August 27, 2001 Saturday evening. The day's faded blue has not yet melted into the inky haze of gloaming and the sun still slants onto Pine Street. Leafy shadows rustle across the colonial facades of the buildings, dappling the faces of strolling people. He wants hummus so we walk from the apartment to Pine Street and the tiny, black-and-white-linoleumed restaurant with eight tables and a kind, black-haired waitress, where the drinks are served in real glasses; glasses that you find in the kitchen of your childhood. We sip slightly flat Coke out of tall, worn glasses with bluebirds on them; my grandmother's glasses had blue and yellow butterflies. Now those blue and yellow butterflies sit quietly on a top shelf of my own kitchen, waiting for the next round of children to fight over them. We sit at a table next to the smooth transparency of the plate window, drinking from someone's grandmother's glasses. The black-haired waitress smiles and smiles. We both order shwarma sandwiches. He makes me order the hummus appetizer plate. He hates to order the appetizer. I always forget that about him. The hummus is ordered and the waitress crosses the small square of a room to another table. He stretches his fingers towards me, grasping for my hand. "How come you always order the same thing as me?" "Because I love you?" "No, really." Another thing I forget is that he can be quite literal-minded. "Because you always order what I want." The hummus comes in a brown plastic bowl. Green slicks of olive oil dot the grainy surface and shards of purply Bermuda onion are sprinkled in the center. I pick the onions out, first with my fingers, then with my fork as the last survivors attempt to hide in the mash of chickpeas and garlic. We both hate onions. I commandeer a corner of the waxed paper that the pita bread rests on for an onion relocation camp. The shwarma follows too soon on the hummus. We are still swiping triangles of pita around the bowl when the waitress brings our sandwiches, wrapped partway in foil to keep them together. But the waitress is smiling and her shiny hair bounces as she laughs at something funny he says. He is always saying funny things. I never forget that about him. I am full of mashed up chickpeas and garlic and toasted pita triangles so not much of the mixture of lamb and spices and cucumbers and greens gets eaten. I eat half of the sandwich the normal way and then unwrap the foil, freeing the pita from its cylindrical form. I scrape off the filing and eat the warm, fluffy bread. He eats his whole sandwich. "So what is new?" He asks this because I have been away for much of the summer and we have only seen each other catch as catch can. This is the first weekend that we can spend the entire three days together because I am not running off to New York or Connecticut, to rehearsal spaces with mirrored walls and peeling paint or quaint parks with gazebos and goose droppings. My heart pangs at the thought of the people I shared the summer with. I miss them. But not so much when I am with him in our world. Now the pang is nostalgic rather than desperate. The void is filled. At this moment, I would rather be eating hummus in a storefront window with him. We chatter on about what is new -- or rather what is new to him. Details of my summer. My friends meeting my father who is turning more and more into a caricature of a New York City cop even though he has been an insurance underwriter for his entire adult life. How I am feeling about the summer waning and having to go back to the libraries and classrooms of the universities. How he is feeling about going permanently on site with one particular client. Schemes for buying a condo next year. Smiles and bright eyes. If I look hard, I can see the warming glow radiating around us. After the hummus, after the shwarma, he wants baklava. I want the honey-almond cake that another smiling waitress gave us once when a piece of the soda fountain fell into my Coke. I don't know what it is called. We ask the waitress. She smiles; her mouth is made for smiling. "Do you mean the little yellow cake with the almond in the center and the honey on top?" "Yes." "It's called Namoura. Nah-more-ah." "Namoura." "Very good. Namoura." She offers us tea with our baklava and Namoura. "It is on the house." The owner brings us the tea in white ceramic mugs. "Now don't ask for the recipe," he tells us, "I won't give it to you. It is my grandmother's recipe and I am the only one who knows it." The owner has a black, bristly mustache. He smiles as much as the waitress does. The tea is thick and honeyed; the baklava is flaky; the Namoura is pleasantly sticky. We are content to sip our tea and eat forkfuls of sweets without much conversation. From this vantage-point, the coming fall, the new school year and reshouldering the yoke of work seem comforting, interesting, even noble. Summer will return and there will always be something to do in between. And we are together. I am reminded that my life is good. I have been given more good