Delicate
Brian Gilmore
The rain falls in torrents, but weather can’t derail me from my quest tonight. I enter the pub and brush the rain off my jacket. Disinterested pairs of eyes slowly rise before settling back down to the emptiness before them. Thunder rolls gently in the distance, enough to provide extra cover for hushed conversations but not enough to scare anyone away. Flickering tabletop candles cast shadows that danced around the booth, bouncing off dark wood paneling and exposed timbers that exude warmth. I order a pint and take a seat at the empty booth along the far wall, third from the window, the booth we’d sat at for years. It was comfortable.
I reach into my pocket and brush up against the small, square box, making sure it’s still there. Still real. I run my hands through my hair, eyes trained on the door.
A friend of ours had set us up, a few years ago, and after a nice dinner at a little Italian place in town, I lost it. I really did. Screw jarred loose. After dinner, taking advantage of the warm summer evening, we went for a walk through the city. We found a little park and stretched out on the grass for a bit. There we were, lying next to each other, gazing at the quarter moon, and I decided to rattle off the reasons why she absolutely amazed me. You’re unlike any other woman I’ve met. You’re beautiful. You’re modest, taking nothing you have for granted in this world. You value and cherish a sense of something greater than yourself, a humility that is too often lost among people today. That kind of stuff. Nothing like a little first-date honesty, huh? But as ridiculous as I felt that night (and what stopped her from putting my number on her block list after she got home that night, I’ll never know) it’s even more incredible to see how things have turned out. That night, I think a part of me saw through the twists of time and pictured us at this moment. At this very threshold.
I glance down at my watch. Any minute now. Lightning momentarily illuminates the bar before it darkens again after a low, sustained growl. The door opens and in walks a man carrying a guitar case. He mutters something to the bartender and makes his way over to the corner table by the fireplace. The man sits down, removes his guitar, and for a moment is content to quietly strum and tune up. None of the handful of people in the bar takes more than a casual notice of this man before going back to their own moments. After a minute, the bartender brings the man a dark pint and joins him at the table. From under the table the bartender pulls out a smaller case and deftly assembles a penny whistle. After pausing for a moment to catch the guitarist’s tune, the bartender put the whistle to his mouth and joins in, playing a slow, yearning melody that I don’t recognize. A couple on the other side of the room quietly turns their chairs to watch the two harmonize, communicating only through the ebb and flow of the music. They respond and feed off each other, seemingly taking turns completing the thought that the other had begun. I smile and take a long sip.
My butterflies have little baby butterflies of their own. I think it’s the right thing to do, though. At the end of the next tune —“Fields of Athenry,” I knew that one— the bartender puts the penny whistle down and makes his way behind the bar to draw some rounds. The guitarist pauses and takes a long, relaxed swig from his pint before continuing on to the next song, hardly missing a beat.
The relationship hasn’t always been easy, though, I’ll tell you that much. In fact, there was a time when I wasn’t even sure if we’d make it to this point. We broke up for awhile and I started seeing some other girls. And I had a nice enough time with these girls, but at the end of any night with them, the only thing I really wanted to do was ring Mary and talk about how this one ate her pizza with a fork, or how she wouldn’t drink wine because it gave her the hiccups. She finds stuff like that pretty funny.
Mary dated some other guys, I think, but I don’t really want to talk about that. It was hard enough just imagining it. We managed to stay friends, though, bruises and all.
One day we started talking—you know, really talking, like we had before—over a bottle of wine, an Argentinian Malbec, I think, and, well, one topic led to another until she looked me in the eye, letting that gaze sit there for what felt like an eternity.
“Why aren’t we together?” she said.
Wow. Hands down, way-the–hell-out-of-the-park, no-brainer numero uno question on my all-time top ten questions asked list. Spoken to or from. Trust me, I knew how to take it from there, and here we are today, box ready in my pocket. Except, I’m not sure where she is. She’s usually not late for anything.
The phone in my pocket buzzes to life. A text flashes across the screen: RUNNING LATE. SORRY. She’s coming. I signal the bartender for a fresh pint. Maybe she knows what awaits her and can’t decide what to wear. That’s probably it. Ten bucks and my right nut says she’s even more gorgeous than she was the last time I saw her. That’s just usually how it works with her.
Outside the storm has started to rage, but inside the soulful yearnings of the guitar maintains the tranquil mood, if just for another moment. My palms trickle sweat. A gust of wind blows open the door just as a lightning bolt incinerates the night sky, disappearing as quickly as it came, leaving a faint trail of white in my eyes. Through the open door rushes a figure cloaked under a black jacket. The form looks feminine, but this woman has a yellow umbrella. Mary hates yellow. The woman removes her hood. My eyes widen.
