Because I’d gotten there so early I’d grabbed a table right outside the Novel Café next
To a hip young couple meditating on decorative foam leaves floating atop their mega-lattes
& a quick glance pegged her as a devotee of another new hybrid Eco-Goth look one just had to love
Though he was a more standard-issue Santa Monica surf stud in pale blond cords & curls
& the same smoky blue plaid Pendleton the Beach Boys wore then Damian pulled up
Straight from the airport in what seemed the smallest rentable sub-sub-compact I’d ever seen
& slowly unfolded his six-foot-six collapsible L.A. Laker’s body & stood up rail-straight looking
At me grinning while I just shook my head & pretty soon we were contemplating our own foamy leaves
& talking about some lines of Sophocles he’d been translating that morning as the deadline
For his book got near & as we both put our intellects on pause sipping our lattes in that momentary silence
We heard the girl say consolingly of course I always think about you when I’m masturbating well
Almost always not always maybe but really most of the time— so after that I admit
It was hard to go back to talking about versions of Sophocles but Damian soldiered on
Telling me a girl he’d loved in his twenties had just written to say she still thought of him a lot
Yet it wasn’t anything he imagined she’d remember—it was the way he’d rested his hands on the yellow keys
Of a broken-down Yamaha upright in his old Chestnut St. apartment & after finishing a piece
Would reach over & touch the earlobe of her right ear with one finger & so he said we just never know
What makes lovers into lovers after all & what surprised him most was that after all these years she’d taken
The time simply taken her time that she’d taken time at last to write