I Loved You More by Tom Spanbauer Page B

still she’s curious. From the other side, her touch, female. Tender even. The way an oncologist touches a cancerous tumor, or maybe in the zoo the way you see on TV a baby tiger playing with a monkey. The candlelight on the smooth brown skin of her arms, her gold bracelets. The sound of gold against gold.
    â€œMy buddy Gruney’s really something,” Hank says, “isn’t he?”
    Olga’s right hand grasps my hand solid. Across the table, Olga’s left hand is solid in Hank’s too.
    â€œI’d love to read your cards sometime,” Olga says. “I don’t know how to describe. You’re like a feral.
    â€œ Feral? ” Olga says. “Is that English?”
    â€œLatinate,” Hank says.
    â€œIs okay?” Olga says.
    â€œSays it perfect,” Hank says.
    â€œA feral child,” Olga says, “who nobody ever listened to.”
    IT’S A GOOD thing I’ve had two maargaareetas . It’s a good thing a third was coming. All that attention would have made the normal ordinary Ben Grunewald go tilt. Made my toes curl up in my shoes, made my balls pull up, poked up my shoulders. Showing off again! Making a spectacle of yourself!
    Hank takes hold of my right hand. His hand, only a way a man can touch. A touch that says he knows that men haven’t really got a clue. It’s only an attitude. But fuck it, we can play and not get caught the way women can. The red votive light on his thick wrist, his smooth forearm.
    That moment is one of the big moments of my life. When everything comes together. I feel a way I’ve only dreamed of. Too high really to ever remember it well. Only a trace, a thin drunk thread of memory going back over the years to find that guy, me, who was sitting there at that table, who let himself be seen. The three of us, on the red leather, darkness and points of soft light hanging in the air around us, the votive candle in the center of the white round table, the red glow of glass, between our second and the third maargaareetas , Hank’s hand in Olga’s, Olga’s hand in mine, my hand in Hank’s.
    I’m about to make a joke, say something, anything, that will make the precious moment stop. I know I can do it. Move myshoulders, tilt my chin, laugh a little laugh. And I’m just starting, just past the shoulders, and in the middle of the chin tilt, when:
    â€œDon’t deprecate,” Olga says.
    â€œDeprecate?” I say.
    â€œLatinate,” Hank says.
    â€œYourself,” Olga says.
    â€œYou must be careful,” Olga says, “of what you say in front of yourself.”
    SOMETHING INSIDE ME, something ancient and infant, that hasn’t looked out of me in a long time, looks out and over across the table at Olga. She is so perfectly doing that beautiful people looked-at look. Part of me wants to punch her, wants this all to stop, a big baby torpor, where is the fucking waiter with the tray of maargaareetas .
    Then that looked-at look, I let it come out of me. Let my own beauty gaze back straight into hers.
    Olga. Maybe it’s because it’s the first time I’ve seen Hank make his nod to hard liquor. Maybe it’s because Hank’s told me about Olga’s Santeria, maybe it’s because she’d asked to read my cards, maybe she is a witch, her beauty, maybe it’s her black eyes that make Hank’s look brown, maybe it’s the gold, all the gold on her. The sound of gold. Maybe it’s the three of us in a dark place hand in hand in hand around a flame. What scares me most is the secret I couldn’t speak in Jeske’s class. Can she see my shame? I watch Olga’s red lips, ready for the brutal truth, but then she speaks.
    â€œYou’ve been with many women also,” Olga says.
    Maybe Olga’s been talking to Hank . Thing is though, I’ve only told Hank about Evie, my ex-wife.
    Maybe it’s simply women’s intuition. Or maybe what happens