things than I have a right to expect. I watch the people glide peacefully down Pine Street in the golden light. Two girls are walking towards us on the other side of the smooth window. One is small, a fine-boned Indian girl with hair as black as a our waitress'. The other catches my eye for an incredible instant that stretches and shimmers and amazes me. This girl is tall, with short brown hair that brushes her ears. She saunters along next to her friend, but there is a self-consciousness in the way she crosses her arms and in her thin-lipped smile. Her hips flare voluptuously. Olive runs underneath her pale skin. Her eyes are wide-set, honeyed almonds. Amazement settles my breath at the bottom of my lungs. I am looking through the window at myself. Five or six years younger and with a haircut I never had, but this girl reminds me so much of myself that it is like a physical blow. When she sees me, she staggers a bit, a quick shuffle-step that denotes her surprise and I know that she is looking through the window at me and seeing herself at thirty. I am staring at her, my fork half-raised to my mouth, the yellow Namoura forgotten. Through the window I can feel her awkwardness and insecurity. Her questions flow through the glass separating us as if it were water. Am I normal? Am I okay? Will someone ever love me? What am I going to do with the rest of my life? Will I ever be happy? She is not asking me these things; these are the questions that travel with her, swirling continually about her head and heart; the same questions that I have carried with me. In the midst of her questions, though, there is a strong feeling of peace. It takes me a moment to realize that this contentment is flowing outward from me, from the very center of my body. I am saying to this younger me: Look at me. I am happy. I have worked things out. Look at this man with me. I am loved and I love. I have found a way to spend my life doing the things that bring me joy and I am finding better ways of doing those things. My life keeps getting better and better. I may not always be content but I have learned how to work things out in this life. You will work these things out, too. You will be me in a few years. All of this passes between us in the space of a few elastic seconds. My peace crosses the glass barrier between us and the corners of the girl's mouth pull slowly into a strangely brilliant smile. I feel my own lips curving upward. Without a mirror, I know my smile is identical to hers. Then she is gone, but the smile lingers. "What's that smile for?" He accompanies his question with a quizzical cock of his head. I am back at the table with the mugs of sweet tea and the cakes. "The strangest thing just happened. That girl reminded me of me." "Weird." "Yeah, but good." His fingers reach for mine again and I tuck a little bit of the peace I feel into a corner of my heart, saving it for a future version of myself.

7 Deadly Sins and Other, Less Fatal Diversions Pride: This afternoon, I got my hair cut, colored, and highlighted. It took a nice chunk of change, but I love it so much that I cannot keep myself from staring raptly into any reflective surface I pass -- mirrors, store windows, brass trim -- you name it, I'm admiring my hair in it. Plus, I don't know what my stylist used, but now my hair smells like the beach. Have I mentioned that I love my stylist? I do. Almost as much as I love my hair. Envy: School's back in and all the little eighteen-year-olds are scurrying around campus. I watch them and covet their youth and romantic notions of the future. Wrath: of Khan. Okay, that gets that out of the way. I feel better now. Sloth: I managed to start teaching my Creative Writing class today without actually having made up the syllabus. Lucky thing I can talk about myself for fifty minutes with no problem. Avarice: Recently, I've been trying to think of ways to make more money in addition to my teaching salary. The only reason I am comfortable with this sudden need for greed is the fact that I will gouge out my eyes with a red pen before I work next summer. Gluttony: Erica is evil. She took me, Holden, and Pat to this restaurant where I had no choice but to eat Scallops Gratinee, Lobster Bruschetta, and Country Beef Burgandy in a bread bowl, and accompany it all with a couple of glasses of merlot. If you are ever in Bucks County, PA, I suggest you check out the Cock & Bull Restaurant. Ignore the slightly off-color name and enjoy the food. Lust: Silver BMW convertibles are awfully sleek, aren't they? Book: Don Quixote. But I actually read some of it today! Tune: The Smiths, "Cemetery Gates": I dread a sunny day, so let's go where we're happy and I'll meet you at the cemetery gates. Oh, Keats and Yeats are on your side. I dread a sunny day, so let's go where we're wanted and I'll meet you at the cemetery gates. Keats and Yeats are on your side, but you lose, because weird lover Wilde is on mine. Crush: Fenton. Fenton. Fenton. Task at Hand: I guess I'd better write that syllabus.