Stormy looks like he’s been hit by a very enthusiastic truck and isn’t sure yet whether it hurts or feels good.
“Stormy, this is not a casual arrangement. I’m going to text you. We’re going to have inside jokes. We’re going to have a bit. Every great friendship has a bit. Tex and Mickey’s bit is that Tex talks for nine hours and Mickey says four words. Our bit will be better. I don’t know what it is yet but I’m going to find it. This will be great.”
“Benji,” Mickey says gently. “Hold on.”
“What?”
“You’re scaring him. Slow down a little.”
“No, I’m not scared,” Stormy says. His face hasn’t changed. “You just talk a lot.”
Tex barks a laugh so loud it sends the seagulls off the railing. “He sure does. Benji talks like me. That’s why I like him. It’s like looking in a mirror except the mirror is shorter, has better hair, and plans weddings instead of smoking meat.”
“First of all, my hair is phenomenal and I appreciate you noticing. Second, I don’t plan weddings. I create experiences. There’s a difference.”
“Oh no,” Sheila says. “Now we’ll all be creating experiences.”
“Sheila, you are literally the queen of creating experiences,” I tell her. “Every person who sits at your bar has an experience. You pour a vodka soda and it becomes a life event. That tourist who came back three nights in a row? That was an experience. You’re in the experience business whether you admit it or not.”
Sheila looks at me over her reading glasses. The look lasts three seconds. Then she straightens the napkin in front of her and says, “I like this one,” to nobody in particular.
The lunch stretches into a meal that has no endpoint because nobody wants to leave the table.
“Let me tell you a story about Sheila,” Tex says, leaning back in his chair. “Last week a guy walks in wearing a sports coat. In Panama City. In July. He sits down at the bar and orders a martini. Sheila looks at him and says, ‘The only olives in this building are on a pizza.’ Guy says, ‘What kindof bar doesn’t have olives?’ Sheila says, ‘The kind that has self-respect.’” Tex points his fork at the empty air where the martini guy was sitting. “Guy gets up. Walks out. I’m thinking, well, we lost that one. Hour later, same guy walks back in. No sports coat this time. Sits at the same stool. Orders a bourbon neat. Tips thirty percent.” He leans forward. “She ran him off and he came back better. That’s not bartending. That’s ministry.”
“It’s common sense,” Sheila says. “You walk into a roadhouse and order a martini, you need guidance. I provide guidance.”
Mickey leans toward me. His mouth close to my ear. “This is what every meal is like,” he says quietly. “Every single one. For twenty years.”
“I love it.”
“That’s one of the reasons I asked you to stay.”
I turn my head and kiss him. Quick, light, on the corner of his mouth, in front of everyone.
Nobody reacts. Nobody cares. The table absorbs a kiss between two men the same way it absorbs everything else — as part of the family.
Mickey’s hand finds mine again under the table. He felt it too.
Stormy pushes his chair back and starts collecting plates, stacking them in order of size with the silverware corralled on the top plate. I stand up and start helping.
“You don’t have to do that,” Stormy says.
“I want to. That’s what friends do. They help.”
We carry the plates to the kitchen together where I wash and he dries. Stormy has opinions about how dishes should be dried and I have no opinions about it at all and this is how we discover our rhythm.
“Do you have an Instagram?” I ask him.
“No.”
“Do you want one?”
“No.”
“Fair. Do you text?”
“Only Tex.”
