The Birthday Boy

RAYMUND P. REYES

It was my birthday. When Kathy was alive, we would order a steak dinner in L’Incontro, a fancy restaurant two blocks down from our apartment. Kathy died three months ago so this year I went by myself.

Darya Zhuravleva

The waitress served me a big slice of carrot cake with thick cream frosting and a tiny lit candle on top because I told her that it was my birthday and that was why I was there. It was on the house, she said. I didn’t know why I felt the need to tell her. Perhaps for her to take pity on me—an old man dining alone and on his birthday, too— and in a sense, make her share in my misery. I even told her about how my wife recently passed away, in response to when she asked as to why I was by myself. She was sorry for my loss, she replied. She waited until I blew out the candle and insisted I make a wish. It sounded corny for people my age to still be making wishes, I said. For what could people my age still wish for? A painless death?

I was touched by her thoughtfulness, though I knew that after she had served me she would move on to her next customer, maybe listen to another sob story, and when her shift was over, go home, think of her own problems, and totally forget me and all the others she served tonight. At least I got a free cake, I consoled myself.

But she was attractive, the waitress. I noticed her, a fact which surprised me. I had stopped paying special attention to attractive young girls for, I don’t remember how long a time now, except to think that they would have been as old as my daughter if I had kids (or granddaughter if I had married early). But that night, I was especially aware of how the waitress caught my attention. It was like the very moment when Kathy died and I felt, more than the grief, relief and an unburdening, a lightness I was not expecting. It surprised me, too. After Kathy exhaled her last breath—with me by her bedside and holding her hand—my first thought was that, at last, I could also move on from my own suffering of having had to witness her die a little each day since the first diagnosis of cancer. Meanwhile, this new surprise was the fact that at fifty-six, I felt the burning again. Just when last week I had declared to Randy and Greg, close friends from work, my opinion that sex is overrated. They reacted with laughter and protestations.

Her name tag said Lily. So when Lily the waitress bent over to serve my order of steak and salad, I glimpsed a little cleavage, a shadow of a hollow on freckled milky white skin, and from there my gaze moved downward, and then sideways to the curve of her back, the shape of a round ass, and further on, smooth legs peeking out from under the short red skirt and white apron of her uniform. She was nineteen, she answered when I asked her how old she was. A freshman in the nearby university and working part-time at the restaurant. I saw Lily not as the daughter or granddaughter that I could have had, but as a possible bedmate. Perhaps it was the real reason why, out of the blue, while she was smiling down at me, patiently waiting for me to complete my order, I blurted out to her that it was my birthday. So she would pay me special attention, even out of pity, but some attention for me, nonetheless. And if I had worked harder at her, I believed she might have given in to my advances.

When I was younger, I could turn on my charm and make women fall for me. The waitress falling for the customer is the stuff of cheap paperbacks and yet, if you must know, it did happen to me in real life. I hit on a waitress and married her. When I first met Kathy, she was serving tables at an Olive Garden restaurant. She wasn’t an ordinary waitress, of course. She was working shifts while pursuing a degree in microbiology (but I wouldn’t know this until much later). It was lust at first sight. This is embarrassing to admit now but that was how it began.

At twenty-six, I was bold and fresh and game. So were my friends, Randy and Greg. That night we worked overtime on tax reports and decided to have dinner at the restaurant across the office before proceeding to a bar five blocks down the road. Kathy served our table. She looked sexy in her uniform: white shirt, black tie, black trousers, and an apron tied around a slim waist. She was very much covered but all the more did it tempt the imagination, especially since her body had those curves which strained through the silky fabric each time she moved.

Greg let out a wolf whistle when Kathy approached with a bunch of menus in her arms. He thought she didn’t hear the first one so he did it again. This time she cast him a sideways glare. I scolded my friend. Tsk, tsk, that’s being disrespectful to a pretty young lady, I wagged a finger at Greg.

You should listen to your buddy here, Kathy admonished in a good-natured way. She smiled at me and gave me extra glances each time she came back to our table to serve, which drove my two companions to tease me mercilessly.

Before we left the restaurant, I wrote my phone number on a napkin and inserted it along with the check. I merely took a chance. I didn’t think she’d call back. Then again, perhaps it helped that I was what you’d call the attractive type.

Later on, each time the memory of our first meeting would come up during talks, Kathy and I would remember to thank Greg for being such a jerk that night. Greg stood as best man in our wedding. In fact, he and I stayed in the same accounting firm and after he got married to Chyna, we developed a weekly ritual of visiting each other’s houses every Saturday for dinners. I actually invited them to keep me company tonight but they were out of town. Their eldest, Greg Junior, just got engaged and they were to meet the girl’s parents for the first time. They promised to host a belated birthday party in my honor on the weekend, though.

I saw my reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall. The image that glowered back at me was enough to douse any illusions I had started entertaining, and any desire that Lily might have summoned with her presence there in front of me. I was old and the mirror, even with the restaurant’s soft lighting, could not conceal this truth. I comb the hair from the sides over to cover a bald spot on the crown, but that isn’t enough to hide the shiny pate peeking through the strands. It is also as gray as my thick eyebrows. The wrinkles that line my forehead turn into ridges when I frown. Laugh lines etch the corners of my mouth even when I don’t smile.

