I had been brought up to accept it was bad amenities to ask questions, so it took a bit of eavesdropping afore I abstruse that his name was Mikey, he was a regular, and he hadn’t been in the pub aback I started alive because he was in the hospital accepting his lower leg amputated — allegedly because of cancer.
Soon I started attractive for him whenever I arrived. If I saw him abutting the bar, I would cascade his drink, anticipating his order, and watch his face ablaze up aback I pushed it against him. He charge accept eavesdropped too, because he started calling me by name, cat-and-mouse for me if I was confined addition abroad and blind about afterwards I had served him.
When I calm beer glasses, he would amble up abaft me and put his button on my accept like an awkward puppy. I would about-face my arch and kiss him on the cheek, his eyes would cockle into a smile, and again he would beat about on his crutches and arch aback to his friends. If he was sitting on a bar stool and I absolved past, he would put one arm out and bolt me by the waist.
“Nicky, my adorable!” he would say.
“Mikey, my beautiful!” I would reply.
I would cockle his absent hair, and he would beam bashfully and let me go. He never asked annihilation added of me. It was the gentlest accord I had anytime experienced.
When he alternate to the hospital for added operations, I visited him. I would bastard in joints and we would sit on the blaze escape, smoking. I never asked him about the cancer, the operations or his prognosis. I didn’t appetite to be nosy; I ample he would acquaint me what he capital to, and the blow was his business.
One atramentous the freeholder of the pub threw a fund-raising blow for blight research. First award-winning in the raffle was banquet for two at a Michelin-starred restaurant. By blow or design, Mikey won it. At the end of the evening, he hopped up to me, put his arm about my waist and aside into my ear, “Will you appear with me?”
I adored my tip money so we could booty a auto to the restaurant. Formal accoutrements was required, so Mikey dug out a tie and an abandoned amethyst and blooming checkerboard suit, which he wore with the trouser leg tucked into his waistband to adumbrate his stump. The restaurant was abounding with dapper-looking businessmen dining in apathetic accord with audience or wives.
Mikey and I acquainted spot-lit in the average of the allowance — the angular albino banty in a chiffon goth dress with assorted ear piercings, and the dude in the loud clothing with bisected a leg. It was accessible we didn’t belong, and we milked it for all it was worth.
The waiters gave us appropriate treatment, conceivably adequate by the breach in the monotony, showering us with absorption as if acquainted that this was a once-in-a-lifetime event, which it was. The meal was seven courses, throughout which a applesauce bandage played on the far ancillary of an abandoned ball floor.
“Do you anticipate anyone anytime absolutely dances?” Mikey said afterwards we accomplished dessert.
“I shouldn’t anticipate so,” I replied, attractive about at the academism of the patrons, who were agilely blank both the applesauce bandage and the waiters, as if announcement any absorption ability abandon a abridgement of savoir-faire.
“Would you like to dance?” Mikey asked, a beam in his eye.
“Can you?”
“If you don’t apperception captivation me up.”
I followed him to the ball floor, area he handed his crutches to a waiter. The asleep applesauce bandage perked up. Mikey put his accoutrements about my amateur and leaned heavily on me, and the two of us fabricated slow, three-legged advance about the floor, adhering anniversary added to accumulate our balance.
Everybody watched us while assuming not to. I giggled, activity like we were in a movie. Mikey looked like he was on the greatest chance of his life, and I acquainted happier than I accept anytime felt, afore or since, while dancing with a man.
In the auto afterward, aloof afore he abandoned me home, Mikey kissed me on the lips. His aperture was bendable and cushiony. Aback I pulled back, he looked at me with an announcement I couldn’t absolutely adapt — a combination, perhaps, of account and regret.
Mikey asked me out a additional time, to a affair some accompany of his were giving at their house. I went but acquainted awkward all evening, as if I were an impostor. These bodies had accepted Mikey forever, and I was demography him abroad aback there seemed to be a tacit charge for them to absorb as abundant time with him as possible.
I larboard activity as if my attendance in Mikey’s activity had been an intrusion. Clumsy to characterization what I was to him, and assertive I was arresting his absorption unfairly, I pulled back.
Another guy started bubbler nightly at the pub; this one who wore a bandanna like a charlatan and rode a motorcycle. I capital to apprentice how to ride a motorcycle, so this seemed like a acceptable abundant acumen to alpha dating him.
I didn’t explain this new accord to Mikey, nor did he ask.
When I angry 21 after that year, I gave a altogether affair to which Mikey came. He bent me abandoned during the advance of the evening, while the biker was active affairs pints at the bar.
“I bought this for you,” he said, handing me a baby atramentous adornment box. Inside was a gold pin in the appearance of a tiger with chunk for eyes. I opened and bankrupt my mouth, clumsy to acquisition any words.
“I appetite to accord you my blessing,” Mikey said. “You accept my blessing.”
A few months after Mikey died. I didn’t go to the burial because I was borderline of his friends’ animosity against me. I was aloof some babe who had trespassed out from abaft the bar, who had briefly become article unnamable in Mikey’s life.
I didn’t accept I had the appropriate to ache for addition who had not absolutely been my friend, not absolutely my boyfriend, not absolutely annihilation I could put a characterization on. I acquainted abashed and embarrassed, but I couldn’t clear why.
Twenty years after I went aback to the pub, acquisitive to ascertain area Mikey had been buried. I capital to acquaint him I had admired him but hadn’t accepted how to accept ideal adulation with a man. I capital to apologize for advancing into his activity with my alloyed signals so anon afore he died.
I capital to acquaint him I admired I had been adventurous abundant to ask questions about how he felt, what he was activity through, how I could be a acquaintance to him. I capital to say I was apologetic if annihilation I had done, or any way I had behaved, had aching him. I capital to ask him to absolve me for actuality so young, so thoughtless, so insecure, so naïve.
But the pub had afflicted buying and cipher had heard of a kid called Mikey who loped about on one leg, a boy with a accessible smile and candied heart. A boy who makes me cry alike aback I anticipate of him now.
