Free Everybody Loves Somebody by Joanna Scott Page B

he felt upon leaving her had been sweet, the memory of his pleasure a kind of souvenir he could revive
     from time to time. But there will be no souvenirs from this brutal experience, only terror as suspicion hardens into the certainty
     that the waitress will remain separate from him, unmoved by his suffering, though it wouldn’t matter even if she did come
     to love him, for she could never love him enough.
    Paladin cursed by eerie love doth seek
    His blessed cushat dove in stormy bleak
    Tossed by the wind. Hear the doleful sound
    Of solace sought and never found.
    His only hope is to confess, without delay, his love for her. It would do no good courting her with an account of his honors,
     mere hindrances to him now, like an elaborate costume on a drowning man. Perhaps, though, the girl will take pity on him when
     he describes this newborn terror and the transformation that has occurred in him. Love at first sight. It’s one of the sublime
     experiences available in life, awful and inspiring and, from a distance, ridiculous. He can’t help it if he’s worthy of ridicule,
     nor does he care what his friends might think of him if they were here. The only one he cares about is the girl before him.
     Why, Sir Maxwell mustn’t keep her waiting any longer, he must tell her exactly what he wants without startling her, the lovely
     creature, without wasting another precious minute—
    “I’ll have the lamb chops, miss. Pink. And bring me a whiskey sour. Don’t dawdle now. I haven’t all day!”
    Stupidity’s deadly weapon—spontaneity. How could he have spoken to her like that, as though she were just an ordinary waitress
     and he weren’t devastated by love? What an idiot, courting her with tyranny and a sneer and thus destroying any shred of interest
     that might have been stirred by kinder words. Come back! But she is already heading into the kitchen, lost to a first impression
     that can never be undone, her indifference calcifying into contempt even as she walks away to fetch him what he wants.
    His only solace is his imagination. He pictures her in the kitchen spitting angrily into his drink, giving him a chance to
     taste her sweet soul. He’d rather taste the salty surface of her skin, her breasts, her lips, the nectar of her sex—he tries
     to imagine stepping out of time into the dream world where she would make herself available to him, tries to picture her in
     place of his mistress Magdalena lying naked on the bed. But the real place he’s in oppresses with its dim electric chandeliers,
     so he closes his eyes against the scene, opens them again a lifetime later, and finds before him his drink. He eats the speared
     cherry first, then sips the whiskey, taking in only enough to wet his tongue, for he wants to make this drink last, along
     with the others that will follow, each full glass an excuse to keep him sitting in this restaurant. He’ll sit here all afternoon,
     all evening, all night, and into the morrow. He’ll sit here until he turns to dust.
    C LASS C , one-thousand-dollar purse on the Widener course, and with Stout on top of Deep End there’s no telling what will happen.
     Jolly Jack breaks too quickly and drops, while Suntime holds on gamely, but it’s Deep End the aunts have put their money on—against
     the advice of their nephew Tony—for Deep End is a handsome, high-stepping horse, a plucky sprinter who last week ran third
     and usually does even worse but today has that look of ambition in his eye. Indeed, he seizes the lead at the quarter post
     and holds it, increases his advantage at the last sixteenth, coming under the wire a half-length ahead of Suntime. And that’s
     at twenty-to-one odds at the last call-over!
    Lucky as gypsies, these two sisters, with their fistfuls of cash. They count their money dollar by dollar and then send it
     back, putting it all on Dundrillon in the second heat, though the four-year-old gelding unfairly carries 151 pounds. Dundrillon
     runs sixth,