strewn owls

Once, Chloe asked Ewan how she and him met (she and him being, of course, not that famous singing duo, but Ewan and his girlfriend, Heather.)

"That's a fine story!"

They were sitting at the bar at Clandestino, awaiting the arrival of said girlfriend.
[How nice it must be, thought Chloe, to be called upon, somewhat regularly, to tell a personal story that is so upliftingly positive, emotionally, for the teller, that his eyes become one thousand percent more bright and his posture that of a proud robin on a spring morning. To say the least, Ewan certainly did enjoy telling the story.]

"The fact that she was once Laurel's roommate was not by accident!.."

"Really?..." [How was Chloe unaware? She had just thought it mere coincidence..]

"Absolutely, you didn't think it was mere coincidence, did you?"

At this, Chloe thought that "mere" was a strange word. After a moment, she thought to answer him, which came out in a rather dejected tone, "yes."

"Well! So, you know that Laurel and I were friends (quite platonic, you understand, for quite some time)..."

[Yes, and I also know that meantime Laurel fell in love with you and your charming ways and still is to this day, much to her detriment.]

"..Well, you see, the first time I came to visit her at her apartment, I had the first inkling of Heather. Laurel played that Magnetic Fields album The Wayward Bus while she made me some dinner. I had asked, ' is this your music?,' because, really, I didn't believe Laurel would be playing Magnetic Fields.."

[It was true, in all honesty, Laurel rather preferred bands like Animal Collective and TV On the Radio. Chloe hated this about Laurel.]

.."And she said, no, it's Heather's. And I thought, 'Heather, who is that?' Heather, who was not home at the time, was, as I quickly discovered, a ghostly roommate, and I did not see her the next ten times I visited Laurel, even though I tried to make it happen. The next time I visited, I peered into Heather's room and caught sight of her guitar hanging on the wall next to her bed, and the various incarnations of owls strewn about her room. I loved the things she owned. The artwork, the furniture, the kitchen utensils, I would come soon to find, were all hers, and I loved it all! And it all just snowballed from there. I believe it was the fourth or fifth time, when I saw that Eric Rohmer VHS sitting on a shelf under the TV, that I felt a strong connection to this person I had never met. I knew that the Rohmer movie wasn't Laurel's, and I didn't even have to ask her this time, because I now felt that I knew Heather, and I was in love. Can you believe it? I could even picture her, without ever having seen a photo of her! I kept this all to myself, you understand, because I wasn't quite sure how to bring it up... So really it's a story not about how we met, but about how I met her."

Chloe was speechless. It must have shown in her face, because Ewan went on... [or maybe it didn't show in her face, and Ewan was as self-centered as Chloe feared him to be...]

"And the craziest part about this whole long, drawn-out story, is that, when I finally met Heather, in human form, not as a summation of all her belongings and tastes, she was exactly as I imagined her. And at that moment, I knew. I knew that there was, and there would be, no one else for me."

And with that, Chloe quickly requested the check from bartender and promptly made a gracious exit out the side door.