I was sitting in the living room trying to remember why I had written “11:00 Coffee” on today’s calendar when Pandora looked up from the video she was watching on her phone and asked if I wanted to go for a walk later. “Sure,” I answered automatically before realizing I hadn’t actually thought about the question. She smiled, apparently satisfied with my response, and went back to her video. Mr. Whiskers was stretched across the windowsill enjoying the afternoon sun with the sort of confidence only an orange cat can possess. Down the hall I could hear John Mercer typing away on his laptop. It was a perfectly peaceful afternoon, which made it the ideal time for my brain to manufacture a problem.
The more I stared at my calendar, the less helpful it became. “11:00 Coffee.” That was it. No name. No location. No reason. Just two words that somehow expected me to remember everything. I was almost certain Karen had mentioned grabbing coffee sometime this week to talk about something from work, but had she actually said today? Or had I simply written the first thing that came into my head before convincing myself it was a real appointment? I checked my phone. No new messages. That wasn’t unusual. Karen wasn’t the sort of person who texted every five minutes. Still, the silence left just enough room for my imagination to start filling in the blanks.
Just as I was trying to reconstruct the conversation from memory, John wandered out of his room carrying his guitar. He sat down in the chair across the room, adjusted the tuning pegs and strummed one long chord that echoed through the apartment. I closed my eyes. There went my concentration. Another chord. Then another. Nothing loud. Nothing obnoxious. Just enough to make every thought in my head scatter like pigeons in a parking lot.
I looked over at him. “Practicing?”
“Trying to learn three chords without forgetting the first one,” he replied.
“How’s it going?”
“I keep forgetting the first one.”
That seemed surprisingly relatable.
I tried returning to my calendar, but every time I almost remembered something, another gentle strum floated through the room. My thoughts would start to come together before immediately wandering off again. Maybe the coffee meeting wasn’t with Karen. Maybe it was next week. Maybe it was with someone else entirely. Maybe I’d dreamed the whole thing. John played another chord.
“I’m beginning to think you’re drowning out my thoughts,” I said.
John stopped playing and looked genuinely concerned. “Sorry. I can go back to my room.”
“No,” I replied. “The scary part is I’m not sure there were any thoughts to drown out.”
Pandora laughed without even looking up from her phone. “That sounds more accurate.”
I pretended to be offended, but she had a point.
Mr. Whiskers chose that exact moment to leap off the windowsill, stroll confidently across the room and flop directly onto John’s guitar case. John sighed. “Well, I guess practice is over.”
The cat stretched as though he had personally solved the noise problem.
My phone suddenly buzzed.
It was Karen.
Tomorrow at eleven still works for coffee, right?
I stared at the screen for several seconds before laughing.
It wasn’t today’s meeting at all.
I’d written tomorrow’s appointment on today’s page.
I looked over at John, who was trying to convince Mr. Whiskers to surrender the guitar case.
“You know,” I said, “I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“I accused your guitar of ruining my concentration.”
“And?”
“It turns out my concentration never showed up in the first place.”
Pandora finally looked up from her phone and smiled.
“I’ve been trying to tell you that for years.”
John laughed, Mr. Whiskers yawned without moving an inch, and I quietly crossed out today’s mysterious coffee meeting. Once again, the greatest mystery in the apartment wasn’t John, Pandora, Karen, or the cat.
It was why I continued trusting my own memory more than my calendar.