All Saints by K.D. Miller Page B

little word. Sounds botanical. A bed of flowering polyps. Gather ye polyps while ye may.
    Kelly takes another swallow of coffee. She’s sitting in a Starbucks across from her doctor’s office, having a wedge of apple cake for breakfast and watching through the window while the street wakes up. It’s just after nine. Usually by this time she’s had two big mugs full of coffee, but this morning she had to fast for her physical. She can feel the caffeine—
    Simon? Is that him? Across the street? She leans forward, trying to see. No. Not Simon. Just a guy with his hair. The set of his shoulders. She sits back in her chair. Spears the lone chunk of glazed apple in her cake with her plastic fork and eats it.
    She went and dreamed about him last night. A silly teenager’s dream. They were dancing. He was breathing into her hair, his mouth close to her ear. He said, I think I’m falling in love with you . Even in her sleep, she knew the dream was hokey.
    She drains her coffee, looks at her watch. Her bone density test isn’t till ten. She takes her empty cup and goes and fills it back up with Columbian Dark. Wonders what they’ll charge her for a refill; if that’s the word. Maybe it’s rerun or redo . These places have their own language, and she doesn’t come into one often enough to pick it up.
    I don’t belong in the world . She made Simon laugh with that. She’d just handed his Blackberry back to him after examining it. It’s true. At some point, it all just started to elude her. Starbucks and Blackberries and iPods and iPads and YouTube. And young female celebrities who all look the same and all seem to be leading the same disastrous life. It all just makes her feel old. At fifty-seven. Meera, the young Hindu woman she works with, asked her the other day if her church forbids cell phones. She couldn’t get over the fact that Kelly still doesn’t have one. “Anglicans don’t really forbid anything,” Kelly said. “We just decide we’re above it.”
    Her refill turns out to be a dollar. She smiles while she tops it up with one percent milk. Simon would get a kick out of that. We just decide we’re above it. She stops smiling. She wasn’t going to do that anymore. Tuck away tidbits to share with Simon.
    Back at her table, she looks around and wonders if she’s in somebody else’s usual spot. It’s prime real estate, right by the window. The man at the next table has regular written all over him. He’s staked out the other two chairs with his coat and satchel, and settled in for the morning with his newspaper. And didn’t he give her a sharp look when she first sat down?
    Give yourself a break, Kelly. Simon’s voice. Lighter and more musical than most men’s. You’re a paying customer. His pale blue eyes, their expression a little exasperated. You don’t think enough of yourself. His hand, reaching for hers across—
    Shit .
    She puts her cup down. Straightens her back. Places her feet flat on the floor. Closes her eyes. Takes in a deep, deliberate breath. Create in me a clean heart. Breathes out, focusing on the air leaving her lungs. And renew a right spirit within me. Does it again. Following the breath. Repeating her mantra. Which she suspects is too wordy.
    She took a meditation course last winter in the basement of All Saints. Their teacher was a Buddhist nun with a shaved head—a woman originally from Savannah, Georgia, whose accent kept making Kelly smile. Fallow the bray-eth. Ee-yin. Owt.
    The nun suggested some one-word mantras ( may-an-truhs ) for them to try. But the psalm refrain from Sunday’s service was still going round in Kelly’s head.
    Breathe in. Create in me a clean heart.
    â€œLoo lah-bee?” A toddler at a table behind her is asking the same question over and over.
    Breathe out. And renew a right spirit within me.
    â€œLoo lah-bee?” Each time, the