Thank You for the Music by Jane Mccafferty

respect with her made me lonely.
    Abraham sat in his truck listening to music and eating a piece of bread. I walked up to the truck and said, “How long had you been a landscaper?” I was nervous, and said had, rather than have, and felt the tips of my ears grow hot.
    â€œA landscaper?” Abraham said, “Is that what I am?”
    He looked bored, at first.
    â€œIf not that, then what? What do you call yourself?”
    â€œAbraham Horell. And you? What do you call yourself?” The boredom in his face had given way to a kind of bemused smile. It was a windy spring day, with gray light and silence surrounding us. I was aware that I’d relive this moment in memory.
    â€œI haven’t come up with a word for myself yet. Don’t know what to call myself.”
    â€œOh,” he said, flatly, and I worried I’d been too odd.
    â€œMy name is Patricia,” I said. “Some call me Trisha.”
    â€œTrisha,” he said. “Nice name.”
    He got out of his truck. He was tall, in loose khakis. He left the music on. Miles Davis. He asked me why I was standing there at the edge of Noreen’s yard. Did I know her?
    â€œShe’s an old friend.”
    â€œDo you know the old man?”
    â€œNot as well as I know Noreen.”
    â€œThe old man takes her for granted. That’s my opinion. And I’ve only been around him three times. My father would’ve called him a horse’s ass.”
    That was all I needed. It was fuel. If he could see that much, he could see a lot of things.
    I looked toward the massive garden he had planted, the rich soil dark as his hair.
    â€œYou do good work,” I said. And I stepped closer to him. I looked at his face. My heart was pounding because I knew that even this subtle gesture might look as wildly transparent as it felt.
    â€œThank you,” he said, and I saw he wore a tiny star of an earring on one ear. “If you come back later, you can see the whole garden, the whole thing, finished.”
    â€œI think I will,” I said. And I tried to imagine that the final look we exchanged demolished any innocence between us.
    It didn’t. I did come back later, and he walked me around the garden, like a proud boy with a curious parent. My heart sank as I told him how lovely it all was. I came back twice that week, and it wasn’t until I brought him coffee the following week that he understood. I could tell by the way he took the coffee, brushed hair out of my eyes, lowered his chin to his chest, and held my gaze.
    Later that same day Abraham and I went to a place called Ruby’s Luncheonette. And I got to hear all about the sweet young man who had dropped out of med school five years ago, who was divorced, who had a child named Zoe Clare, whose ex-wife was “remarried to a rich dude” but still demanding child support, whose father, whom he’d adored, had recently died.
    Abraham spoke with ease, fueled by the bad, strong coffee of the luncheonette. His legs moved back and forth under the table, knocking against each other. I didn’t particularly like his style of conversation—it had that windblown quality, where you feel the person could be talking to anyone, but I didn’t admit this to myself at the time.
    As it turned out, we were there because Abraham lived upstairs, in a room.
    After coffee, and rice pudding, and saltines, and water, up we went. My head felt full of blood. My eyes watered. I bit down on the lipstick I’d applied hours before, then wiped it off on a tissue.
    You could stand at the window of his book-lined room and look down on the little main street, the unspeakably mundane workaday world, and the view gave me more reason to be there. He came up behind me, a kiss on my neck, which felt too cold, too wet, but I was relieved not to have to talk anymore, and relieved that the room was dusky, so that both my body and the pictures of his child framed on the dresser, a girl