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 50’s pinup nurse would have worn, once sexy but no longer. The hose the woman wore have sagged and gathered around her dense ankles. A red line had appeared around her foot where it had shifted in her shoe. 

He didn’t look up at her but he imagined what she looked like. In her 60’s, her hair died red but whisks 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 time 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 was pretty but indistinct like the petal of a rose, the most prominent feature a purple stoned nose ring and heavy eyeliner. Racially she was also indistinct. A clear ethnic edge that could pass for Hispanic, Italian, Greek or Middle Eastern. She had a cigarette tucked behind her ear, tangled in black curls.

The train car rocked and his body moved with the invisible wave of it. Her knee touched his and she moved it away without apology or acknowledgement of any kind. The song ended and Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train” started. He marveled at her choice of music. It was definitely a choice. He wondered if Simon and Garfunkel would be next. Was this some sort of new rebellion against her parents’ rebellion and their parents’ rebellion before them? Like the Greatful 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 longed in that moment 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 didn’t get to hear what the next song was. Before “Peace Train” was through the light rail stopped, the woman looked up and in one move grabbed the vertical bar and swiveled herself around it like a pole dancer and then trotted down the stairs to the door. She got there just as it was closing and put her hand up against the rubber edge to push it open again, setting off a loud beeping alarm which shut off just as she disappeared.

He looked down at where she had sat and there, rocking slightly in the well of the seat as the train began to move again, was a pale blue bic lighter. He picked it up as if to give it to her, but of course it was much too late. He held it in his hand, turned it in his fingers as if it was some archeological find, some artifact of an ancient civilization. She’ll be mad when she finds this missing, he thought, spun it round in his finger tips once and lit it briefly to test it. He held it up to the light and was surprised to find it nearly full of fluid.

His stop came and he stood up, grabbing the hand rail to steady himself as he slung his bag over his shoulder. His brown plaid jacket was unbuttoned but he was unable to button it one handed so he just let it drape. The man in the sweats chose this moment to sit down and they moved awkwardly around each other, almost stepping on the woman’s red-orange shoes. 

He looked up at her and saw that he was entirely wrong. She was blonde, much younger than he’d imagined, pleasantly plump in a fashionable red jacket that matched her shoes, and pearls. Her makeup was tired after the long hot day, but clean and simple with almost no eyeliner at all. She smiled up at him pleasantly, he smiled back and nodded then moved out the door just as it was closing. As he put his hand against it I’ll let out a loud beep aganin as he hopped down to the pavement and the unrelenting late afternoon sun.

He got to the restaurant early, so he went ahead and got a table. There was only one table available inside, even this early, and it was positioned at the doorway to the kitchen which was also the access to the bathroom beyond. He looked at the table for only a moment and asked to be seated outside.

There were only a couple of tables in front of the restaurant but no one was using them because of the heat. In spite of that it was pleasant. The restaurant was on a quiet street across from a church with high hedges and tall eucalyptus trees. A dog groomer was next door, and people were picking up their dogs from the last appointments of the day. A woman and her little girl parked, went in and brought out a perfect dark gray labradoodle with hair neat and trimmed.

He sat outside and drank lemon water. He explained that he was waiting for someone when they brought him the menu, and they told him to take his time. It was a Mediterranean restaurant and he knew what he would get even before he opened the menu but he picked it up anyway and dutifully went through page by page.

He put the menu down. He drank the lemon water. He let the sweat drip down his temple in the sun.

He waited. He’d been waiting for ages. He was tired of waiting. But he bit down, pushed his annoyance aside, took 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 was embarrassed and annoyed and angry. He waited, and he was tired of waiting.

He looked down at the table. There was a candle there that had not been lit. Why light it in the sun? Still he reached into his pocket and pulled out the pale blue lighter and he lit the candle. The flame was barely visible in the sunlight and he had to stare hard at it to keep it in his vision. 

He focused and suddenly he was filled with an inner warmth that actually pushed against the outside heat. He saw that the light flickered and he noticed that there was actually the faintest breeze licking at the sweat on his neck. He breathed in and breathed out. Suddenly the anger was gone.

She wasn’t coming. She wasn’t coming and that was ok. She was being rude and mean and petty and all of it was ok. It wasn’t that he didn’t care anymore, he did, but suddenly it was 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 stung. But as he gazed at that candle he knew it just wasn’t his to care about any more.

Movement to his right caught his attention and when he looked up he saw the woman from the train, the woman who had sat next to him with the earbuds and the hole in her jeans knee, opening the door to enter the restaurant. He blinked, smiled, snorted in disbelief, then got up and followed her in.

He stood for a moment eyes adjusting, trying to figure out which shadowy blob was her. When he caught sight of her he saw she was tying on an apron, preparing to work. 

He held up a finger to her to stop her. She looked at him with one eye squinted quizzically. As he neared her he noticed how very much taller he was than her. He hadn’t noticed when she sat next to him but she was very small. He stopped and bent to meet her on her level. 

Without speaking he showed her that both his hands were empty. Then with a flourish, with a skill he had learned in college always knowing that someday it would come in handy, he produced the lighter out of thin air.

Her eyes widened, squinted, and widened again.

She smiled and reached for the lighter.