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I recall being perched up like a hopeful dream at that rocky restaurant in Monterey. What was it called? Cliffside maybe, or is that just how I remember it? She sat across from me, smiling, nervous, devious, and all at once the loveliest thing I had ever seen.

I grab a piece of bread. It should be heavier. Just a hard shell full of nothing, the weight baked out of it by time and heat. I set it down. It is too much like me; besides, I might get crumbs everywhere and I worry she thinks I’m clumsy. I’ll pour her more wine. Perhaps she will get all buzzed and light and confide that she loves me, always has, that this is perfect and there is no other place, time, man.

Behind her, darkness, a heavy blanket with stars pouring through like the light penetrating my father’s afghan as I hid beneath it listening to his music and hoping he could see me. Down there somewhere is the ocean. I know it. I can hear it from here, but only when I imagine the waves crashing on the shore, my memory like a seashell carrying sound to me from the past. She smiles and I smile back. We are surrounded by people from other places stuffed into evening wear, uncomfortable and strained; their enjoyment of the space and mood cut and diluted by the desire to get back to their room and strip off these costumes and smiles, putting on their more comfortable fears and anger and then private talk about friends; each convincing the other that their life, their way, is right and better. Are we any different? Yes. I am alone and she is with me but not really here.

The moon rising up and pushing away the dark, my father pulling a great arc in the afghan, his big nose leading his eyes in to see if I’m awake; I pretend to sleep, then and now. This moon I have never seen, so big and almost red. I am witnessing its birth from the ocean when always before it has surprised me- popping up from behind pine trees or black mountain shadows or even dancing behind highway street lights, running past me as I lay in the back of our childhood station wagon going home, always going home but never feeling there. I wish I had that afghan.

I beckon her over to me and she looks confused. I stand and point and pull her chair clumsily to mine. I sit and put my arm around her chair, my hand lazily grazing her bare shoulder, feeling every invisible silken hair I know is there. She exhales, melting into the night and I swear I hear her say, 'beautiful'. I imagine she means me, us, this night, anything but the moon.

It is out now and suspended on its own above the horizon, a long line of light racing across the water and landing directly on us. Only us. I want to follow it, at least as far as the shore. I would run across the beach with her and find a way to trip or fall or just tackle her into the soft, warm sand - the sun still living there, mocking our moon. We would kiss suddenly to a primal rhythm echoed by the great waves crashing like I would imagine artillery fire from a helicopter, BANG BANG BANG bang bang bang, as it runs the length of the angled shore, the sea refusing to approach straight on, knowing in time it will erode the land to its will, as will I with her heart. We both have time, me and the sea. The moon has always followed me; no matter where the highway turned, it was always there like a saucer from another planet, racing along with the car and seen only by me.

The waiter is back. He is standing with our food and locked up with uncertainty about whether to serve us as we now sit or as we did when we ordered. He wins. She stands and pulls her chair away to face me. He smiles, glad that the decision is no longer his, comfortable that our positioning now matches the veneer of the other diners.

She looks at her plate and complains- she had requested no peanuts in the sauce for her fish. The moon is forgotten. It hovers over her now like a warning to me. She is not like me, nor will she presently be. I am suddenly uncomfortable in my clothes. I cannot wait to return to our room and trade them for her cold gown and gossip about our waiter and the night. Perhaps I am meant to be alone with the moon after all. But right now I need her and so I’ll just pour some more wine.