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.
