“Oh gosh, are you all right?”

Calvin blinked repeatedly and nodded, wiped inside his cheek with his tongue and decided he’d let gentlemanly conduct slip for a moment. He spat a bit more mud back to the ground and looked back up at Hiromi.

“I’m fine.” He said. She inhaled, eyes lifting skyward and released the breath in tiny chuckles. Both hands held her purse in front of her hips.

“Thank goodness. That was a nasty spill… you left a landing mark.”

“Was it?” Calvin wiped mud from his chest and shoulder, flinging it down with a flip of his wrist. He was inexplicably trying to play it cool despite his standing in the obvious scar left in the mud where his body had dragged a few square feet of grass and soil closer to the water’s edge. The contents of his pocket had strewn out where he’d landed. A hint of gold peeked out from the hole it had been driven into. “Oh.”

Returning his gaze to the woman in front of him, Calvin pushed grass out from behind his ear and grabbed the first thought to float by.

“So, uh… Churro?” He bent to pick up his fallen notebook and poked blindly around for the fallen ring.

Their eyes met. A smile blossomed on Hiromi’s lips. “Consider it my treat.” Calvin shifted forward and had just started to rise when a half-choked “Uuuack!” came from below and behind. Calvin’s brow knit and his heart dropped. Oh no.

Sure enough, as soon as he looked to the source of the sound, there was the duck gagging. Its little shoulders bounced as it stretched its neck with each attempt to swallow.

Calvin’s inner dialogue burst out.

“No no no no, crap, no!”

He scooped up the duck. The jostling dislodged the ring and the duck swallowed it another inch, quacking frantically and painfully.

“Oh you stupid thing!”

Calvin snatched a glance over at Hiromi, whose smile had vanished and been replaced with open lips, wide eyes and brows raised in concern. His own brows jumped from anger to panic.

“I’ve gotta go. I’m so sorry.”

Hiromi blinked. “No, of course, it needs a vet. Go. Go!” Her voice raised and she waved him off. Calvin’s boot tore up a bit more grass as he dashed away in a mad sprint to his car on the far side of the pond.

*** * * * ***

By the time they made it to the vet, the duck had successfully swallowed its inedible snack and was sitting proudly on Calvin’s lap. It took the veterinarian a solid hour to pump the duck’s stomach and rescue the ring. The duck, though small of stature had a stomach of iron and a set of nerves to match.

Standing alone in the corner of the room Calvin held his arms tight to his chest, face grimly drawn. His nausea was amplified by the stinging scent of antiseptic. When the duck finally yakked up its pilfered trinket, the doctor washed it off and carried both it and the unconscious duck over to Calvin.

“Here you go, Mister. One duck-tested, duck approved choking hazard.” The man said. Calvin thanked him, took the duck in his arms and the ring in his palm and thanked him again. As the vet drew up the bill, Calvin sat in the waiting room, rolling the ring over in his fingers. Unbelievable.

He stared down at that little golden circlet. Thought about the woman in the park. Talk about a first impression. He shook his head. A little dirt sprinkled down from his hair. The vet brought out the forms. Maybe I’ll run into her again? Calvin set duck and ring aside and signed the papers silently. Ah well. Not like there was anything there anyway. He tried to reason away the pangs that had hit him earlier. He reached the date section of the paperwork and paused. Was it the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh? He checked his phone. A small red circle with a white number ‘1’ sat on the corner of one of the apps. The top confirmed the date as the twenty-seventh. Calvin finished the forms and handed them back to the vet with another round of thanks and most of his wallets contents. Then he gathered up the duck and his ring and headed to his car.

On his way out, the doctor coughed. Calvin looked back.

“I noticed your duck’s not chipped. Might want to get that taken care of.”

Calvin chuckled nervously. He didn’t have a reply for that.

“Unless you’re kidnapping wild ducks, that’d be a misdemeanor.” The veterinarian winked. Calvin laughed.

“He’s the thief. This is justice!” Nonetheless Calvin picked up the pace a little as he exited the clinic.

Once back in the car he set the duck on the passenger seat and the ring on his dashboard. He stared at it intently with longing and hatred, eyes roving over the three little scars in its surface. The scene played in his head again; her face of bitter resolve. He saw the angle of her chin as she turned her head aside, felt her fingertips in his palm as she placed the thin, wire-mounted diamond ring in it. The sting of her slap along his knuckles when he’d tried to take hold of her hand one last time. The wind on his cheek from her turning away echoed through time by the breeze coming through his open car window.

Mind still reliving the sight of her walking away, Calvin swallowed and stroked his thumb over his ring finger and the knuckle of his left middle finger, the one tiny matching scar that the ring hadn’t taken when his hand hit the brick wall. He sniffed. Wiped away the last tear he was willing to shed thinking about it.

His phone pinged in his pocket. Calvin pulled it out and tapped the screen. A notification sprang up.

“Nakamura Hiromi has sent you a friend request.”

Calvin turned on the car, put it in gear and drove off without bothering to hear the clinking song of gold history bouncing down the storm drain.