4. Will it rain again?

I dreamed I was a piece of fruit and my partner was peeling my skin."
"Why would you dream something like that?"
I looked at my new friend and wondered why I would even tell her something like that. She was cute. Plain. Not the kind of girl you laden with your nocturnal musings. I smiled and thought about such musings, but she interrupted.
"You must watch too much."
I laughed, "Too much what?"
"Your wife. Either sex with your partner is for spectators. Or perhaps, you should help more. Rather than just watching."
I took another drink from my coffee. A fluffy, fruity, iced something altogether rotten. Whenever she speaks I feel like I am learning English all over again. Not that I can't understand her words. But somehow when she speaks I am always sure I don't understand what she means. She looked through me with a sudden edge of irritation. I turned to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing new. I was going to ask as she stooped and checked her phone.
"I don't see why I need one of these. I wish it wasn't ever useful, so I could justify leaving it at home."
"Why have a phone if you aren't going to use it."
"Maybe I will stop using it," she finished, dropping it back in her sack, like a lump of coal.
Jane was one of those women who carried a sack, rather than a purse. Just a well worn fabric thing that slung over her shoulder and hung on her hip. Clearly, it never was intended to coordinate with anything. She really was different from people here.
"James is about to arrive. He is just coming up the exit stairs," she said in a bored way. "Why would I need to know that? We have plans...we are to meet."
James was my connection to this woman. He worked with her, or had worked with her, or well I was never quite clear on their connection. I met James back in college. I was studying English in Canada, as was he. Although, it was the only language he spoke. We somehow became fast friends, and he'd often talked of this girl, Jane. It was strange when one day some years later and quite by accident, she turned up in my gallery. This girl, or woman rather, across from me.
I could tell Jane was unsure about seeing her friend again. I guess there is something in meeting a friend again in a foreign land. But I hardly had time to think about it when the young man entered the cafe.
"Okay?" She looked at him as if to say, so that's who you are. And I could see Jimmy really was James. Taking a full minute to stop blinking from the change in lighting in the cafe, and to think about how one says hello in English. Probably still the only language he can communicate at all in.
"Yes. Well..." James stumbled for a bit.
"Right," said Jane, standing and slinging her sack. "Let's be on the move."
"Good to see you, old friend." I patted him on the pack as we walked out.

Jane led the way to the gallery.
"She seems suddenly on fire," I muttered to James.
"Doesn't she always seem that way?" he looked shocked by my observation. James stopped walking and looked out into the street. Then back the way we had come.
"Is there a problem?"
"Hmm deja vu." James then took out his cell phone and examined it, "Hey, I think I must skip off. I'll meet you at the opening tonight. This guy wants to see me, and I should go."
Jane nodded and I shook hands with James.
"Or maybe you are growing." Jane said suddenly as he turned away.
"What?"
"Not you, see you later." She turned to me and said again, "Maybe you are growing and you need to shed your skin."