The Long Table

September eighth. Simone's birthday was last week and we did what we always do, which is find a table and refuse to leave it. I had booked the reservation for seven and by the time we looked up it was nearly ten and neither of us had noticed the restaurant thinning out around us. The hostess refilled our water glasses twice. We let her.

I don't write about Simone's birthday as a recurring event because it isn't one in the way that some things become recurring events on this blog, it's not a tradition I named and then maintained. It's just that every year in September there's an evening like this one, and I think I only recognize it for what it is while it's happening.

Whatever she said next, she was right.

Simone was in the middle of a story I'd heard the beginning of somewhere else, at the end of a Tuesday session probably, and had never heard the rest of, and there's something about that, the continuation of a sentence that started months ago, that I can't quite account for in ordinary terms.

A person at a nearby table offered to take a photograph. I almost said no and then I didn't, because Simone looked exactly like herself in the candlelight and I wanted the record.

Happy birthday, Simone. Then and now.

We toasted without announcing what we were toasting to, which I think is the only honest way to do it. Happy birthday, Simone. You name the frame first and I'll get around to writing it down eventually, that's what I've got.