Love & Darts (9781937316075) by Nath Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

fence—cattails and rushes as would surround a
stream. Looking at the ironwork of the tables which are frogs
bounding up and down splashes of water. Looking at the flagstones
and pebbles and the beautiful raven waitress who takes them their
water. The lady has cellulite on her thighs and wears comfortable
socks. The man is wearing a French Quarter hat that he likely just
bought today. They are the explorers of our time. Pacific and glad
someone has done it all before. But they are humbled by
decision-making. They share one menu. Sweetly.
    There is sun in my wine. But I don’t care. I
drink it anyway.
    She brings me my little dish of spaghetti.
It looks like a sundae. There is spaghetti in a fancy tiny bowl
with a tablespoonful of pesto and a cherry tomato on top. She
smiles. And I have to admit it’s hilarious. But thank God she
understands.
    Simplicity is a comfort. Familiarity is a
friend. The food is a friend. The smell of the cigar is more than a
friend, is family. The tourists taking it all in is a comfort. It’s
good to be home.
    Well. Back from home.
    He comes through the side gate. “How was the
flight?”
    It’s funny to look at another
individual—about whom you know everything, whom you know better
than yourself—in public sometimes. Some intimate lives don’t
translate easily into communal spaces. All that self-correction
comes back: Don’t stare. It’s not polite. But instead of loving no
person more and cleaving to this one man with a whole heart,
sometimes it’s almost as if you don’t feel anything, don’t care,
don’t even know the man at all. You sit there together without your
tangible connection, like business associates or brothers if you’re
lucky. But intellectually you know something real exists, even if
it’s immaterial.
    What, if anything, is love? There must be a
reason he came and sat down with you, here, at your table. So your
years are built on faith as much as anyone’s and without touching
anything, not hands, not arms, not legs, not thighs, not lips, no
part of the material you, he still reaches in and you remind
yourself: This man is yours forever.
    “Fine. The flight was fine.”
    “Sorry I wasn’t there.”
    “How’s work?”
    “Please don’t do that.”
    The waitress approaches him with a kiss on
each cheek. His suit is navy and the lining opens up to her. She
pours him water and a glass of the wine. They chatter. Then they
remember that today shouldn’t really be a blue sky day in May. I
wish they hadn’t remembered my dead-dad-grief shit. Just keep
chattering.
    And I can tell he doesn’t want to deal with
the somber reality any more than I do. He invites her to sit down.
He never was that intimate. Especially not with the big stuff.
    Who is?
    She is, that arctic goddess, not Norwegian
but Icelandic. She’s got the whole thing down pat. She puts the
pitcher down, puts her hand on my shoulder, squats in all those
shifting shadows, and says to me, “How’s your mom holding up?”
    I say something back that makes her stand up
quickly and go away. A cocktail of finesse, tenuous anxiety,
morbidity, and peevishness—she needs to be busy explaining the menu
to the tourists anyway.
    My lover’s not pleased with the way I
treated his friend. With his eyes he says my behavior’s inexcusable
even under the circumstances. But what he actually says is, “Do you
want to go away this weekend?”
    “I just got home.”
    “I know. But do you want to go away this
weekend?”
    And so it is that faith is unnecessary
again. There is real love. There is a true connection. And he does
understand, completely. He knows everything that’s worth knowing
about whatever it is that’s me. He cares. He shouldn’t but he does.
And he is strong in the midst of all the impossibilities of it. He
exhales suddenly and puts his hand on my thigh.
    The tears affect my view of the tourists so
I blink them away.
    “How did he look?,” he asks.
    It’s hard to say. “He