The Lighter
He sits forward on the hard orange plastic seat, his shoulders over his knees like divers preparing to jump. His body rocks with the motion of the train car. His tie wiggles in his lap like a trained cobra preparing to rebel against the charmer.
A bead of sweat builds beneath his hat. He wipes at it with the back of his hand but does not remove the hat to let his balding head breathe. He scratches at his red-gray goatee, pushes the turtle shell glasses up his nose, and returns to staring at the shoes of the woman sitting across from him.
The shoes are red, almost orange, made of thick leather with a high thick heel and a leather bow on the toe. They are the shoes that a '50s pinup nurse would have worn, once sexy but no longer. The hose the woman wears have sagged and gathered around her dense ankles. A red line has appeared around her foot where it has shifted in her shoe.
He didn't look up at her, but he imagined what she looked like. In her 60s, her hair dyed red but wisps of gray trailing about her face like smoke rising from a new fire not yet born. Way too much eyeliner, a mole, and something severely wrong with her teeth. A smart leopard-skin jacket hiding a body unable to decide whether to be thick or thin, so deciding, like a balloon animal, to be both, either one at different parts of her body. Thick ankles. Thin knees. Thin wrists. Thick in the upper arm. Thick stomach. Thin chest and neck like a turkey carcass at the end of a long Thanksgiving with not enough leftovers.
The train stops and passengers exchange. A man gets on in blue sweats and old school Nikes and stands between him and the woman so he can no longer see her shoes. A woman gets on and sits next to him, and he gathers his leather shoulder bag to his lap to make room. He scoots in his seat, and she spreads out, putting her elbows on her knees, one knee popping through a hole in her inky dark blue jeans. Between her knees, her wrists bent at an elegant angle, she holds her phone, the white cord of her earbuds trailing up to her cascading jet-black hair curling down past her shoulders. A blue and white trucker's cap gives up trying to hold the thick hair in and looks as if it is about to jump away at any moment in search of a head that is less work.
Her earbuds leak sound and at first he can hear it only as noise, and this annoys him. After a few moments as the train departs the stop, the tune puts itself together in his head. "The leader of the band is tired..." He finds this choice of music odd for her and is intrigued.
The song ends and a new one begins. Gordon Lightfoot. He scratches under the nose bridge of his glasses and tries to get a good look at her. She couldn't be much over 20, her blue plaid flannel shirt wrinkled and limp over a white v-neck t-shirt, a black unreadable scrawl of a tattoo peeking out over her collarbone. Her face is pretty but indistinct like the petal of a rose. The most prominent features a purple-stoned nose ring and heavy eyeliner. Racially she is indistinct. A clear ethnic edge that could pass for Hispanic, Italian, Greek, or Middle Eastern. She has a cigarette tucked behind her ear, tangled in black curls.
The train car rocks, and his body moves with the invisible wave of it. Her knee touches his and she moves it away without apology or acknowledgement of any kind. The song ends and Cat Stevens' "Peace Train" starts. He marvels at her choice of music. It was definitely a choice. He wonders if Simon and Garfunkel would be next. Is this some sort of new rebellion against her parents' rebellion and their parents' rebellion before them? Like the Grateful Dead revival of his post-college years, back before Garcia had died and reminded them, in their early thirties, how old they were getting? He longs to share her earbuds and introduce her to the punk of his youth: Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys, The Misfits. Show her what those t-shirts were all about.
He doesn’t get to hear what the next song is. Before "Peace Train" is through, the light rail stops. The woman looks up and in one move grabs the vertical bar and swivels herself around it like a pole dancer and trots down the stairs to the door. She gets there just as it starts closing and puts her hand up against the rubber edge to push it open again. This sets off a loud beeping alarm which shuts off just as she disappears.
