SEVEN

I can hear her struggle to push the chunky stroller through the corridor. As always she is late. But unlike all the other days in our two decade long friendship, I couldn’t care less. I can see the tabby grey cat that nimbly zaps through her ankles and runs inside, from the other side of the indoor patio. The cat’s tail is erected behind its stretchy body like a flag that swifts left and right. Cats have begun to notice the new resident of this house. They use every opportunity to poke their nose inside. She and the nosy cat enter together, as she calls my name repeatedly to spot me. The indoor patio exposes every corner of this house. The massive glass cubical is centered in the middle of the first floor, rising up to the ceiling of the second floor. The sun reigns over the house through the skylight of the patio.

The cat drifts away from her ankles, toward the kitchen where I am sitting, in my tie-dye purple sweatpants and low impact sport bra. It swirls around my ankles mewing. She follows the cat’s lead into the kitchen. Her stroller comes in before her. Coleus leaves are bursting out of its bottom basket. Lush green and purple. She never came empty handed to this house. Perhaps that’s why she is my only friendship that has survived from childhood. She is wearing a bold lipstick color. A thick strand of her hair streams down along her defined jaw line under the sheer shimmery shawl that she is wearing, ever so loosely on her head. She was the pretty one, the funny one, the smart one. I was her shadow.

Once she spots me, she leaves the stroller and throws herself at me. She smells like car seat, heat, baby powder and bitter oranges, also known as Seville oranges. We used to pick so many bitter orange blossoms from trees by the roads in the North of Iran. I inhale her warm hug. There is nothing quite like the bosom of a friend from the past. As she pets my head in her hands, she whispers “Your mother asked me to give you these. Sorry.”