Another business trip, alone again in a another strange city, missing my wife, my daughter, my dog.  I’m going out to eat, having overcome any trepidation about sitting alone in a restaurant seventy or eighty cities ago after ordering room service for about the millionth time.  I try to go local, and I read about this place down on the water where I am in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, housed in a centuries old building with original hand-hewn beams and plank floors, lots of character, that's important to me, and it looks yummy to boot. I arrive and go upstairs to sit at the bar and snag a two-top right next to the window. Outside are a couple of tugboats moored together along the seawall, stretching their lines, the water placid, inviting but much too cold for personal recreation.  A glass of Malbec starts to take hold and the stress of the day starts to dissipate, slowly.

At the other window table is a couple, drinking, talking, twenty/thirty-somethings with that casual, free-spirit vibe us forty-somethings say we don’t envy but deep down, well, you know.  The guy has long dreadlocks secured with beaded string, a Grizzly Adams beard, plain blue sweater, paint-splattered pants, she’s wearing a colorful scarf playfully wrapped about her neck and shoulders, brunette, no highlights thank god, pleasant blouse, hip hugger jeans with a macrame belt, and inviting blue eyes.  I’m gazing out over the bay, my thoughts wandering, to my daughter’s smile, to my guilt over imposing a time out before leaving on my business trip but knowing I’ll talk to her tonight and she’ll be fine, all Daddy Daddy Daddy! before my wife finally manages to pry the phone away from her tiny hands.

I start to eavesdrop on the couple next door, not eavesdropping per se, I mean, just don’t talk so loud folks.  I’m only catching snippets, but enough to tell a story. They’re fairly new together, not a first date, but not doing sleepovers yet either. He’s talking about that night at Tommy’s party, I saw you and immediately wanted to kiss you, and I can’t see her face but I know she’s melting inside, and I swear I can hear her smile. He’s doing well, charming in a hippy-dippy kind of way, and they seem happy enough, things are copasetic, but then he says something, I don’t quite catch all of it except it had something to do with Tommy’s party, about a friend of hers, something embarrassing, and he says it in a way that tells me he expects her to agree with his version and she says I don’t remember that and there is just the slightest edge in her voice, so slight I don’t think he catches it, but being the objective observer I definitely hear it. Then he repeats his statement like she must be mistaken, and I know he didn’t catch the edge because if he had he wouldn’t have repeated it, and she comes back again but edgier, I really don’t remember that, and I’m like dude, listen to her, shut the fuck up, you’re doing fine but now you’re blowing it.  Then, just for a moment, silence, and he says At least we got together and I can hear her smile again and she leans over to him and says, conspiratorially, I wish you would have kissed me that night, and now I can hear him smile.

He gets up to use the restroom and I can see her face, though I try not to stare so as to not creep her out, and I’m right, she’s smiling.  The place is beginning to get crowded.  The guy comes back and they get their check, she pays, they talk some more, hold hands across the table, and then she gets up, walks over to him, cradles his furry hippy cheeks in her hands, and kisses him dangerously, a little passionately, and they leave.

I finish my meal, drink a little more wine, look out over that beautiful bay beyond the tugboats, and think about my wife and little girl, and I smile.  You can almost hear it.