“That’s very nice of you to say. Thank you.”
We talk some more. Her name is Maddy, short for Madeleine. Her friend’s name is Preston. He does not know who I am. I tell her there’s a song I love called “Madeleine” from a musical called Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. She suggests we look it up online right now and listen to it. There is no need, I say. I have it on my phone.
“Let’s hear it!” she says excitedly.
It takes me a minute to find the song and I begin to feel self-conscious, they probably think I don’t know how to use modern technology. I press play and the song begins. The four-part harmony sounds like a barbershop quartet sung in double tempo.
“That is old school,” Preston says before the first verse is over. Maddy shushes him. Other patrons in the restaurant are looking at us, and I realize I am being self-indulgent, playing a song written in the sixties, probably before the parents of this young couple were born: “I’m waiting for Madeleine / In front of the picture show.”
“You don’t need to listen to the rest,” I say, hitting the pause button. “Basically, the guy’s in love with Madeleine, but she keeps standing him up. He waits for her in the rain and catches a cold. The end.”
“Do you think Madeleine is toying with him?” she asks. It’s a question I hadn’t thought of before, but I get the impression she, this real live Madeleine, is toying with me. She’s being flirty, charming, staring me in the eyes with a broad close-lipped smile. Is she interested in any of this, honestly? Or is this the way she might talk to any old man feeding pigeons on a park bench?
“Perhaps,” I say. “I don’t usually consider Madeleine. I’m more focused on the guy getting soaking wet in front of the movie theater.”
“Maybe she’s watching him from the window of the coffee shop across the street,” Maddy says.
“That’s mean. Maybe his cold turns into a really bad case of pneumonia,” I say.
“Maybe she rushes to his bedside and declares her undying love for him,” Maddy says, “and they live happily ever after.”
“They’d probably be in their midsixties by now.”
“I can see them holding hands and walking through a little park in Paris.” She turns her gaze to Preston. She touches his hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. It’s her signal to him that they should get going.
Preston removes some cash from his wallet and places it on the table, and before they depart we exchange pleasantries. I’m doubtful I will ever see these two again, but even if I do I will probably do my best to avoid them. I feel like some kind of youth vampire in their presence and I don’t like it. I fear I just might bite one of their necks if it would make me look five years younger.
While I eat my breakfast—everything my doctor has suggested I avoid due to my elevated cholesterol levels—the waitress clears the green-smoothie glass and white ceramic bowl, which contained oatmeal, I think, from the empty table and resets it. I ask for my check and extract a credit card from my pocket.
The host seats a woman in her midthirties and her young daughter, who is about four, where Preston and Maddy had been sitting just a few minutes before. Perhaps they were never really there in the first place. The mother’s eyes are glued to her cellphone, the girl’s wander around the room and land on me. I smile politely and lift my hand in a halfhearted wave. I usually don’t like children, but this one seems quiet and introspective, the way I like to believe I was fortysomething years ago.
She sticks out her tongue at me, just a little, probably because she knows she might get in trouble should her mother catch her. I return the gesture, very quickly, I don’t particularly want to be reprimanded by her mother either.
The little girl shrugs and for the first time in days, I laugh. Not too loudly, because it really isn’t all that funny, but the way she lifts her shoulders and rolls her eyes reminds me of something an old lady might do while saying, “Eh, who cares.”
Yes! That’s it, kid. So, I’m getting old. So, I’ve had a few failures. So, I’m gonna die, just like everyone else in this damn room. Eh, who cares.
TEXTBOOK PENIS
My penis is technically perfect.
I know what you’re thinking: Every guy says his penis is perfect. Well, that may or may not be true, but mine really is. Seriously. I’m not trying to be braggy or anything, just honest. Many things about me are not even close to being perfect. For example, my eyes are slightly too close together, I have a patch of curly hair only on the left side of my head, and no matter how much weight I lift at the gym, I still have forearms skinnier than Tori Spelling’s. We all have our crosses to bear, but luckily, my dick isn’t one of them.
By the time I was fifteen, I began asking myself the same questions every guy asks himself. Does this thing look like what it’s supposed to look like? Is this thing the right size? And what about those two other things? Are they supposed to just hang out like that all day? And why do they always seem to be moving when I’m just lying there in bed? (I still don’t know the answer to that last one. Balls are so weird.)
Most teenage boys compare wieners in the locker room, I guess, or maybe they talk to their guy friends about this kind of stuff. But I had successfully avoided all team sports and we weren’t forced to shower after gym class, so I wasn’t seeing too many soapy willies other than my own. Plus, my best friends were girls, and they only talked about their boobs and periods. I guess I could have gone to Mike with my questions, but talking to him about penises would have reminded me that he was boning Terri, and I would rather have eaten batteries than imagine that.
So one Saturday I got on my bike and rode to the public library to do a little research on male genitalia. The sexuality books were on the second floor in the science section, so I meandered through the stacks, pulling random textbooks here and there, just so no one who might cross paths with me would think I was a pervert.
“Hmmmm . . . Advanced Organic Chemistry. That looks interesting! I’ll take it. Animal Husbandry, sounds fascinating. Let me grab that one too. Human Reproduction. Ha-ha-ha. I already know everything there is to know about that topic, but let me flip through it just for a few laughs and cocks. I just looove the library.”