Gin & Stolen Spoons

Dim sum for lunch with him, and after almost a year, he is just as much a mystery as when we first met. Plays life like a piano, never lingering for more than an instant on any one note. We walk, for a long time -- bitter wind and too many people crowding the sidewalks. Stopping to read real estate notices in huge picture windows -- and who can live for 5,000 pounds per week? I cannot even wrap my brain around that as a concept.

In the afternoon, I change hotels -- the new one smaller and older and much less impressive, but still cozy in an enveloping sort of way. Phone calls and half of an old movie on televsion; an hour of exhausted sleep -- for every ride I take on the Tube, if I manage to get a seat, I sink into almost-sleep. And I realize, waiting for a train, what I love most about this transit system (aside from it being so easy to navigate that even I can find my way, each time) is the total lack of imposed schedule. No timetables, no Too Late And Wait Another Hour. So you miss a train -- wait five minutes. There is always a second chance. What would it be like, to feel always so completely free from schedules, limits?


We have Indian food, late -- both enamored of our waiter. Tangled discussions explaining the nuances of strange or underused adjectives. (And pungent is not the ideal description to have on a restaurant menu, really.) After, I walk too far in the wrong direction, unable to find a certain bar. I have to, finally, stop into another bar, to ask directions (which I cringe to do, as it seems unbearably gauche...but necessary) and a man standing at the bar, paying for his drink, asks me if I am there with a large group seated within view. I tell him no, that I am trying, actually, to find a nearby place -- and so he half-drunkenly tries to look up directions for me, on his phone. So overtly and not-too-soberly flirting, but in a way that somehow manages to charm. He cannot get his phone to cooperate, so when his friend walks up to us, he asks her to help. It takes her several tries, but finally she pulls up a map, explains very clearly how to get there.


Cold night, and my feet are sore. Down to a small basement room, the music loud -- and I sip gin & tonic, waiting (this is new, this sudden fondness for gin -- years of dislike, and my palate has shifted, pleasing). When he appears at the bottom of the stairs, nine months is minutes. Still so shockingly tall, hands so large. We should not, by any logic, like each other at all. Not really. I am too familiar -- hand to the back of his neck, fingertips tracing the veins on the backs of his (so astoundingly huge) hands. I make you uncomfortable, I know -- in ways you think are, perhaps, good for you (though you will not, I am certain, repeat the night we spent before.) But for now, at least, another drink -- and then wandering through midnight streets, leaning into your arm. We find a small cafe, still open. Sit out in the chill night air, under a sort of heat lamp. Stare at people as they pass. I pocket my coffee spoon, checking so obviously around me to ensure that no one sees that you immediately notice and laugh at me. (This small strange habit I have, but I would make a dreadful thief in real life because I am so incredibly paranoid, neurotic.) Your tweed jacket scratchy against my hand, and I smile big against your shoulder, so solid. Late, very late, and nothing remains open after 2:00am on a Sunday. I find a taxi, and we kiss -- hard and fleeting -- standing in the street. And then I say good night, and you are once more gone (but I hold that kiss tightly, still).