STORY

There is a table for two at Patrick’s.  After the pleasantries, the waitress seats us, and there we are, finally, face to face.

I look up from the menu to take in the surrounding. Very simple really; like bread and butter; delicious in its ordinariness.  Rickety chairs, simple white table cloth, the sun, trees, a person here and then another, passersby wandering about on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

How is it that I find myself seated across from him in a romantic setting such as this, on a warm sunny August day, alone and allowed to soak in the moment?  It takes a good bit of practice for me to gather my thoughts and release them to the passing breeze.  I want to be wholly at this table – it is hard though.   I have to chase the stubborn thoughts; which refuse to leave, insisting that they be witness to this.  I will to focus on the mere pleasure of a simple fare with a person who happens to have slithered his way into my heart.  Who is he?  Do we ever know?  Well, I have only shared a handful of days with this man and fewer nights even.  This time around, I don’t have to ask ‘who am I’ – a much more pertinent milestone.  So I settle to enjoy this “familiar stranger”.

We make light chit chat and he loses me every time he tries to keep a conversation about events, people, things.  They all seem irrelevant to me, yet I engage.  There is a symphony at the back of my head to the tune of “I don’t want to talk about these things at all.”  I don’t want to talk about us either. Who is this ‘us’ anyway.   I just want to be.  Relish the silence. Yet we go on talking about events, people, things.

The meal is pleasant and unhurried – a luxury I rarely have in my everyday life.  The wine is going to my head.  I can’t hear him anymore; I am so lost in my own thoughts.  I see him, I sense him and yet there is this longing that begs to be fulfilled.  Why should the privilege be his? I have a flashback of our time earlier that day.  How is it that he takes me as if it is his right? And why is it that I tacitly agree to the politics of the bed?

Oh, I think I hear him tell me about the limbic mind – apparently that’s what causes a woman to turn to a man mid-conversation and ask ‘do you love me?’ He is looking at me right now, searching for my response. I don’t even know what a limbic mind is, much less care.   It has not occurred to me to ask him  that question.  I already know the answer. Silence is my response.  Anticipation.

He seems bored and agitated and wants to leave. And so we do.  I sense him recoiling – mentally departing, emotionally withdrawing, detaching, scurrying back into his comfort zone.   And so I let go.

He is gone. Another good bye among the many I have endured.  Part of me left on that plane which took off at midnight.

In his absence it is all clear, once the tears dry up. We had it, for a few moments – in Los Olivos – the oneness, the conversation without words, the sharing of a simple meal; the sun, the wine, the glance and the touch – A day.