Olivia will be my one true love.

If I tell her. I’ll get around to that, but I don’t want to rush it. Girls get scared of too much aggressiveness on a man’s part. I’ll just take my time. I once read that girls are like rose petals—delicate, soft and easily hurt. Actually, I have learned a lot about girls just by reading about them. I don’t want anything bad happening to her. So after Olivia moved away, I followed her. She chose a far-off city, with tall buildings and busy thoroughfares. I was dizzy with excitement. I got an apartment a block away from hers, and several stories higher, so I could put in a telescope and watch her. What I saw would have stopped any ordinary man.

But I am not an ordinary man. I wonder about things. A constant stream of men came and went from Olivia’s apartment. I watched them pull up in their fancy cars, and then saw them in her arms through her window. My eye socket got sore from pressing it into the eyepiece of my telescope. There were so many men that Olivia eventually hired a valet to park their cars. He was kept busy all night long attending Olivia’s eager visitors. I knew she was going to get tired of these jerks pestering her. That is how women are. Eventually she would recognize this as folly and tell them all to leave, and that would be my opening. Finally, a moving truck showed up one day. Olivia was moving on. I watched in dismay. This would have stopped any fool. But I am not just any ordinary fool. I kept my watch. I peeled my eyes for Olivia leaving her apartment but missed her. She must have slipped out when I left my telescope for the bathroom or the refrigerator. So, instead, I followed the moving truck.

Her moving truck went to a warehouse. Her furniture got unloaded and went deep into its vast, cavernous space. So did I. It stayed there twenty years. I wondered how Olivia got along for twenty years without furniture. Where did she sit when she thought about me? Where did she eat? Her French Provincial dining set sat here, gathering dust. So did I. It looked as lonely as Marie Antoinette going to the guillotine. I imagined my Olivia pining away in some other lonely city, furnitureless, wasting away with consumption, sitting on the floor. That thought made me sad. Another thing that made me sad was living in a warehouse for twenty years without a bathroom or refrigerator. Try holding it for twenty years.

Then, one day, a truck pulled up and removed Olivia’s furniture. It got loaded up, and I followed it. My car was still parked outside the warehouse. It didn’t start. The tires were flat. Squirrels had eaten the upholstery. So I chased the truck.

I didn’t have far to go. The truck went to the Salvation Army. There, two men took all of Olivia’s furniture and put it inside the Salvation Army store. I went in.

“Where is Olivia?” I asked.

A nice lady met me. She didn’t know what I was talking about. Other than that, she seemed pretty intelligent.

“The owner of all this furniture,” I said.

“We don’t know who that is. Someone just sent us this furniture to sell it,” she explained.

“I’ve waited twenty years to see her,” I said. I think I was shouting. That’s what any ordinary man would do in these circumstances. “Where is Olivia?”

The nice, motherly lady tilted her head and gave me a funny look. She asked me to tell her more about myself. I told her about the telescope, the refrigerator, the valet parking, the squirrels, and not urinating for a really long time. She said she understood. She reminded me of Olivia, who as best as I could remember, was a patient and tolerant girl, much like a rose petal or a sunflower on a long, leafy stalk. She told me to wait right here while she made a phone call. I could not say enough good things about this lady or recommend her too highly. I thought for a moment she was going to call Olivia.

But she didn’t.

Another truck arrived, a white one. Trucks just keep showing up. Two men got out of it. They were dressed in white. I asked them if they were taking me to Olivia. They nodded. We drove to a place far away. The parking lot had a sign that read: “Fine for Parking Here.” I wondered what that meant.

Everyone is nice here. They are a lot like the lady from the Salvation Army. They tell me Olivia might be coming any day to visit me. And they say to just relax and look at the garden outside. So I relax like any ordinary man would. I like it here out in the country. The people are not aggressive at all. There are flowers of all kinds—roses like Olivia, sunflowers like the matronly dowager and spiky Sea Holly like the men who pestered Olivia. Some nights I lean out of the window and urinate on the Sea Holly. It keeps growing. Plus there is a refrigerator and a bathroom. I keep waiting. One day a truck will show up, and Olivia might get out of it. I clearly remembered years ago, the last time we spoke.

“Till we meet again,” she’d said, holding out a hand that was parched and frosty. I still wonder what that meant.