He looks down at where she had sat. There, rocking slightly in the well of the seat as the train begins to move again, is a pale blue Bic lighter. He picks it up as if to give it to her, but of course it was much too late. He holds it in his hand, turns it in his fingers as if it is some archaeological find, some artifact of an ancient civilization. She'll be mad when she finds this missing, he thinks. He spins it round in his fingertips once and lights it briefly to test it. He holds it up to the light and is surprised to find it nearly full of fluid.
His stop comes and he stands up, grabs the handrail to steady himself. He slings his bag over his shoulder. His brown plaid jacket is unbuttoned but he is unable to button it one-handed, so he just lets it drape. The man in the sweats chooses this moment to sit down and they move awkwardly around each other. He almost steps on the woman's red-orange shoes.
He looks up at her and sees that he was entirely wrong. She is blonde, much younger than he'd imagined, pleasantly plump in a fashionable red jacket that matched her shoes, and pearls. Her makeup is tired after the long hot day, but clean and simple with almost no eyeliner at all. She smiles up at him pleasantly. He smiles back and nods then moves out the door just as it is closing. As he puts his hand against it, it lets out a loud beep again, and he hops down to the pavement and into the unrelenting late afternoon sun.
--
He gets to the restaurant early, so he goes inside to get a table. There is only one table available inside, even this early. It is positioned at the doorway to the kitchen, which is also the access to the bathroom beyond. He looks at the table for only a moment and asks to be seated outside.
There are only a couple of tables in front of the restaurant, but no one is using them because of the heat. In spite of that it is pleasant. The restaurant is on a quiet street across from a church with high hedges and tall eucalyptus trees. A dog groomer is next door, and people are picking up their dogs from the last appointments of the day. A woman and her little girl park their car at the curb nearby, go in, and bring out a perfect dark gray labradoodle with hair neat and trimmed.
He sits outside and drinks lemon water. He explains to the hostess that he is waiting for someone as they hand him the menu. They tell him to take his time. It is a Mediterranean restaurant, and he knows what he wants even before opening the menu, but he picks it up anyway and dutifully goes through page by page.
He puts the menu down. He drinks the lemon water. He lets the sweat drip down his temple in the sun.
He waits. He'd been waiting for ages. He was tired of waiting. But he bites down, pushes his annoyance aside, takes a choppy breath.
But it was there. The anger was there, and she wasn't. He knew he looked foolish to the waiter and the cooks, and he is embarrassed and annoyed and frustrated. He waited, and he was tired of waiting.
He looks down at the table. There is a candle there that has not been lit. Why light it in the sun? Still, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pale blue lighter and he lights the candle. The flame is barely visible in the sunlight, and he has to stare hard at it to keep it in his vision.
He focuses, and suddenly he is filled with an inner warmth that pushes against the outside heat. He sees that the light flickers, and he notices that there is the faintest breeze licking at the sweat on his neck. He breathes in and breathes out. Suddenly the anger is gone.
She isn’t coming. She isn’t coming and that is ok. She is being rude and mean and petty and all of it is ok. It wasn't that he didn't care anymore, he did, but suddenly it is out of his reach, beyond his circle of concern. No longer his jurisdiction.
Sure, the slight of her standing him up this one last time stings. But as he gazes at that candle, he knows it just isn’t his to care about anymore.
Movement to his right catches his attention and when he looks up, he sees the woman from the train, the woman who had sat next to him with the earbuds and the hole in her jeans knee. She is opening the door to enter the restaurant. He blinks, smiles, snorts in disbelief, then gets up and follows her in.
He stands for a moment, eyes adjusting, trying to figure out which shadowy blob is her. When he catches sight of her, he sees she is tying on an apron, preparing to work.
He holds up a finger to her. She looks at him with one eye squinting quizzically. As he approaches her, he notices how very much taller he is than she. He hadn't noticed when she had sat next to him on the streetcar, but she is very small. He stops and bends to meet her level.
Without speaking he shows her that both his hands are empty. Then with a flourish, with a skill he had learned in college, always knowing that someday it would come in handy, he produces the lighter out of thin air.
Her eyes widen, squint, and widen again.
She smiles and reaches out for the lighter.