-of-towners.

About a thousand were scheduled to attend Saturday’s event. I walked into that morass of humanity, looked around for a couple of minutes, and then turned around and walked out and away from the past. I never looked back.

So, here’s to all the hometown girls, to all of you who broke my heart, to some of you who didn’t, to the ones whose hearts I broke:

You’re in my memories, to remain forever young.

I’m sorry that I couldn’t bring myself to see you all, but I know you’re just as beautiful now as you were back then.

And I adore you all to this very day.