12
“What do you mean?” Leon asks.
He smiles, rubs at his chin, and gives me an inquisitive, highly suspicious look.
“I mean exactly what I said. What’s the confusion?”
We’re sitting on his porch looking over the lush front yard, dark green and shadowed in the evening. Leon and Mo have this beautiful ranch house outside of Johnston about a mile from mine. We find ourselves here often, sitting on the porch and staring up at the stars, feeling all at once infinite and small. It’s one of our favorite places to try and figure out life one wandering conversation at a time.
“Just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
“Well, it happened, just like I said it did.”
“Interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“What?”
“That’s all you got? Interesting ?”
I’m on my fifth straight cigarette and feeling a little revved. My fingers twitch whenever I attempt any kind of stillness. My legs bounce; my head shakes. A subtle current is spreading from my lower spine and running all the way up my shoulders, curling around the blades, and causing me to have bouts of skittish over-explaining and dramatism in my storytelling. Leon sips lemonade and smirks. He has the audacity to actually sit there and sip his lemonade while he smirks at me. I take a long drag and put the embers out in the ashtray between us.
“I don’t appreciate the fuckin look you’re giving me right now.”
“What look?”
“You know the look.”
The crickets chirp in a high frequency choir, echoing some kind of emphatic agreement. I know they’re on my side. They’re out there feeling all red-lined and revved themselves, trying desperately to be heard and understood.
“Mo make that?” I ask, nodding to the pitcher on the table.
“Yeah, you want some?” Leon is always so genuine in offering, utterly shameless in being pampered and recklessly adored by his woman. He pours me a glass.
“It’s actually really nice.”
“Really nice?”
“Yeah.”
“Who are you becoming, man?”
“Still Leon, baby.”
Honestly, the transformation of your friends who partake in lingering and prolonged relationships can be such a pain in the ass, but Leon and Mo really are one of those rare couples that only make each other better. I honestly don’t know if it’s possible for two people to be more destined for one another. Mo is a wide-set athletic woman who runs early shifts over at The Pit, the best diner in Johnston. I’ve always found the name of the place endearing and so does she. Mo says it either has something to do with the never-ending pit of one’s hypothetical stomach or it’s short for the pit stop since it is so highly regarded by the truckers who make their daily dawn breaks from the road there, all tired and desperate for a hot coffee and an egg or two.
Mo works her ass off at The Pit every day. She’s a phenomenal cook, one of the ones who really loves it, ya know? She has an artistic sense about it all that I’ve always appreciated because my Ma used to be that way, a truly beautiful cook, the kind who experiences pure, limitless joy in serving others. For Mo and my mother, food was a togetherness, an act of love and grace. They lit up and felt closer to God when they were cooking and sharing that gift with others. They’d serve their wonderful meals and imbue that communion with a real spiritual significance. I didn’t always understand how much that meant to my mother, but I caught on eventually. I was just a little late to the party, I suppose. I’ve learned many things from Mo.
She’s also a waitress, and the best damn before sunrise convo an exhausted and hopeless trucker could ever dream of finding mid-work week, broke and strung out.
Mo and Leon are a large couple and as strong as they come. They have a real presence about them, immense and no doubt capable of battle, but patient, humble and kind. I have no doubt they’ll eventually raise a small horde of magnanimous heroes, each more smiling and sensational than the next. The two of them have found what all the lonesome long for—of that I’m certain. On some drunken, musing nights, I think about how Mo loving Leon so much is the universe’s way of evening his proverbial odds. Those two sure did deserve all the love in the world.
I’ll never forget the night at Jimmy’s Place when Leon first told us about Mo, all lit up and alive.
