Dinner for Two

He saw her for the first time from the patio. She wore one of those flowery dresses that signal spring and absolutely simmer in the brutality of Florida’s July high season. She was just standing, staring out across the green-blue horizon, gazing upon the eternities and follies of life that tiptoe that dark mirage known as the future. He gripped the white metal rail of the balcony, listening to the heady gusts whistling between the rusted welds and jittering steel.

“Honey, are you ready?” The voice behind him startled him out of this momentary reverie, a capricious daydream undoubtedly wrought by heat stroke or mid-life crisis or both.

“Ready. Let me lace up real quick.”

“Harry, we’ve got reservations at 6. It’s practically half past five.”

“You know as well as I do that reservations are for tourists.”

“But really, darling,” she smiled at him as he peered up at her from his stoop, his tanned fingers twisting tight bows atop his well-worn boat shoes, “It’s our 50th first date. We don’t want to press our luck.”

“All right then, my princess. Ready to go now.”

“Just one quick sprig of perfume and we are out the door.” She grinned, slipped into the Master bath, and popped back into the hallway waiting for her husband who was staring dreamily out the glass onto the beach.

“Harry?” He stood, motionless, his fingers tapping out a brief interlude on his cargo pants pocket.

“Harry, darling.” Still, he watched, rapt, mesmerized as the dreamy apparition before him danced along the frothy surf. Her dress billowed in a sudden gust, sweeping up and exposing long, shapely legs and the thin, sensual lines of a pair of lacy black underwear.

“Harry. Now.” He heard her this time and turned.

“Coming, Betty. Coming.” His feet moved slowly; the shuffle of his child-like resistance audible on the thick pale tiles that lined the condominium’s luxury floors.

“What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing my dear. Absolutely nothing a double pour of cabernet won’t cure.”

“For two.”

“Always.”

“And forever then?”

“As long as it lasts.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She pulled up just short of the front door, one hand on her slightly overstuffed waist as she glared at him with mock resentment.

“It means that if we don’t hurry it up, they’re likely to give our table away.” He smiled, took her hand in his, and led her to the elevator.

Dinner passed at an arduous pace. His heart beat like a cheetah trapped inside a turtle’s shell. Betty launched into a breathy recall of the week’s vague and uneventful happenings at the ‘Spicy Seagull’ jewelry store.

“And so, Tammy says, hey, Bozo? Get the squawk outta here…”

Silence

“Get it, Harry? Squawk?...Harry?”

“What? Oh, yeah…hilarious.”

“It was. I nearly split a seam I was laughing so hard. You shoulda seen the guy’s face. Pale as a ship’s mainsail.”

“Who was?”

“Jesus, Harry! They guy. The guy I was just telling you about…never mind. Where’d you go?”

“I’m here.”

“You sure as sunrise are not!”

“I’m here, Betty.” But not there, with her, he thought to himself.

“We get one night a year. One night for our first date.” She was infuriated. Her cheeks were flaring now, sucking in and out like a caged cougar chuffing at the bars of a back-alley zoo in little Havana.

“And I’m here.” But, where was she? Where did she go? He considered, staring out across the twinkling ebb and flow of the intracoastal waterway from their riverside table. The fabled Frigate Restaurant was a Melbourne staple and a weekend favorite among the locals.

“It’s like you’re a million miles away.”

“Yeah,” he almost whispered absently as he sipped on a nearly untouched glass of cabernet. “I mean, no. I’m right here. That’s so funny about Tammy.” He managed.

“It was…” His wife sighed and stared across the table. She watched her husband, his sallow cheeks, sunken eyes, receding hairline. He looked so …tired. In stark relief, as though posed in spotlight behind his hunched shoulders, the seas of bubbling, chattering patrons laughed gaily. So happy. So…connected. She refocused, her eyes carving deep divots into Harry’s wrinkled forehead. He was so far away.

It was almost like he wasn’t even there at all.

The second time he saw her was on Wednesday. Four days had passed.

He had stood at the patio door every night staring out over the surf, watching the troupes of tourists and clusters of seashell collectors sidle along the seashore. On Sunday, there were tall men in white linen shirts with old-fashioned straw fedoras and fat cigars tucked into the corner of their mouths. There were statuesque women in long colorful linen and bright shawls that fluttered and danced amidst warm evening breezes. There were small children with bare feet and vacant stares who ran tripping and spilling up and down the dunes chasing the mole crabs who retreated with the surf.

But she did not come. And so, he waited.

On Monday, he positioned himself at the far end of the patio in a tall cocktail chair with a sweeping view of the northern beaches. The leisure seekers moved like flocking gulls, dashing back and forth, in and out of the surf. He hardly noticed Betty moving through the condo. He barely noticed the sallow sundress that seemed to hang too loosely off her shoulders, the deep bags forming under her eyes.

On Tuesday, he waited again. He had a bottle of Coppola Merlot, a single glass, pair of binoculars, and a novel that he had read a thousand times. He glanced at the first page, his eyes glossing over as the words of Dostoevsky’s The Gambler seemed to jumble and bunch before him. Betty was surprisingly quiet. As though she wasn’t anywhere, but still hovering just out of his periphery.

