The Man in a White Suit

The afternoon was lukewarm. It had just rained, and being stuck indoors I had nothing better to do. Its moments like these that I stare into the white sky and slip into this fantasy:

I was out drinking with friends, it didn't matter who they were. Either my Law school friends or my other friends, but never both together. Its easier to keep separate groups of people, separate. Always, during the course of the night, our group would be acquainted with another group, and they will decide to join us while we drink and one of them will sit beside me. A man with a white suit.

He will never drink what we were drinking. His was always a whiskey or a scotch. I would sometimes ask him, what's inside the glass, Jack Daniels? No. Johnny Walker? No. Sometimes he would say a Macallan, other times it was Lagavulin. The glass was always consistent, it will always be his only one.

He would smell of Paco Rabanne, sometimes Hugo Boss, but never Calvin Klein.

He had a consistent smile. A natural smile.

He talks to me, and whatever our topic was, it would be a matter worth talking about. There are days when we talked of politics, of current events, sometimes it would be of mundane things. He would keep his full attention to me, sip his drink, and smile.

I stare at his smile, but never into his eyes. I always believed that there are things man cannot comprehend, which is why as hard as he tries, man cannot recreate them. The eyes are an example. So I keep this rule, that I never look into the eyes.

It would be late, and he would suggest that we get some coffee.

By fate, or coincidence, or luck, I ended up riding in his passenger seat. Just the two of us, headed for coffee. How about the others? Sometimes they say they would follow in another car, other times they are not invited.

One would assume, that we were flirting, and we really were. Or that we were single, which we weren't. He has a fiancee, a girl he's been in a relationship for nearly 8 years now. And I have my significant other as well. It wasn't a secret, we both knew.

They had the perfect relationship, they met in College, he proposed through the radio. She said yes. But I digress.

As we talk over our coffees, about our lives, what we've been missing about each other, I get the urge to ask him why he's here with me. At that point, he would stare at me, sip his coffee and smiles for the last time. I slip out of my fantasy, awakened by reality.

I hear the loud cries of the baby in the other room. I can see it through the two parallel doors, staring at me through the wooden grating of his crib.