“Alright, so, I’m at the Shell ’bout to fill the Chevy and I’m grabbing the cash and there’s this woman pulled over on the side street having an argument with this fuckin guy I had never seen before, but she’s really giving it to him, right? They’re parked to the side and from what I can tell the guy maybe pulled up and dented the back of this girl’s car, and shit, so they were having it out. Anyway this fuckin guy, maybe forty or so, and wearing this torn jacket and shit, dip in, gives her the finger, man, and it’s like, I’m talking, it’s like to her face, like, to her face, inch from her face right, and when he tries to go, this woman grabs him by the back of the shirt, and then he turns and kind of shoves her off, ya know? And then she starts going buck fuckin crazy on this guy man, like crazy crazy, screaming and clawing at this guy and he’s trying to defend himself and shit and they’re just battling it out man right there in the street, it was fuckin nuts, man, insane. And by this time, I had made it over there, so I break up this fuckin crazy street battle or whatever. Man. Things lead to things, the guy gives her cash man, cash, and goes on his way, just like that. So, I’m left with this girl. Morene is her name, she says. And I say I’m Leon, ya know, Leon, yeah, and I’m lookin at her and she’s shining man! So wet with sweat and shining from the streetlamp but she’s smiling now, and she thanks me and I’m smiling too, all goofy as hell and nervous honestly, but you shoulda seen that smile man, and she gets in the car and just, drives off. Just like that.”
He finished the tale and took the largest gulp of beer you’ve ever seen in your life. Prince and I sat there completely amazed in silence, admiring our pal and then Leon goes,
“What do you make of that ?”
And we fuckin lost it laughing. It was the best damn story he’d ever told. God bless your wild heart man.
So, that was how Leon and Mo met and when he ran into her about a week later he asked her out immediately. They hit it straight the whole way, the two big old bears. Before we knew it Mo was hanging around all the time and I’d never seen Leon so happy. We all loved Morene to death from the start. She fit right in and genuinely cared about us in a capacity we weren’t really used to. She was always going out of her way to make sure we were happy or healthy or having a good time or well fed. She really is, and has always been, the best of us.
Anyway, Leon and Mo found all the same things funny and all the same things fun. They’d stay up all night talking about astrophysics, I’m not kidding. All I know is that nobody in this whole world deserved that kind of love like Leon did and they were everything for one another, they’d found the good stuff. Fighters and lovers and strange intellectuals, just downright, undeniably perfect for one another. So, when Leon says the lemonade is really nice , I smile and shake my head because that’s exactly how Mo would have described it, all sensitive and simple and sweet just like that.
Right on cue, Mo steps out through their screen door and says, “sounds like you were hallucinating pal.”
I turn and can’t help but laugh. She’s wearing her classic Mo pajamas, this matching T-shirt and pants decorated with cows and moons. She’s also sipping her lemonade and looking at me smug and amused.
“Were you listening to that whole thing?” I ask as I take a drink.
“Well shit you were practically yelling. It wasn’t that hard.”
“I was not yelling.”
“I heard you from the bedroom.”
“Alright, fine, maybe I raised my voice. Sue me. She’s ruined my fuckin life.”
Mo takes a seat on their porch swing next to Leon and he wraps his giant arm around her. She gives him a kiss and they sure do make it last.
“You two serious?”
They laugh.
“Relax.”
“I can’t relax. I feel like I’m fuckin coked out.”
“Well, you’ve had a million cigarettes, man. What do you expect,” Leon says.
“How much sugar is in this lemonade?” I ask.
“There’s—enough.” Mo smiles. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ll see her again, Cash, this mystery girl.”
“If I do see her again, I’ll have something to say.”
“You’ve seen her?” Moe asks Leon.
“Mhm. Jimmy’s the other night.”
“And?”
“Yeah. Seems interesting. Definitely haven’t seen her around before.”
“Leon, if you describe something as interesting one more time, I’m gonna lose it, man.”
“Why didn’t you talk to her?” Moe’s eyes sparkle whenever she’s interested.
“Long story.”
“Aww Cash, were ya nervous?”
“I don’t know, fuckin, yeah, maybe. I mean you should see her, Mo. She’s a lot more than interesting, I’ll tell ya that much.”
“He’s seen her twice, this girl, already in love.” Leon laughs.
“Three times, man. Whatever. Mo, he tell you about Matchbox?”
She nods, solemn. “Stupid.”
“Yeah. Well. Yeah, stupid.”
The two of them rock slowly in that chair and all at once I see them together in a dream. They’re just as they are, but eighty years old and still gloriously in love, the stars shining only for them, so close they could reach out and hold them if they wanted. Mo looks up to heaven and maybe she’s dreaming the same sort of dream, “You’ll see her again, Cash. I’ve got a feeling.”