Bobby is my best friend. I think we met a year or two after high school, when he came through town and spent that week staying at Matt's. Oh, he fit in with the pack, and he came on that fated camping trip. I think we all lost some body part and gained a chunk of maturity and some life long friends.
You never know who's going to be a good, real friend. Over these many years, decades now, Bobby has become my sweetest, closest friend, the kind who can finish your sentences but doesn't even have to because you both know what you mean. It turns out we make a good team too. Before now, our time together was mostly movies and meals and volley ball and concerts and camping, talking about a book we were reading at the same time or about how to help a friend. We did a lot together. And all that good trust makes for nice work.
We are getting things done, fast and right. It's that easy quiet between us. Rigging the lights in complicated patterns, one pair at a time, with a word or two exchanged here or there, it's a sharp contrast to the catering staff, banging into each other, pans flying, clattering, the manager screaming. At one point today it got quiet and we realized they were just staring up at us, and we burst out laughing. They went back to work, jeering us raucously, but it seemed like the rest of the day went a little better. I don't know, maybe I'm projecting.
We said, let's eat at Giacomo's tonight and Bobby drove. We sat down and I asked for a glass of wine right off and then quickly ordered comfort food. I got perfectly roasted chicken, okra fried ever so lightly, and that great mac and cheese they serve in a little crock, all crispy and bubbly on top. We ate off each other's plates like always, shared a piece of flourless chocolate cake. It all tasted so good.
What I remember about this dinner is what stood out over the day: the simple, profound joy I feel in Bobby's company. When he reached over to pick at my mac and cheese, I just felt grateful to have him in my life. He looked so cute, trying to wax poetic about its savory decadence or something, but mostly just mmmm'ing his way through half the crust till I had to tap his hand with my fork and tell him to leave me some.
We talked about the lighting and the crew and about how well Celeste was doing given Matt's dickheaded decision to leave her when she got cancer and how the remission and her inheritance were fitting karma for both of them. Man, I felt so bad for thinking that all this year but I just couldn't help it. I could hardly look at Matt anymore, and he didn't really hang out with us much. Bobby said he felt the same and he wondered whether Matt would ever get it. He said, "I'd never do that to you, you know?" Not the same, of course, we're not married or anything and I don't have cancer. But I nodded, I understood his point.
We left Giacomo's and started walking toward the car and Bobby looked at the sky, early sunset colors slicing through each other, and said, "I want a cigarette." And then, "It's so nice out this evening. I'll just walk you home and then walk back to get my car." "Really?" I said. "Yeah," he said and smiled. "Come on."
We cut through what's left of Kidden Woods and walked towards my house. It still feels strange, living back here, in the house I grew up in. I got re-attached, visiting Mom when she was dying, so I decided, I guess, to get burned out at my job and take early retirement, which also seems strange -- how do you take early retirement when you feel like a teenager half the time? In my school days, I think I was a little ashamed of our old house in the old part of town, but I like living here now. The trees are tall and offer real shade.
Bobby and I sat on the top step of my front porch. The house blocked the setting sun and it was almost dark here now, just a glow left tracing the treetops. We sat side by side, and I leaned into him. He put his arm around my shoulder, cradling me, and leaned into me.
My heart fluttered. I thought, "I should have been born in 1850." Definitely a romantic. But then, I still would have been a woman and it would have been so hard to get my work published. Bobby sniffled. It sounded like a laugh, and I thought he knew what I was thinking and I sniffled back. At the same time we turned and looked at each other, and at the same time we opened our arms and wrapped them around each other and rested our heads on our shoulders and breathed, deeply, a necessary sigh.
Now my heart lifted and it felt like it burst open wide. My face was warm in his neck. He smelled really, really good. I reached a little further around him and he did the same. I felt him breathing, hard, on my neck. I started to close my eyes, trying to temper the emotion, but stopped because I could not, as I thought, quite unexpectedly, "I'm falling in love with my best friend. And he is falling in love with me too." And I wondered at how life can be.
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By Trish Szymanski
(c) 2009 February 8 / 977
(c) 2009 March 23 / 952