I’ve never believed much in love at first sight. I like to be just as romantic as any other sap, but I just don’t see how one sweaty, pulse-racing moment can possibly tell you she’ll never rinse the peanut butter off her knife before leaving it in the sink for three days, or that she’ll always drink a little too much red wine when you have people over because she’s afraid of coming over as quiet and uninteresting, or that she’ll snore in bed after she’s eaten pepperoni pizza.
But you know that scene in Casablanca where Ingrid Bergman stares wistfully off to the side of the camera? It’s the shot where every dude on this planet can’t help but wish he was not only alive in the 40s, but that she was really gazing at him? I can’t remember the context of the scene—she’s probably talking to that lucky S.O.B. Bogart—but my God, what a look and what a woman. Well, that’s the look I’m getting from the woman at the door. Except, this look is in full color.
Shaking the renegade water off her wavy blond hair, she gives me a slight, coy smile. She walks toward my table and takes the empty seat across the booth. Mary’s seat.
I offer her a drink. She declines. I offer her a smoke.
“Nasty habit to start,” she says.
I offer my name. She accepts.
“Pleased to meet you,” she says. She pauses, as if waiting for something, then goes on. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
I sip on my pint and gaze out the window. Mary will be here any minute. She persists, the weight of her stare penetrating deeply, softly.
“Well, do you?”
I change the subject for a moment. “Are you meeting anyone?”
“I just moved into town,” she says. “I don’t know a soul. Mind if I sit and talk with you?” Again she smiles.
Mary’s on her way. Any minute.
“Tell me about yourself,” she says.
We sit together in that booth—our booth—and I find myself unraveling my story, piece by piece, to this mysterious woman.
She asks about things like my relationship with my parents. How am I supposed to tell her how every time I watch Field of Dreams I cry because the scene with Kevin Costner and his dad reminds me of my own insecurities and fears about my own father? She asks about my biggest regrets in life. Do I want to tell her about the time cheated on Mary after I went out and got loaded, pissed that she blew me off for her girlfriends? How do you communicate demons to a perfect stranger?
Just when I think I have things charted out, the legend made and the map color-coded…. No. No—the only thing that needs to happen is for Mary to walk through that door.
But then she asks me what I’m most afraid of.
“Got anyone you’re waiting for tonight?”
My hand reflexively shoots into my pocket. “She’s everything I could hope for,” I say, slowly. “She makes me happy.”
She nods. I crack. For the next stretch of blurred time, I spill everything about Mary—my hopes, my questions, my fears … my sudden doubts. Tears welling, I pull back into silence and gaze beyond the woman toward the musician lazily picking at the strings of his guitar.
“Excuse me for a minute,” I say. I stand up, walk toward the window, composing myself, and call Mary. After three rings, she picks up, her voice sounding more anxious than usual. Maybe she knew.
“Mary,” I say, “what’s your story? You’re over an hour and a half late.”
“I know, I know,” she says. “Something came up that I just had to take care of, I’m so sorry.”
“Are you okay?” I say.
“I’m fine, it’s just something that can’t really wait right now. I’ll explain when I get there. I love you, honey. I’m almost there.”
I run my hands through my hair and walk back over to the booth. She sips her pint and looks at me with a playful, knowing smile.
“Night not going as you planned?”
“You could say that.” God, she unsettles me. No one, not even Mary, has done that to me. Not like this.
“You know,” I say, “I don’t know a damn thing about you.”
She nods. She grabs my hand with one hand and places her other onto my cheek.
“Listen,” she says, “I don’t know how things with this Mary are going to work out. You seem like a good guy who deserves the best. But here, take this. Just in case.” She removes her hand from my cheek and moves my pint from its coaster. She grabs the coaster, scribbles a phone number on the back, turns it over, and slides it across the table.
Without another word or gesture, she rises from the table, puts on her coat, and walks out the door. A cold gust of air blows through the pub, the storm showing no signs of subsiding. I stare blankly at the coaster and put my pint back on top of it.
Then Mary walks into the pub. She sees me sitting in our booth and rushes over, a giant smile on her face.
“I’m not feeling so well anymore, Mary. Can we just call it a night?” I say. “We’ll do it another night, I promise,” I say. “Let’s just rent a movie or something.”
“We can’t abandon a good soldier, though,” she says, still smiling, pointing to the pint. She picks it up, the coaster sticking to the condensation on the bottom of the glass. After clinging to the glass for a brief moment, the coaster flutters to the table, underside up, and she downs the rest of the pint. Startled, I notice that the coaster is blank. I pick up the coaster, and place it in my pocket.
I stand and walk out of the pub and into the rainy night, Mary a step behind me. The guitarist continues to play, delicately picking at the strings.