He heard a noise on the beach. There was a wedding. He could see the bride trip over the dunes, her long train dragging through sea grapes and crushed coquina shells. The groom caught her arm, raised her upright, and then bowed with a youthful grace. The photographer danced among the furrows carved into the sand by wind and unseen creatures. A cheer went up and Harry stood like all the other retirees on their balconies, and they waved and clapped for the happy couple in a fluttery cadence of flesh on flesh.

Then silence.

Then it grew dark. And he clomped back into the condo reheated a plate of frostbitten lasagna and nursed a final glass of wine. He tucked his book back into its hovel and shuffled alone into the master suite to force himself to sleep.

With less vigor he again found himself at the railing on Wednesday, his hands gripped the metal spars as he stood glaring into the mid-afternoon heat. He was furious and he dared the beach to deny him his vixen this evening, dared eternity to block from him this chance at…what? Chance at…youth? At…happiness? At…life itself?

Where was she!! He was losing his mind and as his fingers curled and uncurled around the white metal, he felt his legs weaken, felt a deep pit grow sallow in the depths of his gut. He needed to get down there. Get down to that beach, to force fate to bend to his will.

He slid the glass door back with such force that it rocked in its moorings.

He snatched an unopened bottle of wine from the counter, greedily grabbed up two crystal goblets, pocketed a wine key, and launched through the front door and out into the ether.

Three stories down.

One hundred and fifty feet through the underground parking garage.

Seventy-five feet down the wooden gangplank.

Shoes off.

Socks off.

The sand felt warm, enveloping his toes with a welcoming swell of earth and grit. His tan cargo shorts flared in the evening breeze and he stumbled over the dunes. He forged through the thick, puffy tufts of untrodden sand, his heels digging deep in the soft swales. He stomped purposefully towards the surfline, drawing up short as he stood staring out across the horizon, his chest heaving with exertion, with frustration.

At the long, dark point which hovers just above oblivion, he caught a flare of pink, the first inklings of sunset winding its way down the cloudless sky and kissing the flat crust of the ocean with its rosé lips. He stood, bottle in one hand, glasses in the other, staring out across the edges of uncertainty. Trembling, he felt the wash of doubt and fear, of loss and pain, of longing fall heavy in the pall of the rising twilight.

Behind him he heard a sound. He turned, the bulbous orange glow of the sun in the west nearly blinding him as it hovered, moored in space between two stark white buildings. From its aurora, a figure emerged. Her floral dress clung about her shapely form like it was painted in space, frozen momentarily in a time both present and past. Her hair fluttered, buffeted by a sudden light breeze that tossed tendrils of amber locks into relief against the setting sun. His breath caught and he fell to his knees, both arms outstretched as he raised the bottle and glasses in mock offering to this goddess, this sweet, perfect beauty.

She crossed the dunes, each footstep flaring against the sand. He dropped his head into his hands, tears spilling from his eyes as he sat unworthy, unwilling to gaze up at this apparition lest she suddenly depart. He knelt, prostrate before her, sobbing, his chest swelling, his back heaving. And then he felt a soft hand on his back. Her hand. How he missed that hand.

“Hi, Harry.” The sound of his name on her lips made him shudder. He shook his head vigorously back and forth, signaling his unworthiness, but still she persisted.

“Harry?” She cupped her hand around his chin, raised his head up and wiped the tears from his reddening cheeks. He saw her young, just twenty years old as she danced through his imagination. He saw her ten years later, bouncing their daughter on one knee as he dove in and out of the surf. He saw her now, a spectacular beauty wise and willful, effervescent.

And for the first time, in many months, he felt the fog lift from his mind, the doubts and fears and years of unrequited dreams rise up into the twilight and dissipate.

And he smiled. He cupped her hands. And he kissed her fingertips.

“Hi Betty,” he mumbled. “You remembered our first date.”

“Of course, dear.”

“Always and forever, then?”

“As long as it lasts.”

In his mind, decades of memories flitted like the pages of a sputtering flipbook, rapidly turning over, far too short. In the present, he went through the routines, through the daily rituals of a popped cork, warm dinner, hours on the couch, and the quiet reverie of sleep which washed the loneliness from his mind. He still went out every Friday to the Frigate. They still set his table. He didn’t need a reservation. His glass was always poured. Her place was always set.

But she never came.

She couldn’t come ever again.

The twilight of their lives had faded.

Her light had been snuffed out much earlier than his. Cancer was a vicious brute. And despite his best efforts, his greatest discoveries, his most rigorous research, he couldn’t save his Betty from its voraciousness. He had watched her wither, held her cooling hand, and felt the life depart. It wasn’t the plan. They had waited their entire lives for paradise, and she had left him behind.

But in this moment, this twisted flare of fantasy, he felt her body warm against his, clinked his glass tenderly against hers, and watched the sunset.

One last time.