A Forty Year Kiss

3

Behind the door marked Men, he stood at the urinal again, and this time, his water came freely. He closed his eyes. He could still smell her perfume on his garments, even in his own whiskers. Was it flowers? Maybe she smelled of flowers, wet tropical flowers like those he’d seen in Florida, just after one of those big storms swept in off the gulf. Flowers and salt water, the ocean. Maybe lemons or grapefruit. Or maybe a big city somewhere, some elegant metropolitan museum. He saw her face, lit by that pink neon light, and just outside, all of the colors of the night merged in the puddled rainfall. His heart was pounding very fast now, totally unreasonably. Please, he said to himself, don’t screw this up. Please, he said to his heart, don’t fail me now.

Of course, it was true—yes, he was back in town, or the area anyway. But why? Well, that much he knew. Knew that he moved here, straight from Albuquerque, because of her. But admitting as much, as he just had, saying it aloud, was it crazy? Was he crazy? Because it felt wrong to admit that all his kin were basically gone from the area, maybe a few cousins here and there that he never spoke to, but otherwise—no; no, he didn’t have a damn person here to talk to, to attend to. That the farm he’d inherited was in rough shape, though he’d already made some major improvements. But that wasn’t the draw, that old money pit, handsome as it was, not in the least. It was just her—Vivian, Viv—that he had pinned all his ridiculous love-crazy hopes on. And he’d admitted as much to her, only moments earlier. God, he thought, you’re going to scare her away. She’s probably already gone. Running towards her car, keys in her hand.

He wanted so much to kiss her ears, to bury his head behind her ear, in her hair, beside her neck. For some reason, he thought of the two horses that lived in a pasture not far from his new-old house. They belonged to a neighbor girl who had just learned to drive, a neighbor girl who he saw every day, driving the country roads, in an old pickup truck, one of her parents sitting beside her on that wide, truck bench, looking nervous as hell. Waving, quickly, like they were afraid to wrench either hand away from the door handle, the dashboard, or the seat—where it was soldered on for safety. He thought of that young woman’s horses, how they stood beside one another, necks touching, silken bodies sharing heat. All that space and those two horses stood so close to one another there was hardly room for so much as a blade of grass between their two bodies.

At the sink, he was aware that his hands were trembling. No, shaking. He splashed water on his face and then wiped it away with a paper towel. He looked at his face in the mirror. Don’t you dare botch this, he said quietly. Be cool. But not too cool. You don’t have to say everything tonight, but you shouldn’t hold back either. This is your chance. Your foot in the door. Then he looked at himself in the mirror again and nodded. If not confidently then a close enough approximation of it.

He returned to the bar where she seemed to have ordered another glass of wine. This pleased him. I’ll have a pint of beer, he said to the bartender.

The same? the bartender said. Or root beer?

What I started with, he clarified, his face flushing briefly.