T.C. Landeau
A silly thing happened once
It may seem like there are beginnings and ends to things, but really there’s only one of each for everyone, and the rest is just middle. So here it is: a middle.
Dusk is a gentle beast, suddenly here, present with monstrous glow and promises of danger and forgiveness, and suddenly gone, leaving a slight chill, a cold spot that turns all remaining light shrill.
It was during dusk that we met on the sidewalk. I was just leaving my table at Cafe Stagiares, as she spilled her warm guts out her brick, timber and iron facade onto an ordinary Bangkok sidewalk, under a dainty bib of green and white awning that retracted overhead as I received my change from an eversmiling waitress.
I recognized him instantly, of course–how could it be any other way?–and saw the same flicker in his narrowing, smiling eyes. Our sudden togetherness cancelled all roles. We could be anything. As the waitstaff hurriedly, fussedly cleared, wiped, and readorned the table table I’d just abandoned with crisp white napkins, slender glass columns as water glasses, and matte bauhaus silverware, which he and his companion, a girl of quirks and personality in her gypsy skirt and afghan top, lowered themselves into while she prattled and he lovingly indulged while remaining locked on me. If I am one to criticize–and I am–I would say she should have noticed his attention was divided, but a long cobbled path of words winding in and out of cul de sacs and side quests, carrying her rich voice into higher and higher flights of fancy; all storytellers should be as lost in their tales but, alas, so should their audiences and hers was my captive.
Bemused, I popped an American lean under a romantic lightpost nestled just outside the perimeter of sidewalk tables, a lightpost that dutifully recognized the moment, igniting me in a sudden candle-colored spotlight. Seizing all time, which is to say the moment, I leveled my gaze into his soul (he didn’t flinch) and languorously extracted an imaginary pack of cigarettes tucked just inside the left lapel of my invisible suit jacket. Tapping it firmly once, twice, thrice against my palm before bringing the crumpled opening to my lips to extract a single Puritan white stick, I held the invisible thing in the purse of my lips, stopping to give him a smolder of pure filth, before suddenly forgetting where my non-existent lighter was. Patting myself down across all pockets, as if to say did I even bring it? Did I lose it? before relief rushes over me; there it is: where it always is. Front left pocket. Loose wrist flicks it open as thumb caresses wheel grating flint and voila! the flame. I put it to the tip and pull deeply on nothing, once, twice, thrice the long seconds tick away.
Pause.
An exhale of pure satisfaction so thorough and true brings us together. I close the distance between us, gently interrupting the boho princess with a brush of my hip to her shoulder, begging her pardon a thousand times over, I extend the smoldering cigarette, nestled between the pointer and middle fingers of my right hand, to him, “excuse me, I don’t smoke,” the words helpless, apologetic.
He understands that he is to save me from the wretched thing, leans in with his right shoulder to slide it away from my hand and up to his lips to take a long luxurious drag, closing his eyes with the pleasure of it, opening them and saying “neither do I.”
And this is how we met