Five Stories
Copyright 2013 Richard George
A Meeting
Mark brushed the raindrops from his shoulders. It fell into the muddy water on the vestibule floor. Romero's had not changed much in the years Mark had known it. Varnished shells clung to a net behind the cash register. They seemed still wet from their native ocean. Rosa, the hostess, never showed any aging. She had always looked to be about forty.
“Good evening, Mr. Harrison,” she said. Her sharp black eyes appraised him. “Wet out, isn’t it?”
“Hello, Rosa,” Mark said. “Yes. It’s wet. Do you have a table for one?”
“Only one, Mr. Harrison?”
“Yes, Rosa; Mr. Ramsey won't be with me again. His heart gave out on him.” Inwardly Mark was surprised at how easy it was to say the words. “He passed last week.”
“I'm sorry to hear that. He was a pleasant man and a steady customer. We will notice his absence.”
“I guess we all have our time,” Mark said. He wished he could have said something more profound, more original, to somehow mark the occasion, but there seemed to be nothing else to say that was not more banal. Down inside his psyche there was hurt and rage; someday it would come out, and when it did, the grief would ease. It was not time for that, yet. He still feared that to let it loose would overwhelm him.
“A table by a window?”
“Yes, please, if you have one.”
“I will have, in about five minutes.”
“I'll stop in the bar, maybe have a Scotch and soda, then.” It had been customary between Mark and Jay that they had their weekly suppers by the window. Mark wanted to cling to custom in this.
“I'll come and tell you when I have a table. We are busy for such a rainy night.”
“Thank you, Rosa.”
“Yes, sir. I'll come as soon as I have one.”
Mark went into the bar. Even though there were quite a few people in the dining room, the bar was almost empty. One other customer was in the bar with George, the bartender. George was Rosa's husband; George had grown grey and pudgy since Mark first knew him.
“Scotch and soda?” George rasped. George had always had a “throat condition” that made him sound like Jimmy Cagney with a bad cold. Mark nodded. George made his drink and went to the other end to pour another white wine for the red-haired woman sitting there. Mark glanced briefly at the woman's profile and turned to his drink. Tonight he wanted to be alone, not to encourage any conversations with strangers. Mark stared into his drink.
Mark raised his head and stared at the bottles behind the bar without seeing them. He had been thinking of himself as a small boy running over the vacant lots of his home town in the shadows of the mountains.
The woman said something to George that Mark couldn't quite hear. Something about the voice was like another intrusion of his past, another part of his past, and it altered the flow of his memories. There was a familiar timbre to it that stirred things he had thought he had long put behind him, had long wanted to forget. He looked at the red-haired woman again. There was a similarity, but the red hair was wrong, or was it? Hair color came from bottles as often as from nature these days. The woman had her head turned away from him. Mark shook his head slightly and stared at the ice cubes in his drink slowly growing smaller. He sipped his drink, and it was watery. How long had he sat here? It was warm in the bar, but not that warm.
Rosa came in and said quietly to him, “I'm sorry it was so long, Mr. Harrison. The other party didn't leave as soon as I thought they would. Your table is ready.”
“That's all right, Rosa; I'm in no hurry to go anyplace tonight.” He got up, taking his drink with him. Behind him the red-haired woman raised her head and stared a long moment at his back as he left. If he had turned, just then, he would have seen her frown in a puzzled way. He might have recognized that frown, even under the red hair. Mark did not turn.
Rosa led him to a familiar table. True to her word, she had set a table by a window aside for him. Romero's had a dozen tables in this corner of the dining room; only two of them had a view of the Bay. The other window table was occupied by a couple with white hair. They were eating without talking, though the woman smiled at the man with the fondness that bespoke long and comfortable associations. Mark thought again of Jay, and nodded. Friendship that was quiet and deep was good. Some few achieved it, some in marriage, some in other ways. He pulled out the chair and sat down, facing the window. When Jay was with him they had taken turns facing the window, making a game of keeping records as to whose turn it was on the backs of envelopes and paper napkins. He smiled without noticing that he smiled. Verna, the waitress, thought the smile was for her and smiled at him.
“I was sorry to hear about Mr. Ramsey,” she said. “It was a surprise to me. He always seemed so robust.”
“It was sudden to me,” Mark said. “I guess he knew for a long time. He never said anything to me. He always did hate to admit weakness. I've missed him. He was a good friend.”
“He was a good customer, always polite.” She pursed her lips, as if she had nothing else to say. The silence was at the point of awkwardness when she added, “Do you want to order now, or would you like to wait a while?”
“I'll have spaghetti with the mushroom and meat sauce, Verna. And a half bottle of Zinfandel, the usual.”
“Very well, Mr. Harrison. Thank you.” She made a note on her pad and went toward the kitchen. Mark looked out at the Bay. The light from the City's tall towers speared the dark waters with shimmering rods of light colored red and silver. The glow of the lights from the City's suburbs reflected from the clouds' underbellies. The rain had stopped, for the time being at least.
Mark looked at the empty place across from him. It didn't seem quite right, the tablecloth bare of napkin and plate. He thought of what an old professor at the Seminary had told him once; the professor had said that people spent the first forty years of their lives accumulating people and things they spent the next forty years of their lives saying goodbye to. Mark nodded, and said, in his own mind, “Jay, you're another goodbye, the current one in a long string.”
Mark looked away from the window. It was too black and cold, the lights glittered too harshly in the dark Bay waters, for Mark to look at them without Jay's face to soften the effect. He wondered if he should have asked for a table away from the windows.
The people next to him were leaving. The woman was helping the man to his feet. The woman was a little stooped; the man trembled. Maybe he had something like Parkinson's disease. The woman looked up as Mark was watching them. She smiled at him as if to say that she didn't mind helping this big man who had been her strength. She still had him, at least.
That was a joy. Mark smiled back. He recognized that his interpretation of the woman's smile was just that, an interpretation. The woman had to lift her arm above her shoulders to help the man on with his coat. Mark could tell it was painful for her by the sharp intake of her breath. Pain and comfort, the balancing act of the human condition.
Verna brought him his Zinfandel and an antipasto plate. He tasted the wine and nodded. Then he took one of the pickled peppers and wrapped it in one of the thin salami slices. Behind him he heard Rosa escorting someone to a table.
Mark wanted to turn and see who was coming with Rosa. He could think of no graceful way to do it. He heard the woman thank Rosa. He recognized the voice, or thought he did; the voice was very like Anna's, as he remembered it. He had not heard her voice since that last day in the Hall of Justice, when she said she never wanted to see him again. He could not be sure, that the voice was Anna's, not from one word.
When he was sure the woman would be studying her menu Mark
looked up at her. He was very curious about this woman who sounded so much like Anna. It had been hard to see her profile in the shadowed dimness of the bar, though the red of the hair had been evident enough. Here, in the brighter light of the dining room, the hair was less red, more brown than red. She held the menu with her face turned partly to the left, reading the left hand page. The turn of her head was somehow familiar without quite being known. It was like the voice, an echo or shadow of something remembered. Mark turned back to the window before the woman could realize she was being stared at. He had no wish to make her uncomfortable.
Mark looked out the window again. The lights of a tanker were blurring in the raindrops on the window as it passed by. He watched it, wondering where it was going, who was going on it, dreaming of running away to sea. It was an old dream for him, born of childhood books.
He had never indulged the dream, except to take a couple of cruises. Impossible though it was, he had held to the dream. Dreams should be the last possible goodbyes. He took another pepper and