Concerning du Monde

  He wasn’t really expecting Ivy to be there when he went back to Café du Monde. It was like letting the phone ring that one last time, on the off-chance it gets picked up. Hopeless, he knew, and he browbeat himself for indulging, but when anyway.
  And was surprised to find her sitting alone on the terrace, reading a book by the insect-swarmed lamp.
  He stood there, staring at her for an eternity, in amazement, in admiration, in adoration. Then he shook himself and hopped the fence like so many mornings, taking the chair across from her.
  “Hi,” he said sheepishly as she glanced up from her book.
  “Where have you been?” she asked, stealing his words. Her face was concern; not worry, but like God in the Garden at the Fall. As though she knew where, only wanted to hear him say it.
  “I was having. . . . a talk with someone,” he said.
  “You wanna know something?”
  “What?”
  She brushed a lock of hair from her face, twisting in his stomach like winding a clock. “Sometimes the questions are more beautiful than the answers have the capacity to be. Sometimes. . . . sometimes the truth is more complicated than an explanation can clarify.”
  “That’s what he said.” Kevin helped himself to her coffee mug. “I just don’t know how it’s done,” he told the tawny swirls.