Free Sparrow Nights by David Gilmour

candlelight—her eyes appeared black, her skin with a beauty mark on the collarbone—that for a second I considered cancelling my order. But I didn’t and made a decision, for better or worse, to simply drink through it.
    The table beside them cleared; a couple sat down, a stocky young man and his blonde wife; soon talk flew between the tables (how quickly people that age make friends!), laughter spilled up into the salty air … A story about a madman on the beach, a mix-up at the hotel check-in; a night in the mountains (“there was a rat, it was sitting on his head!”); lightning-fast ripostes (how fast they think, the sheer speed of it).
    I ordered a fish dinner, red snapper. It took an hour, as it always does in the Caribbean, and by the time it arrived I was already drunk and had quite lost my appetite. I was thinking about Emma, that this gathering at the next table was precisely the kind of thing in which she had so often tried to include me, an evening with her friends. But they didn’t interest me, to be honest. They weren’t stupid, they were just too young, and I never went, not a wedding, not a dinner, not a party, not once in the whole three years.
    “Would you like to join us?”
    I looked around. It was the girl from the airplane.
    “Me?” I said.
    This provoked a volley of well-meaning laughter.
    “Yes, you’re all by yourself.”
    I picked up my drink. A waiter raced over as if I were in danger of toppling into the sea (perhaps I was) and, taking my glass, led me to their table. I sat down between her and her husband. Introductions were made (“My name is Jennifer and this is …”). I could smell her perfume.
    “We’ve only been here two days,” said the stocky young man, “but we’re ready to leave already.” That too set off another volley of laughter. After days and days of talking to myself, I felt quite giddy to have company and I laughed too.
    Leaning forward abruptly, Jennifer started in on a story about growing up on Long Island, a father who read voraciously, a freckled boy at a dance. Her dress shimmered when she moved and I could see down her front. I had a feeling she knew it and knew I was looking and had had just enough to drink to find it cozily fine. Her voice, I noticed, had an odd tribble to it. That must be what Daisy Buchanan’s voice sounded like, I thought.
    Now the blonde woman took the floor. Suddenly we were in Tokyo. “We were on a game show. Everyone watched; they couldn’t believe we could speak Japanese.” She touched her husband’s arm. “Or he could anyway. I was a few pounds heavier then and boy, did it ever show on television. I was never so embarrassed.”
    Her husband jumped in. “We couldn’t get our modem to work over there. We ended up calling collect to New York, like twelve times! Finally they shipped us a new one—by courier. It was wild.”
    “Did you say something?” Jennifer whispered. The stocky young man was impersonating a Japanese bank manager.
    In the tones of a gentleman making conversation (but, in fact, angling for exclusive attention), I said, “Actually, I was thinking about an old girlfriend.”
    “Was it a sad thought?”
    “I was just thinking how much she would have enjoyed an evening like this.”
    “How come?”
    “How come what?”
    “How come she didn’t enjoy an evening like this?”
    “Because I didn’t socialize with her. She was too young.”
    “Oh,” she said, suddenly embarrassed.
    “What?”
    “Then we must seem rather young too.”
    Laughter rose up as the stocky man put a sandal to his ear like a telephone.
    “No, you don’t,” I said. “And neither did she. Now that I think about it.”
    “But you like younger women?”
    “I have to, really. The ones my age are all dead.”
    “I thought so,” she said. She was fiddling with her spaghetti strap now, turning it between her finger and her thumb. Leaning forward.
    “That all the women my age are dead? You really thought that?”
    “You