Me, myself and pie

The solo, late-night pie excursion is imbued with an undeniable charm. I derive a great deal of satisfaction from occupying a whole booth by myself, spreading out my things in a decadent sprawl, a feudal lord presiding over a green vinyl fiefdom. I am separated from the rest of the room from the bridge of the nose down. It is perfect. The baby seal shirt will not offend and only I will know that I am not wearing socks.

My fortress walls are permeable, though, to snatched snippets of strangers' talk. High-pitched, frantic profanity and fervent, well-meant but misinterpreted advice mingle, penetrating my porous shell. Lives are happening out there, lives bathed in neon, stiff with product, barely covered by short skirts. Pastel polos, popped collars and two eggs over easy with two versions of the same meat. White bread. Wristbands. I bite my lower lip and caress my phone and consider pie.

And so I write, while pied lives condense, coalesce and trickle down the walls of my plastic paradise. It's bound to puddle beneath my seat, pool below my drawn-up legs. I'll walk through it on my way out and I'll feel it swirl around my ankles, watch it rise in curlicue clouds with each step I take toward the door, a dense fog parting and re-forming in my solitary wake.

(I had pecan pie. They didn't have strawberry-rhubarb or apple and they had never heard of cloudberry. The decaf was effete but I drank it anyway.)

I miss him. The cadence of his slumber, his sweet sleep smell. His hand, curled heavy on the curve of my hip. I would be there with him now, in the spare room, in the too-short bed. I would walk with him through the fog of others and our wake would be significant, as the wake of two tends to be.

I expect that I shall love him one hundred times over by the time he returns.