Balancing

Lovina Sunset 1, originally uploaded by rjschmidt.

He sits, the single occupant on one side of a small square table with four chairs, balanced on his edge like a diver on the lip of the platform with his back to the void. It is an illusion, this stillness, maintained by tiny concentrated twitches of muscle so that even time appears captivated in anticipation. The restaurant hums around him with all the night noises of an island paradise. Ice, and glasses. People speaking French. Off to one side, the pool glitters with promise and the light of yellow bulbs set in wicker houses to imitate torches, to intimate romance, to strike a mood – but still he does not move. The waiter glides up on oiled coasters, notes the order in the low-voiced tones of a child’s bed time story, and recedes fluidly like water emptied from a basin. A beer is brought and a frosted glass. Even the movements of this seated man’s hands as he pours the beer from the bottle to the glass and drinks are grace, calculated. The way the fingers drop from the wrist with only the slightest movement of the forearm to lift the glass by the rim, the sip, the returning of the glass to the table with the same economy of motion and absence of sound. An index finger touched thoughtfully to the indent between bottom lip and chin-cleft while the eyes watch the sea and the darkness. It is a fragile edge, this side of the table where he is seated, a delicate thing to hold such a position. Because – in his mind - it must appear effortless, and not plagued with doubt.

A man and a woman enter the restaurant together, consult intimately, and sit behind him. He does not turn. The moon is a white feather floating down into a black sea. There is a constellation of ship lights from the fishing boats to mark the horizon. Night has slipped on black gloves and the bats fly in and out of the spilling restaurant light, hunting above the lawn. He does not turn. The talk of the couple murmurs like an old ghost in his mind. It hangs in the cooling air, the backdrop to his existence in that moment. They were at the pool when he arrived back from his trip to town earlier today, they were stretched out like young lions in the sun, tawny and lean. The ironical smile in his mind does not reach his lips as it does sometimes, and it never reaches his eyes. He saw them kissing in the pool at sunset. He wondered if they would come to dinner, and how late, if at all. And now they sit on two sides of a square table in a V, a wedge to open up the world, but he does not turn. That is a novice mistake in this game he is playing. A couple is a dancing thing: it adapts, improvises, grabs hold and swings wildly. Dancers create small worlds and orbit each other. A diver must be still and hold himself alone in space. He must present himself as a portrait of discipline and nobility in this solitary destiny. It is a mistake to look sidelong at the dance. It ruins the concentration.

The silky lap of the shore water sounds like a nurse washing a baby. Somewhere wine is being poured into glasses with a liquid purr. The sky is a magician’s cape sewn with stars. There is soft laughter bubbling down on the beach. You could fool the world from a place like this, and he means to. The man of the couple says Excuse Me and asks him a question, some piece of information about the restaurant. He turns perfectly, and his response is clean, with a hint of humour. They laugh and in the lubrication of their laughter he turns away from them again, back to his solitude and the task of appearing wise, knowing, and elevated, one who has taken a high, narrow path. Like a magi, he will conjure words to enchant this evening, this life, to romance it so that others will believe they want it, too, more than what they have.

But perhaps his imagined audience is not so fooled. The couple behind, of course, pays no attention in their lock-eyed orbit. And his heart, so rarely taken in by the poise of his body, is not fooled at all. A heart always knows the meaning of a dinner alone, even in paradise.
After he leaves, the air closes again around his empty space, and the waiter returns to clear the table and push in the chair. The evening glances up briefly at the lone figure walking away over the lawn and then, drawn in by its own illusions, it turns away and forgets.