<p>Kay and I’s lunch dates continued throughout that semester. First, it was a simple agreement to meet “sometime next week” for more soup and salad, and from there, it turned into a staple. I would meet her at the library at the tail end of her morning shifts a few days a week and walk with her from the library to our chosen spot of the day. We found out all of the delightful little hidden tables in the student union, away from the noise and commotion surrounding the restaurants themselves.</p>
<p>We quickly switched back to bringing lunches from home, rather than continually frequenting the same four restaurants. It would save us money, and as we headed into lent, it was easier for me to bring my own food rather than simply being restricted to salads and the burger joint’s atrocious fish sandwiches.</p>
<p>“Peanut butter and jelly?” Kay asked one day. She sounded incredulous.</p>
<p>“What’s wrong with PB&J?”</p>
<p>“Nothing. I just can’t picture eating something like that as an adult. It feels like a food I left behind back in grade school.”</p>
<p>I lifted a corner of the bread. Sprouted grain bread — that one luxury I permitted myself if only due to its significance — cheap peanut butter, cheap jelly. “I’m not much of a cook, I guess.”</p>
<p>Kay grinned chewing a bite of her much more exciting-looking sandwich. She held it out toward me, speaking around her mouthful. “Bite? Ham’n’such.”</p>
<p>I laughed and shook my head. “Thanks, I’m alright. It’s lent, anyway.”</p>
<p>The coyote worked to swallow her bite, ears perked upright and head cocked to the side. “Lent? Like…honest to God, give up something you really like, fast and pray lent?”</p>
<p>It was my turn to chew through the sticky morass of peanut butter, and I had to take a drink from my water bottle to even begin to speak. “Honest to goodness lent, yes. Though I generally stick with the prescribed ‘beasts of the field, birds of the sky’ strictures, in terms of giving up food.”</p>
<p>“What’s the point of all that?” she asked.</p>
<p>“It’s symbolic,” I said with a wave of my sandwich, as thought that would explain it. “Forty days of lent, forty days that Christ fasted in the desert. Forty is one of those big numbers in the bible.”</p>
<p>She shook her head. We’d had enough conversations by this point that neither of us was really willing to go down the conversational road of discussing religion. I was Catholic, she was not. On that point, we were immiscible, and at the time, I had no problem with it.</p>
<p>I don’t know why the memory of this lunch in particular sticks out to me, though. It was just us, there. Two coyotes, sitting in a solarium tucked in against the south wall of the union. Some renovation or another in the past had left the room obscured, and thus often unused and quiet. It became one of our favorite lunch spots.</p>
<p>Two coyotes sitting in a glass-walled room, a painfully bright blue sky, a blanket of snow on the grass outside. Warm, but sensing the nose-stinging cold a few inches away through the glass.</p>
<p>Why this lunch? Why does this one stick out in my head? We talked about lent more than once. We’d talked about food more than once. Why does this one stick out in my mind?</p>
<p>I remember that the conversation stalled after that, at least for a little bit, and we ate in silence. Kay had brought with her a sandwich larger than my own, plus some little single-serving packet of hummus and some carrots — I remember taking one of those and a swipe of hummus when offered — a packet of chips, and a drink.</p>
<p>I finished before she did. I think that’s why I remember it. She finished her sandwich and then scooted her carrots and chips and hummus to the edge of the table, twisted sideways in her chair, and put her paws up on the low rim of the wall where glass met concrete, squinting out into the brightness of the afternoon.</p>
<p>I pulled out some notes to rifle through, but gave up after a few pages, instead just enjoying the sun with a friend. Sitting nearby, listening to her crunching on chips, watching the way her ears would flinch back with each sharp snap of the carrot between her teeth.</p>
<p>A separate memory, a memory within a memory: thinking of my advisor from Saint John’s. His fur, when we shook hands, was so much softer, so much more pleasant to touch than my own.</p>
<p>That Kay and I were both coyotes didn’t seem to matter, her fur still looked as thought it would feel softer than my own.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I’m remembering this correctly right now. I don’t remember if the Dee that was sitting in the sun was thinking about whether or not Kay’s fur was soft, or if that’s just the Dee right now, sitting here and writing about that moment. It’s such a nothing memory of a lunch that I can’t disentangle the reality from the moods I’ve been wilting under of late.</p>
<p>I just remember that I gave up on the notes and we both sat there, even after she finished, saying nothing, soaking in the warmth.</p>