Taking care of Kathy had accelerated the aging process for me. While the cancer sapped her health and vitality, it also took its toll on me who served as her personal nurse throughout the ordeal. Kathy’s mother came in the mornings while I went to work, but I spent nights with my wife and she moaned in pain most of the time and needed something—had to take her medication or go to the toilet—so I wouldn’t get enough sleep. My hair thinned further, I lost weight, as if my body decided that it was unfair that only Kathy suffered the side-effects of chemotherapy. The deep circles that developed around my eyes became permanent. It took Kathy three years to succumb to the disease and when she finally died, I looked as if I had had cancer, too.

Yet before I saw myself in the mirror and the reflection betrayed me, I recognized what I felt. It had been so long I thought I had lost it, but on the night of my fifty-sixth birthday, I felt it again: desire. I desired her, Lily the waitress. I wanted to share in her youth. With a young girlfriend, I could feel young again. Some men I knew who had young mistresses kept using this excuse in justifying their illicit affairs. I could never comprehend this reasoning, but right then, I got it. When I blew out the candle on the cake, I wished for a windfall. I wished I would win the jackpot in the lottery, something which I had been hoping for ever since I was in college and bought my first ticket. These men past middle-age who had mistresses had money—or wasted whatever they earned on them. They lavished their young women with gifts, perfumes, and clothes, and paid their rents and college tuition. At my age, I thought, relationships have to be bought. Love and youth are free only when you are young. Unfortunately, I could not afford a young girlfriend at the moment if I had to buy her things. All my savings had been wiped-out from Kathy’s treatments. I was starting all over again. I had planned to retire at sixty, but I knew I had no choice but to keep working until I reached the forced retirement age of sixty-five if I were to have enough to live by in retirement.

Would I remarry? A week after the burial, my brother asked me the question. In fact, almost everyone who talked to me, hinted in passing of the possibility of my finding another mate, this while expressing their condolences. Kathy had not been buried yet and I had been asked by a relative, a cousin twice-removed, if I was thinking of getting into another relationship soon. It felt as if no one believes that an elderly man can make it in life without a woman. After dinner—of which I could not finish half of the salad although I ate the slice of cake to the last crumb because Lily brought it especially for me—I asked for the tab. I took my credit card out of my wallet, slipped it inside the little bill folder and gave it back to Lily the waitress, intentionally grazing her hand with mine when I reached over to hand the folder, but just ever so slightly so she would not notice any malicious intent behind it.

While waiting for the receipt and my card back, I looked over to the bar beyond the restaurant area. A woman, in her late forties by the looks of her, was drinking by herself. I could find someone like her instead, I mused. A more approachable and realistic goal. I decided on staying longer and moving to the bar. I contemplated buying her a drink. I could cheer her up. She looked glum, staring into space while sipping at a glass of what looked like orange juice. While I stared at her, praying that she glance at my direction, a man—between forty and sixty, it was hard to tell in the dim light by the bar area—came in from the entrance door and walked toward her. Her eyes lit up when she saw him. She stood up, the man put his arms around her and gave her a quick kiss on the lips.

My eyes followed the two as a waiter led them three tables away from mine. Closer, he turned out to look my age, with even more wrinkles and a paunch. I stared at their hands. She wore a yellow band. So did he. Married, I deduced—or each one married to other people.

Could you please fill-out our survey form, sir? It was Lily the waitress. She was back, handing me a pencil and a small sheet of paper along with my card on a serving plate. I went through the checklist: service, food, ambience. On the lines at the bottom where I was supposed to write my General Comments and Suggestions, I wrote: Happy birthday to me. I thought of writing down my phone number, too. Perhaps it would work again as it had decades ago. But

who was I kidding? If I were twenty-six and looked the way I did then, I supposed Lily would have been flattered. Just as Kathy had been that night we first met. A fifty-six year old man giving those kinds of hints to someone who could pass off as his own daughter, however, is what is called a DOM. Dirty old man. I left and drove home. I surfed on the Internet before retiring. It had become a habit which I picked up after Kathy got sick and she wanted me to keep her company. I stopped subscribing to newspapers and magazines and simply read stuff online. I had also learned to keep track of blogs on my interests, astronomy and finance. I even opened a Facebook account. I looked up some people on the social website, to see whether they had updated their status or uploaded new photos. I had been stalking their pages. There was my first crush from childhood, Marilyn Dominguez, now Marilyn Cruz with two children and five grandchildren. There was my high school girlfriend, Lydia Vasquez, now Lydia Macasangit. There was another ex-girlfriend, Josie Kabacungan, now Josie Stone after she married a Canadian. Finally, the cheerleader who didn’t even know I existed but which was my reason for attending pep rallies and games in college: Julie Manzano, now Julie Manzano-Rivera. All of them had gotten married, and remained married. I prayed that their husbands would die soon.

When the clock struck midnight, I turned off the computer and went to bed, although I knew it would be a while before I’d fall asleep. In the darkness I imagined Kathy there beside me in bed. We were younger and there was sex almost every night—which later turned to once a week, and then much later, every other week, and then once a month, until it dwindled to occasionally and rarely. I wished I would feel her there when I reach out. No, not the fat and wrinkled woman that she had become before she got sick, shrunk, and died, but the young woman with the smooth skin, whose hair smelled like flowers, and held conversations about nebulas, cloning, and Oprah’s latest guest. I missed her.

Raymund P. Reyes currently lives in Ottawa, Canada. His fiction and poetry have been published in Your Impossible Voice, Dappled Things, Carbon Culture Review, The Transnational, and in various literary journals and anthologies in his native Philippines.