F I C T I O N

By Brent Bakeman

I  always think about the differences between us. I always wonder what she was like then, when she was closer to my age. She says, usually with a smile, that she was just like she is now but not as smart. I think that others can be the only judges of how we were. But I’m sure she was a nice person. I really wish sometimes that I could have seen her then; when she was young, unsure, maybe even struggling. I would have liked to have seen the events that shaped this woman, and I won’t lie, as beautiful as she is now she must have been positively on fire back then.

She feels that she traded a family and motherhood for her law practice. I don’t buy that but I don’t argue; I think she was just too good for ninety-nine percent of the men in this world, which means her chances of ever stumbling upon that one percent in her turn on this earth were very slim. Eleven years my senior yet she modestly claims to learn from me. I know I learn from her. She can talk like me. We are those ones, those ones with the “radio-voice” and the politically proper rhetoric for any negotiation. We convince people of things. We both agree that it is gift, the only one I have, she has others.

.We eat our overpriced pasta dishes where the waiters let you smell the cork. The busboys check out the sexy older woman that I am with. Sometimes the difference between she and I emboldens those busboys to give me a congratulatory grin or nod; they are usually closer to my age than she is. I feel cheap sometimes when I wonder if they think she hired me. But I know her far away from public perception, in her overalls and baseball cap hiking through the weeds for a picnic lunch; she smiles and laughs and I know she is happy. I know I make her happy; the busboys don’t see that.