I drank it carefully, self-conscious about my worn slippers and the tiny pension that barely sustained me.
“You keep apologizing for your shoes,” Arthur noticed.
“They are all I have.”
“Shoes carry people to interesting places,” he said. “Yours carried you to me. That makes them valuable.”
At the time, I had no idea how important those afternoons would become.
Each day afterward, we met beneath the oak tree, listening to old jazz records on his portable player while sharing stories about the regrets that had followed us through life.
He spoke often about his late wife.
I confessed my sorrow over never having children.
