Husband and wife, elderly, enter restaurant through wind and rain. Drip with water and longevity, dew of timelessness. She, hunched and clinging. He seats her, helps her into booth and pulls comb from pocket, reworking gust-gashed hair with smoothness and streaks of steadfastness.
"Well, I think we made it."
He looks over personal data assistant at a woman who can no longer speak, who can only stare pleadingly at their waiter as he brings Kendall Jackson and cranberry juice to the table. She is lost but not unreachable; distant, not gone.
And that is why wordless conversations over tilapia and watershow displays of parking lot puddles are enough.
This is loyalty.
