Tom Brady

I met my dream girl once. It was last year, or the beginning of this one. She was kind to me like she was kind to everyone. I was no different and I realize I was probably one of many who thought of her that way. There were probably a dozen of us or so, but now time has whittled it down to just me because I am sincere and I am still here thinking of her when the rest have moved on. She was a waitress in a busy bar that claimed it was also a grille. I am not sure what the "e" on the end of grill means, or why it matters enough to be there. I suppose it is upscale to spell it that way. It could have been worse and been a gastropub. 

I was reeling from a breakup that doesn't matter at all now. But then it was everything and all-consuming like a fire or a storm is all-consuming and I could hardly see color or beauty or breathe or feel anything but the dull pain of that heartache. I drank in that bar nearly every night, except for when it snowed too much and they closed early and there was only a miserable sign to greet me at the door. It was walking distance from my house and I walked briskly in and stumbled home when the music was turned off and the lights on. When I looked around and everyone had seemingly just disappeared.

I went to see her, I realize now. Not for the beer or the hope of anything else. Not for the company of the people I spoke to about things that hardly mattered then and matter even less now. Not to feel normal or wanted by someone after having been so painfully hurt by someone I gave my whole heart to. Not for that stuffed fox on the wall that seemed to stare at me, or for the overpriced food and beer that wasn't any better than the cheaper fare up the street. I went to see her and when she wasn't there I felt lifeless as though I was in the wrong place. Her face, her smile, the smell of her perfume in passing as she ran up and down the walkway behind the bar where I sat made me feel again. She made me feel something that someone else had killed.

It was Superbowl night and the Patriots played the Rams and the bar was nearly empty and snow fell out the window in big paper-like flakes that seemed too deliberate to be real. I sat there with the bartender and that fox and a few people staring at the screen. She wasn't working and because of it I felt like a man in a coma whose family was somewhere outside a door deciding whether they were going to pull the plug or not. My ex was probably in a clinic, though it was Sunday. I didn't know. She wouldn't tell me. She always seemed to be in the clinic and my lifeless phone wouldn't advocate for us anymore and I was bankrupt of hope. 

The beer went down fast and I sighed watching Tom Brady throw a pass to someone over the middle. I was the only person in the bar who was rooting for Tom Brady and the Patriots. The guy next to me and the bartender were rooting for numbers on a posterboard with their names in the square. I never felt closer to an abysmal ending of life than I did in that one moment. But as I was ready to pay the bill and resign myself to the tragedy of my own doing, the door burst open and she walked in smiling, a little drunk, in a Patriots sockhat and jersey. 

I smiled at her and she said hello and sat close next to me and talked to her friend the bartender and two regulars a few stools down. And I sat there and watched the rest of the Superbowl with her, having been resuscitated by one beautiful woman, not caring if my phone rang or vibrated, hoping in fact at last that it didn't. We talked about pictures and stories and how I resembled someone on a tented beer advertisement on the bar. And she looked at me as though she could see into me and I looked at her hoping to see into her. And at times when we didn't say anything we just looked. 

We talked about kids between drinks and where she was from, and her husband. She was happily married and was moving to another state in a few months. She had lived there before and she talked about a beach near where she was moving where she would go by herself sometimes with a blanket and some beer that was the most beautiful place on earth. And as she talked I listened to every word and I don't believe there is a place on earth I'd rather go to than there because of how she described it to me. Nor do I ever feel I have ever listened more intently to someone in all my life.

The Patriots won as they always do and we celebrated and she got ready to leave. Her father came in with her, I hadn't realized, and she waited for him to use the restroom which was under the watchful eye of the fox. I wanted to tell her so badly how beautiful she was and how meaningful her simple hellos and smiles had been to me over the past month or so. How they gave me life when life seemed to have abandoned me. How I wish I could be so lucky as to...no. There was no more a fitting end to it. Had she been drunker and without a chaperone and we made love somewhere it wouldn't have been right and something would have been lost. Something very meaningful that shall be forever preserved and beautiful. That is how I console myself anyway. 

I said goodbye to her gratefully and she smiled at me a little different than before. As though she understood. I didn't go back to that bar until just now, nearly nine months later, months after she moved away. The gestation period of a baby that could have been, the sordid male part of me imagines. But how appropriate it is that it has been nine months in that she gave me life so effortlessly just by being herself. She is one of those people, angels some would say, whose infectious presence in life revives and breathes life into the deadest of souls. 

This place is not the same without her. It's less life and a vibrancy. I never got tell her thank you or that I hope she is happy. So as I go to the restroom, I tell the old fox on the wall who witnessed everything, much more than the follies of me, or the beauty of her. More than one Superbowl or two. He has seen heartbreak, heartache, people falling in love, people eating a last meal, or rekindling a friendship or a love thought lost. I wonder if they ever dust him. I wonder if he misses her too. 

I got a little drunk reminiscing and looked at pictures of her on Facebook and I smiled hoping she went back to that happy place she had described to me. Dream girl would never suffice. No title or moniker befitted her. I'm not praying for her divorce or writing her sappy love letters and mailing them anonymously. I am not messaging her compliments or making myself at all known. I am praying that she is happy and her marriage is the kind people like me write books about. 

The new bartender said she hadn't seen me in here before and noticed me looking at the fox and asked what I thought of the place. I told her I had been in a few times a while back and that I decided to name the fox. Curiously she chuckled and asked what name I chose. And I paid my bill and put on my jacket to leave and told her, "Tom Brady." 

"Why Tom Brady?" she asked.

"Because Tom Brady never loses. Just like hope never loses." I replied. The best love stories are those never written and maybe the greatest loves are those never at all lived.