I Loved You More by Tom Spanbauer Page A

reservations we have to wait. We’re standing in the shadows the leaves make. A Mimosa tree I think. Soft lacy shade. Hank does the introductions. I don’t look too closely at Olga at first.Something makes me not look right at her. When she takes my hand I can feel the bones in her hand. How she holds my hand a moment too long. The lacy shade on her arms and face. Her famous long black curly hair, her beautiful brown skin. Black eyes that make Hank’s look brown. Small boned, like her body has been reduced down twenty percent. Makes me feel oversized, clumsy. Her light see-through blouse is red. No bra. Pockets on the blouse so you can’t really see her nipples. Gold bracelets on her wrists, lots of gold bracelets, a gold ring on each hand. How gold sounds rubbing against itself. Bright yellow shorts. Gold sandals with fake jewels on them. Toenails like her fingernails, so clear and shiny they didn’t seem real. The way she says Mariscada de salsa verde .
    The maître d’hôtel, a tall guy with slick black hair and a Don Ameche mustache, offers us a free cocktail. Olga orders a margarita – maargaareeta – margarita for me too. Then Hank orders a margarita. I look over at Hank real close when he says margarita . I’d never seen Hank drink hard liquor.
    My eyes can’t stay on Hank for long, though. They move with Hank’s eyes to where he’s staring. The way he looks at her. His eyes beholding her. As if she is something newly formed, precious, and as we stand, his breath is breathing life into her. And if he stops looking, if he skips a breath, if he looks away, Olga Rivas, this dark angel of a woman he has conjured up will disappear.
    I don’t like her at all.
    Don’t trust her. Women or men – doesn’t matter. When they’re beautiful the way Olga is beautiful, they know they can get away with anything.
    There’s a simple test you can try on beautiful people. You know how they look as if they know they’re always being looked at? Well, try catching them off guard. And if you can’t ever catch them without that looked-at look on their faces, if you can’t ever catch them picking their nose, slumped over when they sit, belching, sneezing, yawning too wide, God forbid a fart – then youknow you’re in trouble. Stay away from these people like the plague because they’re really not human – not until their beauty fades. And when it does, their beauty a blossom that has burst, when they realize they’re no longer always being looked at, stand away because there’s going to be a meltdown.
    Believe me, I am watching Olga. She is ten, twelve years tops away from being human.
    THERE IS A moment at the table. We are in one of the booths in the back, sitting in a half circle of red leather. Darkness and points of soft light hanging in the air around us. In the center of the round table, a votive candle in a red glass. Above us on the wall, a kitsch painting of a peasant woman with large breasts balancing a jar of wine on her shoulder. Olga in the middle, under the painting, facing out, Hank and I on the ends. We’re somewhere between our second and the third margaritas, high enough that the regular world has shifted just enough to let the shine come through. The all-important shine. Light – it feels like light – creeps into your body and things get clear and you know shit, important shit, and you speak easily because you’re shining with what you know.
    That’s what I’m doing, shining, speaking easily. Who knows what I’m saying. Something important. Something about me. Going on and on and on. Pretty soon I get this feeling and I stop. I come back into my body back from out there wherever it is I was. Hank’s staring at me. Olga’s staring at me.
    Olga reaches over and takes my hand. Her hand, a way that only a woman can touch. A touch that says she knows she’ll never know you but