A Home Was His Dream

We met up.

He called. At the end of a long silence, he did, he called. After I met him by coincidence in the street in Greece with a young girl. After by the same chain of coincidence we returned back in the same bus, me, him and this new girl, it was a week after....

She came up.

She was sparkling.

She .. was amazed. That big smile on her face.. She couldn't eat the fajitas I so studiously prepared for her. She couldn't do much, but told me about last night.

She has liked him for years. She trusted him for months as a buddy. She worked with him in two different companies.

And then last night..

It was hot. It was August.

He was married.

..

He never called her and that shock of seing him with another in Greece.

Photo courtesy of i-gunler.com

So we met up in the January cold.

He was busy with the relocation and settling down after divorce. Messy as usual. This neat figure. He chose the vegetarian restaurant in the Cookie Street Zencefil where we had a nice evening, a good dinner and a sincere chat.

He was the pratogonist I told, like those ones in Hemingway novels: cool, good but unsuffiently heroic, somehow egoist, the other end of interventionist. And I was the narrator. He was just passing by my window .

He frequented many while keeping her wife's abandon secret.

He frequented many and my friend's sparkling eyes must have been among many. Just among others.

And now he was left by one.

His eyes were emptied this time, in the vast plains of not knowing what to do.

..

I listened.

My pratogonist was crawling and trying to find the answers. He was lost.

I asked him to leave the names and the complexity of so many concurrent relationships. I asked him to answer me about what he would like to do.

The surprise of his answer reminded me it was a life and not a novel:

"A home" he said, "I wanted a home, build my own family".

My heart melted, leaving the advocacy of my pure sparkling eyes girl friend  that was betrayed by his absence and his adventure in Greece.

My heart melted.

My hands that moved to hold his, froze on their way. I couldn't get that close to him,

I didn't dare.. to touch the wounded beast.