Eating Alone - Darcy Vebber

She watched him from the doorway, leaning against the jamb. Sam sat with his back to her, looking out the window at the city. It was her seat, the place she sat, when she ate at the table. Out the window the light was turning blue and the trees on the hillside were green black against the winter sky.

He ate like a boy, grabbing, buttering, gulping. It was mostly food he’d brought with him, a loaf of white bread, half a package of bologna, a plastic container of supermarket coleslaw that dripped mayo onto the table. She supplied the quart of milk she kept for coffee and the half gallon of orange juice and glasses. The milk was already gone.

His backpack was on the floor next to him, close by his feet as if someone might take it. He leaned over and reached in, searching for something, his eyes still on the view and the red lip of the horizon.

“Can I get you something?” Lisa finally asked.

He looked around, startled. “Jesus, I .. uh …” He didn’t want to say he had forgotten she was there but he had. For one strange moment, his expression was wary, then he smiled his familiar smile. It was his gift, this smile. He invited her to join him. At her own table. He patted the chair seat next to him. “It’s so great to be inside, to be eating at a table like this.”

She hesitated, sorry to have interrupted. She knew all the stories of Sam’s rootless childhood. He had told her what it felt like, when he got to sit at a table, to have a regular bed for himself night after night. Having him in her life made her feel everything more vividly. Roof, floor, heat, light. She felt a little constriction at the base of her throat and potential tears. And always with the pleasure the fear. She batted it away but it wouldn’t go. “What? Ah, hot sauce, right?”

She knew that as a boy he had learned to put hot sauce on everything, to make any strange thing familiar, to give every new food the same burn.