At Pickles Pub in Baltimore

Within the first fifteen minutes, I learn that you haven’t read a book in thirty years, but in the past three months, you’ve read three. All nonfiction—one I’ve recently read too, 1929. You’ve now read three books more than your son has ever read. Men in competition with their sons, I think: no good. You’re doing an afternoon walk-through with me. The big screens, bigger than I’ve ever seen, are all on, though the pub in all its iridescent yellow and purple is deserted. Baseball’s opening day is a month away; the cold scent of March rains knocks through, damp and beery, but you’re primed in a black-and-orange O’s jersey. I would’ve guessed you for a biker, in for a quick drink, not the pub manager—the bulk of you, the chest-long beard, the sideways glances with a kind of on-edge glee. Maybe you are just glad to talk about books, about economic history and collapse. I refocus us with an event detail: wasn’t there supposed to be a small stage? You assure me you can set up a literary reading tomorrow night. During the nation’s biggest gathering of writers, space is at a premium, or I wouldn’t be at his Pickles Pub. “You can handle poetry and short stories?” I query. “Yours?” you ask. “Mine, too,” and I give you my collection’s title: I Should Have Slept With Them All. And I can see that look—am I being serious with you? But I am. More about reading short versus long (1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin is over 750 pages), where your daughter goes to college, that you never had a reading here, but always a first time, and I agree, a first for everything. Another fifteen minutes, done with logistics, your big arms pointing— the mic here, the bar food there—we‘re finished except you surprise me again by asking, “Too soon for a hug?” Half an hour, a hug? In your arms, I silently swear, I should sleep with you now.

You walk me out of the pub, talking, mostly about books, the three you’ve read, the others you’d like to read, some would call you a raconteur, others a blowhard, a big talker. Those words that cascade over that rough beard, over that barrel-chest, are finally about a wife, as if that should be a warning or a coda to me. You don’t know that tell only makes you more appealing. I’m glad you have a spouse (I wish upon you a long and happy marriage). Your words are our forty-five-minute courtship. You want someone to listen to you, and I’m listening now. My skin bristles, though that might be the wind whipping rain over the Inner Harbor, or it might be that the words that bend me near your Orioles jersey also keep the chaos of the world at bay. Outside, it’s pickles-green against us on the building’s walls, making a statement. On the sidewalk, you take a breath. I once was at a sermon where it was said that G-d’s first breath started the universe. Then all the rest, all the words. Not that you, the manager of Pickles Pub, are god-like. Far from it. Though after about an hour, I feel like I’ve known you all my life. With all your words, you're earning yourself a place in those whipsaw what-if prayerful wild moments I hold close before sleep, that, I pray, will seed the moments before my last breath.