She didn’t say anything, but a tear was meandering down her cheek by this point, and she was shaking, though almost imperceptibly.

“Next question?” I offered.

“Why not,” she sniffed.

“Do you prefer Hearts or Go Fish?” I asked, naming two of my favorite card games.

“Bridge and Cribbage are my areas of expertise,” she said softly. I had never learned Bridge, and I had only started reading about Cribbage after I realized that it wasn’t a vegetable and, as such, it didn’t have that pungent aroma.

This called for the brown notebook, my list of people and their favorite card games.

In the course of the next few minutes, as we ate, I asked a lot of questions (most of them were ones I had already written down in the Lima Bean Green notebook) and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing my half of the rather stimulating conversation. While delighting in the discussion, I had occasion to pull out the following notebooks: jungle green; fuchsia; teal blue; wild persimmon orange; maize; mahi mahi; violet blue (three times!); and my favorite, Nebraska Cornhusker red.  This truly was turning out to be a banner day.

She expressed total amazement at the number of little notebooks I had in my pockets and my travel bag. And then, as she took her first bite into the blueberry cobbler dessert, I mentioned that I had 128 more notebooks with me in the trunk of my car.  It was perhaps unfortunate timing on my part because she began gasping for air; and then, with no sound coming out, I knew what I had to do.

I raced to her side of the table, pulled her out of the chair, turned her facing away from me, and I performed the Heimlich maneuver.  With one firm squeeze, the cobbler was dislodged from her windpipe and it went flying, making an audible SPLAT! right smack in the middle of the forehead of the man at the table next to ours (yes, the same man who had interrupted the conversation earlier).

As I finished making an entry in my rainbow colored notebook (my Heimlich maneuver journal), she started coughing, and again tears were welling up in her eyes; I thought perhaps she was coming down with something.  Not wanting to risk taking ill, I excused myself under the pretense of needing to use the restroom facilities. I found an open stall, sat down, and spent ten minutes recording the events of the evening in any of several notebooks.

When I returned to the table, I noticed that my companion was gone. I lifted the table cloth and looked underneath. She wasn’t there.

The waiter approached me and said, “Sir, the Madame has left the premises.”

“What?” I asked, somewhat astounded; though I wasn’t totally surprised, I thought things had been going swimmingly well.

“She didn’t say why. But she paid for dinner – hers as well as yours – and she told me to tell you that by the time I give you this message she will have obtained an unlisted phone number and will have found a new apartment.”

I shook my head. “She was a rather strange bird, I tell you,” I said, smiling slightly.

“If you insist, sir,” he agreed.

“Now where’s my zebra striped notebook?” I asked, mostly to myself.

“Pardon?” asked the waiter.

“My zebra striped notebook. That’s the one where I record when a date pays for me in a restaurant.”

“Oh?” said the waiter, softly.

“Yep,” I said. “That’s my most favorite one of all.”