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Split ends
If only I’d remembered she sometimes chooses to brunch here after her Saturday yoga class.
It’s quicksand—the twenty feet of polished aisle running from this dreary waiting line and
her prime seat in front of the view window on the east end. Plus it’s been more than a year.
Ohh, and her eyes. It’s been said she once implemented them to convert a grown man into a soprano.
She pretends not to register my significant weight loss. I pretend not to register that her hair
is not as pretty as I recall. Maybe the early morning sun hitting it so hard from behind gives
it the appearance of split ends. Suddenly, like the toss of a coin, she flips her full-face
view away from me: converts it to a stunning left profile in the direction of the wooden
cowboy at the table which rubs up against hers. She swats at his hat like there’s a bee
in it. I know she knows I know this is theater.
A fey waiter squeezes behind her chair. Drops the wooden blinds like poker chips crashing
onto the bottom of a tin can but this does not faze her. I was right the first time. Her
hair is not as pretty as it used to be. I know if I approach her, in one rapid fire,
she will scoop out and trash everything that’s befallen me since our last encounter.
Then fill the gap with everything I do not want to know about her perfect life.
As it comes our turn to be seated, Eric wheels me beneath the table closest to the front door
for a quick exit. He tenderly tucks his bandana under my collar as a bib just in case I slobber
on the delicately-laundered gauzy white peasant shirt he chose for me on our final trip to
Cabo San Lucas last month.
Our favorite waiter immediately sets me up with three-quarters of a cup of de-caf.
Same for Eric except his is regular. A pint pitcher of half-and-half to stir our cups
to full. We each prefer our coffees almost white. Also water without ice so I may
swallow my morning meds more easily. He knows we will reward him well as always.
As Eric gently slips his hand across my hand he quietly says,
Do we know that icy woman next to the hat?
Spiel was 6 months old when the dark years of WWII were unleashed.
He was 50 and in psychotherapy when it dawned on him the fear present in his parent’s bodies
at that time of unprecedented upheaval surely must have had a profound affect on him.
His newest chapbook, “come here cowboy: poems of war,” recently written at age 65
and released by Pudding House Publications in the fall of 2006, focuses on how wars,
stretching from WWI to today’s aggressive hostilities, have imprinted his life.
Email: Spiel
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