Free The Practical Navigator by Stephen Metcalfe Page A

serious can it be if he hasn’t introduced her to you?”
    Leo laughs. “You kiddin’? She’d run for the hills she knows he has guys like me for friends.”
    â€œAnd exes like me.”
    They laugh together. They grow quiet together. Leo can see she’s now in a different place, a different time, who’s to say? Michael telling him once that Anita’s silences often preceded bouts of depression. “What does she have to be depressed about?” Leo had asked.
    â€œNeeta? You okay?”
    â€œI won’t fuck things up for him again, Leo. I promise.”
    The red-gold globe that is the sun is touching the horizon. In moments it will start to spread and melt like butter. Leo has been told that the sun itself is already below the horizon, that a sunset is merely refracted light, subject to air particles and altitude, that in its own way, it’s a mirage and that a mirage can be shaped by the mind.
    â€œHey, you ever seen a green flash?”
    â€œOnly in a glass,” says Anita, pouring the last of the gimlet into Leo’s drink.
    â€œAustralian Aborigines,” says Leo, “consider it good luck. Success, good fortune, that kinda stuff.”
    â€œI never knew that,” says Anita.
    â€œâ€™Course not, I’m making it the hell up.”
    They belly-laugh sweet. Making Anita laugh is like being kissed, thinks Leo. He toasts the horizon. Tequila touched with lime. “Come on, green flash.”
    â€œOh, yeah .”

 
    15
    Fari appears at the front door wearing faded Levi’s jeans, a man’s white button-down cotton shirt, and a tweed jacket not dissimilar to the one Michael owns but that on her seems tailored and stylish. It’s a look that he likes, one she doesn’t mind wearing for him, and besides, she is of the opinion that with expensive shoes and a good leather belt, one can get away with anything. They take her car, one of the smaller BMW sedans, fire-engine red with a manual transmission. Michael drives, enjoying the stick shift and the handling.
    *   *   *
    They meet for the first time when Fari hits him while parallel parking. The car is new to her and she is trying to reverse into a space, backing in, coming out, backing in again, trying to no avail to get close to the curb. Exasperated, she gives up, puts it in first, glances in the side-view mirror, and inadvertently popping the clutch, lurches forward into the street. She sees the man in front of her just in time to frantically hit the brakes, but still, he is knocked back off his feet onto the pavement. She shrieks as the car shudders once and stalls. And then she is out the door, sure she’s killed or maimed him, that she will go to jail or be sued, that a moment ago everything was one way and now it’s irrevocably another. She kneels, her hands fluttering over him. He is alive, thank God, his eyes are open. She tells him not to move, that it’s all her fault, she wasn’t looking, that she has insurance, is he all right, is he all right?
    â€œI’m so sorry, I’m sorry, are you all right ?!”
    â€œWhat?” he says.
    It is only then that she realizes she is babbling in Farsi, that under duress, English, her second language, has flown the coop.
    â€œIt’s okay,” the man says. “No harm done, I’m fine, really.” He starts to rise.
    â€œNo, you shouldn’t,” she says. “You shouldn’t move.”
    â€œWhy not?” the man says.
    â€œYou might be hurt,” she says.
    â€œI’m not,” the man insists. “You were hardly moving.”
    â€œI was trying to park,” Fari says. It sounds feeble and terribly incompetent. People are stopping to look. It’s all horrible. “I didn’t see you.”
    â€œI know that, it’s okay,” the man says as if talking to a child. “Now if you let me get up, I’ll get in my truck and you can have my