Jay Leeming

Our loneliness sits with us at dinner, an unwanted guest who never says anything. It’s uncomfortable. Still we get to know each other, like students allowed to use a private research library for only one night. I go through her file of friends, cities and jobs. “What was that like?” I ask. “What did you do then?” We are each doctors who have only ourselves for medicine, and long to prescribe it for what ails the other. She has a nice smile.Maybe, maybe. . . I tell myself. But my heart is a cynical hermit who frowns once, then shuts the door of his room and starts reading a book. All I can do now is want to want her. Our polite conversation coasts like a car running on fumes, and then rolls to a stop; we split the bill, and that third guest at the table goes home with each of us, to talk and talk.