The Meeting

She walks into the restaurant.  She was running late and so met us here rather than meeting first and coming with him.  I wonder if that was a ploy, for her to make an entrance.  But the minute she walks in I realize she needs no ploy, she makes her own entrance wherever she goes.

She is not conventionally pretty, but she is undeniably beautiful. She carries off a style all her own. Cashmere mock turtleneck with a felted wool embroidered vest layered over top. Artsy and vaguely Peruvian. Straight jeans clinging without actually being tight,  snug enough though, to tug and pull just a bit over her rounded bottom as she walks.  Although walk isn’t the word, exactly.  She strides into the room, feline grace without a bit of cattiness to it.  There’s something of a larger cat in it, ocelot, panther? She doesn’t quite turn heads, but lots of eyes follow her as she passes, tugs the corner of more than a few lips in her wake.

She is not young, but she is younger than we are and at our age, that counts for a lot. Her face has the start of lines, but they are still just rumors, not yet full blown gossip. She wears not a speck of makeup.  Some women have porcelain skin and perfect cheekbones and can get away with a natural look while still resembling Dresden dolls.  Not so her.  She has rougher features and textures, but the lack of paint on her face is both an act of defiance and an affirmation of her confidence.

She smiles at seeing him, and when she does she lights up with energy and barely suppressed emotion. She radiates, turned on by love and some other, more private passions.  Completely focused, she has seen no one else in the whole room on her trip across.  It is obvious there is no one else, at this moment. Without making a scene, she has brought notice and smiles from people sitting at surrounding tables.  ‘Ah, young love’, their bemused expressions seem to say – even though no one at this table can even remember young.

I take my eyes off her for a minute and sneak a glance at him.  He reflects all of it: the light, the love, the taut catness of her stalk, although in him it has the air of Bengal or tawny headed lion. A private look passes between them.  Boundaries broken down for a fleeting second, then reluctantly reestablished, with an nod toward polite convention. They claim each other, and finding it enough, relax and let the world back in.

He stands, they exchange pecks and she apologies gracefully for her lateness.  They turn toward me to make introductions and her gaze falls fully on me for the first time. She takes me in and registers much quickly.  An age old contest passes between us, just for a second we do the dance.  But then she recovers and stops dancing.  She has no need and knows it – we both know it. There has been a changing of the guard, and the conquest is complete.

She is Emily Post personified.  Has that way of making polite interest seem genuine.  I have the sickening suspicion that it is genuine, which is worse. She listens well, draws me out.  Adds her own stories to match mine so that we are at the same level of exposure. She can afford to be kind, would be gentle even if he wasn’t at the table, anxiously watching. With him she is quietly solicitous, the gentle touches on his arm, handing him the salt before he has to ask without seeming to have watched him as he ate. If she is nervous, I cannot tell. But there is much to this luncheon and whatever her confidence, this is fraught with landmines and she must be feeling the strain, if only a little.

By soup, we both know how it will go,  me hating her, her patiently accommodating the old friend. She thinks it will soften in time, that she will earn my trust somehow, as if I’m a cranky old dog to be appeased with soft voice and biscuits. No one ever has, but she has no way of knowing that yet. And I will do nothing to clue her in.  I have my own power, my own hidden weapons, time and patience being the two most potent. I will accommodate her, as I have all the ones before. She will tire. I will wait. Her heart is still sand, but mine has long been stone, and stone never flinches.